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VIDEO: Real alternative energy

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Is there an alternative to petroleum?

Here’s one possibility: Bio-diesel.

The raw material - used cooking grease - is currently being wasted.

BioLiberty.Net, a group of Gulf War veterans, is developing a production system that converts grease to a fuel.

One of the uses of the fuel is to help clear the lots of poor, elderly and handicapped land owners in New Orleans who are unable to clear them themselves and are having their land seized by the city under the new “Good Neighbor” Law.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cfOTXAXC14[/youtube]
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/297.html

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Nato to back US missile defence

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Nato countries have agreed to back US plans to site a missile defence system in Europe, at a summit in Romania.

Member states will endorse a communiqué backing the plan to position missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, US officials said.

Albania and Croatia were invited to join the 26-member alliance.

But Georgia and Ukraine will not be put immediately on the path to membership, while Macedonia was told it must solve a dispute with Greece before joining.

The communiqué on missile defence, circulated by US officials, acknowledges ballistic missile proliferation as “an increasing threat to allied forces, territory and populations”.

It says the US-led system will make a “substantial contribution to the protection of allies”.

It also calls for steps to be taken to deploy a parallel Nato system to defend any countries not covered by the US scheme

The BBC’s diplomatic correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, says that consensus on missile defence is a significant achievement for US President George W Bush, who wanted to get full Nato support for the project before he leaves office.

The alliance had been deeply divided, amid strong Russian objections to the plan.

The US says the system is needed to counter a potential threat from rogue states like Iran, but Moscow fears it could be used against Russia.

The agreement emerged as US and Czech officials announced they had reached a deal to site a to base a missile defence radar on Czech soil, while Poland and the US resumed talks in Warsaw on locating 10 interceptor missiles in Poland.

‘Not happy’

Nato has confirmed it will not yet offer membership to Georgia or Ukraine after the 26-member alliance was split on the issue.

Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference Georgia and Ukraine would become members eventually, something Moscow described as a “huge strategic mistake”.

Germany and France had been opposed to putting the two former Soviet republics on the path to membership, amid concerns voiced by Russia over Nato’s eastward expansion.

Georgian diplomats said they were “not happy” with the delay but welcomed the promise of eventual membership.

Nato officials said Macedonia could begin talks on joining the alliance as soon as it had resolved a dispute with Greece over its name.

Macedonia’s membership was strongly opposed by Greece, which has a northern province that is also called Macedonia.

It argued that the former Yugoslav republic’s insistence on being known as Macedonia implied a territorial claim.

Macedonian officials said their rejection was a “huge disappointment” that would undermine stability in the Balkans, and said they would leave the three-day summit early.

French deployment

Our correspondent says the decisions on Georgia, Ukraine and Macedonia are setbacks for President Bush, who had been pushing for membership for all three countries.

Separately, President Nicolas Sarkozy indicated France would decide next year whether to return to the Nato military command it left in 1966 in protest at the dominance of US commanders.

He also said a battalion of extra French troops would be deployed to Afghanistan, easing fears of a crisis within the Western coalition there.

The US says the French move, expected to involve up to 1,000 extra soldiers, will free up some of its troops to move to southern Afghanistan, where Canada had demanded Nato reinforcements be sent.

Canada’s parliament voted last month to extend its military mission in volatile southern Afghanistan to 2011 - but only if its allies sent reinforcements.

BBC

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The Forbidden Financial Topic: U.S. National Debt

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Mike Adams

As we wind our way towards an election between the numerous professional liars who have been put forward as candidates for U.S. President, it seems to be a great time to remind us all about the financial issue being routinely ignored by virtually everyone (except Ron Paul, of course, who was never really embraced by the “please lie to me” mainstream public). To what financial issue am I referring? The national debt, of course.

Americans don’t want to hear about the national debt. It’s like a family living paycheck to paycheck, maxed out on their credit cards, trying to pretend the collection notices are all being lost in the mail. They don’t want to admit they have no ability to actually pay off the debt they’ve incurred by pursuing a flamboyoant lifestyle, blowing wads of cash on high-priced wines, luxury vehicles, and an occassional line of coke — they desperately want to imagine they can keep living on money that appears from nowhere, regardless of how much they owe to everybody else and the fact that their incomes don’t even come close to matching their expenditures.

