how can obama be a conditional lawlor when he has lost his law license
Mar 8, 2013 - Did Barack and Michelle Obama both surrender their law licenses for ... Barack Obama — Editor of the Harvard Law Review — Has No Law License? ... This struck me as odd, since (a) she went to school to be a lawyer, and (b) she just .... of some incapacitating condition or solely as a matter of the lawyer's ...
Monday, July 8, 2013
.S. Presidential Pardons Lawyer in Chicago
U.S. Presidential Pardons Lawyer in Chicago
Only the President of the United States can pardon people who
have committed federal crimes. When persons are pardoned of federal
crimes, they return to the state of innocence they had before the crime
was committed. Commutation vs. Pardon
Commuting is the act of reducing a sentence. A president has the ability to commute a sentence even before it has begun.A full pardon can do the same thing — it can also reduce a sentence. But more commonly a pardon is granted after a person serves his prison sentence. And unlike a commutation, a pardon can absolve the person of his status as a convicted criminal and restore his civil abilities.
While a presidential pardon will restore various rights lost as a result of the pardoned offense and should lessen to some extent the stigma arising from a conviction, it will not erase or expunge the record of that conviction. Therefore, even if a person is granted a pardon, he must still disclose the conviction on any form where such information is required, although he may also disclose the fact that he received a pardon. In addition, most civil disabilities attendant upon a federal felony conviction, such as loss of the right to vote and hold state public office, are imposed by state rather than federal law and may still have to be removed by state action. Because the federal pardon process is exacting and may be more time-consuming than analogous state procedures, pardon recipients are encouraged to consult with the appropriate authorities in the state of their residence regarding the available procedures for restoring their particular state civil rights both preceding and following a presidential pardon.
An executive clemency petition will need to be sought to obtain a presidential pardon. Warren J. Breslin is a skilled presidential executive clemency petitions lawyer who can successfully prepare and file your presidential pardon petition. Contact him, a United States presidential pardons attorney, online for a return call or call his law offices at 847-934-7070 or toll free at 888-934-7070 for a free initial consultation. Attorney Breslin represents clients in Illinois and throughout the United States. In addition to being licensed in Illinois, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Florida, Warren Breslin is also licensed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States.
The United States Department of Justice states the following:
"A person seeking executive clemency by pardon, reprieve, commutation of sentence or remission of fine shall execute a formal petition. The petition shall be addressed to the President of the United States and shall be submitted to the Pardon Attorney, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 20530, except for petitions relating to military offenses.
"In general, a pardon is granted on the basis of the petitioner's demonstrated good conduct for a substantial period of time after conviction and service of sentence. The Department's regulations require a petitioner to wait a period of at least five years after conviction or release from confinement (whichever is later) before filing a pardon application (28 C.F.R. § 1.2). In determining whether a particular petitioner should be recommended for a pardon, the following are the principal factors taken into account:
- Post-conviction conduct, character and reputation
- Seriousness and relative recentness of the offense
- Acceptance of responsibility, remorse and atonement
- Need for relief
- Official recommendations and reports"
The Office of the Pardon Attorney reviews pardon requests and recommends deserving petitions to the president. The president has the exclusive and sole discretion to grant or deny all pardon requests. Approximately 60 pardons a year are granted or about 10 percent of requests. A professionally prepared petition will give you a considerable advantage.
Obtaining a presidential pardon is a worthwhile pursuit. If you were convicted of a federal crime, a presidential pardon may be the only way to restore your rights and reputation.
While your petition is pending, if an urgent opportunity or need should arise while waiting for a determination by the president, a copy of your professionally prepared pending petition can be used by you to best explain past criminal history to others. It may impress a prospective employer or others that you have taken the initiative to clear your record.
Free Consultations With a Presidential Executive Clemency Petitions Lawyer
Contact Warren J. Breslin online or call his law office locally at 847-934-7070 or toll free at 888-934-7070 to discuss your case. Warren Breslin is an accomplished AV Preeminent* rated criminal defense attorney with extraordinary writing ability who will work hard to help you obtain a presidential pardon. He represents clients nationwide seeking presidential pardons for all federal criminal convictions anywhere in the United States and also clients seeking governor pardons for Illinois criminal convictions. Warren Breslin's criminal defense law practice is in Chicago and in the Greater Chicago area, including Schaumburg and Palatine.
*CV,
BV, and AV are registered certification marks of Reed Elsevier
Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell
certification procedures, standards, and policies.
*For
over 90 years, the Bar Register has been a unique guide to the legal
community's most eminent professionals. It includes only those select
law practices that have earned the highest rating in the
Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory and have been designated by their
colleagues as preeminent in their field.
Martindale-Hubbell
is the facilitator of a peer review rating process. Ratings reflect the
confidential opinions of members of the Bar and the judiciary.
Martindale-Hubbell ratings fall into two categories - legal ability and
general ethical standards.
The Rape, Torture, Murder of Christopher Newsom and Chanon Christian, and the Zimmerman Trial
The Rape, Torture, Murder of Christopher Newsom and Chanon Christian, and the Zimmerman Trial
Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom.
We are told that this is an important trial because…
Well, because the liberal ruling class and the race hustlers who work in concert to Balkanize this nation—race, gender, religion, whatever works—tell us that this is a narrative about race relations in America. George Zimmerman is being cast as a post-modern Bull Connor. Forget that Zimmerman is dark-skinned and Hispanic. Ignore the inconvenient fact that Zimmerman mentored young black kids. Forget that it’s Trayvon Martin who was the racist, referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker.”
Barack Hussein Obama most helpfully told America that Trayvon Martin could have been his son.
Translation: Trayvon Martin was black. Therefore, Obama (half black, raised by his white grandparents) identifies with him.
With all due respect to President Obama, this statement is fundamentally racist. It is an ideology that places skin color—not humanity, truth, or justice—as the center of a value system.
The Newsom-Christian story—an atrocity worthy of Nazis, or comparable to the cruel depredations of Japanese imperial troops—was ignored by the mainstream press. And the reason the liberal media deliberately buried this story is because the human monsters who committed this barbarous act were black, and the victims were white.
The professional race-baiters—Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Bobby Rush, Barack Obama, the entire lynch party at MSNBC—are still out there pushing their vile and false narrative.
Seraphic Secret published this story on April 3, 2012. And nothing has changed.
The KKK have nothing on these monsters.
But the media is supposed to maintain some semblance of objectivity. The media is supposed to guard against the lynch mobs. But now the liberal media is the lynch mob. There is no daylight between the vulgar, grammatically incoherent rhetoric of Al Sharpton and the smooth editorial pages of the NY Times.
We have no idea what happened between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. That is an issue for the judicial system.
But we know exactly what happened in Tennessee in 2007 when five black racists abducted a white couple, then raped, tortured, and murdered them in ways that recall the horrors the Japanese visited on the people of Nanking.
The story of Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian was blacked out by the national media.
As anyone with half a brain realizes, black-on-white crime, common as dirt, is routinely ignored. According to the liberal media, black-on-black crime, which is even more routine, does not exist. When was the last time we heard about the black/black homicide rates in Chicago—the highest in the country? These acts of violence go down the memory hole. It’s the method Communist dictatorships use to rewrite the past and distort the present in order to paint a utopian tomorrow.
The liberal media in America have adopted the Pravda model of journalism.
