Category Archives: Tyranny

Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn

First Rebuttal : May 4, 2015

I find it shocking how often I have people tell me the Constitution is out of date and is no longer relevant or necessary.  Then there are the vast majority of people that think about the Constitution the same way they think about religion; it makes us feel good to believe in it and we’ll even worship it on a holiday or two   The reality is that those who seem to get very worked up to the point that they are willing to act in defense of the Constitution even against the highest levels of government make up a very small minority of Americans.  This is a real problem.

You see if people gave a damn the government couldn’t get away with negating the Constitution.  But the vast majority of people just don’t give a damn and so the government very easily provides ridiculous and false legal sounding arguments to explain away why they have become a higher law than the Constitution. Now I’ve tried to understand why it is that we Americans are so damn apathetic about everything the government and government officials do.

Let me give a couple examples for which our apathy just boggles my mind.   We know they took us into wars on false pretenses resulting in the wrongful deaths of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and yet we’ve prosecuted no one.  Hell they’ve admitted to hacking into millions of our home webcams and downloading videos and pictures of us in our most private moments and maintaining those downloads on government servers and then sharing these files with foreign governments.

But because today’s American is simply a shell of a citizen none of the criminal atrocities creates even a stir from us.  Sure we all read about these atrocities and we are angered in the moment but it passes rather quickly and we fall back into our self induced ignorant bliss.  Only two things can get Americans to formidably rise up.  The first is a very direct and immediate impediment to our comfort.  For example try cutting back on the monthly social welfare checks.  You’ll have riots.   The second way is if the mainstream media relentlessly instructs us to be upset about a particular issue.  Outside of that there is absolutely nothing the new American won’t move past like water off a duck’s back.

What we’re finding out is that, and it sounds slightly over-dramatic but isn’t at all, unless we are willing to fight and die to win back the freedom our forefather’s fought and died to secure for us and all future generations we will continue to feel our chains grow heavier and shorter.  The simple reason is because our government is very much willing to kill to keep its ever encroaching control.  A free population is the antithesis to a political class.  And make no mistake the American federal government is the largest and most powerful group of aristocrats the world has known.

This group of traitors (and I mean that in the very technical sense of the word) not only behave according to a separate set of laws they have actually gone so far as to legislate a separate set of laws.  This in itself is a direct breach of the very Constitution they swear to defend.  Their intent is clear and that my friends is treason.  They are directly negating the very basis of the American concept for their own personal self interest and they are doing so by defrauding American citizens into believing their intent is to represent the will of their constituents.  Treason, Treason, Treason!  What else would you call it?

Now are you ready to fight and die to win the freedoms back for your children and grandchildren?  Hell No!  No, not at all!  And that’s kinda the problem because again the government is willing to kill to ensure your kids and grandkids don’t have the freedoms Americans were guaranteed.  The fuck of it is Americans have become so damn brainwashed that despite the founding fathers telling us explicitly our government would end up enslaving the rest of us to solidify their own power and wealth we ignore it. These were the guys that figured out the British were effectively enslaving us and decided to rise against it and create the greatest damn nation the world has ever known.  They literally created fucking America!!!  I mean holy shit, imagine having that on your CV.  And we pay them no mind, like they’re bat shit crazy and not relevant in our intellectual new world.

Today’s legislators rarely discuss the founding fathers or the Constitution beyond the very thin idea that they know we expect them to defend it.  That is, like freedom and apple pie, they love it during the campaign cycle.  However, ask them why then they continue to legislate against the Constitution and well they don’t want to talk about the Constitution anymore.  And we the people ,like apathetic morons , buy into the bullshit they feed us because we simply don’t care.  It’s to the point they can pretty much do anything knowing they can bullshit us with any damn nonsense that pops into their swollen heads.  And so they do things like hack into our webcams, take nude pictures of us and send them to foreign governments and tell us it’s for our own good.  We don’t give a shit because 1. it doesn’t impede our immediate comfort and 2. the press isn’t telling us it’s something to be concerned about.

