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Russia rejects U.S. missile proposals

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

By Guy Faulconbridge

 

MOSCOW — The Kremlin on Wednesday rejected U.S. proposals aimed at easing concerns over a missile defense system in Europe and said it would try again to resolve the row once Barack Obama is in the White House.

 

Russia says the planned U.S. system will threaten its national security and that the administration of George W. Bush, which leaves office in January, has failed to allay its concerns.

 

“Russia is ready to cooperate with the United States on European security but considers the proposals that were sent are insufficient,” Itar-Tass news agency quoted an unidentified Kremlin source as saying.

 

“We will not give our agreement to these proposals and we will speak to the new administration,” said the source, who was quoted by Russia’s three main news agencies, an indication the remarks reflect official policy. The Kremlin press office declined to comment.

 

The Bush administration “is intent on putting the new U.S. president in a hopeless situation, so that he should take responsibility for what they concocted without him,” Tass quoted the source as saying.

 

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last week he planned to deploy missile systems near Poland’s border in retaliation for U.S. plans to install elements of the proposed missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

 

Washington says the shield is needed to protect the United States against missile strikes from what it calls rogue states, specifically Iran.

 

President-elect Obama has said he would make sure the system had been proven to work before deploying it — a more cautious approach than the Bush administration, which has been pressing to have the system operational as soon as possible.

 

The U.S. had previously proposed confidence-building measures that included allowing Russian representatives access to sites where the missile system is to be deployed and providing real-time video monitoring of activities at the sites.

 

Senior U.S. officials said this week they were planning to discuss the proposals with their Russian counterparts soon.

 

The rejection of Washington’s proposals came on the same day that William Burns, the third-ranking official in the U.S. State Department, was in Moscow for talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Kremlin foreign policy advisor Sergei Prikhodko and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

 

Burns, the most senior U.S. official to visit Russia since its August war with U.S. ally Georgia, “stressed the importance of efforts by the United States and Russia to work constructively on issues of common interest as the United States prepares for the transition to a new president,” the U.S. embassy said in a statement.

 

It said he raised issues including Iran, North Korea, a meeting of G20 leaders in Washington this weekend, the war in Georgia and the next round of U.S.-Russian talks on strategic security and missile defense in December.

 

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

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Big Pharma’s New Mass-Drugging Agenda Pushes Statin Drugs for Healthy People

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

By Mike Adams | Drug companies used to sell products for the treatment of disease. But it didn’t take long for Big Pharma to figure out that the number of diseased people is limited, and therefore so are drug profits. To bypass this problem, they began inventing diseases and marketing them to the public as a way to create new demand for high-profit pharmaceuticals. This is how “bi-polar” came into existence, for example. Same story for ADHD, social anxiety disorder and even high cholesterol (which isn’t a disease in the first place).

But even this disease mongering strategy had its limits. Only a limited number of gullible doctors and consumers can be convincingly deluded into believing in fictitious diseases and psychiatric disorders. To really expand its profits, Big Pharma was going to have to do something revolutionary: They were going to have to figure out a way to sell drugs to people who weren’t sick at all.

Or, put another way: They needed a way to sell drugs to healthy people.

AstraZeneca, Crestor and the new era of mass-drugging

The American Medical Association, not surprisingly, came to the rescue. A study called “Jupiter” was presented at an AMA conference last Sunday. It was funded by Crestor maker Astrazeneca, and it claims that statin drugs save lives when given to healthy people who show no signs of high cholesterol!

Physicians and Big Pharma reps were practically falling over each other Sunday in a mad stampede to the stage in order to out-do each other on making the most outrageous claims surrounding statin drugs. One doctor said the drugs are so useful at saving lives that governments around the world should start prescribing them to practically everyone. Another said that tens of millions of adults should now be put on what he called “statin therapy.” (It’s therapy now, folks, not medicine!) Not to be outdone, a third doctor suggested the drugs be dripped into the public water supply in order to dose everyone!

(Fluoridation isn’t enough, it seems. Now they want to drip drugs into the water supply. Don’t they realize the water supply is already contaminated with pharmaceuticals?)

The AMA convention was so heated with the proclamations of the pharmaceutical faithful that an uninformed onlooker might have mistaken it for a Southern Baptist Revival event. Except it wasn’t faith in God that was being praised here; it was faith in chemicals to conquer nature and dominate human biology.