See the related Counterthink Cartoon on this topic at: http://www.naturalnews.com/022931.html

Too bad every household in America doesn’t have its own Federal Reserve, huh? If it did, we could all just print money to pay off our debt, save our skins, and ignore the fundamentals of economics. But even in Washington today (and New York), the Federal Reserve is too busy bailing out greedy, criminally-operated banks to turn much attention to the much larger issue of the United States’ national debt. Apparently, saving the banks is more important than anything else, and the Fed is now committed to destroying the U.S. dollar through runaway hyperinflation in order to prevent a few rich bankers from facing the consequences of their outrageous sub-prime lending sprees.

America runs its finances like a crack addict

But let’s get back to the national debt for a moment. The United States government is broke. The only reason it’s been able to operate for this long is because other nations and foreign central banks have been foolish enough to keep lending the U.S. government more money. It’s like giving cash to a crack addict and hoping he will somehow seek out a drug rehab center on his own.

This is the person who never gets a job, never makes an honest living, but yet somehow manages to hit up everybody else for cash. You know how it works: “I need to buy a car to get a job,” they say. And then when you pony up the cash for their car, they get drunk and wreck the car, and they never try very hard to get a job in the first place. They keep spending and spending, tossing money down the drain on blows of crack, meth, heroin or booze. They promise to go into rehab someday, if you’ll only help them through “the next month” with a little more cash. This is the life of a drug addict. (Do you know one? Everybody does, it seems…)

America is that drug addict. It borrows cash from the central banks around the world, blowing it all on Medicare prescription benefits signed into law by Bush (money for drugs, see?). It spends trillions on military campaigns that accomplish nothing positive, yet enrage the global community and recruit lifelong enemies of this nation. Notice how the price of oil has more than tripled since the war with Iraq started? It’s so bad now that truck drivers are going on strike over the price of diesel.

America spends money not merely like a drunken sailor, but like a crack-addicted sailor with a wheelbarrel piled high with one-hundred dollar bills, locked in a room full of Gov. Spitzer’s favorite hookers and a suitcase spilling over with blow.

Don’t dare explain the national debt to anyone

But try to explain the simple workings of finance, debt and economics to the uninformed, and you’ll be accused of being a doomsayer, a pessimist, or — the worst insult in today’s fear-based society — unpatriotic! How dare you point out the economic truths that will soon bring this country’s federal government to its knees! Such blatant truths shall not be tolerated… especially not in a country whose entire financial system is based on a cascade of fictional financial instruments propped up by nothing more than wishful thinking and Enron-style accounting fraud.

Let me translate all this for you in serious terms: The United States is already broke. The Federal Reserve is destroying the currency. The U.S. dollar will soon be virtually worthless. There is no saving the dollar, and there’s no saving the savings of any U.S. citizen foolish enough to be holding dollars when the music stops. The Federal Reserve has already decided to do anything in its power to save the rich bankers; even if it means destroying the value of all the dollars held by hard-working Americans. The day will come, folks, when your savings accounts will all be “recalibrated” and you’ll be given ten cents on the dollar while the Fed slinks away with 90% of your savings, using it to bail out overpaid bank owners.

And the federal government? Under a long string of presidential crooks — Democratic and Republican alike — it has decided to pursue a dangerous experiment called, “What happens if we never pay our debtors while running up more debt?” That experiment, not surprisingly, will end in the financial demise of this nation. (But there’s good news: A new, better system may emerge from the dust of the greenback… keep reading…)

You can’t defy the laws of gravity… nor economics

These aren’t careless predictions, by the way. These are simple observations the follow the fundamentals. Why are the nations of the world fleeing the U.S. Treasury debt auctions? Why are dollars increasingly worthless everywhere except in the United States itself? The answer is because the Fed is hyperinflating the currency to save the banks, even while the government is snorting yet more crack and spending unprecedented levels of increasingly-worthless dollars on drugs and war (or, as they call it, “medication and defense”).