The danger of being apathetic until it impacts our immediate day to day is that we allow the government to take away all the freedoms we are not currently using.  What I mean by that is we so far have not had to face what it means to be powerless and in chains.  But only because we haven’t yet ventured out far enough so as to reach the end of our chains.  Like a sleeping dog that isn’t aware he’s been shackled until he wakes and tries to chase a bird, we are asleep and unaware of the shackles placed around our ankles.

Some will say “wait, it isn’t apathy it is a trade off between safety and freedom”.  But the truth is freedom and safety are not conflictual we’ve only been led to believe so.  Fear has replaced freedom here in America and that is not by chance but by strategy of a government that has its own agenda, separate from its oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.  So while we should have prosecuted these recent governments for treason we’ve instead rewarded them the rights of dictatorship.

The Constitution is our freedom keeper but once the Constitution is made subordinate the precedent is set and in our legal system precedence is king.  The strength in the Constitution is just that, it’s strength.  Once we allow an exception to the Constitution’s superseding authority it no longer has any authority.  Unfortunately that exception has already been made.  With it, the destruction of the Constitution and the end to a guaranty of freedom.  Our corrupt government has created ‘legislation’ providing them a legal basis to imprison us without due process.  This is a fact.

This desecrates one of the most important axioms of America, in fact, due process is the very idea we are sold to spend $1 trillion per year fighting multiple simultaneous major theatre wars.  Yet here at home it no longer exists.  But remember our loss of due process is for our own good.  Giving a federal legislator or policy maker absolute discretion over our fate is in our best interest.  You and I have agreed with these propositions.  And you and I will have to adhere to being placed in prison for life if that is the will of our president or any delegate who will benefit by accusing us of being a national security threat.

Just by the fact the threat exists fulfills its objective.  People will not want to bring attention to themselves and thus will avoid protesting the wants of those who now have the authority to impede their freedom.  That in itself impede’s their freedom.  This is the one thing I really wish people could see.  What seem like issues too narrow or small to get worked up over are just marks of the snake bite.  Two very small holes in the skin but those holes are the gateway for the real killing agent to spread and overtake the whole system.

In March alone our beefed up and militarized public service workers killed more than 180 citizens they were meant to serve and protect on American soil.  That makes them an infinitely higher risk to our safety than the foreign terrorists to whom we’ve handed our Constitution.  That’s exactly what we’ve done.  If you listen to the terrorists’ videos that was their goal.  They wanted to end the freedom and free will that America seems to be jamming down the throats of societies around the world.  And so they won the moment Americans accepted to trade away its freedoms for safety.  That was their goal and they have achieved it.

Let’s look at Edward Snowden’s situation to see how one loses one’s freedom.  Snowden is a man that knowingly sacrificed his own freedom to expose the corruption and criminality of our policy makers and their respective agencies.  He is also a citizen that has been deemed a threat to national security.  Why would a man who exposed the criminal enslavement of Americans and citizens around the world be deemed a terrorist rather than a hero??  Because he is a threat to the power and control and really the entire system of those who can now legally classify him as a threat, removing his right to due process.

In effect, these political criminals can now legally lock away any prosecutor at will.   This is a gross conflict of interest and the hero that exposed this conflict of interest is now a victim of it.  Edward Snowden not only informed America, he recognized that he would be the first example so that Americans would see, first hand, the sort of corruption that has infected our system.  I can only infer he made himself known because he believed seeing it actually happen would get Americans to rise up and correct the moral transgression.  And what did we the people do in response to Snowden’s incredibly brave and patriotic action?  Absolutely nothing!!!  We force this hero to live in exile.  We don’t even demand the corruption to stop.  We do nothing.  How very American of us.  And why do we do nothing?  Because it doesn’t impede our immediate comfort and the media hasn’t told us we need to be concerned about the issue.

