Governor Abbott Commands State Guard to Monitor Jade Helm 15 Operation

04/28/2015 02:12 PM

04/28/2015 06:59 PM

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Governor Abbott is putting his citizens' rights first by commanding General Betty keep Texans properly informed during an upcoming military exercise.

The United States Army says that United States Military Operation Jade Helm 15 is designed to train special forces units such as the Army's Green Berets, Air Force and Marine Special Operations Commands, Marine Expeditionary Units, and the 82nd Airborne Division. 

It will take place in various locations across the State of Texas including the Big Country's own town of Big Springs from July - September of 2015. 

Citizens have been raising concerns since preliminary operation plans came to light, and Governor Greg Abbott is making it his mission to quell these fears the best he can. 

He penned this letter to Commander of the Texas State Guard Major General Gerald "Jake" Betty urging him to monitor all aspects of the operation in the interest of keeping his public informed. Governor Abbott wants to make it clear to Texans that their "safety, constitutional rights, private property rights, and civil liberties will not be infringed".

State Guard monitoring would make information like military personnel movements and training exercise schedules public knowledge. 

Abbott ends his letter by highlighting "Texas' long history of supporting our military forces and our proud tradition of training, deploying, and supporting our active-duty troops and return veterans." 

More information on Jade Helm 15 from the United States Army.

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Federal Government Ordered to Explain Why it Needs a Cell Phone Kill Switch

Federal Government Ordered to Explain Why it Needs a Cell Phone Kill Switch

By Carey Wedler

Global Research, April 29, 2015

The Anti-Media 28 April 2015

Region: USA

Theme: Law and Justice, Police State & Civil Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Monday [April 27] is the court-ordered deadline for the government to explain a secretive policy that allows it to use a “kill switch” on cell phone service among the population. The policy, adopted by the Department of Homeland Security in 2005, is called Standard Operating Procedure 303 and allows

“…for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices.”

It allows the government to cut service “within a localized area, such as a tunnel or bridge, and within an entire metropolitan area.” The policy comes with a murky, questionable history.
The implementation of the policy was a reaction to the 2005 London subway bombing and was deemed necessary for national security. In 2005, all cell service in New York’s Hudson Tunnel was cut off for two weeks—a move that by the DHS’s own admission created

“disorder for both Government and the private sector at a time when use of the communications infrastructure was most needed.”

Due to the secrecy surrounding the policy, there is no concrete documentation to suggest that SOP 303 has been used to cut cell service. In 2011, however, all cell phone communication was cut on San Francisco’s BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This was done to disrupt a protest against a violent police officer who killed a homeless man. That same year, the White House claimed that the government had the right to

“control private communications systems in the United States during times of war or other national emergencies.”

In an effort to learn more about the justification for the BART shut down, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a FOIA request with DHS in July of 2012. DHS claimed it could not find any relevant documentation, leading EPIC to file a FOIA lawsuit. A lower federal court found the agency insufficiently complied with the request. By February of 2015, however, a higher court sided with a DHS appeal and ruled that

“the [DHS] permissibly withheld much, if not all of SOP 303, because its release…could reasonably be expected to endanger individuals’ lives or physical safety . . . .”

In spite of the federal government’s aggressive attempts to keep this information secret, EPIC filed a request last month for the court to revisit its decision, arguing that “if left in place, [it] would create an untethered ‘national security’ exemption.” This time, the court gave the government until this Monday, April 27, to explain the details of its policy, including under what conditions it may be implemented.
Alan Butler, a lawyer for EPIC, explained plainly that,

“We’re not asking for detailed information about how [SOP 303] works … but about the rationale and the policy guidelines.”

The push toward a “kill switch” has been building for years (and predates cell phones and the Internet). In July of 2012, Obama signed an Executive Order that “granted the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.” In 2010, a Senate Subcommittee on “Homeland Security” approved a kill-switch for the Internet and in 2014, the House of Representatives introduced a cell phone kill switch bill in the name of preventing smartphone theft. In August of that same year, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring all smart phones made after July 2015 to have a built in kill switch. The bill has been criticized for granting dangerous power to both law enforcement and hackers.
The use of a kill switch has also been lambasted for what some view as an inability to prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, previous terror attacks have relied not on cellular communication, but merely on an alarm clock built into a phone—which would be unaffected by the use of a kill switch.
The dangers of granting such broad authority to government seem not only abundant, but obvious. As seen in the 2011 BART instance, the state is more than willing to dismantle communication for reasons beyond national security. The power to disrupt the citizens’ right to organize protests against state action is an unconscionable effort to control the population and silence dissent. That the government is so resistant to explain this power is reason enough to distrust it.
As Howard Feld, Senior Vice President of Public Knowledge, a public advocacy group, pointed out,

“Understanding a policy should not compromise national security.”

