WHY WE STAND UP – WHY WE RESIST – WHY WE WILL FIGHT THIS TYRANNY
U.S. Government Using Terrorism Against the American People
Three Ways Obama Carried Bush’s Tyrannical Torch, in Just One Week
DRONE CREEP:How Domestic Drone Use Is Quietly Being Implemented, DHS Loan a Drone
Obama nominates mastermind of controversial drone strike programme as next CIA director
Could Human Enhancement Turn Soldiers Into Weapons That Violate International Law? YES
Gun show sees record turnout; vendors running out of merchandise
America’s Biggest Killers: The Chart Anti-Gunners Don’t Want You To See
BTW – Zero Dark Thirty “Torture is good, even though bad info” “Bin Laden was real, and now he’s dead” Additional Opinions… +What about the SEALs tragedy 2 weeks later?
Eric Jon Phelps was again on the Decrypted Matrix show on Revealing Talk Radio, November 12, 2012 at Midnight EST / 9pm PST. During last Monday night’s show it became apparent that Decrypted Matrix host, Max Maverick, was not going to get everything he wanted in the show. After the show, the ratings, site traffic and archive hits of the show made it quite obvious that this coming show would be important.
When Barack Obama took office, drone strikes were a once-in-a-while thing, with an attack every week or two. Now, they’re the centerpiece of a global U.S. counterterrorism campaign. Obama institutionalized the strikes to the point where he could hand off to the next president an efficient bureaucratic process for delivering death-by-robot practically on autopilot. Only now he’s the next president. Welcome to Obama’s second-term agenda for dealing with the world. As the Ramones sang: second verse, same as the first.
Early in the first term, then-CIA director Leon Panetta observed that drones were the “only game in town” for attacking al-Qaida in Pakistan. By that he meant invading a country for the third time in a decade was a nonstarter, and the flesh-and-blood spies needed to do a traditional intelligence operation weren’t available in sufficient numbers. So the Obama administration all but crafted its counterterrorism strategy around the drones, turning their surveillance and lethal operations into a bureaucratic apparatus led by White House aides with minimal outside oversight. The CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, elite forces that rarely operate visibly, have the lead for implementing the robot-based agenda — and augmenting it with commando raids. Backstopping them are new tools to invade and disrupt enemy data networks.
The strikes have spread from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia. And now that Obama’s been reelected, expect them to spread to Mali, another country most Americans neither know nor understand. The northern part of the North African country has fallen into militant hands. U.S.-aligned forces are currently plotting to take it back. The coming arrival of Army Gen. David Rodriguez, the former day-to-day commander of the Afghanistan war, as leader of U.S. forces in Africa is a signal that Obama wants someone experienced at managing protracted wars on a continent where large troop footprints aren’t available. Instead, Rodriguez will have to track, check and erode the spread of al-Qaida in northern and eastern Africa using drones and commando forces, available from his expanding bases in places like Djibouti. If all of this seems routine, that’s the point.
The Obama administration is doing something similar with cyber weaponry. It’s trying to make them a normal part of everyday conflict. Gone are the days when senior officers equivocated in public about their ability to disrupt enemy data networks. Now the Air Force talks openly about spending $10 million on new tools “to destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries [sic] ability to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage.” The Pentagon’s futurists at Darpa have launched a new “Plan X” to routinize the corruption of enemy networks and the exfiltration of data within normal military operations. Routinization may actually be the wrong word: Darpa wants military malware that works like “the auto-pilot function in modern aircraft.” The Stuxnet worm that messed with Iran’s centrifuges was only the beginning.
All this might seem aggressive for a president who liked to say on the campaign trail that “the tide of war is receding.” But the tide of war never actually goes out. And the wicked-hard problems facing Obama’s national security team may only be getting under way.
Next comes Iran. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that he will feel the need to strike Iran by next summer. Obama has a stronger hand with Netanyahu now that he doesn’t have to worry about reelection, but he’s still committed himself rhetorically to preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon. Even if Obama can avert a war, his clear preference, Iran will continue to consume a tremendous amount of the White House and the Pentagon’s attention. The alternative to a massive bombing campaign might not be so benign, either: the point of Stuxnet was to make the Iranians distrust the industrial controls on their nuclear program’s centrifuges.
Then comes Afghanistan, a war that Obama does not discuss candidly. He’s fond of saying, as he did in one of his final ads, that he plans on “ending the war in Afghanistan, so we can do some nation-building here at home.” His real policy is way more complex than that. Yes, Obama is committed to withdrawing most troops and ending a formal U.S. combat role by 2014. Obama plans to keep a residual troop presence in the country, even after the 2014 “withdrawal,” and negotiations with the Afghans about what shape that presence will take — and for what purpose — are supposed to begin shortly. Among the things Obama is likely to seek: Afghanistan’s permission to keep its air bases as launchpads for drone strikes into Pakistan. The charitable interpretation is to say Obama is caveating his out-of-Afghanistan pledge. The uncharitable interpretation is that he’s misleading the country on it.
The Obama administration is still grappling with the implications of its sprawling, robot-led war. Some of its top officials are just starting to question how long the strikes have to persist. But they haven’t addressed concerns about the precedent the U.S. is setting by sending robots to violate the sovereignty of nations, which are unavoidable as drone technology advances and proliferates. Micah Zenko, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations, sees a reckoning with the robots on the horizon.
“There is a recognition within the administration that the current trajectory of drone strikes is unsustainable,” Zenko says. “They are opposed in countries where strikes occur and globally, and that opposition could lead to losing host-nation support for current or future drone bases or over-flight rights.” In other words, tomorrow’s America diplomats may find that drones overshadow the routine geopolitical agenda they seek to advance. The trouble is, the administration’s early search for less-lethal policies to supplement or supplant the drones isn’t promising.
Obama’s broader foreign policy agenda keeps getting derailed. He barely talks about his expansive goal of eliminating global nuclear weapons anymore. Any route to an Israeli-Palestinian peace runs through Netanyahu, who only wants to talk about Iran. The much-heralded “pivot” of the U.S. defense posture toward Asia, a relatively modest goal, keeps getting deferred by the crises of the moment: the Navy’s newest and more advanced ships are going to confront Iran, not to preserve the freedom of the Pacific shipping lanes. A former Obama Pentagon official, Rosa Brooks, recently lamented the Obama team’s chronic inability to shape global events.
Civil libertarians rightly point to Obama’s reversals on expanding warrantless surveillance; the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects; military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay; prosecuting whistleblowers; and embracing an expensive definition of the war on terrorism’s executive powers. But there’s little evidence that Obama will change course. In an insightful blog post, the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes writes that Obama’s civil-liberties and national security record is best explained by a policy “consensus” in D.C., running through George W. Bush’s second term and Obama’s first, that basically agrees on a definition of executive power that civil libertarians dislike. It’s uncomfortable with torture, but basically comfortable with expansive domestic spying and detention powers.
As Obama’s second term dawns, it’s time to put away ideological illusions about his approach to foreign affairs. Liberals keep waiting for an agenda that’s less killer-robot-y. Conservatives are unable to see him as anything but a peacenik: “We’ll get to see what jimmy carter’s 2nd term would have looked like,” tweeted Jim Carafano, a defense analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
But the evidence is staring everyone in the face. Obama has elevated a practice of stealthy robotic warfare to the tactic of choice for U.S. security priorities, and built around it a system that operates it practically on bureaucratic inertia. Obama has a powerful incentive of all to continue his trajectory: with the one major exception of the Benghazi consulate disaster, Obama’s handling of global affairs has been notably free of high-profile screwups. That’s the sort of thing that propels a foreign policy agenda — to borrow a term — forward.
