Former Marine Indefinitely Detained In Psychiatric Ward Over 9/11 Facebook Posts

http://www.washingtonsblog.com
August 21, 2012

Former marine Brandon Raub was carted off by the Feds and locked in a psychiatric ward for his Facebook posts questioning the government’s version of 9/11.

Raub isn’t the first person who has suffered this fate. Claire Swinney was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for claiming government liability for 9/11. Others have been committed for the same reason over the last decade.

Surely the Feds are right … that kind of talk is crazy, right?

Maybe. But many of the 9/11 Commissioners themselves don’t buy what the government says about 9/11, they say that the government has covered up the state sponsorshipof the 9/11 hijackers, and Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was entirely foreseeable .

Indeed, while they obviously haven’t said that the government was involved, 9/11 Commissioners have said we need further investigation and that the American people should question 9/11. Does that mean they should they be committed to the same psych ward which Mr. Raub and Ms. Swinney enjoyed? Of course not.

Some people believe that 9/11 was wholly unforeseeable. Others believe that government personnel were criminally negligent in letting 9/11 happen, and then obstructed justice to cover it up. See this, this,this, this, and this. Still others believe that rogue government personnel allowed 9/11 to happen, or even played a role in the attacks themselves.

Whatever one believes about 9/11, isn’t our society built on freedom of speech? And if someone has kooky theories, won’t the scientific method and free debate defeat the baseless theories? Isn’t that what modern society is all about?

Raub’s attorney – the head of the non-partisan civil rights law firm The Rutherford Institute – points outthat Raub is being indefinitely detained, and says:

For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”
What Do Mental Health Professionals Say About Those Who Question 9/11?

Many sociologists and mental health professionals say that those who believe the official version without any questioning are the ones suffering from psychological defense mechanisms.

Sociologists say that fear of terrorism has made people blindly accept false justifications for war – including the false claim that Saddam had a hand in 9/11 (when even the 9/11 Commission says he didn’t).

And the following mental health professionals say that questioning the government’s cut-and-dried version of 9/11 is the sane thing to do:
Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Lester Grinspoon, MD
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD
Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University Barry R. Komisaruk
Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Global Health in the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Michael D. Knox
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Laura Schafer
Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University Alan Gilchrist
Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Neuroscience, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Michael Gabriel
Former Chief Mental Health Coordinator and Director of Manpower Development and Training, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and Lecturer in Psychology, Boston University Herbert Hoffman
Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University Jack Sawyer
Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward
Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino
Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther
Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner
Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor
Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris
Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Marburg Gert Sommer
Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Ralph Hood
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College. Former Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Vietnam Veteran 7 years service, Jon Bjornson, MD
Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser
Trauma specialist Danielle Duperret, Ph.D.
Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD
Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz
Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech
PhD in clinical psychology from Texas Tech Michael Green
PhD in educational psychology Brent Igo
PhD psychologist Paul Johansson
PhD psychologist Gail Maudal
PhD psychologist Robert Hopper
Ph.D Psychologist Dorothy Lorig
Psychologist Robert Griffin

There are many other mental health professionals who agree.
Why Are Some Psychologists So Dogmatic?

Russian psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters.

Similarly, American apologists for the powers-that-be are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

But most mental health professionals who assume that those who question 9/11 are crazy are simply victims of the the “Martha Mitchell Effect”:


The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:


Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable.

As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Postscript: We do not condone violence. Virtually all those who question the government’s version of 9/11 are peaceful, non-violent folks.

Assange’s Full Speech from the Ecuadorian Embassy

http://rt.com/
August 19, 2012

Julian Assange made his first public appearance in two months, ever since he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Addressing the hundreds of people gathered outside the embassy, Assange thanked them for their support, claiming it was their resolve and presence that stopped British police storming the building.

“On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy and police desceneded on this building, you came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you brought the worlds eyes with you. Inside this embassy after dark I could hear teams of police swarming up into the building through the internal fire escape,” Assange said.

“But I knew thered be witnesses. And that was because of you.”

The WikiLieaks founder thanked President Correa “for the courage he has shown” in granting him asylum, and to all the nations and individuals who have shown him support.

Assange also addressed the US government and President Obama, calling for the “witch hunt against WikiLeaks” to end.

“The United States must pledge before the world will not pursue journalists for shining light on the secret crimes of the powerful. The US administration’s war against whistleblowers must end.”

He also spoke of Bradley Manning, the Army Private who has been charged with 22 criminal counts over his alleged role in providing Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks site with sensitive documents that were then distributed. Manning has been imprisoned for more than 800 days and has yet to stand trial before a military tribunal.

“On Wednesday Bradley spent his 815th day of detention w/o trial. The legal maximum is 120 days,” Assange told the crowds gathered outside the embassy.

“If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and invaluable to all of us. Bradley Manning must be released”.

Assange went on to mention Nabeel Rajab, a Bahraini human rights activist, who was “sentenced to 3 years in jail for a tweet”.

Rajab tweeted critical comments about the Bahraini Prime Minister, calling for him to step down. Before his arrest, Rajab appeared as a guest on episode four of ‘The Assange Show’ on RT, hosted by the WikiLeaks founder. In the interview, he criticized the US-led invasion of Iraq, as well as US refusals to take action during the Bahraini protests and the wider Arab Spring.

Assange also spoke of Pussy Riot, a Russian female punk band, three members of which have just been sentenced to 2 years in prison for a “punk prayer” in Moscow’s main cathedral.