Hence the bumper sticker: Annoy everyone. Explain the national debt. People don’t want to hear this. They’d rather imagine none of these problems exist; that debt doesn’t matter; that unlimited dollars can be created out of nothing with zero impact on peoples’ savings; that the U.S. government is wise enough to avert financial disaster. These are the hopes of the deluded. These are precisely the ramblings of Enron’s accountants before the crash, or dot-com stock pushers before that crash. They’re the slobbering blatherings of all the people who said housing prices will never fall, and therefore everyone will get rich off the never-ending housing price booms!

Important lessons learned the hard way

I’ve spend many years pointing out the idiocies of the deluded. I publicly predicted the dot-com crash and began warning people to get out of the market in 1998 - 2001. (This is a matter of public record, not some wishful hindsight.) I also publicly predicted the collapse of the housing market right here on this website, beginning nearly two years ago. And now, those predictions that once seemed “radical” are the Wall Street Journal’s front page news. What am I predicting now? Like I said, it’s not a prediction, it’s just an observation.

It’s like observing gravity. If you toss something into the air, you can be confident it’s going to come falling back to the ground. You don’t have to “predict” gravity; it’s a law of the universe. It works by itself, like clockwork, regardless of what you want it do to (I’m ignoring near-light speed travel, relativity, quantum physics, and all that fun stuff for the purposes of this metaphor, by the way, for those readers who are physicists). Likewise, when you see a nation throw its dollars into the air, spending its way to oblivion, ignoring its debt and ramping up its spending to even higher levels, it doesn’t take much of a prediction to know that it’s all going to fall back to the ground in a grand economic collapse.

So I’m not even calling the coming collapse of the U.S. government a “prediction.” It’s just common sense. It’s as obvious as gravity. If you don’t believe me, do the math. There is no mathematical solution to the current financial crisis facing not merely the banks and the currency, but the federal government itself. The only unknown factor is WHEN things will happen. Can the Fed help the economy limp along in a state of near-collapse for another year? Perhaps. Five years? Maybe. Ten years? I doubt it.

Now for the good news: The good news is that the U.S. federal government will eventually go bankrupt. Yes, that’s the good news! Because after the financial chaos passes (which will not be fun, believe me), we have a chance to create a new society, a new currency and a new, honest system of government that actually represents the People for a change. The current cabal of corruption and criminal behavior that sits in Washington and pretends to protect the interests of the voters is about to find itself on the receiving end of an angry mob. The 200+ year experiment called The United States of America is in its final chapter. But out of its failure, we can learn important lessons. We can learn things that will help us create a better future society. Lessons like:

• Never let a private company (the Federal Reserve) control the money supply.

• Never let “representative” legislators vote in your place. Insist on a DIRECT Democracy in the next society. (We don’t need Senators and Congresspeople, folks. The whole concept is long since outdated, and most Senators and Congresspeople are crooks.)

• Never let a government abandon the gold standard for its currency. If you do, that government will inevitably hyperinflate the currency and leave the people broke.

• Never let corporations run the government. If you do, your government will become a branch of the corporations, and the regulators (like the FDA, USDA, etc.) will become agents of corporate-sponsored terrorism that abandon all ethics and destroy the health and safety of the People.

• Never allow the centralization of power in one branch of government. For example, do not allow the creation of Executive Orders we’ve seen signed by the President.

• Never allow one man (the President) to commit acts of war. Didn’t we learn this after Vietnam?

• Never allow people from industry to take jobs in the government where they become biased, pro-corporate pushers of everything from pharmaceuticals to beef.

• Never allow politicians to censor scientists.

• Never allow the population to be dumbed-down through sub-standard public schools that only raise a generation of obedient workers, not skeptical thinkers.

• Never allow the media to control the population through advertiser-supported propaganda and violent programming.

• Never allow politicians to destroy citizens’ rights. When they attempt to do so, march on your capitol (in a non-violent way, of course). Arrest the politicians. Prosecute them for crimes against the People.

• Never allow corporate lobbyists to have access to lawmakers. If you do, you’ll end up with a corrupt government that only protects corporations, not the People.

• Never allow your government to operate in secret, with secret prisons, secret wiretapping laws and secret war “evidence” that is never made public. Secrecy breeds corruption. Honest societies do not need to conduct their judicial processes in secret.

• Never allow corporations to play God with the food supply by genetically modifying the crops.