Hurricane Sandy is being described as the “worst storm in 100 years” and will possibly mutate to super-storm status once it combines with a polar air mass over the eastern United States enabling it to cause widespread damage and chaos, but how convenient is the timing of this “natural” event in regards to the election? Is it possible that the storm is a contrived event designed to throw the election for Obama?
The reality of weather modification is no conspiracy theory.
Since before the 50′s, weather modification techniques have existed. In fact, the threat of “weather weapons” was so imminent that the United Nations felt it necessary to draft a treaty ensuring no nation would use this “new means of warfare” against one another. Why would the U.N. draft a treaty if weather modification was just a conspiracy theory?
The 1976 UN Weather Weapons Treaty defined “weather weapons” as follows: “[…] the term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes–the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere andatmosphere, or of outer space.”
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“High level pentagon sources contacted the White Dragon Society this week to warn that the massive storm hitting the US North-East this week was a HAARP attack by the Nazi faction of the Western oligarchy…”
This is a very good article from Press Core on weather modification and how Hurricane Sandy was ‘steered’ into NYC:
The US government is using the HAARP Sea–Based X–Band Radar (SBX) platform to intensify and steer the man made Hurricane Sandy. Hurricane Sandy is Obama’s October surprise – create and steer a hurricane and cause mass destruction. The US Air Force / Navy SBX is steering Hurricane Sandy into New York City.
All 3 of the US HAARP Weather Modification systems – the land based system in Alaska, the Sea Based SBX and the mini shuttle X-37B were all built for use as military weather modifying weapons of mass destruction – in direct violation of the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques…”
Back in 1997, a hurricane simulation drill took place surrounding a hypothetical Hurricane Sandy, modeled after the Hurricane of 1938 which swept up the Eastern Seaboard into New York. Below you’ll find information and charts base around the 1997 drill. Also included below are two other videos dedicated to the 1938 Hurricane, which coincidentally sound quite similar to Hurricane Sandy.
Westchester County Communications Officer Sandy Fried, an Amateur Radio operator and ODES staff member, had recently attended a training seminar at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Part of the training was a simulation using data from the Hurricane of 1938 that caused major losses on Long Island and in Westchester. The texts of the simulated bulletins, forecasts, discussions and strike probabilities along with the hurricane’s track were sent home with the seminar attendees. We named the simulated hurricane after Sandy, who incidentally was nine years old during the real Hurricane of 1938.
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You won’t believe your eyes when you see what this video reveals!!! Satellite and Radar captured Infrasonic Undulation, Chemtrails en mass and Chem Dumping!!! Multiple weather system steering and super storm creation, right before your eyes!!!
DefinitelyHTA – HAARP Type Array infrasonic undulation. But it’s not just the array we know as HAARP in Alaska. It is a myraid of TTA network arrays working in concert. Arrays can be ground based, Satellite emitters, Field antenna signal boosters, flight based, ship based, mobile or even hand held. (Depending on the civilian or military use.) There are even TTA signal echo buoys throughout our oceans. Ionosphere fortified with chemtrail as a reflective frequency mirror.
Atmospheric Scientists in aircraft take information from hurricanes for DHS Operation H.A.M.P. (HURRICANE AEROSOL AND MICROPHYSICS PROGRAM). DHS funds it. One of the functions of those planes is deploying aerosols. In 2010 the American Meteorological Society (AMS) presented discussion on how these aerosols were effective at decreasing and increasing the intensity of Hurricane KATRINA under DHS Operation H.A.M.P.
“Singular Polarity” — simply a magnet with 1 pole rather than a north and south pole.
“Perpetual Motion Generator” — using 2 same pole magnetic unit – singular polarities against each other to create force away from each other continuously.
“Contrail vs chemtrail”. (As Congress refers to them.)
Contrails dissipate to invisibility within seconds or minutes of being laid down because they are simply steam from the jet wash.
Chemtrails are mixtures of aerosols that are sprayed in the ionosphere with metals and chemicals such as aluminum and barium in tiny particulates. 1 reason being to create a mirror effect to bounce frequency off of, to pass frequency as far as 1/4 of the globe away. HAARP website explains this process.
“Infrasonic Undulation” Looks like frequency on a spectrograph. If you Google images – spectrograph, you will find pictures of frequency. You’ll see sound waves in consistant patterns obviously man-made, electro-mechanically emitted. Chemtrail (already magneto-dynamic) becomes more dynamic when frequency is added to the mix to undulate (stir up) the system. “Infrasonic Undulation” through chemtrail is ELF waves stirring air deployed aerosols up. Hitting the metals etc… with high powered – low frequency disperses the metals throughout the storm, the moisture in the storm clings to those metals, Object 1 – move the metals, and you move the storm. Object 2 – decreasing and increasing the storm’s intensity. DHS Documented during KATRINA.
Which is why the new cloud name “Undulatus Asperatus.” “Undulated (Stirred Up) Breathing Vapors” Stirred up by TTA frequency. Kind of reminds you of the NAZI’s who insisted to their victims, “Now breath the vapors in deeply!!!” As they were locking them in the ‘showers’ to be gassed to death, doesn’t it! I get the feeling that when they came up with that name, they were laughing at their many victims whom they dub the “sheeple.”
TTA = Tesla Tech Array. HTA — HAARP Type Array.
(They use frequency to manipulate.) There are ground based TTA’s (like HAARP n Arecibo) multi-million watt frequency emitters around the world along with countless Low Orbit SAC (AEHF) Satellites, booster antenna arrays, oceanic echo buoys, military, commercial and privately owned sea going vessels with TTA units (BTW …ever heard of mass ocean animal deaths – burned bodies and the necropsy reports stating cause of death to be “Acustic Trama?”) , in field military and mobile units, are all a part of the SAME Global TTA Network, under the auspices of the UN and NATO and are thereby complicit.
Decency dictates that having this technology we should use it to save lives and property but…UN Agenda 21 – population reduction from 7 Billion to 500 Million. It means the wholesale slaughter of 6.5 Billion people. ‘The great culling’ they call it. Impossible to believe until you do the research as to why. If you step into their economic shoes, you understand their rationale. The PTB n UN want Obama in office. UN is overseeing our election. May need Martial Law to suspend elections.
If our country’s TTA is involved (and with FrankenStorm it is, because UN Treaty requires WE be the nation responsible under the UN “weather weapons” agreement) then our leader is at the helm of our TTA network. Working along side other countries’ TTA’s – this is a semi-global effort.
The reason???
UN Agenda 21 (Population Reduction) and attempt to suspend elections. With no electricty, floods, population displacement, damage etc… state of emergency – possibly even martial law.
Andrew Sullivan says he’ll use it less scrupulously than the president. But based on what evidence? Current policy is plenty unscrupulous already.
Asked about drone strikes during Monday’s foreign policy debate, Mitt Romney basically said that President Obama is right to use them. Expect more drone warfare in 2013 regardless of who wins the election. Does that mean that the two candidates are indistinguishable on the issue? My friend and former boss Andrew Sullivan doesn’t think so. “Memo to Conor Friedersdorf,” he wrote while live-blogging at The Dish. “You think Romney would be as scrupulous in drone warfare as Obama?” Implicit is the judgment that Obama has been “scrupulous.”
But it isn’t so.