This story, fully reported by Flopping Aces, is horrifying. I had to force myself to read the stomach-churning details. But it is important that we know what happened to Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian and to chastise a national media that routinely ignores the white victims of black racial hatred in favor of setting forth a false and dangerous narrative that paints America as socially and institutionally racist.
On Saturday January 6, 2007 Hugh Christopher Newsom, age 23 and Channon Gail Christian, age 21, both students at the University of Tennessee went out on a date.
They were driving in Channon’s Toyota 4-Runner when they were carjacked at gunpoint. Suddenly the crime turned far more savage than an armed car theft. Chris and Channon were kidnapped and driven to 2316 Chipman Street where they were forced into the home at gunpoint.
While Channon was forced to watch, her boyfriend was raped prison style and then his penis was cut off. He was later driven to nearby railroad tracks where he was shot and set afire. But Channon’s hell was just beginning. She was beaten; gang raped repeatedly in many ways, had one of her breasts cut off and bleach poured down her throat to destroy DNA evidence—all while she was still alive. To add to Channon’s degradation the suspects took turns urinating on her. They too set her body afire, apparently inside the residence, but for some reason left her body there—in five separate trash bags.
Full story at Flopping Aces.
My friend David Gerstman (AKA Soccer Dad) brings to our attention Blogrunner’s coverage of the Newsom-Christian atrocity, and Glenn Reynold’s coverage on Instapundit.
This entry was posted in Obama Watch, Race Relations and tagged Al Sharpton, Barack Hussein Obama, Chanon Christian, Christopher Newsom, Jesse Jackson, MSNBC, Race Baiters. Bookmark the permalink. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.
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Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
- No profanity.
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Prefabricated Fascists: The FBI's Assembly-Line Provocateurs
Prefabricated Fascists: The FBI's Assembly-Line Provocateurs
By William Norman Grigg on December 5, 2009
“Valhalla” at work: FBI undercover asset Hal Turner, who was tasked to infiltrate and radicalize the “far right,” speaks at a rally sponsored by the FBI-controlled National Socialist Movement
and the morals that they worship will be gone.
And the men who spurred us on sit in judgment of all wrong
they decide, and the shotgun sings the song.
~ Pete Townsend
It’s difficult not to experience a faint pang of sympathy for Hal Turner, albeit an ephemeral one deeply buried beneath multiple layers of well-earned disgust.
For at least five years, and probably more, Turner was a paid informant and provocateur in the employ of the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, the Federal Government. His assignment was to bait easily influenced people with incendiary rhetoric about race and other resentments, and reel in anyone who bit a little too lustily on the bait. The Bureau credits Turner with personally bringing more than 100 “extremists” to their attention, many of whom (the Bureau won’t specify how many) were arrested.
There’s every likelihood that at least some of Turner’s victims were offered the same deal offered to Randy Weaver after he was set up on trivial and spurious firearms charges by an undercover snitch for the ATF: Become an informant/provocateur, and you’ll stay out of jail.
Weaver rejected the deal, and the FBI eventually retaliated by attacking his home and murdering his wife and son. Jos Padilla, a rougher customer than Weaver, rejected the same deal; he was declared an “enemy combatant,” subjected to prolonged torture intended to destroy his mental equilibrium and break his will, and eventually convicted on exceptionally dubious terrorism-related charges.
Before he was outed as a stukach in early 2007, Turner was the host of a web-based talk radio program and a freelance speaker who specialized in “incitement-and-indictment” entrapment of “right-wing extremists.” Hackers discovered a cache of e-mail correspondence between Turner and William Haug, an agent working for a Joint Terrorism Task Force who acted as the informant’s handler. Turner closed down his radio program while emitting great gusts of affected outrage over what he insisted were spurious accusations that he had collaborated with the Feds.
In a message posted to Pro Libertate after he was identified as an agent provocateur — along with federal assets tasked to carry out similar missions within Muslim sub-populations in the U.S. — Turner insisted that only “PARANOID FREAKS (like this blog)” would suspect him of collaboration.
By way of establishing his neo-Nazi bona fides, Turner boasted that “my [white supremacist] rallies in Kingston NY and Kalamazoo, MI cost those cities $60,000 and $120,000 respectively in police overtime and that there’s no way the FBI would have approved anything like that by an informant because the cities would have demanded the money back!”
Actually, as we’ll see anon, the FBI has no problem staging white supremacist rallies and protest marches that help “local” police departments rack up overtime.
Certainly, the police don’t mind making a little extra money by swanning about in riot gear. Events of the sort Turner organized are an intelligence bonanza for the Regime: They give the FBI (and, most likely, other Homeland Security assets) an opportunity to harvest detailed information for federal databases about both “right-wing extremists” and their opposition.
We know this is the case through first-person testimony from an FBI undercover asset who spent nearly a decade worming his way through the “radical right” — including the National Socialist Movement (NSM).
The NSM’s adherents doubtless see themselves as the finely honed blade of a resurgent “white power” movement, a description promoted with similar zeal by professional hate-hucksters like Morris Dees’ artfully misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center and the so-called Anti-Defamation League.
Actually, the NSM is “all show, no go” — it’s more of a federally controlled traveling roadshow, sort of a Third Reich tribute band. Its cadres exude all of the raw menace of the hapless Illinois Nazis from The Blues Brothers, and possess all of the street-fighting chops of the bumbling Black Widow biker gang from Clinton Eastwood’s Philo Beddoe films.
But I digress.
We were discussing Hal Turner’s career as an FBI informant/provocateur code-named “Valhalla,” details about which have been pried from the Bureau by reporters for the Bergen (New Jersey) Record.
Beginning in 2003 (or, as Turner claims, 2002), Turner was a paid informant “who spied on his own controversial followers,” reports the Record, citing “government documents, e-mails, court records, and almost 20 hours of jailhouse interviews” with the snitch. Turner “received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band.”
“I was not some street snitch,” insists Turner. “I was a deep undercover intelligence operative.” He demands recognition of that distinction with the same desperate desire for dignity displayed by any other whore who seeks to upgrade his or her job description with a more refined title.
The FBI budgeted at least $100,000 to pay for Turner’s performances, both on his radio program and in public speeches. He now insists that he was merely role-playing on behalf of his pimps — both the FBI’s Special Agent Haug and New Jersey State Police Detective Leonard Nerbetski, who also served on the Newark Joint Terrorism Task Force.
As he tells the story, Turner was required to feign passion for various unsavory causes: In interviews with the Record, Turner maintained that “the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and he now feels double-crossed by the Bureau after his arrest.”
“The audience loves the rip-roaring radio psycho,” Turner boasted in an e-mail to the FBI. “They literally throw money at it. Just be confident that the personality you hear (or hear about) on radio is not real life. I have zero intention of doing anything stupid.”
In the guise of the “radio psycho,” Turner — with the FBI’s help — was pulling down about $15,000 a month to express such edifying sentiments as the following: “A full day of violence against blacks would be a really nice thing…. [L]ynchings, church burnings, drive-by shootings and bombings [would] put these subhuman animals back in their place.”
Turner materialized at various white power gatherings in several states. He also traveled to Brazil on the FBI’s dime to spy on suspected white supremacists in that country, as well as to investigate an alleged plot by white supremacists and Brazilian Arabs to send “consumer goods” to resistance fighters in Iraq. It’s difficult to believe that the CIA remained entirely aloof from that aspect of Turner’s career.
While the FBI was willing to abet Turner’s efforts to incite violence against innocent people, the Feds moved against him shortly after he published comments on his blog interpreted as death threats against three judges in Chicago. He was arrested shortly before the 2008 election and is scheduled to stand trial this week.