The new position of the pharmaceutical industry, you see, is that the human body is born deficient in pharmaceuticals. Human biology must now be “corrected” with “therapeutic doses” of these patented chemicals. Oh, and don’t forget to leave your wallet at the door, too, because these drugs aren’t free.

$10 billion for yet more pharmaceuticals shoved down your throat

In fact, this USA Today article (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/200…) calculated that prescribing the statin drugs more widely in the USA would add $10 billion a year to the national debt.

Perhaps in an age where the Federal Reserve is secretly swindling the taxpayers for more than one trillion dollars, ten billion doesn’t seem like much. But it comes out to $500,000 spent on these drugs for each life “saved” by statin drugs… and that’s if you actually believe the study that was funded by AstraZeneca (…and you’d have to be more than a bit gullible to swallow that junk science in the first place).

What’s “junk science” about the AstraZeneca study? For starters, the study was halted two years early because it was claimed the results were so positive for the control group that it would have been unethical to continue denying the same drugs to the placebo group.

Gee, who needs actual science anymore when you’ve got so much faith in the safety of drugs that you don’t even need to actually complete the clinical trials? (Why even bother with the study at all?)

Apparently, modern drug trials only need to show a hint of early success in order to be halted and declared an outrageous success. But it’s no coincidence that the halting of the Crestor trial just happened to take place before the statin drug side effects would begin to emerge in the control group.

By halting the study, you see, what AstraZeneca cleverly did was cut off any possibility of side effects becoming apparent. What kind of side effects? Muscle weakness, heart attacks, diabetes and death, to name just a few. In fact, the study already documents a skyrocketing percentage of those taking the statin drug suddenly being afflicted with diabetes, but they stopped the study before they could really figure out why, and all the pro-drug physicians pushing this junk science agenda are dismissing the diabetes results as irrelevant.

Oh, I see. Clinical trial results are only “relevant” when they support the desired outcome. When they show problems, they’re dismissed as “irrelevant.” And when a trial begins to show undesirable side effects, it’s simply halted and declared an outrageous success.

Like I said: Why bother with actual science anymore? With a pre-decided agenda like the one applied to this study, the Scientific Method is a complete no-show. Real science has been replaced with a sloppy, cheap replica of science.

Quackery is alive and well in mainstream orthodox medicine. But it’s not called quackery; it’s called “evidence-based medicine.”

Here’s what the evidence really shows…

Just out of curiosity, let’s look at the evidence being touted by the proponents of this study, shall we? Depending on exactly how you crunch the numbers, the study shows that one heart “event” (like a heart attack, stroke or death) is avoided for every 80 people put on the drug.

That means 79 people have no benefit from the drug whatsoever! (If you believe the study, anyway.)

But 1 out of 80 is quite enough for the pro-drug pushers to proclaim statin drugs to be nothing less than a modern medical miracle. If it were given to enough people, we’d save a whole bunch of lives, we’re told. And the $10 billion in government expenditures is worth it!

Conventional docs aren’t very good at math, by the way. All the hype about this particular study proves it: If $500,000 worth of Crestor can save one life, might there be a less expensive way to save that same life?

Let’s see… The amazing nutrient resveratrol could be given to the same number of people for a fraction of the cost: About $5,000 by my estimation. That’s 1/100th the cost. B vitamins could also be provided at extremely low cost, and they are well known to prevent heart attacks and strokes. In fact, the list of nutritional supplements that could safely and cost effectively prevent heart attacks is quite staggering: Magnesium, omega-3 supplements, juniper berry extracts, aged garlic extracts, red yeast rice, CoQ10, cayenne pepper and many more.

In fact, once you become aware of all the natural supplements that can prevent heart attacks and strokes, you’d have to be a complete fool to spend $500,000 to save just one life, especially when you could save 100 lives for the same (or smaller) investment in natural remedies. Many of these are revealed in the book The Weiss Method, by Dr. Decker Weiss, by the way (http://www.truthpublishing.com/weissmet…).

Why orthodox medicine abandoned the science and the people

Note, curiously, that no conventional docs are promoting any of these natural heart remedies, even though any honest assessment of their medical merits would reveal them to be even more impressive than statin drugs. Even more importantly, these natural supplements don’t destroy your health and cause nutritional deficiencies like statin drugs do. They won’t kill you and they won’t contaminate the environment with yet more pharmaceuticals flushed down the toilet.