Sullivan and I agree that Obama won last night’s debate, and that he’d be likely to preside over a more prudent, reality-based foreign policy than Romney, based on the respective campaigns that they’ve run. On drones, however, Romney appears to have the exact same position as Obama. And Obama has been egregiously unscrupulous. I don’t want to hear the dodge about how drone strikes are necessary. It’s beside the point. This is about the specific ways Obama has waged the drone war. Even if you agree in theory with drone strikes, Obama’s actions ought to bother you.
Let me be specific:
As Jane Mayer noted when describing the CIA’s drone strikes, “The program is classified as covert, and the intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed.”
The Obama Administration avoids judicial accountability by arguing that the drone program is secret, even as it acknowledges the existence of the program when bragging about killing terrorists.
As the Mayer article goes on to state, “because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war. Should something go wrong in the C.I.A.’s program — last month, the Air Force lost control of a drone and had to shoot it down over Afghanistan — it’s unclear what the consequences would be.”
According to The New York Times, “Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”
The Obama Administration permits the CIA to carry out “signature strikes” even though they don’t know the identity of the people they’re trying to kill!
As Glenn Greenwald explained, “In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals.”
As a report published by the law clinics at NYU and Standford document, innocent people in Waziristan are being terrorized and traumatized daily by Obama’s drone war. And the policy has killed, at minimum, hundreds of innocent people, a judgment that is supported even by data from the New America Foundation, whose methods almost certainly under-count dead innocents.
So to sum up, Obama has implemented a global killing program with zero checks and balances; he’s operated it out of the CIA rather than the Department of Defense; he invokes the state-secrets privilege to avoid defending it in court, even as he brags about its efficacy; it includes killing people whose identities we don’t even know; all military-aged males we kill are presumed to be “militants”; the Pakistani government reportedly gets to pick some of the targets; at minimum, hundreds of innocents have been killed, including rescuers and funeral-goers; a 16-year-old American citizen was among those killed; and Sullivan, having been exposed many times to all the information I’ve just included, thinks its accurate to call Obama’s drone program “scrupulous,” though it could easily be made more transparent, accountable, and lawful.
What really gets me is that, in addition to arguing that Obama has run this program scrupulously (something implied in Sullivan’s question, and explicitly argued in threads like this one), Sullivan has also himself articulated almost all of the reasons why the program has been unscrupulous — that is to say, why Obama’s drone policy “disregards, or has contempt for, laws of right or justice with which he is perfectly well acquainted, and which should restrain his actions.”
“One thing I’ve learned this past decade is that the CIA is pretty much its own judge, jury and executioner,” Sullivan wrote. “It is much less accountable to the public, more likely to break the laws of war and destroy the evidence, more likely to do things that could escalate rather than ameliorate a conflict.” Is it scrupulous to pick an organization like that to run your drone program?
Says Sullivan’s post from June of 2011 (emphasis added):
Obama is now engaged in two illegal wars — in Libya and in Yemen. There was no Congressional debate or vote on these wars — and one is being waged by the CIA with unmanned drones. I think we have learned a little about what happens when you give the CIA carte blanche to run a war with no accountability except to a president who has a vested interest in covering up errors.
Said Sullivan on another occasion, “Put drones in the hands of an executive who is empowered to do anything without any input from the other branches of government … and we have a problem indeed.” He is also on record stating that “counting every military-age man in the vicinity of a Jihadist as a terrorist is a total cop-out,” and he even wrote that “if the CIA, based on its own intelligence, can launch a war or wars with weapons that can incur no US fatalities, the propensity to be permanently at war, permanently making America enemies, permanently requiring more wars to put out the flames previous wars started, then the Founders’ vision is essentially over. I think it’s a duty to make sure their vision survives this twenty-first century test.”
So let’s get back to Sullivan’s debate night question. “You think Romney would be as scrupulous in drone warfare as Obama?” My best guess is that, on drone warfare, their policies would be about the same — that is to say, alarmingly unscrupulous, with unpredictable consequences. That’s what happens when you give someone the power to kill without checks in secret.
I have no reason to think one or the other would predictably kill more innocent people with drones. Does Sullivan? If Romney wins, what odds would Sullivan give on the proposition that Romney ultimately kills more civilians with drones than Obama has? Based on what evidence? Obama has already killed an American citizen without trial and conducted drone strikes in a country where no war has been declared, so I don’t see how Romney would set any precedents that are even more alarming. (What precedent would that be?) Overall, I have no idea whose drone war would be more damaging. Having watched Sullivan strongly denounce and other times defend Obama’s drone war in posts that cannot be reconciled with one another, I don’t think he knows either.
So what if Romney is elected and turns out to be much worse on drones? It could totally happen. I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ll be opposing his unaccountable killing policy from day one regardless, just as I’ve opposed Obama’s policy due to its manifold flaws. And if Romney’s drone policy turns out to have all sorts of catastrophic consequences? I hope Sullivan remembers that Obama established the bipartisan consensus behind a worldwide drone-strike strategy and set all the necessary precedents without losing the support of backers like Sullivan. (He didn’t even lose support for continuing his current drone policy itself.) A Romney drone fleet, operating in numerous countries with zero oversight from the judiciary or Congress, with American citizens in the crosshairs? Obama and his supporters built that. It would be ready for President Romney on day one.
This week, PBS’s “Frontline” published the transcript from a June 27, 2012 interview with Kristen Caldwell, a woman who grew up with President Barack Obama and attended the Punahou School with him in Honolulu, Hawaii. Among other claims, she told PBS that, as a young child, Obama told his classmates that he was Kenyan royalty or an Indonesian prince — fascinating claims that she discussed in great detail.
The former classmate, who referred to Obama as “Barry” throughout the interview (the name she claims his classmates called him), said that she believes Obama was at the prestigious school on scholarship. Like other kids who were attending on reduced admission, he likely worked at the tennis courts on campus — a location where the two frequently hung out.
“I can picture him as this slightly — “chubby” is too strong, but rounded, short little guy, Barry Obama,” Caldwell said. “And he told us that his father was an Indonesian king and that he was a prince, and after he finished school he was going to go back, and he would be a ruler in Indonesia.”
Obama must have been charismatic even then, as his former classmate said the following about his wild claims: “I absolutely believed him.” Caldwell also said she heard that Obama once told his fifth-grade class that he was Kenyan royalty. While she didn’t hear this directly — and it was years later that the story made its way to her — Obama’s claim to be a prince was something she experienced directly.
“My sister and I remember very clearly that he was an Indonesian prince and that he would be going back there,” she continued. “So there was some reference to where he had come from, and the understanding was his family was there.”
Caldwell and Obama were purportedly close, seeing as her father allegedly drove him home from the tennis courts on rainy days. Additionally, she claims that they spent a great deal of time hanging out together both during the school year and throughout the summer each year – however, she didn’t seem to know intimate details about his background.
As far as the embellished stories about his father and stature, PBS asked Caldwell why she believes Obama told such tall tales.
The former classmate said that she believes insecurity was the central underpinning of his stories about being royalty and one-day returning to Indonesia to assume the throne. After living in Hawaii until he was six, moving in Indonesia from six until age 10 and then arriving back in the state, once again, she said she could understand why he felt the need to compensate.
“I would think he would have felt very, very fish-out-of-water, very uncomfortable, and like anybody, he’d have to have a little bit of bravado to mask the insecurities,” Caldwell continued.
In a subsequent question, PBS asked if Caldwell noticed anything special about Obama during the time she spent with him. Considering that he grew up to become the leader of the free world, the outlet was curious to know if he exuded confidence and other such sentiment that pointed to a bright future ahead. While highlighting the fact that Punahou was filled with brilliant and talented children — and that getting into the school required that one fit these categories — she said, “to me he was a normal kid.”