“There is unity in the oppression,” Assange said. “There must be absolute unity and determination in the response”

The WikiLeaks founder was granted political asylum on Thursday – a decision that ignited a wave of international responses, with the UK and Sweden opposing the verdict and Latin American countries strongly supporting Ecuador’s move.

This article first appeared on RT.com

FBI Arrest Former Marine For FaceBook Posts About 9/11 Truth

Michael Kelley
http://www.businessinsider.com
Aug 19, 2012

A former U.S. Marine who accused the government of lying about 9/11 and spoke of “The Revolution” on Facebook was detained on Friday night, reports Renee Nal of Gather.

According to Brandon Raub’s mother, authorities from the FBI, Secret Service and Chesterfield County PD came to their door, questioned Raub about his Facebook posts – which are critical of the official story regarding 9/11 and refer to “starting a revolution” – then handcuffed him and placed him in a Chesterfield PD squad car before taking him directly to John Randolph Psychiatric Hospital in Hopewell, Va.

[...]

Here is the video of the arrest:

The most recent posts by Brandon J Raub – as opposed to Raub Brandon – include “AND THEY WILL SAY HE SAID IT TO THE NSA FIRST.” on August 16 and “Feelin like Pac all Eyes on me.” on August 15 and “The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it. ” on August 14.

Also on August 14, he posted this video:

As well as this:

Facebook/Brandon J Raub
A post on August 12 said: “There has been an overwhelming amount of evil enacted and planned against you, your children, and your countrymen. It is great in scope. Your government evil. It is as simple as that. And the calvary is coming.”

Full article here

Hacker group "Anti-Leaks" attacks WikiLeaks and RussiaToday web servers

As British police prepared to storm the Ecuadorian embassy and kidnap Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in violation of international law, a shadowy hacker group launched a denial of service attack on Russia Today’s web servers.

“An anti-WikiLeaks group has admitted responsibility for a sustained DDoS attack that made the Russia Today website intermittently unavailable on Friday,” John Leyden writes for The Register.

“The Kremlin-funded channel features a talk show hosted by Julian Assange but posts by AntiLeaks, the group which launched the attack, suggest the assault has more to do with the controversial guilty verdict in the trial of Russian feminist punk rockers Pussy Riot.”

Journalist Tony Cartalucci has documented connections between Pussy Riot’s support campaign and the U.S. State Department and the CIA spin-off, the National Endowment for Democracy.

Likewise, the group that has attacked RT looks to be the brainchild of U.S. intelligence, although they claim to be patriotic Americans who consider Assange a terrorist. The group’s professed leader, going by the name “DietPepsi,” posted a tweet on August 8:

We are young adults, citizens of the United States of America and are deeply concerned about the recent developments with Julian Assange and his attempt at asylum in Ecuador.

Assange is the head of a new breed of terrorist. We are doing this as a protest against his attempt to escape justice into Ecuador. This would be a catalyst for many more like him to rise up in his place. We will not stop and they will not stop us.

Antileaks registered its Twitter account on August 4, when it claimed responsibility for taking down the Wikileaks site earlier this month.

Geek sites have questioned the ability of the group to successfully engage in the sort of sophisticated denial of service attack that struck the Wikileaks website.

“Now we have something new a group called AntiLeaks has popped up and managed to drop a 10GB/s + DDoS attack on WikiLeaks, their affiliate sites and mirrors. This is something pretty spectacular when you think about it,” Sean Kalinich wrote for Decrypted Tech on August 8.

Kalinich went on to speculate that “recent technologies used to attack Torrent swarms that have popped up in the US” may be responsible for the Wikileaks attack. Corporate giant Microsoft has thrown its weight behind an effort to disrupt peer-to-peer torrent networks.

More likely, the Pentagon or one of its contractors is behind the attack on RT, a media network funded by the Russian government, considered a designated enemy in cyberspace.

The Pentagon has not been shy about its decision to attack enemies in cyberspace. It has turned to the private sector for help in building something called “Plan X,” an ambitious “new phase in the nation’s fledgling military operations in cyberspace,” according to theWashington Post.

Back in 2008, the Pentagon’s Information Operations Roadmap designated the internet as an enemy “weapons system” and declared that the military must be ready to “fight the net.”

Col. Charles W. Williamson III, writing for the Armed Forces Journal, proposed denial-of-service attacks against official enemies. “The days of the fortress are gone, even in cyberspace. While America must harden itself in cyberspace, we cannot afford to let adversaries maneuver in that domain uncontested. The af.mil botnet brings the capability to help defeat an enemy attack or hit him before he hits our shores,” Williamson explains.

“To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret,” the New York Timesreported in 2010. A Pentagon report said “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army.”

DietPepsi knows many observers will conclude that the anti-Wikileaks operation is run by the U.S. government. “I want to make it clear to all the conspiracy theorists out there that we have nothing to do with the United States Government or Trapwire,” DietPepsi wrote in an email to The Register.

Following the Antileaks attack, another shadowy group entered the fray. Anonymous – or somebody claiming to be the hacker group – posted the following video:

At least 18 killed as S. African police open fire on thousands of striking miners (Photos)

http://rt.com
August 16, 2012

Warning! Photos below, and in the rest of this article are graphic.

At least 18 bodies were seen lying bloody and motionless on the ground after local police opened fire on striking miners, a South African news agency reports. Some of the protesters were allegedly armed with machetes and spears.

The incident is believed to have occurred after police, in the process of laying down barricades of barbed wire, were outflanked by a crowd of 3,000 demonstrators.

Nine people had been killed prior to Thursday’s clashes in a spate of protest in the mining town, located northwest of Johannesburg. The platinum mine, owned by Lonmin PLC, has been the focal point of protests over wage disputes since last Friday.