The lives of Americans have become so easy and so secure that we no longer recognize living in a utopia of freedom comes not with costs but with obligations.  We seem to believe that paying taxes indemnifies us of our real obligations as citizens who have been handed a beautiful gift and who are responsible for passing on that precious gift to future generations of Americans.   And that is a mistake that will have historians writing of us as we write of Eve in the garden of Eden.  Our lack of principles resulting in the suffering of all future generations having destroyed a gift we obviously didn’t deserve.

source: first rebuttal
emphasis: zero hedge

Armed U.S. Guards Will Soon Be Stationed In Canada

Eva Shield
Press For Truth: April 22, 2015

Armed U.S. border guards will soon be posted in Toronto’s Union Station and other places in the country. They also might not be held accountable in a Canadian court for their actions, if they ever were to cross the line. A pre-clearance agreement was signed last month by the Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. Armed U.S. guards will now be posted to any port, ferry terminal, rail station, or land crossing, in an effort to clear goods and passengers through immigration and customs before they cross the border. The agreement hasn’t yet been made public and the details are scarce. It is alleged that U.S. guards will not be able to make arrests, but they will have powers to detain people and call local police to the scene. The U.S. guards will be able to carry a sidearm in land, rail, and marine preclearance operations, but again they will not be able to do so with air travel passengers. 

 

Currently, U.S. customs and Border Protection (CBP) preclear passengers already at eight different Canadian airports. Police are the only ones allowed to have guns within the airport areas, so the U.S. guards in the airport will supposedly not be armed as such in those places. “If U.S. government agents who are on duty on Canadian soil are only going to be liable to be prosecuted in the United States for potential criminal acts in Canada, what does that mean for access to justice for people affected by those actions? Asks executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Josh Paterson. 

 

This deal is assumed to be part of a much larger plan, to more thoroughly integrate the services between Canada, United States, and Mexico. Dubbed the “North American Union,” we can see that the authorities are certainly moving slowly in this direction. The move allows for officers to cross-over the invisible border line in order to conduct their investigations and perform their occupational duties, but it also raises concerns regarding accountability for the officers.  Why should American officers operating on Canadian soil be exempt from our laws? How are we supposed to feel safe if this be the case? Why are we not being afforded jurisdiction under our laws for an incident that might occur on our own sovereign territory? 

(read the full article at Press For Truth)

Security-bill snooping goes too far, federal watchdogs warn

Ian MacLeod
Ottawa Citizen: April 23, 2015

The federal government’s proposed security bill contains serious and contradictory flaws that will allow more than 100 government entities to exchange Canadians’ confidential information – yet no provision for similar information-sharing between the agencies that track the lawfulness of federal spies and police, parliamentarians were told Thursday.

Four of Canada’s top government watchdogs – who monitor privacy, the country’s two spy agencies and the RCMP – testified on Bill C-51 before the Senate national security committee.

Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien levelled the harshest blows. Canadians risk being caught in a web of unbridled government snooping into their personal lives if the draft security legislation becomes law, he warned.

“The bill would potentially lead to disproportionately large amounts of personal information of ordinary, law-abiding citizens being collected and shared. This sets up the prospect of profiling and Big Data analytics on all Canadians. In short, the means chosen are excessive to achieve the end,” Therrien said.

A crucial concern is C-51’s proposed Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. It would allow more than 100 federal departments, agencies and other entities to share information about Canadians with 17 departments and agencies that have national security responsibilities. The information would only have to be “relevant” to a potential or suspected national security threat. The 17 agencies also could share and collate information among themselves.

Therrien fears this could lead the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), RCMP, Department of Finance and others to share potentially all information they may hold on Canadians and businesses.

“The minister of public safety has indicated there are several privacy protections envisaged by Bill C-51. While I agree there are some, I believe they fall quite short of what a balanced approach would require,” he said.

(read the full article at Ottawa Citizen)

‘Patriot Act’ not an effective counterterrorism tool; is being used for mass domestic surveillance

US unveils 6-year-old report on NSA surveillance

Nedra Pickler
AP: April 25, 2015

With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans’ calls and emails.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it.

President George W. Bush authorized the “President’s Surveillance Program” in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers “had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.”

Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies.

The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the “to and from” records of most domestic landline calls.