“He didn’t seem outstanding academically or athletically or any other way. To me he seemed normal,” she continued.
While these claims are certainly odd, children often role-play and use their imaginations. It’s entirely possible this is what was at play. Either way, these are some intriguing claims to say the least. Read the transcript from “Frontline’s” entire interview with Kristen Caldwell here.
NEW YORK – As a student at Harvard Law School, then-bachelor Barack Obama’s practice of wearing a gold band on his wedding-ring finger puzzled his colleagues.
Now, newly published photographs of Obama from the 1980s show that the ring Obama wore on his wedding-ring finger as an unmarried student is the same ring Michelle Robinson put on his finger at the couple’s wedding ceremony in 1992.
Moreover, according to Arabic-language and Islamic experts, the ring Obama has been wearing for more than 30 years is adorned with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada: “There is no God except Allah.”
Sincere recitation of the Shahada is the sole requirement for becoming a Muslim, as it expresses a person’s rejection of all other gods
Egyptian-born Islamic scholar Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D., examined photographs of Obama’s ring at WND’s request and concluded that the first half of the Shahada is inscribed on it.
“There can be no doubt that someone wearing the inscription ‘There is no god except Allah’ has a very close connection to Islamic beliefs, the Islamic religion and Islamic society to which this statement is so strongly attached,” Gabriel told WND.
“Dreams from My Real Father” producer Joel Gilbert, an Arabic speaker and an expert on the Middle East, was the first to conclude that Obama’s ring, reportedly from Indonesia, bore an Islamic inscription.
Photographs published last week by the New Yorker from Obama’s time at Occidental College, taken by fellows students, indicate that the ring Obama wore three decades ago is the one he is wearing in the White House.
Barack Obama
As WND reported in July, previously published photos have shown Obama wearing a gold band on his wedding-ring finger continuously from 1981 at Occidental, through graduation at Columbia in 1983, in a visit to Africa in 1988 and during his time at Harvard from 1988 to 1991. But none, until now, have displayed the ring with enough detail to identify it as the one he currently is wearing.
WND reported a satirical edition of the Harvard Law Review published by students in 1990 contains a mock Dewers Scotch profile advertisement poking fun at Obama. Among a list of Obama’s “Latest Accomplishments” is: “Deflecting Persistent Questioning About Ring On Left Hand.”
The comment suggests the ring was a subject of student curiosity at the time and that Obama was not forthcoming with an explanation.
He still has not explained why he wore the band on his wedding-ring finger before he married Michelle.
Declaration
Gabriel, born to Muslim parents in Upper Egypt, grew up immersed in Islamic culture. He memorized the Quran at age of 12 and graduated in 1990 with a Masters degree from the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the preeminent Sunni Muslim institution of learning.
He explained that on Obama’s ring, the declaration “There is no god except Allah” (La Ilaha Illallah) is inscribed in two sections, one above the other.
On the upper section, “There is no god” is written in Arabic letters, from right to left: Lam, Alif, Alif, Lam, Ha.
On the lower section is “except god,” written in Arabic letters from right to left: Alif, Lam, Alif, Alif, Lam, Lam, Ha.
In the lower section, the word “Allah” is written partially on top of the word “except,” noted Gabriel, the author of “Islam and Terrorism” and “Journey Inside the Mind of an Islamic Terrorist.”
It is common in Islamic art and Arabic calligraphy, especially when expressing Quranic messages on jewelry, to artfully place letters on top of each other to fit them into the allotted space.
The exhibit below shows how the Arabic inscription fits over the two parts of the Obama ring.
“There is no God except Allah” overlaid on Obama ring
‘First-rate accent’
In an interview during the 2008 presidential campaign, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof questioned Obama about his Islamic education in Indonesia, where he lived from 1967 to 1971.
After acknowledging that he once got in trouble for making faces during Quran study classes in his elementary school, Obama recited for Kristoff the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, the Adhan.
The prayer incorporates the Shahada, the expression of Islamic faith, with each line repeated twice:
Allah is supreme! Allah is supreme!
I witness that there is no god but Allah
I witness that Muhammad is his prophet
Kristof noted Obama recited the prayer in Arabic “with a first-rate accent.”
“In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset,’” Kristoff wrote.
Gabriel told WND that a person wearing a ring with “There is no God except Allah” demonstrates the significance of Islam in his life.
“Christians never use the statement,” he pointed out. “By wearing the Shahada on jewelry, a person communicates that Allah is in control of all circumstances. Allah controls you; Allah is the one and only one.”
Obama, who attended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for two decades, has repeatedly insisted he is a Christian.
Obama’s hand in a White House photo
‘Blessed statement in Islam’
Gabriel emphasized the importance of the Shahada in the profession of faith in Islam.
“Muslims recite the Shahada when they wake up in the morning and before they go to sleep at night,” he said. “It is repeated five times every day in the call to prayer in every mosque. A single honest recitation of the Shahada in Arabic is all that is required for a person to convert to Islam.”
Gabriel believes it would be impossible for Obama not to be aware of what is written on the ring, calling it a “blessed statement in Islam.”
“By wearing this religious statement on one’s hand, it connects the person to Islam,” he said. “It is worn in hopes that Allah’s protections would be with the person, in hopes of gaining favor with Allah.”
He affirmed that Muslim men do wear gold rings, despite prohibitions in Islamic law.
“Though Islamic law prohibits the wearing of gold jewelry by men, it is a widely accepted custom, even in strictly Muslim countries,” he said. “The wearing of gold rings is even more acceptable when it contains a religious message, such as ‘There is no god except Allah.’”
He noted there is also widespread acceptance of men wearing gold jewelry in non-Arab Islamic societies such as Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Pakistan, where Muslims generally understand that Muslims are subject to strong influences of local non-Arab cultures.
“Therefore, even though technically prohibited, a Muslim man wearing a gold ring is not looked down upon, especially if the jewelry reflects a love of Islam and a connection to Islamic society,” he said. “An even greater level of acceptance is for businessmen who deal with infidels, because such a person would be regarded as a person of influence.”
“Now we have a new context for what Obama meant when he told the Islamic audience in Cairo that he has ‘known Islam on three continents,” Gilbert said. “He also told the Cairo audience that he considered it part of his responsibility as president of the United States ‘to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.’ All religious Muslims are by definition required to defend Islam.”
Gilbert’s most recent documentary films on the Middle East are “Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and The Revolt of Islam” and “Atomic Jihad: Ahmadinejad’s Coming War and Obama’s Politics of Defeat”
Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009
Obama in Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009, close-up
The Occidental ring
The photographs published last week by New Yorker magazine indicate Obama was wearing the ring at Occidental College.
One photo shows Obama sitting alongside Occidental roommate Hasan Chandoo in 1981, apparently waiting for a meal to be served.
Barack Obama and roommate Hasan Chandoo at Occidental College in 1981
Obama’s extended left hand clearly shows the ring, as seen below.
The second of the recently released photos shows Obama reaching for a book from an Occidental College library shelf.
Barack Obama in Occidental College library in 1981
A close-up of the library photo can be seen below.
Detail of Barack Obama ring in Occidental College library in 1981
In the above photo, the ring’s design can be seen, including a series of parallel bars that distinguish its outer circumference.
In the story, Jodi Kantor described its “intricate gold design,” noting it came from Barack Obama’s boyhood home of Indonesia and was not traditional, like Michelle’s.