Fighting intensified over the weekend when two police officers were killed. Striking workers and local security guards have also been caught up in the violence.

Some 3,000 police massed in the area on Wednesday, some wearing riot gear and supported by helicopters. Demonstrators were reinforced on Thursday by a group of women pledging to stand by their husbands in their demand for increased wages.

Lonmin announced that the disruption means the company is unlikely to meet its 2012 production targets. Shares in the company have tumbled 6 percent following Thursday’s violence, bringing total losses since the outset of the strike to 13 percent.

This article first appeared on RT.com

US warns Iran to stay out of Syria

The Australian
August 15, 2012

A huge bomb blast rocked the heart of Damascus yesterday as pressure mounted on the regime, with the world’s largest pan-Islamic bloc poised to suspend Syria over the unrelenting violence.

The US accused Iran of setting up a pro-regime militia in Syria as Washington increasingly ties the prolonging of the conflict – now in its 18th month – to interference by its long-time foe Tehran.

[...]

[Leon Panetta:] “We are seeing a growing presence by Iran and that is of deep concern to us. We do not think that Iran ought to play that role at this moment in time, that’s dangerous … it’s adding to the killing that’s going on in Syria,” he said.

Read full article here

Dozens Of Underwater Drones Deployed To The Waters Of Iran

Peter Murray
http://singularityhub.com
August 11, 2012

What to do when international talks begin falling apart? Send a fleet of unmanned submersibles in preparation for a waterway showdown. As US talks with Iran over their nuclear program began to sour and the possibility of sanctions against the country rose, Iran responded by threatening to cut off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway and the only way into and out of the petroleum-rich Persian Gulf. The US responded in turn, the LA Times reports, by sending dozens of SeaFox unmanned submersibles to the region to seek out and destroy mines in the strait.

Each SeaFox is outfitted with an underwater television camera, homing sonar, an explosive charge, and is controlled through an optic fiber tether. None of the submersibles, however, return from a successful mission as they end, not only with the destruction of the mine, but the craft itself, each costing about $100,000. The SeaFox can sniff out both submerged and surface mines.

The SeaFox is the unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) made by the German company Atlas Elektronik. It measures about 4 feet long and weighs just under 100 pounds. Their small size enables them to be deployed from helicopters, small rubber boats, or dropped from minesweeping ships. Its maximum operational depth is about 300 meters and it can run for around 100 minutes without having to return and recharge.

Read full article here

U.S. banks told to make plans for preventing economic collapse

Rick Rothacker
http://www.chicagotribune.com
August 10, 2012

U.S. regulators directed five of the country’s biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp and Goldman Sachs Group Inc, to develop plans for staving off collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the banks could not count on government help.

The two-year-old program, which has been largely secret until now, is in addition to the “living wills” the banks crafted to help regulators dismantle them if they actually do fail. It shows how hard regulators are working to ensure that banks have plans for worst-case scenarios and can act rationally in times of distress.

Officials like Lehman Brothers former Chief Executive Dick Fuld have been criticized for having been too hesitant to take bold steps to solve their banks’ problems during the financial crisis.

Read full article here

Two earthquakes in Iran kill 300 and injure 2,600

Yeganeh Torbati
http://in.reuters.com
August 12, 2012

Overcrowded hospitals in northwest Iran struggled to cope with thousands of earthquake victims on Sunday and rescuers raced to reach remote villages after two powerful quakes killed nearly 300 people.

Thousands huddled in makeshift camps or slept in the street after Saturday’s quakes in fear of more aftershocks, 60 of which had already struck. A lack of tents and other supplies left them exposed to the night chill, one witness told Reuters.

“I saw some people whose entire home was destroyed, and all their livestock killed,” Tahir Sadati, a local photographer, said by telephone. “People need help, they need warm clothes, more tents, blankets and bread.”

Read full article here

17-Year-Old Strangled By Seat Belt In Cop Car

http://www.theindychannel.com
August 11, 2012

State police are investigating the death of a 17-year-old who apparently strangled himself with a seat belt in the back of a police car, investigators said.

Police were called to a burglary early Wednesday morning at the Madison County Shrine Club, where two juveniles and one adult were taken into custody, police said.

Gary Dalzel is the Shrine Club president. He got to the scene after getting a call about a possible break-in. He said the alleged burglars were after the club’s stash of liquor.

Read full article

Boy whose hot dog cart was shut down by the city of Holland now homeless

Anne Shieber
http://www.mackinac.org
August 10, 2012

Several weeks after a city zoning officer shut down his hot dog business, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his parents are homeless.

The family was hoping Nathan’s hot dog cart could help them through a difficult time. Nathan’s mother, Lynette Johnson, suffers from epilepsy and his stepfather, Doug Johnson, has multiple sclerosis. Their illnesses have restricted them from finding permanent, full-time work.

The family receives about $1,300 a month in disability payments, Medicaid and food assistance. The three are having a hard time staying together. MLive confirms what the Mackinac Center learned Thursday — Nathan and his mother are staying at the Holland Rescue Mission.

Read full article here

Stratfor emails reveal secret, widespread TrapWire surveillance system

http://rt.com
August 10, 2012

Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology — and have installed it across the US under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. The employee roster at Arbaxas reads like a who’s who of agents once with the Pentagon, CIA and other government entities according to their public LinkedIn profiles, and the corporation’s ties are assumed to go deeper than even documented.