As the song says, “some men like the fishin’, some men like the fowlin’, and some men like to hear the cannonball a-roarin.” Turner likes nothing more than hearing the sound of his own voice. Yet “here I am in prison, betrayed,” he laments, arrested by the same FBI Special Agent who recruited him and — he plaintively maintains — fed him his lines.
“I was given specific instructions,” Turner declares, and he played the role of racist agitator out of his duty as “a loyal, patriotic decent American citizen.”
Turner may be telling the truth. His experiences are eerily similar to those recounted by former FBI “deep cover” operative (and one-time Roller Derby star — no, I’m not kidding) David Gletty in his ineptly written but highly useful memoir Undercover Nazi: The FBI Infiltration of Extremist Groups in America.
In what strikes me as a transparent effort to cultivate a marketable mystique, Gletty says that many details of his work as a paid FBI snitch remain “classified.” He claims to have been recruited in 2000 when, as the leader of a constitutional militia, he came across a plot by an Appalachian white supremacist to set off a string of radiological bombs in collaboration with al-Qaeda.
Recruited as a “deep cover” operative, Gletty spent several years cultivating ties with “extremist” groups, including elements of the KKK, the Hammerskins, and eventually the National Socialist Movement. He was careful to get his “ticket punched” by working with legitimate dissident groups such as the League of the South, and various immigration reform groups, such as at least one element of the Minuteman volunteer border watch movement.
Gletty’s most notable achievement was to infiltrate and become leader of a National Socialist Movement chapter in Florida and organize a 2006 NSM march in Orlando that was intended to sow fear and anger in a predominantly black neighborhood.
To prepare for that role, Gletty behaved much as Hal Turner had, fulminating in public about the supposed inferiority of non-white people and befouling the air with exhortations to collectivist violence. This not only legitimized Gletty in the eyes of his comrades in the NSM, it also helped to rile up the group’s enemies, thereby ensuring a large turnout of counter-protesters for the February 2006 march in Orlando — which was exactly what the Bureau desired.
During his years as an informant/provocateur, Gletty was usually accompanied by a fellow asset he identifies only as “Joe.” During the Orlando protest, Gletty recalls, Joe carried a concealed digital camera “for taking all the photos he could of protesters and counter-protesters. Then the images would be fed into the FBI face recognition computer. At least 1000 faces for the computer to digest.”
In addition to producing a bounty of biometric intelligence for the FBI, the Orlando rally offered a good dry run for a future Homeland Security crack-down. Gletty points out that his FBI handler was “actually pumped up” about the Orlando march, “because the protest would be a great training exercise for the Orlando Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the FBI, and MBI [the Central Florida Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation] as they would all be in attendance.”
As a leader in the white supremacist underground, Gletty held many “surveillance parties” — not only public events, but private functions used to gather intelligence and, where possible, set up various low-level thugs to become informant/provocateurs themselves.
For three years, “Joe and I … traveled from state to state, rally to rally, and party to party, infiltrating the White Power Movement in America,” Gletty recalls. “Thousands of miles, hundreds of photographed faces, and a myriad of tape recordings were contributing to the eradication of racial and religious prejudice in America.”
Really? To judge from recent attention earned by the NSM, Gletty’s mission was not to help “eradicate” prejudice (as if this could be accomplished through government intervention), but rather to bring the group more completely under the FBI’s control.
The NSM is a remnant of George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party (ANP). According to Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party, the ANP was thoroughly compromised through the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO operation; by the time of his murder in 1967, Rockwell was widely believed to be a “patsy” for the FBI or some other intelligence agency.
One objective of the anti-ANP COINTELPRO operation was to create a rift between Rockwell’s Nazi outfit and the United Klans of America. By the late 1970s, the Klan was thoroughly honeycombed with FBI assets. In fact the Bureau boasted that it had enough Klansmen on its payroll in North Carolina to elect that state’s Grand Dragon: At one point, 7 of the 8 members of a Charlotte Klan chapter reportedly were FBI assets informing on the klavern’s sole non-federal employee.
A sitcom-worthy simulacrum of street-fighting: NSM members square off against the equally ludicrous “Brown Berets de Aztlan” in Riverside, California.
The National Socialist Movement’s current strategy is to provoke tumult and violence, rather than participating in it directly. In recent weeks the group has achieved a relatively high profile by staging anti-immigration rallies in Riverside, California and Phoenix, Arizona.
In California, a small knot of NSM denizens faced off with members of “Los Brown Berets de Aztlan,” a foundation-funded militant Chicano group, with riot police clad in body armor on hand to maintain “order.” A few weeks later the group inflicted itself on an immigration-reform protest in Arizona during which the group’s most visible spokesperson, J.T. Ready, unfurled a portrait of Adolf Hitler.
Ready — a dishonorably discharged ex-Marine — is a pretty good candidate to be the next NSM figure outed as an asset of the Feds. An ambulatory wad of cholesterol and bile, Ready looks like the unfortunate result of a genetic experiment combining the most unpleasant traits of Ernst Roehm and Chris Farley.
While certainly not telegenic, Ready has achieved a certain media prominence as a result of his candor in reciting the Nazi party line.
The sudden prominence of the NSM has been noted — with a detectable hint of gratitude — by left-collectivists eager to shoehorn resistance to the Obama Regime into a pre-determined narrative: Critics of the Blessed One and his administration are animated by concealed bigotry, according to this reading, whether they know it or not, and their rhetoric is creating an “atmosphere” of incipient violence that will engender domestic terrorism.
It should be remembered that the same tropes were put into play early in the last Democratic administration, just before the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing — a terrorist act for which disenchanted former federal employee Timothy McVeigh was executed, but was actually carried out with the help of “others unknown,” including several federal assets connected to a bizarre little white supremacist commune known as Elohim City.
The Regime has gone to a great deal of trouble to keep the otherwise moribund White Power movement on life support. It’s simply too useful as a political foil — and, occasionally, as an instrument of politically useful violence — for the Regime to let it die.
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.
Murder-Suicide or Assassination: Did Veteran J.T. Ready Pay the Price For Going Constitutional?
Murder-Suicide or Assassination: Did Veteran J.T. Ready Pay the Price For Going Constitutional?
Infowars.com
May 3, 2012
PHOENIX – Volunteer U.S. Border Guard & outspoken former U.S. Marine, J.T. Ready, was found dead Wednesday afternoon along with three adults and one small child, in an apparent mass shooting in Gilbert, Arizona.
According to local police, this mass shooting event has been declared an open and shut case just hours after the fact. According to the police, there are no survivors and no eye witnesses to mention. Most horribly, the ruthless slaying also included a two year old girl.
Within just a couple of hours after the event the police & media were quick to accuse Ready of being responsible, with the local news officially declaring this morning that the crime a murder/suicide, “domestic violence carried out by former white supremist and lone vigilante.”
Case closed.
The full ballistics reports have not even been carried out for this five person shooting, yet police are rushing to draw a line under the case.
But early reports from the Arizona Republic reported an unknown gunman, wearing body armor, opening fire in the area – a report which died quickly as soon as police secured the crime scene and began giving statements to the local media.
Speculation of a cover-up frenzy was fueled by an early statement from Sgt. Bill Balafas stating, “We don’t believe the suspect is at large. All the information is pointing to the fact that he is one of the dead in the house;” thus, continuing the latest trend of not waiting for a full coroner’s report before publicly slandering and implicating someone.