(read the full article at AP)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

Ellen Brown
Huffington Post: April 24, 2015

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” — Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution

A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers. Continue reading The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

‘SCANDALOUS’: Baltimore Police Spying On Cellphones And Hiding It

Casey Harper
Daily Caller: April 20, 2015

A detective’s court testimony Monday revealed that Baltimore law enforcement is spying on residents at an incredible rate without a warrant — and doing their best to hide it.

Detective Michael Dressel testified that Baltimore law enforcement have used “sting rays”–devices that track personal cell phone data and location–more than 4,300 times with court orders and an undocumented number of times without them, The Baltimore Sun reports.

“This is scandalous,” Tim Lynch, the Cato Institute’s Director for the Project on Criminal Justice, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Police agencies have misled the public about how the stingray devices have been used and how often. We need to find out what has been happening in other cities around the country. FBI officials and police chiefs need to come clean about this.”

The testimony came in a murder case where law enforcement used sting rays to find a phone involved in the alleged murder. Sting rays are devices used by authorities that act like cell phone towers, intercepting cell phone signals that would normally go to cellular towers. This allows authorities to track where you are, usually without a warrant and often even without a court order. Some sting rays can even detect information about your texts, calls and emails.

Local police departments obtain these devices from federal agencies but only on the condition that they keep the entire project entirely hidden from the public. In fact, police often drop charges or offer plea bargains in cases related to sting rays when pressured by defense lawyers or judges to reveal how they work.

In one Florida case, prosecutors who had what seemed an open and shut robbery case offered the defendant a plea bargain when pressured on police’s use of sting rays.

They would rather drop the charge than expose the practice. Because of this, how the devices work and how often they are used is one of law enforcement’s best kept secrets.

(read the full article at Daily Caller)

Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Head of the FBI’s Anthrax Investigation Says the Whole Thing Was a Sham

Washington’s Blog: April 17, 2015

Agent In Charge of Amerithrax Investigation Blows the Whistle

The FBI head agent in charge of the anthrax investigation – Richard Lambert – has just filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit calling the entire FBI investigation bullshit:

In the fall of 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, a series of anthrax mailings occurred which killed five Americans and sickened 17 others. Four anthrax-laden envelopes were recovered which were addressed to two news media outlets in New York City (the New York Post and Tom Brokaw at NBC) and two senators in Washington D.C. (Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle). The anthrax letters addressed to New York were mailed on September 18, 2001, just seven days after the 9/11 attacks. The letters addressed to the senators were mailed 21 days later on October 9, 2001. A fifth mailing of anthrax is believed to have been directed to American Media, Inc. (AMI) in Boca Raton, Florida based upon the death of one AMI employee from anthrax poisoning and heavy spore contamination in the building.

Executive management at FBI Headquarters assigned responsibility for the anthrax investigation (code named “AMERITHRAX”) to the Washington Field Office (WFO), dubbing it the single most important case in the FBI at that time. In October 2002, in the wake of surging media criticism, White House impatience with a seeming lack of investigative progress by WFO, and a concerned Congress that was considering revoking the FBI’s charter to investigate terrorism cases, Defendant FBI Director Mueller reassigned Plaintiff from the FBI’s San Diego Field Office to the Inspection Division at FBI Headquarters and placed Plaintiff in charge of the AMERITHRAX case as an “Inspector.” While leading the investigation for the next four years, Plaintiff’s efforts to advance the case met with intransigence from WFO’s executive management, apathy and error from the FBI Laboratory, politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters, and yet another preceding and equally erroneous legal opinion from Defendant Kelley – all of which greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation.