The details on Abraxas and, to an even greater extent TrapWire, are scarce, however, and not without reason. For a program touted as a tool to thwart terrorism and monitor activity meant to be under wraps, its understandable that Abraxas would want the program’s public presence to be relatively limited. But thanks to last year’s hack of the Strategic Forecasting intelligence agency, or Stratfor, all of that is quickly changing.

Hacktivists aligned with the loose-knit Anonymous collective took credit for hacking Stratfor on Christmas Eve, 2011, in turn collecting what they claimed to be more than five million emails from within the company. WikiLeaks began releasing those emails as the Global Intelligence Files (GIF) earlier this year and, of those, several discussing the implementing of TrapWire in public spaces across the country were circulated on the Web this week after security researcher Justin Ferguson brought attention to the matter. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks was relentlessly assaulted by a barrage of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, crippling the whistleblower site and its mirrors, significantly cutting short the number of people who would otherwise have unfettered access to the emails.

On Wednesday, an administrator for the WikiLeaks Twitter account wrote that the site suspected that the motivation for the attacks could be that particularly sensitive Stratfor emails were about to be exposed. A hacker group called AntiLeaks soon after took credit for the assaults on WikiLeaks and mirrors of their content, equating the offensive as a protest against editor Julian Assange, “the head of a new breed of terrorist.” As those Stratfor files on TrapWire make their rounds online, though, talk of terrorism is only just beginning.

Mr. Ferguson and others have mirrored what are believed to be most recently-released Global Intelligence Files on external sites, but the original documents uploaded to WikiLeaks have been at times unavailable this week due to the continuing DDoS attacks. Late Thursday and early Friday this week, the GIF mirrors continues to go offline due to what is presumably more DDoS assaults. Australian activist Asher Wolf wrote on Twitter that the DDoS attacks flooding the servers of WikiLeaks supporter sites were reported to be dropping upwards of 40 gigabytes of traffic per second. On Friday, WikiLeaks tweeted that their own site was sustaining attacks of 10 GB/second, adding, “Whoever is running it controls thousands of machines or is able to simulate them.”

According to a press release (pdf) dated June 6, 2012, TrapWire is “designed to provide a simple yet powerful means of collecting and recording suspicious activity reports.” A system of interconnected nodes spot anything considered suspect and then input it into the system to be “analyzed and compared with data entered from other areas within a network for the purpose of identifying patterns of behavior that are indicative of pre-attack planning.”

In a 2009 email included in the Anonymous leak, Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence Fred Burton is alleged to write, “TrapWire is a technology solution predicated upon behavior patterns in red zones to identify surveillance. It helps you connect the dots over time and distance.” Burton formerly served with the US Diplomatic Security Service, and Abraxas’ staff includes other security experts with experience in and out of the Armed Forces.

What is believed to be a partnering agreement included in the Stratfor files from August 13, 2009 indicates that they signed a contract with Abraxas to provide them with analysis and reports of their TrapWire system (pdf).

“Suspicious activity reports from all facilities on the TrapWire network are aggregated in a central database and run through a rules engine that searches for patterns indicative of terrorist surveillance operations and other attack preparations,” Crime and Justice International magazine explains in a 2006 article on the program, one of the few publically circulated on the Abraxas product (pdf). “Any patterns detected – links among individuals, vehicles or activities – will be reported back to each affected facility. This information can also be shared with law enforcement organizations, enabling them to begin investigations into the suspected surveillance cell.”

In a 2005 interview with The Entrepreneur Center, Abraxas founder Richard “Hollis” Helms said his signature product “can collect information about people and vehicles that is more accurate than facial recognition, draw patterns, and do threat assessments of areas that may be under observation from terrorists.” He calls it “a proprietary technology designed to protect critical national infrastructure from a terrorist attack by detecting the pre-attack activities of the terrorist and enabling law enforcement to investigate and engage the terrorist long before an attack is executed,” and that, “The beauty of it is that we can protect an infinite number of facilities just as efficiently as we can one and we push information out to local law authorities automatically.”

An internal email from early 2011 included in the Global Intelligence Files has Stratfor’s Burton allegedly saying the program can be used to “[walk] back and track the suspects from the get go w/facial recognition software.”

Since its inception, TrapWire has been implemented in most major American cities at selected high value targets (HVTs) and has appeared abroad as well. The iWatch monitoring system adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department (pdf) works in conjunction with TrapWire, as does the District of Columbia and the “See Something, Say Something” program conducted by law enforcement in New York City, which had 500 surveillance cameras linked to the system in 2010. Private properties including Las Vegas, Nevada casinos have subscribed to the system. The State of Texas reportedly spent half a million dollars with an additional annual licensing fee of $150,000 to employ TrapWire, and the Pentagon and other military facilities have allegedly signed on as well.

In one email from 2010 leaked by Anonymous, Stratfor’s Fred Burton allegedly writes, “God Bless America. Now they have EVERY major HVT in CONUS, the UK, Canada, Vegas, Los Angeles, NYC as clients.” Files on USASpending.gov reveal that the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense together awarded Abraxas and TrapWire more than one million dollars in only the past eleven months.

News of the widespread and largely secretive installation of TrapWire comes amidst a federal witch-hunt to crack down on leaks escaping Washington and at attempt to prosecute whistleblowers. Thomas Drake, a former agent with the NSA, has recently spoken openly about the government’s Trailblazer Project that was used to monitor private communication, and was charged under the Espionage Act for coming forth. Separately, former NSA tech director William Binney and others once with the agency have made claims in recent weeks that the feds have dossiers on every American, an allegation NSA Chief Keith Alexander dismissed during a speech at Def-Con last month in Vegas.