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
According the Veterans Today:
“Miltary trucks are
arriving at the murder scene in Arizona, The FBI, ICE, Homeland
Security, State and local forces all there for what the news across the
nation and the world had wrongly reported as a murder suicide involving a
believed one time militant extremist.
The police press
conference today, blaming the incident in domestic violence is a “cop
out” as far as we are concerned. The police say the military has to be
there because the “ammunition” stored in the home was too confusing for
normal people to deal with, like, perhaps, to “leave there” as they
should.
The chemical drums
found may very well be rain water. After the Gabby Giffords shooting,
Gabby and so many others, police statements along with military presence
has become something of a signature we have begun to understand, the
more departments and agencies, the further from the truth we get.”
What would be the motive for such a crime? Police are quick to insist it is simply that of a crazed lone-gunman.But Ready was campaigning as a democrat for the Sheriff’s Office in Pinal County – a county currently being ravaged by Mexican drug cartels and suffering losses due to the federal government’s Fast and Furious gun distribution operation.
J.T. Ready had made himself a target from many quarters. His volunteer Minuteman group’s recent seizure of $4.5 million of illegal narcotics made him a target of the Mexican Drug Cartels. A post on Ready’s Facebook page yesterday alluded to just that.
It seems there were two sides to J.T. Ready – one of a highly articulate, intelligent, principled American citizen who was deeply concerned about our country’s future, and that of a person haunted by what the media portrayed as his dark questionable past.
JT Ready had become a ‘person of interest’ to many people in recent years.
Ready’s opponents on issues like immigration reform and the 2nd Amendement would have been enraged by his public statements against Operation Fast and Furious, as well as his recent political relationship with Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce who recently went to the Supreme Court in Washington DC to bat for Arizona in the battle for states’ rights. Last night’s multiple murder in Gilbert, Arizona will only fuel increased speculation – as well as border tension and new attempts to smear fellow SB1070 proponent Russell Pearce by his known political connections to Ready, while also going after the 2nd Amendment.
Ready has drawn fire from different area after fashioning himself into a public figure as an advocate for the 2nd Amendment, immigration reform, and most notably as sovereign rights of individuals as well as a defender of the constitution. Critics will also point to his known attendance at Neo-Nazi Rallies or perhaps that he was mentioned as a possible FBI informant affiliated with the ‘National Socialist Movement‘ (NSM), a group known to be deeply infiltrated by the FBI.
Association with the NSM would cause some to speculate that Ready was a federal informant at some point. If Ready was ever a federal informant, recent evidence would suggest that he would have progressed well beyond this, and had gone independent. But Ready’s own military background along with many level-headed and constitutionally sound statements to support his role as a volunteer leader along Arizona’s hot border – suggest that he was an independent citizen and an outspoken advocate.
Ready had been closely monitoring the border situation with fellow USBG Rangers since 2009, and according to the USBG mission statement, had been cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security in their efforts to secure the border.
In a recent post on his Facebook profile it shows a man saddled with the stance on illegal immigration, with Ready stating: “Volunteer elements that wish to help protect this nation should be organized and be put to use, not turned away like the current administration is notorious for doing.”
This political position – particularly from someone running for Sheriff in America’s most embattled county, made him a target of the federal government.
If there was motive to kill J.T. Ready, perhaps it was his role in intercepting drugs from the powerful Sinaloa Drug Cartel. Perhaps it was his open distaste for the Federal Government and Arizona’s open borders. Or maybe it was his ambition to become Sheriff – in a border county which is currently the number one theater for drug smuggling and border crime in the United States of America.
So as tragedies mount and tension rises, one thing is for certain, that the snake is only starting to unravel.
Forensic findings on Obama’s birth certificate: ‘A 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it’
Forensic findings on Obama’s birth certificate: ‘A 100 percent forgery, no doubt about it’
Special to WorldTribune.comBy Grace Vuoto
There is a problem with President Barack Obama’s long-form birth certificate: It’s a forgery, say multiple forensic experts who have examined it. A report detailing the evidence will soon be presented to Congress.
On April 27, 2011 the White House released Mr. Obama’s long-form birth certificate in an attempt to quell a public firestorm over the validity of the shorter version he provided prior to his 2008 election. A group of concerned citizens in Arizona suspected the Certificate of Live Birth produced in 2011 by the administration was fabricated; they asked Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County to investigate.
Lead Investigator Lt. Mike Zullo.
This is a key development, asserts Lt. Zullo, because Mr. Hayes is a certified handwriting analyst and forensic document examiner who worked repeatedly for Perkins Coie, a reputable law firm, and was deemed a dependable professional in their legal cases. Moreover, Perkins Coie has defended Mr. Obama in his legal jousts on the birth certificate matter over the past five years.
“Mr. Obama’s operatives cannot discredit him,” said Lt. Zullo. “Mr. Hayes has been used as the firm’s reliable expert. The very firm the president is using to defend him on the birth certificate case has used Mr. Hayes in their cases.” In addition, Mr. Hayes is a Democrat whose business is based in Hawaii. He cannot easily be accused of having a political axe to grind in this matter, explains Lt. Zullo.
Mr. Hayes initially agreed to simply take a cursory look at the document. Yet, within one hour, he called Lt. Zullo. “There is something wrong with this,” said Mr. Hayes.
A few weeks later, the expert, who has over 20 years of experience and has authored five books on his craft, presented a detailed 40-page report with a stark assessment: “…based on my observations and findings, it is clear that the Certificate of Live Birth I examined is not a scan of an original paper birth certificate, but a digitally manufactured document created by utilizing material from various sources,” writes Mr. Hayes. “In over 20 years of examining documentation of various types, I have never seen a document that is so seriously questionable in so many respects. In my opinion, the birth certificate is entirely fabricated,” states Mr. Hayes.
The report by Mr. Hayes is now an affidavit that belongs to the Cold Case Posse and cannot be retracted, regardless of any political or social pressure he encounters, explains Lt. Zullo.
“There has been a very effective media campaign to discredit anyone who tries to work with us,” said Lt. Zullo. “It is impossible to discuss this issue without being lambasted.”
Those who defend Mr. Obama say inquiries into the president’s birth certificate are based on conspiracy theories; these are “birthers,” they insist, who simply refuse to accept the credible evidence presented by Mr. Obama.
As a precaution against others misusing or manipulating Mr. Hayes’s report, Lt. Zullo has copyrighted it.
Mr. Hayes’s report has provided yet another certification — among a resounding 1,200 computer software tests undertaken by Lt. Zullo’s team — that demonstrates, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the long-form birth certificate has been fabricated. Lt. Zullo appointed two reputable computer science professionals, working independently of one another, to examine the long-form birth certificate. Both experts confirmed the document is inauthentic.
“Somebody made this,” said Lt. Zullo, referring to the long-form birth certificate as a nine-layer, computer-generated PDF document. “Someone spent days doing this.”
“The recreation of an official document is a crime,” said Lt. Zullo. “Either there is no original birth certificate or there is something in the original that is being concealed.”
The Maricopa County Cold Case Posse consists of an all-volunteer unit of accomplished individuals with experience in criminal investigations and legal professionals working under the law enforcement authority and direction of Sheriff Arpaio.