• Never allow corporations to be granted intellectual property ownership over seeds, genes, animals and medicines. If you do, you will one day wake up impoverished, “homeless on the continent your fathers conquered,” to quote Jefferson.

• Never allow banks to operate on a fractional reserve system of loans and money creation that’s just begging for a series of cascading failures.

… I could go on, but you get the point. We have learned some very tough lessons over the last 200+ years, and once this present government collapses, it is crucial that we apply those lessons in creating a new system that abandons tyranny and embraces genuine freedom. We will have this opportunity soon. Many Americans will lose their life savings on the journey towards this new opportunity, but if we maintain our collective vision of a brighter future society, I believe we can create something much better out of the ashes of this failed experiment called the United States of America.

Please note: In no way do I support violence of any kind in creating a new society in the aftermath of this current one. I only support collaboration, openness, freedom and great respect for all living creatures as well as our sacred planet Earth. I believe the passing of this failed government is a blessing, not a curse, and I believe the collapse of the U.S. dollar will ultimately help awaken many to the tough but rewarding decisions that will face us all in the very near future. We must consciously decide to take back our freedoms, our rights and our futures from a system of corporate and government control that has destroyed our planet, exploited our people, and stolen our savings. But if can make the rights decisions based on creating a more promising future for our children, then the rewards will be unimaginable.

We the People hold the power to create a new society based on the freedoms and promises once held sacred in this land. Be ready to play your role, a constructive role, in the aftermath of this current society. And do not be surprised when gravity kicks in and this entire fictional government charade comes crashing down along with the fractional reserve banking system, the criminal Federal Reserve, the war-mongering politicians and the endless, endless debt. There is no way out now other than collapse and rebirth.

I can’t say when it will come, or exactly how it will play out. I only urge us all to remain positive, informed and constructive. The coming chaos will be painful in the short term, but out of the ashes of a failed society, we can work together to rebuilt a new one based on real freedom, honest money, sensible medicine and limited government.

###

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and technology pioneer with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies’ products. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of energy efficient LED lights that greatly reduce CO2 emissions. He also founded an environmentally-friendly online retailer called BetterLifeGoods.com that uses retail profits to help support consumer advocacy programs. He’s also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and practices nature photography, Capoeira, Pilates and organic gardening. Known on the ‘net as ‘the Health Ranger,’ Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

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BAE axes 600 military jobs

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Aerospace giant BAE Systems is to axe almost 600 jobs at two of its military factories, unions were told today.

Officials expressed shock at the scale of the cuts at the sites in Brough, near Hull and Woodford, near Manchester.

Unite said it would resist compulsory redundancies among the 450 job losses at Brough, home of the Hawk aircraft, and 134 job cuts at Woodford, the home of Nimrod.

National officer Bernie Hamilton said: “Only a few days ago the Red Arrows had the Hawks on display to celebrate the RAF’s 90th anniversary. Sadly, the future for the skilled workers that built these state of the art jets is now uncertain.

“Unite will resist any compulsory redundancies and will be working with management at both sites to find alternatives, including re-skilling, transfers to other operations and work packages from other projects.

“We have known for some time that we had a challenge on our hands at both sites due to the completion and delivery of current orders for the Fast Jet Trainer and the completion of work cycles at Woodford.

“Winning new orders in a competitive market is very challenging. At the same time the industry is rising to meet demand for new technologies like the Unmanned Combat Aircraft .

“In the long term it is imperative that the aerospace industry and the UK Government reaches agreement to safeguard the UK’s large fixed wing capability for future generations.”

BAE Systems said the job cuts at Brough would affect engineering, manufacturing and business support areas, while those at Woodford would impact on engineers.

The company said it had been seeking additional work for the Brough site, but it was not able to sustain the current number of jobs.

A transition plan was being developed to retain “critical capabilities” at Brough, which would include reducing its dependency on the Hawk.

Brough site and services director Tony Arksey said: “We recognise that this is a difficult period for all employees and their families and we will continue do everything possible to mitigate the number of job losses.”

BAE said a review last year of the engineering capabilities in its military air solutions business had identified that the workload would reduce as products moved from design and development into the support phase, which had led to the job cuts at Woodford.