None of this appears to be of interest to the American Medical Association and its faithful cohorts. Honest science no longer matters in the world of orthodox medicine. Helping health consumers save money while they’re saving lives isn’t even on the list of priorities.

Instead, the modern institution of medicine operates like a cult, and the believers of this cult have been programmed to ignore any evidence that contradicts their existing beliefs. Pharmaceutical medicine is the one truth, the one god that they worship, oblivious to the real world passing them by, where superfoods, herbs and nutritional supplements have already made pharmaceuticals virtually obsolete. The honest benefits of natural remedies dwarf the “miraculous” study results achieved by modern medicine’s dishonest researchers who twist and manipulate clinical trials until they can wring out the numbers they plotted to engineer before the study even started.

But it’s not enough to fabricate the science and try to make your own drugs look better than they really are: Many members of the Cult of Pharmacology are busy applying the same junk science agenda to their discrediting of natural remedies. Almost every week, we read about yet another vitamin or supplement being “proven” worthless in the mainstream media.

Vitamin E is a favorite target of the Big Pharma cultists, because they can deviously select synthetic vitamin E (as they always do) for their studies and avoid using the natural vitamin E that actually works. Once the study results produce the anti-vitamin results they’re looking for, they pronounce things like, “Vitamin E kills people!” and other similar nonsense (which the mainstream media faithfully reprints ad nauseum).

Yes, to hear it from the Pharmacult faithful, the human body is deficient in medications, but somehow incompatible with nutritional supplements.

This is the official position of the FDA, the AMA, the brainwashed physicians and the med schools that teach this bunk: Nutrition has no benefit in the human body and supplements have no effects other than damaging the human body. Yet pharmaceuticals fulfill a deficiency in human biology that’s been present since birth. Human beings are born deficient (sorta like being “born into sin”) and must be “saved” with the quack medicines of the pharmacological cult.

The cult that keeps on killing

It’s an obvious point, but I’ll mention it just in case: This cult is extremely dangerous to the safety of our citizens. By its own admission, it is responsible for the death of 783,000 Americans each year (called “iatrogenic deaths”), and their drugs alone kill at least 100,000 American citizens annually. And yet the Cult of Pharmacology, like all whacky cults, thinks it needs to spread and “convert” everyone to its medicines (Kool-Aid, anyone?) so that all Americans are members of the cult, sucking down statin drugs, fluoride, antidepressants, vaccines or whatever new chemical the cult demands we blindly swallow.

Oh, and these treatments aren’t free, by the way. This cult is run by corporations, and they want not only your loyalty and your mind… they want your wallet, too! Hand over your life savings, folks, for the privilege of being treated with what is claimed to be the best health care system in the world. (Insert laughter here…)

Join us or die

And now, the most dangerous era of the Cult of Pharmacology has begun: The era of Gunpoint Medicine, where anyone refusing to join the cult by taking their medicines is considered a criminal.

It’s already happening in New Jersey, Maryland and Texas. There, parents who say no to mandatory vaccinations risk being arrested at gunpoint and having their children stolen away from them by Child Protective Services.

In the UK just this week, a 13-year-old girl who refused to undergo heart transplant surgery was told she would be forced to undergo the procedure, essentially at gunpoint, and her parents were threatened with arrest. They took the case to court and had to win back their right to refuse the heart transplant procedure and a lifetime of expensive anti-rejection drugs that would only benefit — surprise! — Big Pharma’s bottom line.

These are not fictions: This is happening across the world right now. Mandatory mental health “screening” programs have been proposed in the U.S., and they would put tens of millions of teens and expectant mothers on dangerous psychotic drugs known to cause violent thoughts and suicidal behavior.

The Cult of Pharmacology, you see, isn’t satisfied to merely have your wallet. It’s not even enough to own your body. What they want is your soul. They are on a dangerous religious crusade, and you are required to pledge your allegiance to the lab-coat-wearing gods of Pharmalot or you will be arrested, imprisoned and stripped of everything you value and love (like your own children).

Will statin drug consumption be enforced at gunpoint, too?

The next stage in this cultist expansion is, of course, the mandatory consumption of statin drugs by the citizenry.

If the drug company zealots can convince the U.S. government that statin drugs will save lives and somehow save it money on medical costs, we could soon see an effort to mandate the taking of statin drugs by all adults (and perhaps even children).