Sheriff Arpaio asked Lt. Zullo in August, 2011 to quickly quell the concerns of about 250 citizens who asked for an investigation. Yet, to his dismay, Lt. Zullo was unable to do so, having concluded within five days of his work that the document was compromised. He has since traveled to eleven states in eleven months, relying on public donations, on a grueling campaign to gather information about the certificate.
He filed an affidavit on May 14, 2013 to the Supreme Court of Alabama chronicles much of the evidence he has compiled thus far. In particular, he depicts a two-day meeting of investigators, attorneys, and information technology professionals, including Mara Zebest, a nationally recognized computer expert.
“All in attendance agreed unanimously that the White House computer image .pdf file contained anomalies that were unexplainable unless the document had been fabricated piecemeal by human intervention, rather than being copied from a genuine paper document,” states the affidavit.
The Cold Case Posse has determined that the certificate of live birth the White House presented is not a photocopy of an original document but one that “was pieced together electronically from multiple sources,” according to the affidavit. The registrar’s signature stamp and date stamp are from different layers of the document and are imports from other sources.
“The fact that the stamps can be picked up and moved about the document leaving a white background…is evidence enough of tampering,” states the affidavit.
During our interview, Lt. Zullo narrated his encounter in Hawaii on May 21, 2012 with Deputy Attorney General Jill Nagamine, who after repeated questions, failed to confirm the document released by the president is the same as any that might exist in their records.
“If you make a copy of your driver’s license and alter it, is it still a copy?” asked Lt. Zullo. She did not directly answer the question, and instead replied: “But you still have a driver’s license.” She agreed to confirm only specific items on a list, not that the document the White House produced is identical to any in the Hawaii archives. This incident “sent all the alarm bells ringing,” said Lt. Zullo.
“If an official document is altered in any way, it must be stated that it is an amended version,” said Lt. Zullo. “Failure to do so is a crime.”
The Cold Case Posse continues to gather evidence. The current report, consisting of 300 pages and likely to balloon to 400, will soon be delivered to Congress.
“We can’t send it to the Department of Justice for obvious reasons,” said Lt. Zullo, referring to the lack of credibility of current Attorney General Eric Holder who has been embroiled in multiple scandals, and is accused by leading Republicans of lying to the American people.
“I am working on this 24/7,” said Lt. Zullo. He has endured long hours on the case, under intense pressure from Obama administration operatives and supporters who seek to discredit Lt. Zullo and anyone who cooperates with the investigation.
When I asked why he persists, he replied, in the terms of a devoted officer of the law:
“I know it’s a felony.”
“The entire United States has been defrauded by a document that is usually automatically issued to every person in America. This is a blatant manipulation. If President Obama can’t be honest about his birth certificate, he can’t be honest about anything,” Lt. Zullo said.
“The original ‘birther’ is President Barack Obama himself,” said former Deputy Sheriff of Florida County and current talk-show host Carl Gallups in an interview with WorldTribune.
“It was Barack Obama who said for 16 years, along with his publisher that he was ‘Kenyan born,’” said Mr. Gallups, referring to the promotional materials for Mr. Obama’s book by his literary agency Dystel & Goderich prior to his presidential election that referred to him as having been “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia.” Mr. Obama’s bio was changed on the agency’s website in April, 2007, stating he was born in Hawaii. When Breitbart News broke this story, Miriam Goderich issued a press release stating that “a fact-checking error” occurred while she worked as an agency assistant. In other words, for sixteen years, the “error” had gone undetected.
Mr. Gallups, host of Freedom Friday, a pastor for 30 years, author of the Amazon best seller The Magic Man in the Sky, is now the premier media reporter covering the investigation. He has been given a unique position of trust and confidentiality in the case due to his extensive law enforcement background. Mr. Gallups also accompanied Lt. Zullo to CPAC and Capitol Hill earlier this year in order to present the evidence to politicians.
“Barack Obama has not been vetted,” said Mr. Gallups. “It is the responsibility of Congress to determine the eligibility of any candidate to hold office. The Senate examined whether Senator John McCain was qualified to run for president and concluded that he was. Yet, no one has done the same for Mr. Obama.”
Mr. Gallups explained that he, like most Americans who first hear about this, assume someone, somewhere has determined that a candidate running for office, especially the highest office in the land, has documents that have been thoroughly examined. “Yet, the procedure to run for office is for a political party to endorse a candidate,” said Mr. Gallups. “The Democratic National Committee determined that Mr. Obama was eligible. Once a party endorses a candidate, the individual states are not required to do any examination. The only other agency required to do the vetting is the Electoral College. But in this case, they did not do so either.”
“Everyone feared a public backlash of some kind,” explains Mr. Gallups of attempts to thoroughly vet Mr. Obama prior to 2008. Yet, based on his expert analysis as a former law enforcement officer, the long-form birth certificate document is indeed a fabrication.
“From the beginning, I have always said, as a law enforcement officer and patriot, if I can be proven wrong, I will back down, will declare my mistake and apologize.” He has issued numerous public challenges for anyone with credible evidence to come forward.
“This is not fun; it is not easy,” he said. “I have been marginalized and insulted simply for stating the truth of the matter. As a patriot, ex-cop, father and grandfather, I know what I know. Please prove me wrong. I will back away.”
Mr. Gallups echoes the sentiment of many who have looked at the evidence: initial dismissal, then shock, disbelief, an assumption that it is all a mistake that will quickly be debunked and then the horror of concluding that the certificate Mr. Obama has presented is fake.
What many in the media fail to grasp is that so-called “birthers” would rather be wrong than right. It is more upsetting for many of them to believe that this kind of crime can be committed than that it was not.
The difference between a conspiracy theory and a crime is that a conspiracy theory cannot stand against the test of forensic evidence. Those who dismiss this investigation as merely “kooky” must answer these questions: Are leading experts in their field who have provided their professional assessment to a criminal investigation merely to be ignored?
Why would these experts risk their reputation and also commit perjury? It is therefore kookier to disregard these assessments summarily than to view them with an unbiased eye.
The evidence currently being accumulated by the Cold Case Posse requires consideration. It is time for Congress to do its constitutional duty and examine all this hard evidence in the clear light of day.
Grace Vuoto is the Editor of Politics and Culture at World Tribune, host of American Heartland with Dr. Grace on WTSB Radio and is the founder of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal.
Drone falls dangerously out of sky; Local news station reveals what it had been filming
Drone falls dangerously out of sky; Local news station reveals what it had been filming
as long as it aint me in the video i wont worry but if i see a drone i will shoot it down
Posted Thursday, June 27th 2013 @ 3pm
(Liz Klimas) A
small drone obtained by a local Florida news station is revealing just
why some have privacy — and safety — concerns regarding the ever
expanding use of such surveillance technology by both the government and
hobbyists.
WKMG-TV, covering the Orlando area, reported one if its reporter finding a RC aerial vehicle that fell out
of the sky after losing control and crashing into a tree. The news
station was able to obtain more than two hours of footage that was taken
by the attached GoPro camera, revealing what the drone had been
observing before its fall.
Here’s what WKMG wrote of the footage:
[...] you can see each flight starts innocently enough. But you can see the potential for bad behavior.
In one shot, the drone races toward an apartment window, getting within feet of the glass.In another shot, the drone hovers over a female sunbather at a pool. She’s completely unaware that it’s there, and she never looks up.But the scariest shot of all shows the drone wobbling high over I-4 as cars zoom by down below. The drivers have no idea that the drone was out of control at that point, and only seconds away from crashing.