The DHS stubbornly disagreed. Asked to explain the decision to withhold basic procedural information from the public on the program, it responded only with,

“We have no comment on this.”

Although the court-mandated deadline has come and gone — as of midnight yesterday — without a response from the government, this story will be updated when and if they ever decide to offer an explanation for the shrouded policy.

Obama, Corporate “Free Traitors” and You! Fast-Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Obama, Corporate “Free Traitors” and You! Fast-Tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

By Ralph Nader

Global Research, April 29, 2015

CounterPunch 27 April 2015

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy

The pro-big business President Barack Obama and his corporate allies are starting their campaign to manipulate and pressure Congress to ram through the “pull-down-on-America” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and foreign investment treaty between twelve nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam).
The first skirmish is a fast track bill to have Congress formally strip itself of its constitutional authority to regulate trade and surrender this historic responsibility to the White House and its corporate lobbies.
Lest you think the TPP is too commercially complex to bother about, think again. This mega-treaty is the latest corporate coup-d’état that sacrifices the American consumer, labor and environmental standards – inventively called “non-tariff trade barriers” – and much U.S. sovereignty to the supremacy of corporate commercial trade.
No single column can adequately describe this colossal betrayal – camouflaged by phrases like “free trade” and “win-win agreements.” For comprehensive analysis of the TPP you can go to Global Trade Watch (http://www.citizen.org/trade/).
Trade treaties, like NAFTA and GATT, which created the World Trade Organization (WTO), already have proven records of harming our country through huge job-exporting trade deficits, unemployment, freezing or jeopardizing our consumer and environmental rules, holding down regulations on giant banks and weakening labor protections.
How does the corporate state and its “free traitors” construct a transnational form of autocratic governance that bypasses the powers of our branches of government and accepts decisions that greatly affect American livelihoods issued by secret tribunals run by corporate lawyers-turned-judges? Well, first they establish autocratic procedures, such as fast track legislation that facilitate the creation of an absentee autocratic government, which betrays the American people by going far beyond reducing tariffs and quotas.
Imagine, when the TPP treaty finally gets negotiated with other nations in secret, the White House cynically classifies it as an “agreement” requiring a simple majority vote, not a treaty requiring two-thirds of the Congress for passage. Fast track legislation then limits debate on the TPP to a total of 20 hours in each chamber. Then, Congress lets the White House tie Congress’ hands by prohibiting any amendments and requesting just an up or down vote.
Meanwhile the campaign cash flows into the abdicating law-makers’ coffers from the likes of Boeing, General Electric, Pfizer, Citigroup, Exxon Mobil and other multinational corporations that show a lack loyalty to the United States (no corporate patriotism) due to their ties to communist and fascist regimes abroad who let them get away with horrible abuses and repression in the name of greater profits.
Many of these Pacific Rim countries, for example, have bad labor laws and practices, few, if any, consumer or environmental protections that can be enforced in courts of law and precious little freedom of speech.
A recent treaty with South Korea was pushed through Congress on false predictions of jobs and win-win solutions. In fact, the Korean agreement resulted in a ballooning of the trade deficit that the U.S. has with that country, costing an estimated nearly 60,000 American jobs.
The majority of these corporate-managed trade agreements come from the demands of global corporations. They exploit developing countries that have cheap labor and lax laws, unlike more developed countries, such as the U.S., that have greater protections for consumers, workers and the environment. Under this trade agreement, countries that seek better protections for their workers and consumers can be sued by corporations and other nations. Remarkably, better treatment, such as safer motor vehicles, is seen as an obstructive trade barrier against inferior imports.
For one example of many, under the WTO, the U.S. cannot keep out products made by brutal child labor abroad, even though U.S. law prohibits child labor in this country. This is how our sovereignty is shredded.
Under the WTO, the U.S. has lost 100 percent of the cases brought before the secret tribunals in Geneva, Switzerland against our public interest laws –like consumer and environmental protections. The TPP will produce similar autocratic outcomes.
Cong. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), former Texas Supreme Court Justice, told POLITICO:

“I do not believe that Congress should relinquish its trade oversight authority. This really is a fast track — seeking to railroad the Trans-Pacific Partnership through while the United States Trade Representative (USTR) hides from Congress the most important details.”