On July 6, 2006, Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303. Reports of mismanagement conveyed in writing and orally included: (a) WFO’s persistent understaffing of the AMERITHRAX investigation; (b) the threat of WFO’s Agent in charge to retaliate if Plaintiff disclosed the understaffing to FBI Headquarters; (c) WFO’s insistence on staffing the AMERITHRAX investigation principally with new Agents recently graduated from the FBI Academy resulting in an average investigative tenure of 18 months with 12 of 20 Agents assigned to the case having no prior investigative experience at all; (d) WFO’s eviction of the AMERITHRAX Task Force from the WFO building in downtown Washington and its relegation to Tysons Corner, Virginia to free up space for Attorney General Ashcroft’s new pornography squads; (e) FBI Director’s Mueller’s mandate to Plaintiff to “compartmentalize” the AMERITHRAX investigation by stove piping the flow of case information and walling off task force members from those aspects of the case not specifically assigned to them – a move intended to stem the tide of anonymous media leaks by government officials regarding details of the investigation. [Lambert complained about compartmentalizing and stovepiping of the investigation in a 2006 declaration.  See this, this and this]

This sequestration edict decimated morale and proved unnecessary in light of subsequent civil litigation which established that the media leaks were attributable to the United States Attorney for the District of the District of Columbia and to a Supervisory Special Agent in the FBI’s National Press Office, not to investigators on the AMERITHRAX Task Force; (f) WFO’s diversion and transfer of two Ph.D. Microbiologist Special Agents from their key roles in the investigation to fill billets for an 18 month Arabic language training program in Israel; (g) the FBI Laboratory’s deliberate concealment from the Task Force of its discovery of human DNA on the anthrax-laden envelope addressed to Senator Leahy and the Lab’s initial refusal to perform comparison testing; (h) the FBI Laboratory’s refusal to provide timely and adequate scientific analyses and forensic examinations in support of the investigation; (i) Defendant Kelley’s erroneous and subsequently quashed legal opinion that regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) precluded the Task Force’s collection of evidence in overseas venues; (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions. Plaintiff further objected to the FBI’s ordering of Plaintiff not to speak with the staff of the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes or investigative journalist David Willman, after both requested authorization to interview Plaintiff.

In April 2008, some of Plaintiff’s foregoing whistleblower reports were profiled on the CBS television show 60 Minutes. This 60 Minutes segment was critical of FBI executive management’s handling of the AMERITHRAX investigation, resulting in the agency’s embarrassment and the introduction of legislative bills calling for the establishment of congressional inquiries and special commissions to examine these issues – a level of scrutiny the FBI’s Ivins attribution could not withstand.

After leaving the AMERITHRAX investigation in 2006, Plaintiff continued to publicly opine that the quantum of circumstantial evidence against Bruce Ivins was not adequate to satisfy the proof-beyond-a-reasonable doubt threshold required to secure a criminal conviction in federal court. Plaintiff continued to advocate that while Bruce Ivins may have been the anthrax mailer, there is a wealth of exculpatory evidence to the contrary which the FBI continues to conceal from Congress and the American people.

Exonerating Evidence for Ivins

Agent Lambert won’t publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence against Ivins. As the New York Times reports:

[Lambert] declined to be specific, saying that most of the information was protected by the Privacy Act and was unlikely to become public unless Congress carried out its own inquiry.

But there is already plenty of exculpatory evidence in the public record.

For example:

  • Handwriting analysis failed to link the anthrax letters to known writing samples from Ivins
  • No textile fibers were found in Ivins’ office, residence or vehicles matching fibers found on the scotch tape used to seal the envelopes
  • No pens were found matching the ink used to address the envelopes
  • Samples of his hair failed to match hair follicles found inside the Princeton, N.J., mailbox used to mail the letters
  • No souvenirs of the crime, such as newspaper clippings, were found in his possession as commonly seen in serial murder cases
  • The FBI could not place Ivins at the crime scene with evidence, such as gas station or other receipts, at the time the letters were mailed in September and October 2001
  • Lab records show the number of late nights Ivins put in at the lab first spiked in August 2001, weeks before the 9/11 attacks

As noted above, the FBI didn’t want to test the DNA sample found on the anthrax letter to Senator Leahy.  In addition, McClatchy points out:

After locking in on Ivins in 2007, the bureau stopped searching for a match to a unique genetic bacterial strain scientists had found in the anthrax that was mailed to the Post and to NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, although a senior bureau official had characterized it as the hottest clue to date.