Watch the report with video from the drone:
Using the footage, WKMG was also able
to track down the pilot of the drone, finding where he lives. Speaking
with the drone’s operator, Guimy Alexis, the station learned he didn’t
intend any harm.
“The only thing I want to do is essentially record a flight, put some music on it, and put it on YouTube,” Alexis said.
Read more: http://www.ktrh.com/articles/national-news-104668/drone-falls-dangerously-out-of-sky-11437712/?cmp=obinsite#ixzz2YVZ70hha
Government Spying Has Always Focused On Crushing Dissent … Not On Keeping Us Safe
Government Spying Has Always Focused On Crushing Dissent … Not On Keeping Us Safe
Governments Spy On Their Citizens for Control and Power
Top terrorism experts say that mass spying on Americans doesn’t keep us safe.High-level American government officials have warned for 40 years that mass surveillance would lead to tyranny. They’ve warned that the government is using information gained through mass surveillance in order to go after anyone they take a dislike to. And a lieutenant colonel for the Stasi East German’s – based upon his experience – agrees.
You don’t have to obsess on the NSA’s high-tech spying to figure out what the government is doing. Just look at old-fashioned, low-tech government spying to see what’s s really going on.
Instead of focusing on catching actual terrorists, police spy on Americans who criticize the government, or the big banks or the other power players.
Todd Gitlin – chair of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University, and a professor of journalism and sociology - notes:
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) has unearthed documents showing that, in 2011 and 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies were busy surveilling and worrying about a good number of Occupy groups — during the very time that they were missing actual warnings about actual terrorist actions.
From its beginnings, the Occupy movement was of considerable interest to the DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, while true terrorists were slipping past the nets they cast in the wrong places. In the fall of 2011, the DHS specifically asked its regional affiliates to report on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and ‘significant criminal activity.’”
Aware that Occupy was overwhelmingly peaceful, the federally funded Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of 77 coordination centers known generically as “fusion centers,” was busy monitoring Occupy Boston daily. As the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff recently reported, they were not only tracking Occupy-related Facebook pages and websites but “writing reports on the movement’s potential impact on ‘commercial and financial sector assets.’”
It was in this period that the FBI received the second of two Russian police warnings about the extremist Islamist activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the future Boston Marathon bomber. That city’s police commissioner later testified that the federal authorities did not pass any information at all about the Tsarnaev brothers on to him, though there’s no point in letting the Boston police off the hook either. The ACLU has uncovered documents showing that, during the same period, they were paying close attention to the internal workings of…Code Pink and Veterans for Peace.
***
In Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, intelligence was not only pooled among public law enforcement agencies, but shared with private corporations — and vice versa.
Nationally, in 2011, the FBI and DHS were, in the words of Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.” Last December using FOIA, PCJF obtained 112 pages of documents (heavily redacted) revealing a good deal of evidence for what might otherwise seem like an outlandish charge: that federal authorities were, in Verheyden-Hilliard’s words, “functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.” Consider these examples from PCJF’s summary of federal agencies working directly not only with local authorities but on behalf of the private sector:
• “As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.”
• “The FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to… [22] campus police officials… A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.”
• An entity called the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the private sector,” sent around information regarding Occupy protests at West Coast ports [on Nov. 2, 2011] to “raise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.” The DSAC report contained “a ‘handling notice’ that the information is ‘meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…’ Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) reported to DSAC on the relationship between OWS and organized labor.”
• DSAC gave tips to its corporate clients on “civil unrest,” which it defined as running the gamut from “small, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.” ***
• The FBI in Anchorage, Jacksonville, Tampa, Richmond, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Birmingham also gathered information and briefed local officials on wholly peaceful Occupy activities.
• In Jackson, Mississippi, FBI agents “attended a meeting with the Bank Security Group in Biloxi, MS with multiple private banks and the Biloxi Police Department, in which they discussed an announced protest for ‘National Bad Bank Sit-In-Day’ on December 7, 2011.” Also in Jackson, “the Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a ‘Counterterrorism Preparedness’ alert” that, despite heavy redactions, notes the need to ‘document…the Occupy Wall Street Movement.’”
***
In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee learned … that the Tennessee Fusion Center was “highlighting on its website map of ‘Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity’ a recent ACLU-TN letter to school superintendents. The letter encourages schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.”
***
Consider an “intelligence report” from the North Central Texas fusion center, which in a 2009 “Prevention Awareness Bulletin” described, in the ACLU’s words, “a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department, and hip hop bands to spread tolerance in the United States, which would ‘provide an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish.’”
***
And those Virginia and Texas fusion centers were hardly alone in expanding the definition of “terrorist” to fit just about anyone who might oppose government policies. According to a 2010 report in the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department Inspector General found that “FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be ‘factually weak.’” The Inspector General called “troubling” what the Los Angeles Times described as “singling out some of the domestic groups for investigations that lasted up to five years, and were extended ‘without adequate basis.’
Subsequently, the FBI continued to maintain investigative files on groups like Greenpeace, the Catholic Worker, and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, cases where (in the politely put words of the Inspector General’s report) “there was little indication of any possible federal crimes… In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘acts of terrorism’ classification.”
***
In Pittsburgh, on the day after Thanksgiving 2002 (“a slow work day” in the Justice Department Inspector General’s estimation), a rookie FBI agent was outfitted with a camera, sent to an antiwar rally, and told to look for terrorism suspects. The “possibility that any useful information would result from this make-work assignment was remote,” the report added drily.
“The agent was unable to identify any terrorism subjects at the event, but he photographed a woman in order to have something to show his supervisor. He told us he had spoken to a woman leafletter at the rally who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, and that she was probably the person he photographed.”
The sequel was not quite so droll. The Inspector General found that FBI officials, including their chief lawyer in Pittsburgh, manufactured postdated “routing slips” and the rest of a phony paper trail to justify this surveillance retroactively.
Moreover, at least one fusion center has involved military intelligence in civilian law enforcement. In 2009, a military operative from Fort Lewis, Washington, worked undercover collecting information on peace groups in the Northwest. In fact, he helped run the Port Militarization Resistance group’s Listserv. Once uncovered, he told activists there were others doing similar work in the Army. How much the military spies on American citizens is unknown and, at the moment at least, unknowable.
Do we hear an echo from the abyss of the counterintelligence programs of the 1960s and 1970s, when FBI memos — I have some in my own heavily redacted files obtained through an FOIA request — were routinely copied to military intelligence units? Then, too, military intelligence operatives spied on activists who violated no laws, were not suspected of violating laws, and had they violated laws, would not have been under military jurisdiction in any case. During those years, more than 1,500 Army intelligence agents in plain clothes were spying, undercover, on domestic political groups (according to Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967-70, an unpublished dissertation by former Army intelligence captain Christopher H. Pyle). They posed as students, sometimes growing long hair and beards for the purpose, or as reporters and camera crews. They recorded speeches and conversations on concealed tape recorders. The Army lied about their purposes, claiming they were interested solely in “civil disturbance planning.”
Indeed, the New York Review of Books notes that spying in America has always been focused on crushing dissent:
In the United States, political spying by the federal government began in the early part of the twentieth century, with the creation of the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice on July 1, 1908. In more than one sense, the new agency was a descendant of the surveillance practices developed in France a century earlier, since it was initiated by US Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a great nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who created it during a Congressional recess. Its establishment was denounced by Congressman Walter Smith of Iowa, who argued that “No general system of spying upon and espionage of the people, such as has prevailed in Russia, in France under the Empire, and at one time in Ireland, should be allowed to grow up.”Postscript: This is not some “post-9/11 reality”. Spying on Americans started before 9/11.