Don’t think it could happen? Check your recent history on the situation with HPV vaccines. Refusing the vaccines makes you a criminal in at least two states in the U.S. right now, and drug companies are pushing new laws to criminalize the rejection of vaccines across the entire nation. Similarly, fluoridation laws subject the entire population to toxic fluoridation chemicals (which in no way resemble actual mineral fluoride, by the way), and even though rejecting fluoridated water is not yet a crime, I’ve met many dentists who think it should be.

There’s little doubt that if the drug companies get their way, medicating yourself and your children with statin drugs, SSRIs or other hyped-up pharmaceuticals will no longer be optional: It will be mandated. And those who refuse will be rounded up and forcibly medicated. It’s already happened: Read Children Herded Like Cattle Into Maryland Courthouse… at http://www.naturalnews.com/022267.html

It’s important to realize that all government mandates are essentially enforced by the threat of violence or imprisonment. Even paying your vehicle license plate taxes is fundamentally enforced at gunpoint. If you don’t believe me, just drive around with expired license plate tags for long enough, and sooner or later an armed officer of the State will stop your vehicle and threaten you with arrest if you don’t pay money to the State. That officer is an extension of the power of the State, and his own personal power is enforced by the firearm carried at his side. (If you don’t believe me, just ask the officer if he will leave his firearm in his own car, and see what he says…)

Many of Big Pharma’s cultist doctors now believe that same power of enforcement at the end of a gun should be aimed at parents and their health decisions. Parents who, through the intelligent acquisition of knowledge about natural therapies, consciously choose non-conventional medical therapies for their children should be arrested, locked away and stripped of their own children, say these doctors. They are not fit to be parents if they will not medicate them with over 100 different vaccines, the doctors claim. The drug companies agree with them, too. How dare parents refuse to put their kids on chemotherapy, vaccines, or antidepressant drugs? It’s downright un-American!

The upshot of all this is the growing power of a medical police state that might be more accurately called Medical Marxism. Under Big Pharma’s medical Marxist regime, natural remedies will be outlawed, physicians will be indoctrinated with the propaganda of the state, and those who resist will be sent to the gulag.

Don’t think it could happen? It’s happening RIGHT NOW in America. The FDA has outlawed many natural remedies, physicians have already been brainwashed into drug-pushing automatons, and parents who have resisted conventional medical therapies for their children are being routinely arrested at gunpoint, imprisoned and separated from their families. We are dealing with the systematic destruction of health freedoms and the rise of medical violence against the People.

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Bush lists some of his regrets from presidency

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

NEW YORK — President Bush listed some of the regrets from his presidency Tuesday, particularly the display of the “Mission Accomplished” sign as backdrop for a speech he gave about a month after the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

“To some, it said, well, ‘Bush thinks the war in Iraq is over,’ when I didn’t think that,” he said in a CNN interview in New York. “It conveyed the wrong message.”

The sign was hung on the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, when Bush landed on the carrier wearing a flight suit to declare that major combat operations in Iraq were over. That speech has since served as a rallying point for critics of Bush’s policies in Iraq.

“I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said,” Bush added. He cited comments he made after the Sept. 11 attacks, when he said of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden: “I want justice. There’s an old poster out West that said, ‘Wanted, dead or alive.’ ”

He also said he regretted telling Iraqi insurgents in 2003: “There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring ‘em on.”

Bush said, “My wife reminded me that, ‘Hey, as president of the United States, be careful what you say.’ ”

Bush also described his meeting Monday at the White House with his successor, President-elect Barack Obama.

“It was interesting to watch him go upstairs,” Bush said of Obama’s visit. “He wanted to see where his little girls were going to sleep. Clearly, this guy is going to bring a sense of family to the White House, and I hope Laura and I did the same thing.”

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Space-Based Domestic Spying: Kicking Civil Liberties to the Curb

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

By Tom Burghardt |

Last month, I reported that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) space-based domestic spy program run by that agency’s National Applications Office (NAO) had gone live October 1.

Federal Computer Week reports that Charles Allen, DHS’ Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis, told the 5th annual GEOINT Symposium on geospatial intelligence in Nashville late last month that, “DHS’ imagery requirements are significantly greater, in number and scope, than they were at the department’s creation, and will continue to grow at an accelerating rate as the department’s mission-space evolves.”