Anthrax vaccine expert Meryl Nass. M.D., notes:

The FBI’s alleged motive is bogus. In 2001, Bioport’s anthrax vaccine could not be (legally) relicensed due to potency failures, and its impending demise provided room for Ivins’ newer anthrax vaccines to fill the gap. Ivins had nothing to do with developing Bioport’s vaccine, although in addition to his duties working on newer vaccines, he was charged with assisting Bioport to get through licensure.

***

The FBI report claims the anthrax letters envelopes were sold in Frederick, Md. Later it admits that millions of indistinguishable envelopes were made, with sales in Maryland and Virginia.

***

FBI emphasizes Ivins’ access to a photocopy machine, but fails to mention it was not the machine from which the notes that accompanied the spores were printed.

FBI Fudged the Science

16 government labs had access to the same strain of anthrax as used in the anthrax letters.

The FBI admitted that up to 400 people had access to flask of anthrax in Dr. Ivins’ lab.  In other words, even if the killer anthrax came from there, 399 other people might have done it.

Moreover, even the FBI’s claim that the killer anthrax came from Ivins’ flask has completely fallen apart. Specifically, both the National Academy of Science and the Government Accountability Office – both extremely prestigious, nonpartisan agencies – found that FBI’s methodology and procedures for purportedly linking the anthrax flask maintained by Dr. Ivins with the anthrax letters was sloppy, inconclusive and full of holes.  They found that the alleged link wasn’t very strong … and that there was no firm link.  Indeed, the National Academy of Sciences found that the anthrax mailed to Congressmen and the media could have come from a different source altogether than the flask maintained by Ivins.

Additionally, the Ft. Detrick facility – where Ivins worked – only handled liquid anthrax.  But the killer anthrax was a hard-to-make dry powder form of anthrax.  Ft. Detrick doesn’t produce dry anthrax; but other government labs – for example Dugway (in Utah) and Batelle (in Ohio) – do.

The anthrax in the letters was also incredibly finely ground; and the FBI’s explanation for how the anthrax became so finely ground doesn’t even pass the smell test.

Further, the killer anthrax in the letters had a very high-tech  anti-static coating so that the anthrax sample “floated off the glass slide and was lost” when scientists tried to examine it.  Specifically, the killer anthrax was coated with polyglass and each anthrax spore given an electrostatic charge, so that it would repel other spores and “float”.   This was very advanced bio-weapons technology to which even Ivins’ bosses said he didn’t have access.

Top anthrax experts like Richard Spertzel say that Ivins didn’t do it. Spertzel also says that only 4 or 5 people in the entire country knew how to make anthrax of the “quality” used in the letters, that Spertzel was one of them, and it would have taken him a year with a full lab and a staff of helpers to do it. As such, the FBI’s claim that Ivins did it alone working a few nights is ludicrous.

Moreover, the killer anthrax contained silicon … but the anthrax in Ivins’ flask did not.  The FBI claimed the silicon present in the anthrax letters was absorbed from its surroundings … but Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories completely debunked that theory. In other words, silicon was intentionally added to the killer anthrax to make it more potent.  Ivins and Ft. Detrick didn’t have that capability … but other government labs did.

Similarly, Sandia National Lab found the presence of iron and tin in the killer anthrax … but NOT in Ivins’ flask of anthrax.

Sandia also found that there was a strain of bacteria in one of the anthrax letters not present in Ivins’ flask. (The bacteria, iron, tin and silicon were all additives which made the anthrax in the letters more deadly.)

The Anthrax Frame Up

Ivins wasn’t the first person framed for the anthrax attacks …

Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

People don’t remember now, but the “war on terror” and Iraq war were largely based on the claim that Saddam and Muslim extremists were behind the anthrax attacks (and see this and this)

And the anthrax letters pushed a terrified Congress into approving the Patriot Act without even reading it. Coincidentally, the only Congressmen who received anthrax letters were the ones who were likely to oppose the Patriot Act.