Nonetheless, the new Bureau became deeply engaged in political surveillance during World War I when federal authorities sought to gather information on those opposing American entry into the war and those opposing the draft. As a result of this surveillance, many hundreds of people were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act for the peaceful expression of opinion about the war and the draft.
But it was during the Vietnam War that political surveillance in the United States reached its peak. Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and, to an even greater extent, Richard Nixon, there was a systematic effort by various agencies, including the United States Army, to gather information on those involved in anti-war protests. Millions of Americans took part in such protests and the federal government—as well as many state and local agencies—gathered enormous amounts of information on them. Here are just three of the numerous examples of political surveillance in that era:
- In the 1960s in Rochester, New York, the local police department launched Operation SAFE (Scout Awareness for Emergency). It involved twenty thousand boy scouts living in the vicinity of Rochester. They got identification cards marked with their thumb prints. On the cards were the telephone numbers of the local police and the FBI. The scouts participating in the program were given a list of suspicious activities that they were to report.
***
- In 1969, the FBI learned that one of the sponsors of an anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, was a New York City-based organization, the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee, that chartered buses to take protesters to the event. The FBI visited the bank where the organization maintained its account to get photocopies of the checks written to reserve places on the buses and, thereby, to identify participants in the demonstration. One of the other federal agencies given the information by the FBI was the Internal Revenue Service.
The National Security Agency was involved in the domestic political surveillance of that era as well. Decades before the Internet, under the direction of President Nixon, the NSA made arrangements with the major communications firms of the time such as RCA Global and Western Union to obtain copies of telegrams. When the matter came before the courts, the Nixon Administration argued that the president had inherent authority to protect the country against subversion. In a unanimous decision in 1972, however, the US Supreme Court rejected the claim that the president had the authority to disregard the requirement of the Fourth Amendment for a judicial warrant.
***
Much of the political surveillance of the 1960s and the 1970s and of the period going back to World War I consisted in efforts to identify organizations that were critical of government policies, or that were proponents of various causes the government didn’t like, and to gather information on their adherents. It was not always clear how this information was used. As best it is possible to establish, the main use was to block some of those who were identified with certain causes from obtaining public employment or some kinds of private employment. Those who were victimized in this way rarely discovered the reason they had been excluded.
Efforts to protect civil liberties during that era eventually led to the destruction of many of these records, sometimes after those whose activities were monitored were given an opportunity to examine them. In many cases, this prevented surveillance records from being used to harm those who were spied on. Yet great vigilance by organizations such as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought a large number of court cases challenging political surveillance, was required to safeguard rights. The collection of data concerning the activities of US citizens did not take place for benign purposes.
***Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated a program known as COINTELPRO, for Counter Intelligence Program. Its purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” them. The first target was the Communist Party of the United States, but subsequent targets ranged from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organizations espousing women’s rights to right wing organizations such as the National States Rights Party.
A well-known example of COINTELPRO was the FBI’s planting in 1964 of false documents about William Albertson, a long-time Communist Party official, that persuaded the Communist Party that Albertson was an FBI informant. Amid major publicity, Albertson was expelled from the party, lost all his friends, and was fired from his job. Until his death in an automobile accident in 1972, he tried to prove that he was not a snitch, but the case was not resolved until 1989, when the FBI agreed to pay Albertson’s widow $170,000 to settle her lawsuit against the government.
COINTELPRO was eventually halted by J. Edgar Hoover after activists broke into a small FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971, and released stolen documents about the program to the press. The lesson of COINTELPRO is that any government agency that is able to gather information through political surveillance will be tempted to use that information. After a time, the passive accumulation of data may seem insufficient and it may be used aggressively. This may take place long after the information is initially collected and may involve officials who had nothing to do with the original decision to engage in surveillance.
***
Since President Obama is asking us to trade some of our privacy with respect to our phone calls and our use of the Internet for greater protection against terrorism, at the very least we need to know exactly how our privacy is being violated. We also need to debate fully whether such measures uphold our Constitutional rights, such as the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of expression and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. Yet if the program is kept secret, and if even the court opinions stating the rationale for authorizing surveillance are kept secret, we cannot decide whether a trade-off is warranted; if it is warranted, exactly what should be traded; if constitutional rights are implicated, whether these are appropriate matters for a trade; or how we can impose limits on any trade so as to minimize the violation of our rights. A trade made in ignorance is not much of a trade.
Presidents, Plots, Broken Promises, Coups, Torture, Two Gulags and the “American Dream”
Presidents, Plots, Broken Promises, Coups, Torture, Two Gulags and the “American Dream”
When first we practise to deceive.” (Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832.)
It has been a bit of a foot-in-mouth week for the constitutional lawyer who is President of the United States.As Egypt’s increasingly autocratic and theocratic Muslim Brotherhood’s President Mohammed Morsi was rejected by the population with an estimated thirty three million person demonstration and a twenty two million signature petition, the US Nobel Prize Peace Laureate cheer leading for the overthrow of Syria’s sovereign Head of State, declared he is “deeply concerned” over the ousting of President Morsi.
He called for the :
“ … return (of) full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible, through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters.”
”The United States continues to believe firmly that the best foundation for lasting stability … is a democratic political order with participation from all sides and all political parties — secular and religious, civilian and military,” Obama stated, demanding that: ” …during this uncertain period, we expect the military to ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected.”Further, the United States supported:
“ … a set of core principles, including opposition to violence, protection of universal human rights, and reform that meets the legitimate aspirations of the people.”CNN called the (certainly also infiltrated) demonstrations the largest number of protestors at a political event in the history of mankind. Whatever the outcome of the interim government and the nation’s longer term response to it, it was demonstration of another rare kind: democracy in action.
Whilst castigating Egypt for an
example of democracy’s definition, by his avowed hero Abraham Lincoln –
whose journey Obama emulated on road to the White House – “government
of the people, by the people, for the people (which) shall not perish
from the earth” (Gettysburg Address, November 19th 1863) Obama blithely
ignored the dangerous criminality of sections of the ousted President
Morsi’s supporters.
On 4th July, as the US celebrated
Independence Day, in a chilling mirror image of America’s favoured
fundamentalists in Iraq, Libya and Syria:’
“True to their vows, pro-Morsi Muslims are attacking Egypt’s Christians for participating in the anti-Morsi protests. The St. George Coptic Christian Church in a village in al-Minya, Egypt, has just been set on fire by “pro-Morsi” forces.The message concluded:
Copts are reported to be in a state of “fear and panic.” ‘
Days earlier, a letter was circulated in al-Minya, which has a very large Coptic population, calling on Copts not to join the protests, otherwise their “businesses, cars, homes, schools, and churches” might “catch fire.” ‘ (i)
“If you are not worried about any of these, then worry about your children and your homes. This message is being delivered with tact. But when the moment of truth comes, there will be no tact.”Some of the other threats delivered in support of Dr Morsi, to those of all or no religious persuasions, include relieving them of their eyes and wiping them “off the face of the earth.” (ii)
Yet President Obama related his
deep concern at : “ … the decision of the Egyptian Armed Forces to
remove President Morsi and suspend the Egyptian constitution” calling
on: “the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return
full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as
soon as possible, through an inclusive and transparent process, avoiding
any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters.” This as
he is stepping up funding and weapons to terrorists in Syria committing
acts of barbarity exceeding even anything in Eqypt.