The firm said there was no opportunity for significant transfer of engineering work packages to the site, despite the good reputation of the Woodford team.

“The workload for the engineering team makes the current staffing level unsustainable, regrettably resulting in the redundancy announcement,” BAE said in a statement.

Woodford site general manager Jim Welsh said: “We recognise that this is a difficult period for all employees and their families and we will continue to do everything practical to mitigate the number of compulsory job losses.”

Keith Hazlewood, national officer of the GMB union, said of the Brough job cuts: “This announcement is a devastating blow for the company, the local community and a further blow to UK manufacturing.”

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Defiant Brown set to tighten law on cannabis

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Downing Street today signalled that Gordon Brown remains determined to tighten the law on cannabis, despite reports that the official advisory body is set to recommend against re-classification.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman sought to play down a BBC report that the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) had concluded that there was no need to re-classify cannabis again as a class B drug.

He said that the report appeared to be based on a single presentation and that the committee had yet to reach any final conclusions.

Mr Brown, he said, stood by his comments at his Downing Street press conference on Tuesday when he said that the Government needed to send out a signal that cannabis use was not just illegal but also unacceptable.

“With regard to the Prime Minister’s position, I think he made that fairly clear at his press conference,” the spokesman said.

Mr Brown ordered the committee to carry out a review of the 2004 decision to downgrade cannabis to a class C drug in one of his first acts on becoming Prime Minister last year.

According to the BBC report, the committee has now concluded there is no need re-classify it again after new research produced no evidence that rising cannabis use in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s had led to increases in the incidence of schizophrenia.

However, the Prime Minister’s spokesman insisted that the committee had not made any final conclusions.

“Some of these reports seem to be getting ahead of themselves. We are not expecting to receive the report from the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs for at least another another month or so,” he said.

“As we understand it, this report is based on one presentation that was given to a meeting. The advisory body themselves are still some way away from making any final conclusions on this.”

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When the truth the CIA tells us is a lie

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

There is an old riddle that goes “I have two coins that total 15 cents and one of them is not a nickel”.

The answer of course is that the other one is a nickel.

So we have a perfect example of telling a limited amount of truth with the intent to deceive and the effect is a lie. This brings us to Michael Hayden, the CIA Director.

He has acknowledged that the CIA has water boarded only three individuals several years ago and the CIA is prohibited from water boarding any more.

Now that seems like an honorable approach to a controversial activity.

What he failed to tell Congress was that they have been outsourcing interrogations to civilians who are apparently immune from U.S. laws (as Blackwater was and still is) and they are free to do whatever they please to whomever they please and wherever they please — a totally “results oriented” process not to be cluttered with details that might cause some level of embarrassment to the ostrich mentality of the executive branch.

Yes indeed, one of those coins is not a nickel, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the other one is.

James Prescott
Schaumburg

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‘Terror gang plotted to blow up airliners’

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Eight Islamist terrorists plotted to blow up several transatlantic airliners in mid-air using explosives disguised as soft drinks in what would have brought about a death toll of “almost unimaginable scale”, a court heard today.

The alleged suicide mission involved the suspects boarding seven Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines flights leaving London bound for the United States and Canada on a date to be arranged in late 2006.

Once on board, homemade bombs would explode on each aircraft, killing all the passengers and causing casualties on an “almost unprecedented” scale.

At the start of the trial amid high security at Woolwich Crown Court, South London, Peter Wright, QC, for the prosecution said the plot had been foiled when two of the suspects, Abdullah Ali and Assad Sarwar, were arrested on the night of August 9 and 10, 2006, as they were meeting in Walthamstow, East London.

Documents examined on Mr Ali’s memory stick, which was seized by police, showed details had been recorded of flights going to Montreal, Washington, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Toronto.

The court heard that the suspects wanted the flights to be blown up while they were in the air over the Atlantic, meaning none of the other aircraft could be saved after the first exploded.

“Once the mid-flight explosions began, the authorities would be unable to prevent the other flights reaching a similar fate.”

The court heard that an address book belonging to Mr Ali, 27, seized by police, contained details that showed the formula to be used in the explosives.