11 things that can happen when you allow your country to become enslaved to the bankers

Michael Snyder
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com
Aug 10, 2012

Why are Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and so many other countries experiencing depression-like conditions right now?

It is because they have too much debt. Why do they have too much debt? It is because they allowed themselves to become enslaved to the bankers. Borrowing money from the bankers can allow a nation to have a higher standard of living in the short-term, but it always results in a lower standard of living in the long-term. Why is that? It is because you always have to pay back more money than you borrowed. And when you get to the point of having a debt to GDP ratio in excess of 100%, you are basically drowning in debt. Huge amounts of money that could be going to providing essential services and stimulating your economy are now going to service your horrific debt. Today, citizens in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy are experiencing a standard of living far below what they should be because the bankers have trapped them in endless debt spirals. Sadly, the vast majority of the people living in those countries have absolutely no idea what is at the root cause of their problems.

The truth is that no sovereign nation on earth ever has to borrow a single penny from anyone.

In theory, there is nothing stopping a government from printing up debt-free money and spending it into circulation.

But that is not the way our world works.

Instead, our national governments borrow money that has been zapped into existence out of thin air by central banks.

Now what kind of sense does that make?

Why don’t our governments just create the money themselves?

If the government of Greece had been directly issuing debt-free Greek currency all these years, they would have a national debt of zero and they would not be in the middle of a deep depression today.

So why isn’t anyone proposing that they go to such a system?

Instead, everyone is trying to figure out a way that the Greeks can muddle through this depression and keep paying on their unsustainable debts.

It is such a tragedy what has happened to Greece. The city of Boston has a larger economythan the entire nation of Greece at this point.

But this is what happens when you allow the bankers to trap your country in debt. The central banking systems of the world are designed to be endless debt spirals that systematically transfer wealth from the people through the governments and into the hands of the ultra-wealthy.

Just look at what is happening in the United States. The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times largerthan it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the rest of the nations of the western world did not get into all this debt by accident.

This happened by design.

And we can see what happens when the system starts to unravel by looking at what is happening in Greece and in Spain right now.

The following are 11 things that can happen when you allow your country to become enslaved to the bankers….

#1 At some point nations that are drowning in debt must implement “austerity measures” in an attempt to stay solvent.

This causes economic slowdown and unemployment skyrockets. We are seeing this happen in Greece, Spain and a whole bunch of other nations right now.

Over the past four years, the Greek economy has contracted by close to 25 percent. Just this week it was announced that the unemployment rate in Greece has risen to 23.1 percent.

A year ago it was just 16.8 percent

In Spain, the unemployment rate is even higher. It has hit 24.6 percent, and some analysts expect it to eventually reach 30 percent.

This would have never happened if these nations had not gotten into so much debt.

#2 Economic progress can actually go backwards in a debt-based system.

In Greece, a very large number of citizens have actually been giving up their cars and have gone back to riding bikes….


The high cost of road tax, fuel and repairs is forcing Greeks to ditch their cars in huge numbers. According to the government’s statistics office, the number of cars on Greek roads declined by more than 40 percent in each of the last two years. Meanwhile, more than 200,000 bikes were sold in 2011, up about a quarter from the previous year.

#3 Your banking system will inevitably melt down at some point.

Every debt bubble eventually bursts, and authorities all over Europe are desperately trying to keep the European banking system from completely imploding.

But despite their efforts, people are pulling money out of banks in southern Europe at a staggering pace. Just check out the slow motion bank run that is unfolding in Spain….


Capital outflows from Spain more than quadrupled in May to €41.3 billion ($50.7 billion) compared with May 2011, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Spanish central bank.

In the first five months of 2012, a total of €163 billion left the country, the figures indicate. During the same period a year earlier, Spain recorded a net inflow of €14.6 billion.

#4 In all countries with a debt-based system, eventually your taxes will be raised to ridiculous levels.

When the income tax was introduced in the United States back in 1913, the vast majority of Americans were in the 1 percent tax bracket.

Throughout the years there have been countless promises that taxes would be limited, but those promises always end up getting broken.

Even when they give us “tax cuts” with one hand, they usually end up raising taxes ten different ways with the other hand.

In the United States today, we are literally taxed in dozens and dozens of different ways.

Our politicians love to come up with new and inventive ways to tax us without us really even feeling it.

In the end, they are going to take as much away from us as they can possibly get away with.

Just look at what is happening in France.

The newly elected socialist president of France says that his party plans to raise the top tax rate in France to 75 percent.

But even though our politicians tax us to death, they still manage to run up gigantic mountains of debt on top of that.

#5 Your currency slowly but steadily becomes worthless.

Most people don’t realize that inflation is a tax. Every dollar you currently have in the bank is constantly losing value. That is because in a debt-based system like we have, the total amount of money and the total amount of debt is supposed to keep perpetually expanding.

Since the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. dollar has declined in value by well over 95 percent.

This did not happen by accident. Every other major currency around the globe has been steadily declining in value as well.

#6 When things get bad enough, there will be rioting in the streets.

A few weeks ago, a total of more than a million public employees took to the streets in more than 80 different Spanish cities. You can view footage of some of the violent clashes with police that took place right here.

#7 When a debt-based economy crashes, money becomes very tight and shortages tend to happen.

Just look at what is happening in Greece. Medicine shortages have become a tremendous problem. The following is from a recent Bloomberg article….


Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines.


#8 Your population will eventually become so desperate that they will start banding together to loot food and supplies from stores.