Proponents of the TPP want to limit debate and prevent any amendments to this treaty that might deal with issues such as currency manipulation, child labor, bad workplace conditions, etc. by such countries as Mexico and Vietnam. What is enforceable, with penalties, are sanctions and lawsuits against our country (and others), which corporate power demands. U.S. taxpayers will ultimately pay that price.
This is why Senator Elizabeth Warren is opposing the TPP. She wrote in the Washington Post that the TPP, “would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court.”
For example, if a company doesn’t like our controls over cancer-causing chemicals, it could skip the U.S. courts and sue the U.S. before a secret tribunal that can hand down decisions, which can’t be challenged in U.S. courts. If it won before this secret kangaroo court, it could be given millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, charged to you, the taxpayer. Again, the big business “free traitors” are shredding our sovereignty under the Constitution.
Scores of such cases already have been brought under the WTO. Senator Warren explained that

“recent cases include a French company that sued Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage, a Swedish company that sued Germany because Germany decided to phase out nuclear power after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and a Dutch company that sued the Czech Republic because the Czechs didn’t bail out a bank that the company partially owned… Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Uruguay from implementing new tobacco regulations intended to cut smoking rates.”

Senator Warren upset President Obama who, before a business audience (he wouldn’t talk TPP before a labor or consumer gathering), called Warren “wrong on the facts.” Really? Well why doesn’t he debate her, as Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA? She has read the fine print; I doubt whether he has read more than the corporate power tea leaves. He seems to have forgotten his severe criticism of NAFTA from when he ran for president in 2008.
Right now, President Obama probably has the Republican votes in the Senate, but not yet a majority of votes in the House. The vast majority of the Democrats are opposed to the TPP. Tea Party Republicans are reducing Speaker Boehner’s vote count among Republicans. Using history as an example, President Bill Clinton easily peeled off votes during his push for NAFTA. What we need now are a couple of million voters around America to put serious heat on their faltering members of the House and Senate – not that arduous of an effort – over the next few months. That is fewer Americans than watch big league games on television.
In addition, these civic-minded and active Americans would be backed by 75 percent of Americans who think that the TPP should be rejected or delayed, according to a bipartisan poll from the Wall Street Journal. People know what these “pull–down” trade agreements have done to them in their own communities.
Ralph Nader’s latest book is: Unstoppable: the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.

Congressman Says It’s “Open Season on Black Men”

• Democratic Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus
• Views America as a nation awash in racism

See also:  Congressional Black Caucus   Democratic Party
                Congressional Progressive Caucus


Hank Johnson Jr. was born on October 2, 1954 in Washington, DC. He earned a BS at Clark College in 1976 and a JD at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in 1979. Johnson subsequently worked for twelve years as an associate judge in the DeKalb County (Georgia) Magistrate Court; five years as DeKalb County commissioner; three years as chair of the DeKalb County budget committee; and a number of years as a criminal and civil litigator for the Johnson and Johnson Law Group. In 2008 he served as co-chair of the Barack Obama Presidental Campaign in Georgia.

After defeating incumbent Cynthia McKinney in the 2006 Democratic primary race for Georgia's 4th Congressional District seat, Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He has held that post ever since, and is a member of both the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

In September 2009, Johnson demanded that Republican Representative Joe Wilson be censured for having shouted “You lie!” during the portion of Barack Obama's healthcare-related speech to Congress where the President pledged that his proposed reforms would not extend health insurance to illegal immigrants. Charging that Wilson's outburst had racial undertones, Johnson argued that if the congressman was not formally rebuked, “we will have people with white hoods running through the countryside again.”
On December 22, 2009, Johnson was one of 33 U.S. Representatives who signed a letter to Hillary Clinton, calling on the Secretary of State to pressure the Israeli government to end its ban on Palestinian student travel from Gaza to the West Bank. “We applaud your efforts to support educational opportunities for Palestinian youth, including your initiative to increase U.S. funding for Palestinian universities and educational programs in Gaza and the West Bank,” added the letter.

In March 2012, not long after a “white Hispanic” neighborhood-watch captain named George Zimmerman had shot and killed a black teenager named Trayvon Martin in an altercation that mushroomed into a natonal media obsession, Johnson claimed that Martin had been “executed for WWB in a GC—Walking While Black in a Gated Community.”

In November 2012, Johnson—angered by the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission ruling which held that corporations have a right to freedom of political speech—condemned American corporations for seeking to “control” people's “patterns of thinking” via media “messages” that teach them to “hate [their] government.” To remedy this problem, Johnson called for “a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations.”

In January 2013, Johnson charged that racism lay at the heart of the National Rifle Association's opposition to the gun-control legislation which President Obama was advocating. “First of all, he is a black,” said Johnson. “And as a black person being the president of the United States, that is something they [the NRA] still cannot get over.”