Indeed during Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication reported.

As readers are well aware, the Predator B carries out “targeted assassinations” of “terrorist suspects” across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for “disaster management” is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come.

Despite objections by Congress and civil liberties groups DHS, in close collaboration with the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that develops and maintains America’s fleet of military spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) that analyzes military imagery and generates mapping tools, are proceeding with the first phase of the controversial domestic spying program.

NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and “disaster relief” agencies such as FEMA will use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by military spy satellites. As I wrote earlier this year, unlike commercial satellites, their military cousins are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore possess more power to monitor human activity.

Testifying before the House Homeland Security committee in September, Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project, called for a moratorium on the domestic use of military spy satellites until key questions were answered. Steinhardt said, “Congress needs to act before this potentially powerful surveillance tool is turned inward upon the American people. The domestic use of spy satellites represents a potential monster in the making, and we need to put some restraints in place before it grows into something that will trample Americans’ privacy rights.”

Needless to say, a feckless Congress has done virtually nothing to halt the program. As The Wall Street Journal reported in early October, Congress’ “partial funding” of the office “in a little debated $634 billion spending measure,” means that NAO is now providing federal, state and local officials “with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery.”

Allen told the GEOINT Symposium that while “geospatial efforts are being coordinated across agencies,” technical hurdles must be overcome in order to improve geospatial IT applications. Federal Computer Week avers,

For developing future satellite imagery capabilities, Allen recommended diversity, availability, survivability and flexibility for future systems in a satellite and modular payload system similar to what was advised by the Marino Report in July 2007 to the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office.

“It describes an architecture that allows for short time between launch as well as an option for variable modalities. This kind of diversity is what I believe will be necessary to assure adequate collection of a wide array of targets,” Allen said. (Alice Lipowicz, “Geospatial Intelligence Use Grows at DHS, Official Says,” Federal Computer Week, October 30, 2008)

What those “variable modalities” are were not spelled out by Federal Computer Week. However, the Marino Report was released by Chesapeake Analytics Corporation, an under-the-radar Arlington, Virginia-based private defense contractor that describes itself “as a ’boutique’ consulting firm” for senior executives “in the geospatial technology sector.” The report itself was written by Defense Group Inc. (DGI), a spooky Falls Church, Virginia defense contractor for NRO and NGA. According to their website, DGI “customers” include the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense and “numerous Intelligence Agencies.”

As we have seen however, the use of satellite imagery during “national security events” such as last summer’s political conventions in Denver and St. Paul may have aided FBI and local law enforcement in their preemptive raids on protest organizers and subsequent squelching of dissent. One wonders if this is what DGI refers to when they write that the company “performs work in the national interest, advancing public safety and national security through innovative research, analysis and applied technology”?

NAO’s launch is all the more troubling since an independent review of the program by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the department has been less than forthcoming that NAO complies with privacy laws and doesn’t violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

The 1878 law prohibits the military from playing a role in domestic law enforcement. Since the 1990s however, Posse Comitatus has been eroded significantly by both Democratic and Republican administrations, primarily in the areas of “drug interdiction,” “border security” as well as “Continuity of Government” planning by U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM).

Despite objections by GAO auditors DHS securocrats held up the release of their 60-page report, citing its “sensitive nature.” The September 15, 2008 report, entitled “National Applications Office. Certification of Compliance With Legal, Privacy, and Civil Liberties Standards Needs to Be More Fully Justified,” is now in the public domain and was finally released November 6, two days after American national elections.

It makes for a very troubling read. In their November 6 cover letter to congressional committees, the GAO writes:

Citing a growing need to use classified satellite information for civil or domestic purposes, in 2005, an independent study group reviewed the future role of the CAC [Civil Applications Committee] and concluded that although the civil domestic users were well supported through the CAC, homeland security and law enforcement users lacked a coherent, organized, and focused process to access classified satellite information. (GAO, “National Applications Office Certification Review,” GAO-09-105R, November 6, 2008)

However, the “independent study group” cited by GAO was neither independent nor predisposed towards limiting the deployment of military spy satellites for domestic “missions.” Indeed that report, “Independent Study Group, Civil Applications Committee Blue Ribbon Study,” (September 2005), was the product of a panel comprised solely of securocrats and defense and security contractors who stand to make a bundle on NAO. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed last year, the intelligence-sharing system to be managed by NAO,

…will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance. (”Domestic Spying, Inc.” CorpWatch, November 27, 2007)

Indeed, the “independent study group” was appointed by Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence who himself was a senior vice president for ten years with the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation. McConnell oversaw that firm’s extensive contracts in military intelligence and information operations for the Pentagon, Shorrock reported in March 2008.