And – between the bogus Al Qaeda/Iraq claims and the FBI’s fingering of Ivins as the killer – the FBI was convinced that another U.S. government scientist, Steven Hatfill, did it.  The government had to pay Hatfill $4.6 million to settle his lawsuit for being falsely accused.

Ivins’ Convenient Death

It is convenient for the FBI that Ivins died.

The Wall Street Journal points out:

No autopsy was performed [on Ivins], and there was no suicide note.

(read the full article at Washington’s Blog)

FBI admits it fudged forensic hair matches in nearly all criminal trials for decades

Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post: April 19, 2015

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favoured prosecutors in more than 95 per cent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

The FBI errors alone do not mean there was not other evidence of a convict’s guilt. Defendants and federal and state prosecutors in 46 states and the District of Columbia are being notified to determine whether there are grounds for appeals. Four defendants were previously exonerated.

The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the U.S. courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said. The question now, they said, is how state authorities and the courts will respond to findings that confirm long-suspected problems with subjective, pattern-based forensic techniques — like hair and bite-mark comparisons — that have contributed to wrongful convictions in more than one-quarter of 329 DNA-exoneration cases since 1989.

In a statement, the FBI and Justice Department vowed to continue to devote resources to address all cases and said they “are committed to ensuring that affected defendants are notified of past errors and that justice is done in every instance. The Department and the FBI are also committed to ensuring the accuracy of future hair analysis, as well as the application of all disciplines of forensic science.”

Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, commended the FBI and department for the collaboration but said, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”

“We need an exhaustive investigation that looks at how the FBI, state governments that relied on examiners trained by the FBI and the courts allowed this to happen and why it wasn’t stopped much sooner,” Neufeld said.

Norman Reimer, the NACDL’s executive director, said, “Hopefully, this project establishes a precedent so that in future situations it will not take years to remediate the injustice.”

While unnamed federal officials previously acknowledged widespread problems, the FBI until now has withheld comment because findings might not be representative.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a former prosecutor, called on the FBI and Justice Department to notify defendants in all 2,500 targeted cases involving an FBI hair match about the problem even if their case has not been completed, and to redouble efforts in the three-year-old review to retrieve information on each case.

“These findings are appalling and chilling in their indictment of our criminal justice system, not only for potentially innocent defendants who have been wrongly imprisoned and even executed, but for prosecutors who have relied on fabricated and false evidence despite their intentions to faithfully enforce the law,” Blumenthal said.

(read the full article at National Post)

Undercover Mounties pushed pressure-cooker bomb plan on accused terror couple, court hears

Ian Mulgrew
Postmedia News: April 9, 2015

The Surrey couple accused of plotting to bomb the B.C. Legislature was taken on a three-day holiday in the Okanagan by the RCMP so they could relax while working on their terrorist plan.

But surveillance recordings of the impoverished addicts relishing the police-provided corner hotel suite and personal bathrobes don’t buttress the prosecution case against the pair. They broadsided it.

Organized after RCMP undercover officers had spent more than four months in a futile attempt to have John Nuttall articulate a real plan, the police used the Kelowna getaway to persuade him to abandon a harebrained scheme involving rockets armed with explosives made from cow manure and use pressure-cooker bombs filled with C-4.

“The reason I like the pressure-cooker idea is because we know it works, and it’s doable,” said an undercover officer acting as an Islamic extremist in the sophisticated police sting.

Later during the meeting, the officer, who like his colleagues cannot be named or identified by court order, enthusiastically reiterated the message: “I like that idea (using pressure-cooker bombs) … if you had a bunch of those and you decided you actually wanted to use that … if you wanted to put C-4 in that, like holy shit, how much damage would that (cause)…”

If Nuttall didn’t get the message, it was repeated a third time by the cop: “I like the pressure cooker thing a lot. I think it is feasible. It’s exciting. You know you can do it.”

It was a banner day for the defence, which has called on the jury to scrutinize police conduct.

Nuttall, 40, and Amanda Korody, 31, have pleaded not guilty to four charges in connection to the supposed plan to detonate explosive devices in Victoria during July 1, 2013 Canada Day celebrations.