When people have no work and they cannot feed their families they often find themselves doing things that they never imagined that they would do. Just check out what is happening in Spain right now….


Unemployed fieldworkers and other members of the union went to two supermarkets, one in Ecija (Sevilla) and one in Arcos de la Frontera (Cadiz) and loaded up trolleys with basic necessities. They said that the people were being expropriated and they planned to “expropriate the expropriators”.

The foodstuffs, including milk, sugar, chickpeas, pasta and rice, have been given to charities to distribute, who say they are unable to cope with all the requests for help they receive. Unemployment in the Sierra de Cadiz is now 40%.

#9 If things get bad enough, even essential services may start shutting down.

Authorities in Greece are legitimately concerned that there may be interruptions in the supply of natural gas and electricity. Suppliers are leaving bills unpaid for extended periods of time, and one day millions of Greeks may wake up to find that the power to their homes has been cut off….


Greece’s power regulator RAE told Reuters on Friday it was calling an emergency meeting next week to avert a collapse of the debt-stricken country’s electricity and natural gas system.

“RAE is taking crisis initiatives throughout next week to avert the collapse of the natural gas and electricity system,” the regulator’s chief Nikos Vasilakos told Reuters.

RAE took the decision after receiving a letter from Greece’s natural gas company DEPA, which threatened to cut supplies to electricity producers if they failed to settle their arrears with the company.

#10 In an economic depression, many people begin to totally lose hope.

An increasing number of parents in southern Europe are facing such desperate situations that they are actually abandoning their babies.

The following is from a recent CNBC article….


According to SOS Villages, a European charity that attempts to help families in financial hardship before abandonment occurs, in the last year alone 1,200 children in Greece and 750 in Italy have been abandoned. That is almost double the 400 children abandoned in Italy a year ago, and up from 114 children abandoned in Greece in 2003.

#11 Just like we saw during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there is a spike in suicides when an economy crashes.

Greece has never seen anything like what is happening now. The suicide rate has been absolutely soaring.

The following is from a Reuters article back in April….


On Monday, a 38-year-old geology lecturer hanged himself from a lamp post in Athens and on the same day a 35-year-old priest jumped to his death off his balcony in northern Greece. On Wednesday, a 23-year-old student shot himself in the head.

In a country that has had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, a surge in the number of suicides in the wake of an economic crisis has shocked and gripped the Mediterranean nation – and its media – before a May 6 election.

If you live in the United States, you need to watch what is happening in Europe very closely, because similar conditions will come to the United States soon enough.

Just like Europe, we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved to the bankers, and now we will suffer the consequences.

Sadly, most Americans do not even realize how we got into this mess. The following is from a recent article by Professor Steven Yates….


It should have been clear that the country—indeed, Western civilization itself—was on the wrong trajectory as governments and central banks, working in tandem, severed ties between their currencies and precious metals, allowing massive credit expansion to run rampant and the national debt to skyrocket—making, e.g., the pseudo-prosperity of the roaring 1990s possible. Nixon had “closed the gold window” on August 15, 1971; our national debt was around $400 billion. Slightly over ten years later, the debt crossed the $1 trillion threshold. Ten years after that, it reached $6 trillion. When George W. Bush left office having been the biggest spending Republican in U.S. history, it had risen to over $11 trillion. Today, under the watch of the catastrophic Obama presidency, by the time this reaches print the national debt might have surmounted $16 trillion with no end in sight.

The United States has accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world and it will totally crush us at some point.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are totally unprepared for the economic chaos that is coming.

One study found that 64 percent of all Americans have less than $1000 in the bank.

Can you believe that?

Even though we could be on the verge of another global food crisis, most Americans do not have enough food in their homes to last a single month.

Even though the U.S. economy is on the verge of another recession, most Americans are still running out and buying toys that they don’t need and paying for them with credit cards that they should not be using.

If you want to see where we are headed, just look at Greece and Spain.

They are going through economic hell, and we will be joining them soon enough.

Get ready while you can.

Cops strip search mom, “forcibly” pull tampon out of her for maybe rolling through stop sign

Chris Sweeney
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com
Aug 10, 2012

Getting pulled over for rolling through a stop sign is whack. But getting pulled over, having a gun pointed in your face, and then being strip searched on the side of the road in front of your two children for rolling through a stop sign is, well, really whack and probably an excessive use of force.

Last July, Leila Tarantino claims that she was pulled over by an officer with the Citrus County Sheriff’s Department.

[...]

The cop then placed Tarantino in the back of the squad car, where she allegedly sat for two hours. When backup arrived, Tarantino was strip searched on the side of the road, where passing motorists could see everything.

Then, in a gruesome twist, a female officer “forcibly removed” a tampon from Tarantino. Presumably, the cops were looking for drugs, but the lawsuit notes that a drug-sniffing dog was never called in, and cops never found any contraband or anything illegal.

Full article here

US, Vietnam Launch Agent Orange Cleanup

Marianne Brown
http://www.voanews.com
August 9, 2012

HANOI — The United States and Vietnam’s defense ministry have launched the first cleanup operation to rid a former air base of a toxic dioxin left from the Vietnam war. Although many people have welcomed the move, some say it is too little, too late to help generations of people suffering birth defects and diseases linked to the chemical.

The project, which started Thursday, aims to clean up soil and sediment contaminated with dangerous levels of toxin dioxin at a former U.S. Army air base in central Vietnam.

During the Vietnam War, Da Nang airport was used to store the herbicide “Agent Orange” which was sprayed on vegetation used as cover by guerrilla forces.