GAO investigators have determined that while DHS “has established procedures for legal review, it has not yet fully addressed all outstanding issues regarding how the planned operations of the NAO, as described in the department’s certification documents, are to comply with legal requirements. Specifically, DHS has not resolved legal and policy issues associated with NAO support for law enforcement.” As investigators outlined:

DHS originally did not fulfill agency requirements to identify privacy risks and control mechanisms but recently has taken steps to do so. At the time of NAO certification, DHS did not fully explain how the office would comply with widely accepted privacy standards, such as the need for personally identifiable information to be accurate, secure, and used only for limited purposes. Specifically, the NAO’s original privacy assessment did not identify or analyze the risks that NAO operations might not meet these standards, nor did it specify measures to mitigate such risks. In response to discussions with us regarding these shortcomings, the Privacy Office developed a revised assessment that represented a substantial improvement in identifying privacy risks and mitigating controls to address them, such as providing appropriate oversight and building a process to identify and correct inaccurate information. However, differences between the review procedures outlined in the revised privacy impact assessment and those in the standard operating procedures raise questions about whether the specifics of the NAO’s privacy protection controls have been clearly established. (GAO, op. cit. p. 4)

While paltry recommendations towards mitigating potential civil liberties’ and privacy abuses by NAO were submitted to the DHS Undersecretary of Intelligence and Analysis (Charles Allen), GAO found that “specific measures have not yet been developed to address the potential for improper use or retention of information provided by the NAO and the potential for impermissible requests to be accepted as a result of a reliance on broad annual memorandums as justifications.” In other words at NAO, as at other intelligence agencies across the war on terror’s domestic “battlespace,” it’s business as usual.

Three categories of classified satellite information are to be provided law enforcement by the National Applications Office:

* Geospatial intelligence (GEOINT)–GEOINT is defined as “the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. Geospatial intelligence consists of imagery, imagery intelligence, and geospatial information.”

* Measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT)–MASINT is defined as intelligence “derived from measurements of physical phenomena intrinsic to an object or event.” These phenomena can include the following types:” electro-optical, infrared, laser, spectral, radar, polarimetric, high-power or unintentional radio frequency emanations, geophysical, chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear.”

* Electronic intelligence (ELINT)–ELINT is defined as “technical and geolocation intelligence derived from non-communications electromagnetic radiations emanating from other than nuclear detonations or radioactive sources. It does not include oral or written communications.” Thus, ELINT could include intelligence based on signals from machines, such as computers, but not telephone conversations or other communications between individuals. (GAO, op. cit., p. 25)

While DHS has yet to resolve legal and policy issues associated with NAO support for law enforcement operations, the Office still continues to identify such support as a key element of its “mission.” Indeed, DHS’ Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Office did not resolve how NAO will comply with the applicability of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, Posse Comitatus and the Reagan-era Executive Order 12333 that limits how federal intelligence agencies collect information on U.S. citizens and legal residents.

Citing lax standards in NAO’s legal review process, GAO found that “the process for developing and approving annual memorandums for MASINT and ELINT has not been delineated. Such procedures are an important control in assuring that access, retention, and sharing of information is properly constrained.”

However, as the eight long years of the Bush administration have demonstrated, any and all measures to “constrain” out of control federal spy agencies and their privatized assets in the corporate world have been rebuffed. Indeed, congressional oversight of the “intelligence community” and the Executive Branch is a joke–at the expense of an informed citizenry and democratic institutions accountable to the American people.

While DHS claims that data gathered for law enforcement purposes will be “in compliance with privacy and civil liberties laws and policies of the United States,” the GAO found that “by broadly sharing information with non-federal users, who are not bound by the Privacy Act, personal information could be at risk of being used in ways not specified when it was originally collected.” Considering that some 70% of U.S. intelligence assets are employees of private security and defense contractors, NAO is a civil liberties disaster waiting to happen.