The prosecution alleges that the formula involved hydrogen peroxide being mixed with tang, a sugary drink, and then coloured so that it looked like a normal refreshment, like Lucozade or Oasis. It would be detonated by a battery attached to a power source, he added. The address book included scrawled references to Lucozade, Oasis and mouthwash, and what colour the mixture should look like. Among other notes, it also referred to the need to select date for the operation.

Mr Wright said that Mr Ali was asked about the address book when he was arrested, but replied that he “could not remember” why he had written the details down.

He added that the explosions allegedly planned by the men would have “devastating consequences” and would have been done “all in the name of Islam”.

“These men were, we say, indifferent to the carnage that was likely to ensue,” he said.

“Inevitably, such an event would also have fatal consequences for the various passengers and crew who happened, quite by chance, to be flying to North America on the day selected by them to commit their atrocity.

“These men and others were actively engaged in a deadly plan which, had they been successful, would have brought about a civilian toll from an act of terrorism on an almost unprecedented scale.”

Mr Ali, also known as Ahmed Ali Khan, 27, of Walthamstow, Mr Sarwar, 24, of High Wycombe, Tanvir Hussain, 27, of no fixed address, Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking, Ibrahim Savant, 27, of Walthamstow, Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, of Walthamstow, Waheed Zaman, 23, of Walthamstow and Umar Islam, aka Brian Young, 29, of High Wycombe, all deny conspiring to murder others and endangering aircraft

The trial was adjourned for the day, and continues tomorrow at 10am.

David Byers, Woolwich Crown Court

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Memo linked to warrantless surveillance

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.

The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.

The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations,” the footnote states, referring to a document titled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States.”

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP.

That program intercepted phone calls and e-mails on U.S. soil, bypassing the normal legal requirement that such eavesdropping be authorized by a secret federal court. The program began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued until Jan. 17, 2007, when the White House resumed seeking surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Wednesday that the Fourth Amendment finding in the October memo was not the legal underpinning for the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

“TSP relied on a separate set of legal memoranda,” Fratto told The Associated Press. The Justice Department outlined that legal framework in a January 2006 white paper issued by the Justice Department a month after the TSP was revealed by The New York Times.

The October memo was written just days before Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA’s secret wiretapping program for the first time.

The government itself related the October memo to the TSP program when it included it on a list of documents that were responsive to the ACLU’s request for records from the program. It refused to hand them over.

Late Wednesday, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said department officials believe the October 2001 memo was not about the eavesdropping program, but he did not explain why it was included on requests for documents linked to the TSP.

Earlier, Roehrkasse said the statement in the footnote does not reflect the current view of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

“We disagree with the proposition that the Fourth Amendment has no application to domestic military operations,” he said. “Whether a particular search or seizure is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment requires consideration of the particular context and circumstances of the search.”

Roehrkasse would not say exactly when that legal opinion was overturned internally. But he pointed to the January 2006 white paper.

“The white paper does not suggest in any way that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military activities, and that is not the position of the Office of Legal Counsel,” he said.

Suzanne Spaulding, a national security law expert and former assistant general counsel at the CIA, said she found the Fourth Amendment reference in the footnote troubling, but added: “To know (the Justice Department) no longer thinks this is a legitimate statement is reassuring.”

“The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration’s extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The administration’s lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law.”

“Each time one of these memos comes out you have to come up with a more extreme way to characterize it,” Jaffer said.

The ACLU is challenging in court the government’s withholding of the October 2001 memo.

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We Are Bad – Bronze Graffiti

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

Recognising the high art status of graffiti the We Are Bad Collective have had the letters cut from their stencils cast in Bronze. These Bronze Graffiti plaques reading, “WE ARE BAD – PLEASE KEEP AN EYE ON US”, have been cast with polished text on a green Patina background.

A spokesperson from the We Are Bad Collective said, “Given the recuperation of Graffiti into a fine art category, and in recognition of its roll as public art, we thought it only fitting that graffiti artists should start using materials that reflect its new found status”.

On the 2nd April 2008 30 Bronze Graffiti plaques where attached to CCTV camera posts in various London locations.

eBayers and Treasure hunters be warned the WAB Collectives love of the drift means we have placed these plaques in some of the most obscure London locations, (non in Shordich).

Take a drift through the hinterlands!!!! Happy Hunting…..

Wearebad.net

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