Kantor wrote:
Just before the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. pronounced Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson man and wife on the evening of Oct. 3, 1992, he held their wedding rings – signifying their new, enduring bonds – before the guests at Trinity United Church of Christ. Michelle’s was traditional, but Barack’s was an intricate gold design from Indonesia, where he had lived as a boy.
There was no mention in the article that Obama already had been wearing the ring for more than a decade.
The photos of the ring from the 1980s can be compared with more recent photos, such as the ones published by the Huffington Post in 2010 in an article by Anya Strzemien, “Obama’s ‘Intricate’ Indonesian Wedding Band: A CLOSE-UP,” seen here.
Obama wedding ring, Huffington Post, March 18, 2010
Obama wedding ring, Huffington Post, March 18, 2010
A federal appeals court has extended a temporary stay of a district court judge’s order barring the government from using an indefinite detention provision in a defense bill passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama late last year.
A three-judge motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit issued the order Tuesday afternoon, indicating they saw flaws with the scope and rationale for U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Forrest’s original order blocking the disputed provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011.
“We conclude that the public interest weighs in favor of granting the government’s motion for a stay,” Appeals Court Judges Denny Chin, Raymond Lohier and Christopher Droney wrote in a three-page order that also expedited the appeal.
The judges continue:
First, in its memorandum of law in support of its motion, the government clarifies unequivocally that, ‘based on their stated activities,’ plaintiffs, ‘journalists and activists[,] . . . are in no danger whatsoever of ever being captured and detained by the U.S. military.’
Second, on its face, the statute does not affect the existing rights of United States citizens or other individuals arrested in the United States. See NDAA § 1021(e) (‘Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.’).
Third, the language of the district court’s injunction appears to go beyond NDAA § 1021 itself and to limit the government’s authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force…
The case will go forward now before what will likely be a different trio of judges, but the stay will likely remain in place pending resolution of the government’s appeal.
The import of the law is disputed. Proponents say it simply reinforced authority a federal appeals court in Washington had already accorded to the U.S. government, at least as far as foreigner are concerned. Critics say the measure exposes journalists and human rights activists who meet with alleged terrorists to the prospect of open-ended detention.
All three judges on the motions panel were appointed to the appeals court by President Barack Obama.
Obama lawyers file a breathless, angry appeal against the court ruling that invalidated the NDAA’s chilling 2011 detention law
Bagram airbase was used by the US to detain its ‘high-value’ targets during the ‘war on terror’ and is still Afghanistan’s main military prison. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP
In May, something extremely rare happened: a federal court applied the US constitution to impose some limits on the powers of the president. That happened when federal district court judge Katherine Forrest of the southern district of New York, an Obama appointee, preliminarily barred enforcement of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the statute enacted by Congress in December 2011 with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President Obama (after he had threatened to veto it).
That 2011 law expressly grants the president the power to indefinitely detain in military custody not only accused terrorists, but also their supporters, all without charges or trial. It does so by empowering the president to indefinitely detain not only al-Qaida members, but also members of so-called “associated forces”, as well as anyone found to “substantially support” such forces – whatever those terms might mean. I wrote about that decision and the background to this case when it was issued.
What made Judge Forrest’s ruling particularly remarkable is that the lawsuit was brought by eight journalists and activists, such as former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, who argued that their work, which involves interactions with accused terrorists, could subject them to indefinite detention under the law’s broad and vague authority, even for US citizens on US soil. The court agreed, noting that the plaintiffs presented “evidence of concrete – non-hypothetical – ways in which the presence of the legislation has already impacted those expressive and associational activities”. The court was particularly disturbed by the Obama DOJ’s adamant refusal to say, in response to being asked multiple times, that the law could not be used to indefinitely detain the plaintiffs due to their journalistic and political activities.
Last week, Judge Forrest made her preliminary ruling permanent, issuing a 112-page decision explaining it. Noting that the plaintiffs “testified credibly to having an actual and reasonable fear that their activities will subject them to indefinite military detention”, she emphasized how dangerous this new law is given the extremely broad discretion it vests in the president to order people detained in military custody with no charges:
The court also brushed aside the Obama DOJ’s prime argument, echoing the theories of John Yoo: namely, that courts have no business “interfering” in the president’s conduct of war. After acknowledging that the president is entitled to deference in the national security realm, Judge Forrest dispensed with the Obama DOJ’s claim with this vital observation: one that should be unnecessary but, in the 9/11 era, is all too commonly ignored:
In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he’s not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.
In response to this ruling, the Obama administration not only filed an immediate appeal, but they filed an emergency motion asking the appeals court to lift the injunction pending the appeal. Obama lawyers wrote a breathless attack on the court’s ruling, denouncing it as “vastly troubling” and claiming that it “threatens tangible and dangerous consequences in the conduct of an active military conflict” and “threatens irreparable harm to national security”.
The Obama DOJ also objected that the decision “was entered against the president as commander-in-chief in his conduct of ongoing military operations, is unprecedented and exceeded the court’s authority”: how irreverent. And they argued that the broad detention power claimed by President Obama “has been endorsed by two presidents [meaning him and George W Bush], by the [rightwing] DC circuit in habeas litigation brought by Guantánamo detainees, and by the Congress in Section 1021(b)(2).”
I’ve written at length before about why indefinite detention is so dangerous, and why a statute such as the NDAA – which purposely (as the court here found) leaves open the question of whether it applies to US citizens – is one of the most pernicious laws enacted in some time. I won’t rehash that here, but I do want to make two points about the Obama administration’s new fight in defense of this law.
First, the Obama administration’s unhinged claim that Judge Forrest’s ruling imperils national security gives the lie to the central excuse for the NDAA: namely, that it does not expand the president’s detention powers beyond what is already vested by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). Judge Forrest’s ruling leaves the 2001 AUMF in place and did not purport to nullify any prior decisions applying it. Therefore, if the NDAA does nothing that the 2001 AUMF did not already do – as Obama defenders relentlessly claimed to justify his signing of this odious bill – then it cannot possibly be the case that Judge Forrest’s ruling harms national security, since Obama already has all the detention power he claims he needs under the 2001 AUMF.
The reality is that the NDAA did indeed wildly expand the president’s detention powers beyond what the 2001 AUMF provided. In contrast to the 2001 AUMF – which empowered the president to act against a relatively narrow category: those “he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on 11 September 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons” – the NDAA empowers him to act against a much broader range of people: not only those who perpetrated 9/11, but also “associated forces”, and not only those who are members of such groups, but those who “substantially support” them.
While the Bush and Obama DOJs have long absurdly interpreted the 2001 AUMF to apply to this broader range, and while some courts have accepted that interpretation, the law itself vested no such power. The NDAA did. That is why civil liberties groups such as the ACLU denounced Obama’s signing of it so vociferously, and it is why the Obama DOJ is so horrified, obviously, by the prospect that it will be invalidated: precisely because it so drastically expands their detention power. Both the court’s ruling and the Obama DOJ’s reaction to that ruling prove that the NDAA does indeed provide the president with significantly enhanced authority of indefinite detention.
Second, to see the sorry and wretched state of liberties in the US under President Obama, let us look to Afghanistan. The US is currently attempting to turn over to the Afghan government control of the lawless prison system the US has long maintained in Bagram and other parts of that country. But that effort is running into a serious problem: namely, the US wants the prisoners to remain there in cages without charges, but the Afghans are insisting that indefinite detention violates their belief in due process. From an Associated Press article Monday headlined “Afghans reject US-favored administrative detention”:
“An Afghan judicial panel ruled Monday that administrative detention violates Afghan law, potentially thwarting a US plan to hand over Afghan detainees that American officials believe should continue to be held without a trial.