In June 2013, Johnson condemned black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for voting to strike from the 1965 Voting Rights Act a provision that designated which parts of the country needed to have any proposed changes to their election laws pre-cleared by the federal government or a federal court. (Click here for details of that provision and its ramifications.) By Johnson's reckoning, Thomas’s “offense” was “worse” than that of the infamous National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. Moreover, Johnson called it a “tragedy” that Thomas, a conservative, had repeatedly issued decisions that were “to the detriment of the African-American community.”

In December 2014 Johnson told a radio interviewer, “Barack Obama has been one of the greatest presidents that we have had in the history of this nation. It’s unfortunate that since he raised his hand and took the oath in his first inauguration, that he’s been met with nothing but opposition, and confrontation, and actual, personal dehumanization.” Further, the congressman condemned the popular black conservative and Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson for: (a) “trying to tap into the ignorance of people who have been whipped into a frenzy, like a lynch mob,” and (b) appealing “to the lowest common denominator” of the human spirit.

In January 2015, Johnson went to the House floor to argue against the Regulatory Accountability Act, a bill aiming to require federal agencies to give advance notice of proposed regulations that were likely to have a substantial impact on the U.S. economy. Characterizing the 85,000+ pages of regulations that are added to the Federal Register each year as “the things that help make America a great country,” the congressman declared: “Don't think that regulations are hurting you. Regulations are causing what benefits you are taking advantage of now.”

That same month, Johnson objected vehemently when Republican House Speaker John Boehner—without first asking President Obama for his approval—invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress about the gravity of the growing Iranian nuclear threat and his (Netanyahu's) “profound disagreement” with the negotiated deal that the Obama Administration was pursuing with Iran. Specifically, Johnson took exception to “President Barack Obama being a black man disrespected by a foreign leader.”

At a Congressional Progressive Caucus forum in March 2015, Johnson spoke about the recent rise of ISIL, the barbaric Islamic terrorist group that had overrun vast swaths of Iraq since President Obama—against the recommendations of his military advisors—withdrew all remaining U.S. troops from that country in December 2011. “A lot of people want to blame ISIL on the President, but its not truly his fault,” said Johnson. “He did exactly what needed to be done.”

In April 2015, after a white South Carolina police officer was charged with murder after fatally shooting a fleeing black man in the back during a traffic stop, Johnson said: “It feels like open season on black men in America and I’m outraged. In fact, all Americans are at risk when bad actors in law enforcement use their guns instead of their heads.”

For an overview of Congressman Johnson's voting record on an array of key issues, click here, here, and here.

For additional information on Hank Johnson Jr., click here.

Obama Praises Jihad-Supporting Turkish Prime Minister

May 22, 2013 by Joseph Klein 14 Comments

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Turkey’s jihad-supporting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan received effusive praise from President Obama last week during their joint news conference in the White House Rose Garden.  Obama described the Islamist leader, who unapologetically called Zionism “a crime against humanity,” as “a strong ally and partner in the region and around the world.”
This is just a continuation of President Obama’s infatuation with Erdogan. When the two leaders met at the Seoul, South Korea, Nuclear Security Summit in March of 2012, Obama called Erdogan his “friend and colleague….We find ourselves in frequent agreement upon a wide range of issues.” Not content with this level of praise, Obama added that he considered Erdogan “an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend” who has displayed “outstanding leadership.” In fact, Obama so admires Erdogan’s “outstanding leadership” that Obama has allowed the United States to lead from behind Turkey in Libya and Syria, sucking the U.S. into a swamp inhabited by Islamist jihadists.

As Barry Rubin, the director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal explained:

“Once again the Turkish government has taken the lead on U.S. policy by pushing for direct U.S. aid to the rebels. That means giving money, weapons, and other aid to the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical groups to take power because the real moderates in the Syrian opposition are rare.”