But their B.C. Supreme Court trial has heard that by mid-June Nuttall, who was on methadone, didn’t know what day of the week it was and often confused the federal and provincial governments, Parliament and the Legislature, Ottawa and Victoria.

His lawyer Marilyn Sandford suggested the holiday was organized because the Mounties were concerned their 240-officer investigation was off the rails because Nuttall was unbalanced and unfocused.

Much of what he said was culled from Rambo movies, conspiracy plots and extremist Islamic literature.

He was wearing mirrored-rock-star sunglasses and eye-makeup, known as kohl, as the RCMP officer pretending to be an extremist Arab businessman drove them to Kelowna on June 16.

Nuttall intended to launch rockets at the “Parliament Buildings” and if he had any left over he would launch them at Seattle — which he believed was 32 km from Vancouver rather its true distance, 230 km.

“It’s going to take a lot of planning … a year to plan this and build this,” he said.

“A year, holy, that’s…” the corporal said, staggered.

“Starting today, oh yeah,” Nuttall continued. “By this time next year I want to be doing this … maybe sooner, the sooner the better.”

“I thought you wanted to make the pressure cookers?” the officer asked.

“I did, but as a distraction,” Nuttall replied.

Nuttall had told the undercover officer earlier he wanted to arm the rockets with homemade explosive made in part from cow manure.

But on the way to the Okanagan, the officer told him: “Don’t worry about explosives. Know what we are going to use? We are going to use C-4.”

“C-4 for the test?”

“For the pressure cooker,” the officer said.

(read the full article at National Post)

RELATED:
Did FBI “Set Up” Capitol Bombing Suspect? They’ve Done It 49 Times Since 9/11!

—-
Alternative Free Press -fair use-

Quebec students are fighting for you

Jon Parsons
theindependent.ca : March 27, 2015

It seems like only yesterday the 2012 Quebec student movement rocked the streets of Montreal, and now they’re at it again.

The basis for the current strike is the same as its predecessor: opposition to austerity and neoliberalism. Over the last few years student groups in Quebec have consistently organized massive demonstrations in an impressive show of strength and commitment, and so it seems correct to understand the present student strike more as an intensification of a protracted struggle.

At the same time, there has been a proliferation of militant student protest throughout the global West. Occupations and demonstrations are continuing on a number of campuses, such as the London School of Economics, and University of Amsterdam, and University of Arts London, and University of Melbourne, to name a few. The grievances are strikingly similar to those expressed in Quebec – austerity, tuition fees, neoliberalism.

Outside the global West, significant and ongoing student movements are taking a stand in Honduras, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Myanmar, to name a few.

There has arguably not been such widespread student unrest since the famous student-led protests of 1968, and, at least in the West, Quebec students have been on the frontlines of the fight, enduring police brutality, subversion, and constant obfuscation in the mainstream press.

The student fight is your fight, too

The province of Newfoundland and Labrador has until recently weathered the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis, but with a significant deficit and growing debt, the provincial government has indicated that austerity measures will come into force in short order. Many things are “on the table,” including increased tuition at Memorial University, among other measures common to austerity economics.

At the same time, recent studies have shown that Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the least politically engaged provinces in Canada, in terms of both formal and informal politics. NL has one of the lowest overall voter turnouts (around 53 per cent) as well as the lowest youth voter turnout of any province (around 29 per cent).

The reasons for this are many and varied, and it is not my intention to assign blame. Nonetheless, there is an overwhelming sense of complacency, perhaps apathy, with regard to politics in the province, and especially so for youth.

In light of this, it is nothing of an exaggeration to say that Quebec students are fighting for us all, as they are the only significant force in the country opposing austerity and neoliberalism, and the only ones who seem to understand the importance of popular protest. Quebec students are showing us all how it’s done, both in terms of tenacity and in terms of organization, as Ethan Cox explains in Ricochet.

(read the full article at theindependent.ca)

Alternative Free Press -fair use-