“President Hamid Karzai’s office announced in a statement that a top-level judicial panel met earlier in the day and decided that the detention of Afghan citizens without a court trial ‘has not been foreseen in Afghan laws’ and therefore could not be used.
“The US government has long held Afghans captured in operations inside the country without trial, arguing that they are enemy combatants and therefore can be detained for as long as their release might pose a danger to the international coalition …
“A US official confirmed that the transfer of detainees had paused because of the dispute.”
Is that not amazing? On the very same day that the Obama DOJ fights vigorously in US courts for the right to imprison people without charges, the Afghan government fights just as vigorously for basic due process.
Remember: the US, we’re frequently told, is in Afghanistan to bring democracy to the Afghan people and to teach them about freedom. But the Afghan government is refusing the US demand to imprison people without charges on the ground that such lawless detention violates their conceptions of basic freedom. Maybe Afghanistan should invade the US in order to teach Americans about freedom.
This is not the first time this has happened. In 2009, the Obama administration decided that it wanted to target certain Afghan citizens for due process-free assassinations on the ground that the targets to be executed were drug “kingpins”. They were to be killed based solely on US accusations, with no trial, just as the Obama administration does with its own citizens. But again, that plan ran into a roadblock: Afghan leaders were horrified by the notion that their citizens would be extrajudicially executed based on unproven suspicions [my emphasis]:
“A US military hit list of about 50 suspected drug kingpins is drawing fierce opposition from Afghan officials, who say it could undermine their fragile justice system and trigger a backlash against foreign troops.
“The US military and Nato officials have authorized their forces to kill or capture individuals on the list, which was drafted within the past year as part of Nato’s new strategy to combat drug operations that finance the Taliban …
“General Mohammad Daud Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy interior minister for counternarcotics efforts, praised US and British special forces for their help recently in destroying drug labs and stashes of opium. But he said he worried that foreign troops would now act on their own to kill suspected drug lords, based on secret evidence, instead of handing them over for trial.
“‘They should respect our law, our constitution and our legal codes,’ Daud said. ‘We have a commitment to arrest these people on our own’ …
“There is a constitutional problem here. A person is innocent unless proven guilty,” [former Afghan interior minister Ali Ahmad Jalali] said. “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”
In other words, the Obama administration has received far more resistance to its due process-free imprisonments and assassinations from Afghans than it has from its own citizens in the US. If only more Americans, including progressives, were willing to point out the most basic truths in response to these Obama power seizures, such as: “If you go off to kill or capture them, how do you prove that they are really guilty in terms of legal process?”
Instead, many Americans, particularly in the age of Obama, are content to assume that anyone whom the US government accuses of being a terrorist should, for that reason alone, be assumed to be guilty, and as a result, any punishment the president decides to dole out – indefinite imprisonment, summary execution – is warranted and just; no bothersome, obsolete procedures such as “trials” or “indictments” are necessary.
It is that mindset that will ensure that Obama’s vigorous fight to preserve the power of indefinite detention will provoke so little objection: among Americans, that is – though obviously not among Afghans, who seem to have an actual understanding of, and appreciation for, the value of due process.
The Obama administration is battling to restore a controversial provision of a new federal law that it admits could have been used to arrest and detain citizens indefinitely – even if their actions were protected by the First Amendment.
A federal judge this week made permanent an injunction against enforcement of Section 1021 of the most recent National Defense Authorization Act, which was declared unconstitutional.
The Obama administration then took only hours to file an appeal of the order from U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest, and attorneys also asked her to halt enforcement of her order.
In her order, Forrest wrote, “The government put forth the qualified position that plaintiffs’ particular activities, as described at the hearing, if described accurately, if they were independent, and without more, would not subject plaintiffs to military detention under Section 1021.”
But she continued, “The government did not – and does not – generally agree or anywhere argue that activities protected by the First Amendment could not subject an individual to indefinite military detention under Section 1021.”
The case was brought last January by a number of writers and reporters, led by New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The journalists contend the controversial section allows for detention of citizens and residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to anyone engaged in hostilities against the U.S.
The lawsuit alleges the law is vague and could be read to authorize the arrest and detention of people whose speech or associations are protected by the First Amendment. They wonder whether interviewing a member of al-Qaida would be considered “substantial support.”
“Here, the stakes get no higher: indefinite military detention – potential detention during a war on terrorism that is not expected to end in the foreseeable future, if ever. The Constitution requires specificity – and that specificity is absent from Section 1021,” the judge wrote.
“It most definitely tells us something about their intent,” he told WND.
He cited Obama’s signing statement, when the bill was made law, that he would not use the provision allowing detention of American citizens without probable cause in military facilities.
“Just because someone says something doesn’t mean they’re not lying,” he said.
Bloomberg reports the Obama administration also is asking Forrest for a stay of the ruling that found the law violates the First, Fifth and 14th Amendments.
The judge expressed dissatisfaction with what one observer described as the arrogance of the Department of Justice in the case.
Forrest asked the government to define the legal term, noting the importance of how they apply to reporting and other duties.
“The court repeatedly asked the government whether those particular past activities could subject plaintiffs to indefinite military detention; the government refused to answer,” she wrote.
“The Constitution places affirmative limits on the power of the executive to act, and these limits apply in times of peace as well as times of war,” she wrote.
She said the law “impermissibly impinges on guaranteed First Amendment rights and lacks sufficient definitional structure and protection to meet the requirements of due process.”
“This court rejects the government’s suggestion that American citizens can be placed in military detention indefinitely, for acts they could not predict might subject them to detention, and have as their sole remedy a habeas petition adjudicated by a single decision-maker (a judge versus a jury), by a ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard,” she wrote.
“That scenario dispenses with a number of guaranteed rights,” she said.
The Obama administration already has described those who hold a pro-life position or support third-party presidential candidates or the Second Amendment fit the profile of a domestic terrorist.
Obama stated when he put his signature to the legislative plan that his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.”
Virginia already has passed a law that states it would not cooperate with such detentions, and several local jurisdictions have done the same. Arizona, Rhode Island, Maryland, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Washington also have considered similar legislation.
The case was brought on behalf of Christopher Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alex O’Brien, Kai Warg All, Brigitta Jonsottir and the group U.S. Day of Rage. Many of the plaintiffs are authors or reporters who stated that the threat of indefinite detention by the U.S. military already had altered their activities.
Constitutional expert Herb Titus filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the sponsor of the Virginia law, Delegate Bob Marshall and others.
Titus, an attorney with William J. Olson, P.C., told WND the judge’s first decision to grant a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of paragraph 1021 “affirms the constitutional position taken by Delegate Marshall is correct.”
The impact is that “the statute does not have sufficient constitutional guidelines to govern the discretion of the president in making a decision whether to hold someone in indefinite military detention,” Titus said.
The judge had noted that the law doesn’t have a requirement that there be any knowledge that an act is prohibited before a detention. The judge also said the law is vague, and she appeared to be disturbed that the administration lawyers refused to answer her questions.
Titus said the judge’s conclusions underscore “the arrogance of the current regime, in that they will not answer questions that they ought to answer to a judge because they don’t think they have to.”
The brief was filed on behalf of Marshall and other individuals and organizations, including the United States Justice Foundation, Downsize DC Foundation, Institute on the Constitution, Gun Owners of America, Western Center for Journalism, the Tenth Amendment Center and Pastor Chuck Baldwin.
Marshall’s HB1160 passed the Virginia House of Delegates by a vote of 87-7 and the Virginia Senate 36-1. Since the vote was on changes recommended by Gov. Bob McDonnell, it was scheduled to take effect without further vote.