GAO revealed four key areas where privacy risks have been identified:

1. An individual may be unaware that personally identifiable information will be collected about him or her in response to a request processed by the NAO.

2. Personally identifiable information may be collected, analyzed, or disseminated in a manner that makes the information inaccurate.

3. Personally identifiable information may be misused by a requestor.

4. Associated technology may improve so dramatically that qualitatively new capabilities will enable the gathering of personally identifiable information in ways that are impossible today, thus creating new potential privacy risks. (GAO, op. cit., p. 44)

DHS claims these issues will be mitigated by “providing appropriate oversight” and by “building a process to identify and correct inaccurate information, and ensuring that the DHS Privacy Office and DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties remain critical components of all review processes as new and improved technology is developed.”

In other words, we’re to rely on DHS to police itself and that agencies critical to Office operations such as the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency will simply hand over America’s most closely-guarded intelligence secrets to federal civil rights attorneys for appropriate “oversight.” Talk about a blind leap into the darkness!

Let’s be clear here and shed whatever illusions one may have about the outcome of last Tuesday’s election. Despite the overwhelming rejection of the Bush administration and their surrogates by the American people, the incoming Obama administration will pay lip-service to civil liberties and the rule of law. This however, will amount to no more than a better public relations campaign, image management and product roll-out. America rebranded.

But as we have seen throughout the unfolding disaster that is the “war on terror,” the Democrats have been fully complicit with the crimes of the Bush regime. From the USA Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, immunity for criminal telecoms, “preemptive policing,” torture, financial fraud and the looting of the economy by capitalist grifters, not to mention the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, threats against Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela–indeed any nation that doesn’t toe the imperialist line–the Democrats have been Bush’s most faithful and reliable partners.

While the GAO’s report is a welcome addition to the already voluminous catalogue of Bushist horrors, one can expect that NAO’s law enforcement “mission” will quickly–and quietly–come on line. After all there’s bundles of cash, courtesy of the American people, that need to be spread far and wide!

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press.

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9/11 Cultwatch in Dumfries

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

By Paul Stott |

The bulk of the 9/11 Cultwatch talk at Glasgow University concentrated on the 9/11 Cultwatch paper presented to Loughborough University in September.

However, the organisers in Dumfries requested some additional information as regards background, methodology and motivations. These comments are reproduced below:

What This Talk Is

My talk is about the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement - very simply those groups, individuals and organisations who reject the view of Al Qaeda responsibility for the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. This is not a talk about 9/11 itself, or US foreign policy or Osama Bin Laden. What I will focus on is 9/11 and the Muslim world, the anti-semitism of the 9/11 truth movement and finally the offspring that 9/11 truth is nuturing - for example the 7/7 truth movement.

Why?

Two things motivated my interest in the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement. I’d been writing for many years for a magazine called Notes From the Borderland. NFB had taken a long term interest in two former MI5 officers - David Shayler and Annie Machon, who had fallen out with the Security Service and launched new careers as public figures. 

We were unhappy at the naive and unquestioning welcome many in left/liberal circles gave them, especially when they offered no substantive information on the disruption of radical political groups by the police and security services, and worse their main argument seemed to be for a more efficient MI5.

In 2005 Machon and Shayler abruptly left the anti-war movement and moved into 9/11 truth circles, even though both had written articles on the dangers of Islamist terrorism, using 9/11 as an example. Something did not ring true.

The second motivation  was the behaviour of 9/11 truth activists themselves, particularly at the 2005 Anarchist Bookfair, where they used a high degree of subterfuge, coupled with intimidation on the day, to get David Shayler and Annie Machon into an event they would never otherwise have been allowed to enter.

Something was clearly happening here, and if we did not comment on it, no one else would?

Methodology

My colleague Larry O’Hara likes to use the term ‘oppositional observation’. For many years now he and I have gone to 9/11 truth meetings, spoken to their members and debated on their Internet forums. We have interviewed disillusioned truthers, and been hissed and booed by those still active in the truth movement. I have now seen nearly all of the truth movements main speakers - certainly those who have visited the UK.

We have attempted to move beyond the truth movements obsession with the Internet, trying to keep a handle on the ever shifting volume of books on Islamist terrorism and 9/11, with a desire wherever possible to look at primary sources. Whatever its faults, people do need to read the 9/11 Commission Report, they do need to look at Bin Laden’s statements since 9/11 (how many truthers have looked at either?) and they do need to compare the shifting comments of some 9/11 truthers, especially as the truth industry continues to grow.