​​The toxin, which has been linked to disease and birth defects, has remained a dark reminder of the war. U.S. Ambassador David Shear spoke at the opening ceremony in Da Nang.

“The dioxin in the ground here is a legacy of the painful past we share, but the project we undertake here today hand in hand with the Vietnamese is, as Secretary Clinton said, a sign of the hopeful future we are building together,” he stated.

Da Nang is the most toxic of 28 dioxin “hot spots” in Vietnam. The $43 million project will excavate and clean up 73,000 cubic meters of soil and sediment around the airport. The U.S. embassy said the soil should be safe for use by 2016.

“This process uses high temperatures to break down the dioxin in the contaminated soil and make it safe by Vietnamese and U.S. standards for the many men, women and children who live and work in this area,” said Shear.

Some have hailed the project as a historic turning point for both governments after years of wrangling over the issue.

The defoliant killed off millions of acres of vegetation and has been linked to diseases such as diabetes, cancer and birth defects. However, Washington has not admitted liability for health problems caused by the chemical.

Over the last 13 years, the U.S. has provided $54 million to help disabled people in Vietnam, but not specifically to problems linked to Agent Orange.

Mai The Chinh, head of the information board for the Vietnamese Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, known as VAVA, says he thinks Washington has not done enough.

He says it has taken too long for the U.S. to clean up the area and they have not given any money to support health care for dioxin victims.

He says at least three million people have birth defects because of Agent Orange, including at least 300,000 children.

Several orphanages across the country make a special point of taking in children believed to be affected by Agent Orange.

Images abound of babies at these centers with deformed heads looking through the bars of their cots and toddlers with twisted limbs being fed rice gruel.

Thanh Xuan Peace Village, just outside Hanoi, houses hundreds of these children. Director Nguyen Thi Thanh Phuong, says funding is difficult, especially during times of economic crisis.

She says the life of children affected by Agent Orange is more difficult than most, so they are in desperate need of support.

She says she thinks the United States has not done enough to help rid Vietnam of dioxin contamination because the poison continues to affect people three generations after the war ended and there are other hotspots in the country besides Da Nang.

However, she says the center has received help from some unlikely sources. Some American veterans have returned to Vietnam to support the Peace Village and made generous donations. Some were themselves exposed to the herbicide and their own children have been born with deformities.

The U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin estimates $450 million is needed to completely eliminate dioxin “hot spots” and provide care, education and economic opportunities to those affected. It may be nearly 40 years since the end of the conflict. Some observers say the cleanup project in Da Nang is a small but crucial step in helping heal the scars of war.

Occupier charged with terroristic felony for protesting in front of bank

http://rt.com
August 9, 2012

A protester belonging to an Occupy Wall Street group in rural Pennsylvania is being charged with felony attempted bank robbery and a terrorism-related charge for holding signs up during a demonstration at a local Wells Fargo branch.

David C. Gorczynski, 22, was charged on Tuesday with attempted bank robbery and terroristic threatening, both felonies, as well as one misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. Police detained him after he walked into an Easton, PA Wells Fargo branch with a sign that read “You’re being robbed” and another that said “Give a man a gun, he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank, and he can rob a country.”

Gorczynski was at the Wells Fargo bank as part of a demonstration led by Occupy Easton, the small Pennsylvania town’s OWS offshoot.

Easton is located around 60 miles outside of Philadelphia and has a population of only 26,800 according to the 2010 census.

The Express-Times reports that police were alerted to the branch after a bank teller hit an alarm that alerted the authorities.

“I think our guys did what they had to do in this instance,” Easton police Chief Carl Scalzo tells the paper. “At the end of the day, if we get a report of a panic alarm at a bank, we’re going to respond accordingly.”

Chief Scalzo adds that Gorczynski’s First Amendment right to protest freely can’t trump any allegations that he may have been behind something more sinister.

“We can’t allow the perceived idea of protesting to be a defense to criminality,” Scalzo says in response to reports that the suspect was simply demonstrating Wall Street corruption. “People have to understand if they want to protest, there’s a line.”

Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union tells the paper that the charges seem “overzealous . . . especially given the clear political nature of the statements.”

Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli tells The Express-Times, “I’m very on top of this” and claims he is investigating whether or not the charges were justified.

“He is not the criminal. If the police were truly there to protect and serve the taxpayers, the banksters would be arrested and this man would be called a hero,” the Occupy Easton group responds on Facebook.

Gorczynski was released on $10,000 bond after a defense and bail fund established online helped bring in enough money to buy his freedom after his arrest.

This article first appeared on RT.com

Man shot in head while handcuffed in police car

Mark Hughes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
August 9, 2012

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets to protest an official explantion of suicide in the death of Chavis Carter, 21, in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Mr Carter was pulled over by police late last month and searched twice by officers who discovered a small $10 bag of marijuana. He was also wanted for skipping probation on another drugs charge.

Mr Carter had his hands cuffed behind his back and put into a police car.

Read full article

Google to pay $22.5M fine over privacy practices

Juan Carlos Perez
http://www.computerworld.com/
August 9, 2012

Google will pay a historic fine to settle U.S. government charges that it violated privacy laws when it tracked via cookies users of Apple’s Safari browser.

The US$22.5 million civil penalty is the largest ever secured by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for a violation of one of its orders, the FTC said on Thursday.

However, ConsumerWatchdog.org finds the settlement inadequate for various reasons, including the amount of the fine and the fact that it allows Google to deny guilt and liability.