Marshall then wrote leaders in state legislatures around the country suggesting similar votes in their states.
Marshall’s letter noted Virginia was the first state in the nation to refuse cooperation “with federal authorities who, acting under the authority of section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), could arrest and detain American citizens suspected of aiding terrorists without probable cause, without the right to know the charges against them, and without the procedural rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.”
He told lawmakers, “While we would hope that the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives would be vigilant to protect the constitutional rights of American citizens, even when addressing the problem of international terrorism, those efforts in Congress failed at the end of last year, and President Obama signed NDAA into law on December 31, 2011.”
Endorsing Marshall’s plan was the Japanese American Citizens League, which cited the detention of tens of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II on no authorization other than the president’s signature.
The Obama administration continues to argue the law allows for detention without legal due process only those who “substantially supported” terror groups such as al-Qaida or “associated forces.” But the plaintiffs note that the law does not define those terms.
Instead, they point to the law’s provision that such individuals may be detained “without trial until the end of the hostilities.”
Obama attorneys said the new law simply affirms what already was precedent under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was adopted in the dust of the 9/11 terror attacks.
But plaintiffs wrote, “Nowhere does the AUMF convey to the executive the power to detain any person – citizen or otherwise – who ‘substantially supported’ al-Qaida or the Taliban or their associate forces, as section 1021 of the NDAA now provides.”
“No case has ever recognized the government’s contention that the AUMF authorized the detention of noncombatants. … Neither case law nor the actual text of the AUMF supports the government’s contention that such detention power already existed.”
The Plot Thickens: Debt Collector; Obama’s Social Security number reserved for Connecticut applicants also tied to an alias Harrison J Bounel. The debt collector also claims Obama has used two other Social Security numbers in Illinois. This interview covers several issues ranging from O’s SS# to his property tax filings in Chicago to 50+ different addresses tied to Obama and Michelle across the country. The interview aired on TruNews Radio 5/18/2011. – http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2011/05/plot-thickens-debt-collec… –
Veteran Los Angeles coroner forensic technican Michael Cormier had died, apparently due to arsenic poisoning. The 61 year old Cormier was discovered dead on April 20th – the same day the city officials had released their preliminary autopsy report on the death of conservative media powerhouse Andrew Breitbart.
According to early reports, Michael Cormier was “seemingly healthy,” yet “suddenly stricken” with a fatal condition – just like Andrew Breitbart.
It’s the latest twist in the case of Andrew Breitbart’s untimely death that will surely fuel increased speculation into possible foul play – in both cases.
The sluggish release of the Breitbart autopsy follows the unorthodox, rushed announcement by city authorities at the time of Breitbart’s death that he had died of ‘natural causes’ on March 1, 2012 at the age of 43.
The timing of Breitbart’s death came on the eve of a few highly anticipated events. Firstly, he had announced that he would be releasing rare ‘game changing’, rather damning video footage of President Obama allegedly cavorting with communist activists years earlier. Some footage was released in the days after his death, but it is not believed to be material that would change the corse of the 2012 election as Breitbart had indicated beforehand. He was also due to reveal his new Breitbart.com format, and had met only one before his death with Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse team in Phoenix in relation to Obama’s forged PDF birth certificate and forged US Selective Service registration card.
The LA County Coroner’s office announced in their preliminary reportthat Breitbart had died of heart failure, and that a negligible amount of alcohol was found in his system. No prescription or illicit drugs were discovered at any point during the autopsy. The final, definitive medical explaination on Breitbart’s death has yet to be made public.
Coroner Michael Cormier’s mysterious death was first reported by KTLA TV reporter Elizabeth Espinosa explaining how city detectives were investigating a possible ‘arsenic poisoning’ in the case. This report was later picked up and reported in an LA Times Local blog:
“The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that finding the presence of poison does not necessarily mean the death was a homicide, because the substance could have accidentally entered his system.”
“At this point we haven’t ruled out foul play,” said Lt. Alan Hamilton of the Los Angeles Police Department. “It is one of the things being considered. We are waiting for the coroner’s results.”
A toxicology report is expected to be released sometime between May 25th and June 1st.
WND also recounted Breitbart’s early career, by summarizing:
Matt Drudge paid tribute to his colleague and friend with a posting on the Drudge Report: “In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what’s happening. I don’t think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20′s. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today.”
ProPublica rounds up the best investigative reporting on campaign finance.
This week, we’re exposing the world of campaign finance post-Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case that opened the door to super PACs. The stories fall into three categories: donor profiles, pieces on super PACs, and scandals (though as Michael Kinsley said, “The scandal in Washington isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal”).
This roundup focuses on national stories, but you can find more under our Campaign Finance tag on MuckReads. Did we miss any? Email [email protected]
The Donors
CovertOperations,The New Yorker, August 2010
This 2011 National Magazine Award finalist profiles the billionaire Koch brothers, who are using their money to try to promote libertarian ideals. The resulting “ideological network” of foundations, think tanks, and political movements has become so sprawling that in political circles it’s known as the “Kochtopus.”
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Is Gingrich’s Hard Line on Palestine Paid for by Sheldon Adelson?, Daily Beast,January 2012
Sheldon Adelson is the seventh–richestman in the United States, and the largest donor to the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future. As this 2008 New Yorker profile shows, he also opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and wields enormous political influence in Israel. Some wonder if his views affected Gingrich’s “hard-line” stance on Palestine.
TheOperator, New Republic, April 2012
Harold Simmons is the 2012 campaign’s biggest donor. So what does he want from all his political giving?
Contributed by @Jake_Bernstein
TheAttackDog, The New Yorker, February 2012
Larry McCarthy, the media consultant who helps run the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future, is Washington’s go-to guy for negative ads. He rose to prominence for the racially charged Willie Horton ad that helped George H.W. Bush get elected in 1988.
Super PACs
FirmGives $1 MilliontoPro–RomneyGroup, ThenDissolves, MSNBC, August 2011 Need a good example of the secret money fueling the 2012 election? This mystery company donated $1 million to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future—and then promptly dissolved. At the time, it was one of the biggest contributions of the election cycle.
Contributed by @SteveEngelberg
MostIndependentAdsfor 2012 ElectionAreFromGroupsThatDon’tDiscloseDonors, Washington Post, April 2012
You can thank anonymous donors for 90 percent of the total spent on advertising so far in the 2012 presidential election. The funds are funneled through social welfare nonprofits, also known as 501(c)4s, that do not have disclose their donors.
The 2012 MoneyRace: CompareTheCandidates,New York Times
If you want to track super PAC money, we’re going to point you to PACTrack. But when it comes to candidates’ fundraising, the New York Times’ news app is pretty sweet.
BundlersOntheInside, iWatch/ABC News, September 2011
Several of Obama’s top political supporters went to work within the Energy Department as it pumped stimulus money into alternative energy firms. Some supporters were also investors in companies that applied for government loans. (Part of a series on the stimulus-backed, and now bankrupt, Solyndra.)
Contributed by @paulkiel
DoubtsRaisedonDonationstoComptroller, New York Times, October 2011
New York City comptroller John C. Liu was considered a contender to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thanks in part to his robust fundraising machine. But when the New York Times canvassed nearly 100 homes and workplaces of donors listed in Mr. Liu’s campaign finance reports, they found several irregularities, including some that raised questions about whether some donors actually existed. Liu’s campaign is now under federal investigation.