Background

When I spoke at Loughborough University, one questionner rightly pointed out that in my paper there were few sources from ‘radical’ publications. In a way, I am a bit of a lone wolf in the developing field of Terrorism Studies, and even more so in writing critically about Islamist organisations.

Many of those writing on this subject come from political backgrounds sympathetic to the security industry (e.g. the school at St Andrews University) or from left/liberal gackgrounds, perhaps journals such as Race & Class, where society is usually see through a prism where the only real evils come from the West, and the United States in particular. 

I have issue with both of those traditions.  

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Unite against Nato expansion and war

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

The European anti-war movement is calling for mass protests at next year’s Nato summit in Strasbourg, France, including an international demonstration and a counter-summit.

This is a key opportunity for the anti-war movement.

The reason is simple.

Nato has become the main vehicle for the imperial strategy of the US and its allies. And the timing is perfect – the mood for change that swept Barack Obama to office coincides with deep problems for the US’s imperial project.

Nato’s actions are destabilising much of Europe and Asia.

Nato controls the 47,000-strong “International Security Assistance Force” that fronts the disastrous occupation of Afghanistan.

Rather than accepting defeat in the face of growing opposition, Nato leaders are now contemplating a military “surge” in Afghanistan and more cross-border attacks in Pakistan.

The US’s two most senior military figures, General David Petraeus and Admiral Michael Mullen, are currently reviewing their Afghanistan strategy and planning on how to deal with “safe havens for terrorists” in Pakistan.

Incursions

There have been 17 bloody incursions into Pakistan since the beginning of September. Western powers have given the Pakistani government a choice – crack down on the so-called “tribal areas” on the Afghan border or Nato may take the situation into its own hands.

The assumption is that the resistance in Afghanistan is growing because of these “terrorist bases” in Pakistan.

In fact the opposite is the case – the growing instability in Pakistan is a direct consequence of the brutal Nato occupation of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile Nato’s plans for eastward expansion in Europe risks confrontation with Russia.

The day after Obama’s election, Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev announced he would move nuclear warheads to Kaliningrad on the border with Poland, and point them west.

He said this was to “neutralise” the so called “missile defence shield” that the US has been throwing up around Russia.

But it is also a sign of Russia’s defiance in the face of its war with Georgia in the summer and attempts by Nato to integrate Georgia and Ukraine into its orbit.

Though the US is still the most powerful country in the world, economic crisis and the fact that its armies are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan make challenges to US power more likely.

US military chiefs recently repeated calls for Nato countries to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Obama himself has said he wants to see more concerted action. But tensions are emerging in the Nato coalition.

Britain’s most senior soldier warned this week that Britain should not redeploy its troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

General Jock Stirrup told the BBC, “The British armed forces are stretched. It’s crucial we reduce the operational tempo for our armed forces.

“It cannot be just a one-for-one transfer from Iraq to Afghanistan.’’

The statement from the chief of defence staff is a signal to the US that Britain is not prepared to endlessly ramp up the number of troops.

We cannot be complacent, however, as the US is likely to use the Nato summit to pressure countries to contribute more troops.

Millions

The Strasbourg protests give us a chance to push for the changes that millions are looking for.

They can be a launchpad for a global campaign against the occupation of Afghanistan.

They can also force the warmongers onto the defensive.

Anyone who remembers Genoa in 2001 will know that huge international protests can have an electrifying effect on activists round the world.

© Copyright Socialist Worker

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The Promise of Change… and the Change We Need

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Revolution Newspaper | You couldn’t miss it on Election Night. People actually pouring into the streets to celebrate the election of a president. Emotions ran high, and tears flowed.

Hope-hope that is founded on the real possibilities for fundamental change in this world-is indeed precious. Dedicating your life to something higher than the ethic of “I-want-mine” is so vital that the future of humanity actually depends on it. And overcoming- truly overcoming-the divisions of society based on inequality and oppression must be at the heart of any real movement for social change.

But now, in the dawn of the morning after, one must ask and honestly grapple with some basic and very serious questions.

Hope for what?
Service to what?
Unity around what goals and what values?
And victory for whom?

Click here for print version (PDF).
Click here for YouTube Video Part One.
Click here for YouTube Video Part Two

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