Read full article

U.S. Postal Service loses $5.2 billion, warns of low cash

Emily Stephenson
http://www.reuters.com
August 9, 2012

The U.S. Postal Service’s net loss widened to $5.2 billion during the April through June period, and the cash-strapped agency warned on Thursday that without help from the U.S. Congress it will face low cash and be unable to borrow money this fall.

The Postal Service, which relies on the sale of stamps and other products rather than taxpayer funding, has been struggling for years as Americans increasingly communicate online and as payments for future retiree health benefits and other obligations drain its cash.

A week after its first-ever default on a legally required payment to the federal government, officials called on Congress to pass postal legislation that would overhaul the mail agency’s business model and offer some relief from its dire financial situation.

Read full article

Court prompts Twitter to give data to police in threat case

Seth Doane
http://www.cbsnews.com
August 8, 2012

The social network Twitter is in the middle of a dispute pitting counter-terrorism and security against privacy and free speech.

The issue is how far authorities can go when lives could be at risk.

Twitter was subpoenaed late Tuesday as part of a New York Police Department investigation into threats reminiscent of the July 20 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, in which 12 people were killed and dozens wounded.

Read full article

Obama fights ban on indefinite detention of Americans

http://rt.com/
August 8, 2012










The White House has filed an appeal in hopes of reversing a federal judge’s ruling that bans the indefinite military detention of Americans because attorneys for the president say they are justified to imprison alleged terrorists without charge.

Manhattan federal court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in May that the indefinite detention provisions signed into law late last year by US President Barack Obama failed to “pass constitutional muster” and ordered a temporary injunction to keep the military from locking up any person, American or other, over allegations of terrorist ties. On Monday, however, federal prosecutors representing President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta filed a claim with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of eliminating that ban.

The plaintiffs “cannot point to a single example of the military’s detaining anyone for engaging in conduct even remotely similar to the type of expressive activities they allege could lead to detention,” Obama’s attorneys insist. With that, the White House is arguing that as long as the indefinite detention law hasn’t be enforced yet, there is no reason for a judge to invalidate it.

Reuters reports this week that the government believes they are justified to have the authorization to lock alleged belligerents up indefinitely because cases involving militants directly aligned against the good of the US government warrants such punishment. Separate from Judge Forrest’s injunction, nine states have attempted to, at least in part, remove themselves from the indefinite detention provisions of included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA.

In section 1021 of the NDAA, the president’s authority to hold a terrorism suspect “without trial, until the end of the hostilities” is reaffirmed by Congress. Despite an accompanying signing statement voicing his opposition to that provision, President Obama quietly inked his name to the NDAA on December 31, 2011. In May, however, a group of plaintiffs including notable journalists and civil liberty proponents challenged section 1021 in court, leading to Just Forrest to find it unconstitutional one month later.

“There is a strong public interest in protecting rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Forrest wrote in her 68-page ruling. “There is also a strong public interest in ensuring that due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment are protected by ensuring that ordinary citizens are able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military detention.”

At the time Just Forrest made her injunction, attorney Carl Mayer told RT on behalf of the plaintiffs that, although he expected the White House to appeal, “It may not be in their best interest.”

“[T]here are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law that they ought to just say, ‘We’re not going to appeal,’” Mayer said. “The NDAA cannot be used to pick up Americans in a proverbial black van or in any other way that the administration might decide to try to get people into the military justice system. It means that the government is foreclosed now from engaging in this type of action against the civil liberties of Americans.”



The original plaintiffs, who include Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges, have asked Just Forrest to make her injunction permanent. Oral arguments in the case are expected to begin this week.

This article first appeared on RT.com

Popcorn ingredient found to be linked with Alzheimer’s

http://www.foxnews.com/ 
August 8, 2012

Movie popcorn has often been criticized for its high calorie count, but now the tasty treat may harm more than just your waistline.

A recent study has found that diacetyl, an ingredient in popcorn responsible for its buttery flavor and smell, may be linked to Alzheimer’s disease, UPI.com reported.

The scientists said they focused on the substance, because it has already been associated with respiratory and other health issues in workers at microwave popcorn and food-flavoring factories. According to UPI.com, diacetyl is used in other products such as margarines, snacks and candies, baked goods and in some beers and chardonnay wine.

Read more

The first color image of Mars from Curiosity Rover

http://www.nasa.gov/
August 7th, 2012

This view of the landscape to the north of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity was acquired by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on the afternoon of the first day after landing. (The team calls this day Sol 1, which is the first Martian day of operations; Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, 2012.)

In the distance, the image shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater. The image is murky because the MAHLI’s removable dust cover is apparently coated with dust blown onto the camera during the rover’s terminal descent. Images taken without the dust cover in place are expected during checkout of the robotic arm in coming weeks.

The MAHLI is located on the turret at the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm. At the time the MAHLI Sol 1 image was acquired, the robotic arm was in its stowed position. It has been stowed since the rover was packaged for its Nov. 26, 2011, launch.

When the robotic arm, turret, and MAHLI are stowed, the MAHLI is in a position that is rotated 30 degrees relative to the rover deck. The MAHLI image shown here has been rotated to correct for that tilt, so that the sky is “up” and the ground is “down”.

When the robotic arm, turret, and MAHLI are stowed, the MAHLI is looking out from the front left side of the rover. This is much like the view from the driver’s side of cars sold in the USA.

The main purpose of Curiosity’s MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil at the rover’s Gale Crater field site. The camera is capable of focusing on any target at distances of about 0.8 inch (2.1 centimeters) to infinity. This means it can, as shown here, also obtain pictures of the Martian landscape.

This article first appeared on http://www.nasa.gov/