Contributed by @srubenfeld
HouseFreshmenPushBillsthatBenefitBigDonors,USA Today, August 2011
Despite promises to change Washington, several House freshmen began their terms by pushing legislation that benefited some of their biggest donors.
Contributed by @rlocker12
(how politicians are ‘purchased’ by powerful men with an agenda)
The official trailer for ‘The Campaign’ starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as political rivals in a race for Congress in a North Carolina district. Ferrell plays incumbent congressman Cam Brady who makes a major public goof that forces a bunch of wealthy CEOs to put up a rival for his seat in Congress in the form of Galifianakis’ Marty Huggins, the director of the local Tourism Center.
Last month, The New Yorker magazine reported on how POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian told President Obama to his face that “prosecuting whistleblowers would undermine his legacy.”
One of those whistleblowers being targeted is Tom Drake, a National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who is less than a week away from his first day in court. Drake is being prosecuted not for sharing classified information with the media, but instead is being charged with having information—including UNclassified materials—in his possession that he used in cooperation with a Defense Department Inspector General audit of a program that wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and may have put your civil liberties at risk. As Danielle told the President, “Drake was exactly the kind of whistleblower who deserved protection.”
Prosecuting whistleblowers for their cooperation with authorities will have a chilling effect throughout the federal government at a time when we need whistleblowers to identify waste, fraud, abuse, threats to our civil liberties, and other misconduct.
There is not (or there should not be) a national security exemption to accountability in a democratic society—yet going after a whistleblower like Drake is the antithesis of accountability. The White House should tell the Justice Department to exercise prosecutorial discretion and drop its case against Drake.
In addition, the White House should redouble its efforts from last year and prioritize passage of a new whistleblower protection bill that affords whistleblowers, including those in the national security field, better protections. Despite a new policy issued by the Justice Department in 2009, the state secrets privilege continues to be used in excess. The privilege is invoked to shut down lawsuits, including some that seek accountability from the U.S. government in cases that allege unlawful activities ranging from wrongful kidnapping and imprisonment to a massive warrantless wiretapping operation that violated the U.S. Constitution and the law.
If you don’t know much about the Drake case, or want to know more, there is a plethora of resources available:
The Government Accountability Project (GAP) is representing Drake (although not as his criminal defense). Some of GAP’s efforts and other information on Drake can be viewed here.
Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the non-profit Federation of American Scientists, has been diligently chronicling significant filings during the pre-trial phase of the case and presumably will continue to do so if the trial begins. His archive gives the public free access to the court filings. Aftergood has also closely tracked other developments in the Drake case. He recently wrote that there is “a growing consensus that the prosecution of Drake on charges of unauthorized retention of classified information is a mistake, and that the Obama Administration has mishandled the case.”
Whether you are pro-Obama, anti-Obama, or apolitical, it is clear that the framework for handling national security whistleblowers is fundamentally flawed, and is generally hostile to them. The Drake case is a line in the sand.
Nick Schwellenbach is POGO’s Director of Investigations.
ShareThisSEIZE DC! (Unlike the Tea Party, we’re not bringing guns!)
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Citizens for Legitimate Government, http://www.legitgov.org/ (CLG) calls for protest – SEIZE DC!
Why SEIZE DC?
Endless, illegal, murderous and bankrupting war abroad; endless, brutal and bankrupting attacks on the vast majority at home—this is what we protest.
Ten years ago, with the illegitimate installation of Bush as “president,” Citizens for Legitimate Government made it its mission to expose the coup and to oppose the Bush occupation of the White House. We predicted that the installation of Bush was merely the precursor to an era of illegal and undemocratic undertakings on the part of the U.S. government–policies that had begun at home and that would extend across the globe. Unfortunately, we were right. And we were right to say that this era would not and has not ended with Obama. In fact, it continued unabated and gained in intensity.
In 2008, we witnessed a supposed change of guard with the election of Barack Obama. But even before the election took place, we suggested that Obama, rather than being an agent for change, was in fact a cleverly constructed mirage to enable the financial, corporate and military oligarchy to continue on the same course, in fact, to do so with without the degree of opposition that was building to the Bush regime. What we have witnessed is not ‘change you can believe in,’ but, where Obama and most Democrats in Congress are concerned, belief you can change.
From Bush to Obama, we have seen not a change in policies, not a reversal, not even a ‘failing’ to change course, but the exact opposite: a determined continuation, extension and increase of the very same policies.
Rather than an end to imperialist wars, we have witnessed the increase in scope and the extension of war into other countries. Rather than two wars, we now have four.
Rather than policies favouring ‘Main Street’ as promised, we have witnessed the unprecedented transfer of wealth into the coffers of the banks, corporations and military contractors. We have seen record corporate profits while social misery for the working classes continues to rise, with unemployment not seen since the Great Depression and record home foreclosures. We now have austerity imposed on the vast majority while those who caused the financial crisis with wars, bailouts and corruption, pay little or no taxes and enjoy record profits.
Instead of restoring civil liberties, we have seen their further erosion with the extension of the Patriot Act, the increase of surveillance on the web, and a declaration by the president of the right to assassinate American citizens without any legal sanction whatsoever.
Indefinite detentions have not only continued under Obama, but he has also made sure that proven innocence is no cause for release.
This is but a short summary of the reasons for SEIZE DC!
How to SEIZE DC?
We protest “peacefully,” although not passively. We do not accept marching orders. This is how we protest.
For 10 years, we have witnessed the absolute formalization of protests—the seeking of permits, the placing in quarantined zones, the appropriation of ‘free speech’ and the pro forma ‘right to dissent,’ treated as a purely formal and meaningless expression. We say, enough! We need no permission to free speech or the right of assembly. We seek no one’s permission and will not have our protest cordoned off from and made irrelevant to the functioning of a murderous and tyrannical oligarchy. We will not be corralled or controlled. Our protest is a seizure of DC, by which we mean an attempt to seize the attention of the city and the nation so that its policies of seize and destroy may end.
More details on the protest schedule to follow soon. Lori Price, Editor-in-Chief
CLG Under Surveillance — CLG Sunshine Project – Citizens for Legitimate Government (CLG) will post .gov and .mil IPs visiting the Seize DC webpage, and others! The following IP addresses correspond to the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of the President, the Naval Research Laboratory, and dozens of other governmental organizations accessing the CLG pages. This list comprises only a snapshot of the daily, routine surveillance carried on by the U.S. government on the CLG’s pages.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera reported head of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, ranked 701st on Forbes’ yearly report of the wealthiest men alive, and worth an estimated $1 billion, today officially thanked United States politicians for making sure that drugs remain illegal. According to one of his closest confidants, he said, “I couldn’t have gotten so stinking rich without George Bush, George Bush Jr., Ronald Reagan, even El Presidente Obama, none of them have the cajones to stand up to all the big money that wants to keep this stuff illegal. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say, Gracias amigos, I owe my whole empire to you.”
Eric Jon Phelps was again on the Decrypted Matrix show on Revealing Talk Radio, November 12, 2012 at Midnight EST / 9pm PST. During last Monday night’s show it became apparent that Decrypted Matrix host, Max Maverick, was not going to get everything he wanted in the show. After the show, the ratings, site traffic and archive hits of the show made it quite obvious that this coming show would be important.
The court also brushed aside the Obama DOJ’s prime argument, echoing the 
In other words: while the president is entitled to deference in his conduct of war, he’s not entitled to wield the power to order people, including American citizens, indefinitely imprisoned in military detention. Regardless of how he claims he intends to exercise this power, the mere act of vesting it in him so chills the exercise of first amendment and other protected rights that the constitution can have no meaning if courts permit it to stand.