Obama’s deep concern at the
removal of President Morsi is at odds with his repeated statements on
President Assad, as exampled in the May White House meeting with
Turkey’s now embattled Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “We both
agree that Assad needs to go. He needs to transfer power to a
transitional body,” he said (news, websites.)
President Assad’s government and
territorial integrity is, of course enshrined in the fine legalese of
the UN. Further, as Obama pledges millions$ in equipment, training and
aid to the Syrian insurgents, he directs his Administration to review US
assistance to Egypt – on the basis that American law forbids aid to
countries that remove leaders in a military coup, as he plans and funds
one for Syria. Arguably, a lawyer who gives the term “legal leeway”,
entirely new dimensions.
The atrocities in Syria being
committed by the “Free Syrian Army”, alleged to be paid in “crisp US $
bills” are a legion. The terrorist “commander” videoed mutilating a
corpse and cannibal-like eating parts of organs, was described in the
Los AngelesTimes (14th May 2013) as vowing thus:
‘ “I swear to God, soldiers of
Bashar, you dogs - we will eat your heart and livers”, the “commander”
declares, while brandishing the organs, directing a sickening message to
Syrian President Bashar Assad. “Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter
the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!”
‘Human Rights Watch said the man in the video appeared to be a rebel
figure known as Abu Sakkar, of the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade,
which arose … last year in the Baba Amr district of the city of Homs.
The brigade is one of scores of rebel factions in Syria that answer to
no central command.’Those pad in “crisp US $ bills” have summarily executed across the country, including a fifteen year old street tea seller for “blasphemy.” Beheadings also include a Priest and a Bishop, along with desecrated bodies, burned Mosques and Christian churches and reportedly the massacre of an entire village of Christians at al-Duvair. (iii)
Also in formerly secular Syria
“units” from the self-declared “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham”
(ISIS) - from the equally formerly secular Iraq until the US backed
fundamentalists gained sway – have also begun imposing stricter
interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing
members of rival rebel groups.
The latest internecine clashes
were in the town of Al Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local
“activists” said. An opposition group known as the Free Youths of Idlib
said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.
The bodies of a “commander” and
his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were reportedly found
beheaded, with locals saying that the men’s heads were found next to a
trash bin in a main square. Again, chillingly reminiscent of years of
the same, which overwhelmed Iraq under the American and British invasion
and occupation.
Of Egypt, last Wednesday Obama
demanded that: “during this uncertain period, we expect the military to
ensure that the rights of all Egyptian men and women are protected.” No
such demands over the daily slaughter of innocents in Iraq under a US
puppet Prime Minister, Syria under US funded and armed gangs – and a
presumption that the President’s ritual signing off on the droning to
death of men and women in the villages of Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia or
where ever – is a God given right.
But perhaps the greatest example
of schizophrenic chutzpah, was the Nobel Laureate’s visit to South
Africa’s Robben Island prison, where Nelson Mandela was held for
eighteen years, in and eight ft., by eight ft., cell.
After standing in Mandela’s
former place of incarceration, looking out of the barred window for a
photo op, he wrote in the prison, now museum visitors’ book: “On behalf
of our family, we’re deeply humbled to stand where men of such courage
faced down injustice and refused to yield. The world is grateful for the
heroes of Robben Island, who remind us that no shackles or cells can
match the strength of the human spirit.”
Tell that to Edward Snowden and
Bradley Manning. Ironically, his Secret Service agents stood watch in
the old tower where South Africa’s apartheid thugs watched over Nelson
Mandela and his colleagues. What symbolism.
Tell it also to those without
hope who Obama made an election promise to release, rotting in another
island gulag: Guantanamo Bay, where in fact there are eight stalags,
built on a US leased former coaling and naval stations dating back to
1898.
In 2008 Amnesty USA recreated a
life-size replica of a maximum security Guantanamo cell and toured the
States with it. (iv) At eight feet high, ten feet long and seven feet
wide, it is just two feet longer than Mandela’s cell – and one foot
narrower.
However, when the first prisoners
arrived at the gulag on 11th January 2002, cells were reported to the
made from chain-link fencing and measuring just six feet by eight feet,
with corrugated metal roofs. Sleeping arrangements were a foam sleeping
mat on the concrete floor. Two buckets sufficed for washing and a
toilet. (v)
After Camp Four riots in June 2006, prisoners in Camp Six were
incarcerated alone: “for at least 22 hours a day in windowless,
concrete, steel-doored cells.
In even more restrictive camps
such as Camps Three and One, it is reported that the prisoners are
denied “special items” – such as toilet paper. When nature calls, a
prisoner must ask the guards for the “necessary” amount of toilet
paper.Think about it.
“Lights in the prison are kept on 24 hours a day … The camps are surrounded by barbed wire and green sheets to restrict any views, including that of the ocean.”
In Camp Three:“Since the opening of the prison at Guantanamo Bay on 11 January 2002, the U.S. government has detained more than 759 men there. To-date, only three prisoners have been convicted of committing war crimes against the United States.”
“The detainees’ cells were sufficiently isolated from one another that they couldn’t see one another. Additionally, there were noise generators near each cell so they couldn’t hear one another.”In April 2010 the Guardian reported that a TV had been installed in a common area in Camp Six – with prisoners shackled to the floor during television “privileges.”
On the campaign trail in 2008
Barack Hussein Obama was unequivocal, if elected: “We are going to lead
by shutting down Guantanamo and restoring habeus corpus … I have said
repeatedly that I will follow through on it.” Further: “I have said
repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, I am going to shut down on it,
we are not being true to our values.” (vi)
This week, two allegations of
torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, including: “electric shocks;
repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced
nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation;
hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs”, by
US mercenaries employed by CACI, were dismissed by US District Judge
Gerald Bruce Lee.
The Judge’s grounds were that US
corporations are immune from prosecution for acts committed on foreign
soil. This in spite of the fact that the US military was an occupying
force and thus legally responsible for the well being of the Iraqi
population at the time CACI was committing the unimaginable – and a US
General was in overall charge of Abu Ghraib and eleven other of Iraq’s
prisons.
Speaking after he left that tiny cell on Robben Island, Obama said:
“Nelson Mandela showed us that one man’s courage can move the world.”
Quite, especially if you are the self styled most powerful one on earth.Incidentally the window in Nelson Mandela’s sparse little place of incarceration, in front of which Obama stood for his photo op, was multiple times larger than the near slits that pass for windows in Guantanamo cells that have them. (viii)
“Pity someone didn’t slam the door shut on him”, remarked an intolerant friend. Tut, tut.
Notes
i.
http://cpnagasaki.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/revenge-coptic-christian-churches-homes-are-reportedly-under-attack-by-morsi-supporters/
ii.
http://cpnagasaki.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/revenge-coptic-christian-churches-homes-are-reportedly-under-attack-by-morsi-supporters/
iii. http://www.dailypaul.com/287415/syrian-rebels-massacre-christian-village
iv.http://blogs.suntimes.com/conventions/2008/09/inside_your_very_own_guantanam.html
v. http://the-beacon.info/countries/united-states/demographics-of-guantanamo-bay-prison/
vi. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8USRg3h4AdE (1.43m)
vii. http://www.allgov.com/news/us-and-the-world/americans-get- away-with-murder-and-torture-in-iraq-130701?news=850439
viii. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-23121416
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