Obama fancies Turkey as a model of a modern democratic Islamic state.  At their joint news conference last week, Obama praised Erdogan’s “reforms” and  said “we will support efforts in Turkey to uphold the rule of law and good governance and human rights for all.”
Erdogan’s idea of democracy is an electoral system that he can manipulate in order to remain in power. His Islamist party has moved inexorably to replace the secular republic established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk with an Islamic state.  Erdogan’s jails have housed more journalists than any other country in the world, including Iran and Russia.  And talking about Russia, Erdogan appears to be taking a page out of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s playbook. Like Putin, Erdogan plans to play musical chairs between the prime minister post he now holds but cannot run for again under his party’s rules, and the presidency which he is intent on taking over in 2014 and converting into the country’s most powerful position from the symbolic one it is today. Erdogan will ram through whatever changes to the constitution are necessary to make this happen if a consensus cannot be reached.
“Turkey would walk into a dark dictatorship,” said Riza Turmen, a deputy from the opposition Republican People’s Party. “Turkey is already on this path. The parliament is unable to fulfill its duties even in a parliamentary system. The judiciary is not independent, the press is not free,” he told Reuters.
At last week’s joint news conference, President Obama lauded Erdogan’s supposed efforts to “normalize relations with Israel.” Erdogan then proceeded contemptibly to use the joint news conference to announce in Obama’s presence that he will be visiting Gaza next month, after previously rejecting Secretary of State John Kerry’s request not to go there at this time because it could interfere with just such a normalization of relations. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh claimed that Erdogan’s upcoming visit to Gaza “emphasizes that the era of U.S. tutelage has ended.”
Aside from Barack Obama, Haniyeh has been one of Erdogan’s biggest cheerleaders.  Back in 2010, Haniyeh said: “Mr. Erdoğan has become our voice and won hearts of all Palestinians. We began naming our children after Tayyip Erdoğan. The name of Erdoğan has been immortalized in Palestine.” He also called Turkey “the new Ottoman.”
In his description of Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership as “the new Ottoman,” Haniyeh has a much better idea of Erdogan’s true agenda than President Obama does. Obama thinks that Turkey, like the United States, is interested in removing President Bashar Hafez al- Assad from power in Syria in order to bring about a free Syria “that is intact and inclusive of all ethnic and religious groups,” as Obama put it in his joint news conference with Erdogan last week.  That may be Obama’s naive aspiration but, as Hamas leader Haniyeh knows, Erdogan is interested in building “the new Ottoman” in the entire region, which means promoting revolutionary Sunni Islamism under Turkey’s leadership. Erdogan is using Obama to advance his Islamist agenda.

No doubt Erdogan will use his upcoming Gaza visit to further solidify Turkey’s prestige in the Muslim world, which will also help him politically at home. Expect, for example, Erdogan to push publicly for Israel to completely lift its embargo on the Gaza Strip. Expect him also to mark the three-year anniversary of the incident involving the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara vessel in which a number of Turkish radicals lost their lives as they attempted violently to break Israel’s legal naval blockade of Gaza. They had assaulted Israeli naval commandos trying to stop the blockade-running ship. The radicals were heard chanting the jihad call to arms honoring Muhammad’s massacre of the Jews of Arabia: “Khybar, Khybar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return.”
Erdogan has exploited the Mavi Marmara incident for propaganda purposes for three years. But this was not just exploitation of an opportunity that happened to present itself to Erdogan. In fact, Erdogan was reportedly supportive of the flotilla idea all along before it set sail, because it would create a confrontation with Israel that would cost Israel in the court of public opinion, which is precisely what happened. A journalist on board the Mavi Marmara with good connections to government officials and the IHH group that organized the flotilla stated: “The Turkish government was behind the flotilla to the Gaza Strip and its objective was to embarrass Israel: ‘The Turks set a trap for you and you fell into it.’ The flotilla was organized with the support of the Turkish government and Prime Minister Erdogan gave the instructions for it to set sail. That was despite the fact that everyone knew it would never reach its destination.”
Immediately after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the urging of President Obama, apologized to Erdogan for the Marmara operation and committed to reach final agreement on compensation, Erdogan began backtracking from his own promise to restore full diplomatic relations with Israel and stop certain legal proceedings brought against Israeli soldiers.
Erdogan told Turkish reporters that it was too early to talk about dropping the Mavi Marmara case against the Israeli soldiers, and that normalizing diplomatic relations would come gradually. “We will see what will be put into practice during the process. If they move forward in a promising way, we will make our contribution,” Erdogan said.
Turkey is reportedly holding out for extraordinarily high compensation which, even if paid, would not satisfy some of the families of the radicals who became “martyrs” on the Mavi Marmara.
Yet, in the face of Erdogan’s continued anti-Israel rhetoric and his backtracking on his promises of normalization, Obama still made a special point at last week’s joint news conference “to note the Prime Minister’s efforts to normalize relations with Israel.”
Obama continues to play right into Erdogan’s hands as the devious Islamist leader prepares to visit with the Hamas terrorists in Gaza next month, to provide weapons and other support to Islamist jihadists in Syria and to consolidate his increasingly authoritarian power at home.
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About Joseph Klein

Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN’s Stealth Assault on America’s Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam.