- The Sociopaths Win Again
- Feds Now Admit to Storing Scanned Nude Body Images
- New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania
- Obama Executive Order Makes States Coastal Jurisdictions Subject to U.N. Treaty
- The Mandatory ‘Service’ Bill and the Coming Mass Murder in Iran
- After Afghan War Leaks, Revisions in a Shield Bill
- Obama Drops His Latest Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq
- Project Vigilant Is a Fraud
|
Posted: 04 Aug 2010 03:55 PM PDT From The Mises Institute — And now for our “Narcissistic State Announcement of the Week“:
So if I understand this correctly, two men who have devoted their lives to aggressing against innocent people will stand before a (worshipful) Washington press corps and explain why a company that has produced useful and innovative products for over forty years has “harmed consumers.” Moreover, the aggressors will explain how their violent behavior will produce superior products versus the peaceful coordination of the marketplace. And to top it off, the aggressors will explain why they and they alone possess a superior understanding of the marketplace—not Intel or its customers—that eliminates the need for any outside check on their violent behavior. Please tell me if I am missing something here.
Related posts: |
|
Feds Now Admit to Storing Scanned Nude Body Images Posted: 04 Aug 2010 11:40 AM PDT From cnet News — For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.” Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse. This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports. Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual strip search. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing fuzzier images, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers. This privacy debate, which has been simmering since the days of the Bush administration, came to a boil two weeks ago when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that scanners would soon appear at virtually every major airport. The updated list includes airports in New York City, Dallas, Washington, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Philadelphia. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, has filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to grant an immediate injunction pulling the plug on TSA’s body scanning program. In a separate lawsuit, EPIC obtained a letter (PDF) from the Marshals Service, part of the Justice Department, and released it on Tuesday afternoon. These “devices are designed and deployed in a way that allows the images to be routinely stored and recorded, which is exactly what the Marshals Service is doing,” EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg told CNET. “We think it’s significant.” William Bordley, an associate general counsel with the Marshals Service, acknowledged in the letter that “approximately 35,314 images…have been stored on the Brijot Gen2 machine” used in the Orlando, Fla. federal courthouse. In addition, Bordley wrote, a Millivision machine was tested in the Washington, D.C. federal courthouse but it was sent back to the manufacturer, which now apparently possesses the image database. The Gen 2 machine, manufactured by Brijot of Lake Mary, Fla., uses a millimeter wave radiometer and accompanying video camera to store up to 40,000 images and records. Brijot boasts that it can even be operated remotely: “The Gen 2 detection engine capability eliminates the need for constant user observation and local operation for effective monitoring. Using our APIs, instantly connect to your units from a remote location via the Brijot Client interface.” This trickle of disclosures about the true capabilities of body scanners–and how they’re being used in practice–is probably what alarms privacy advocates more than anything else.
A 70-page document (PDF) showing the TSA’s procurement specifications, classified as “sensitive security information,” says that in some modes the scanner must “allow exporting of image data in real time” and provide a mechanism for “high-speed transfer of image data” over the network. (It also says that image filters will “protect the identity, modesty, and privacy of the passenger.”) “TSA is not being straightforward with the public about the capabilities of these devices,” Rotenberg said. “This is the Department of Homeland Security subjecting every U.S. traveler to an intrusive search that can be recorded without any suspicion–I think it’s outrageous.” EPIC’s lawsuit says that the TSA should have announced formal regulations, and argues that the body scanners violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable” searches. For its part, the TSA says that body scanning is perfectly constitutional: “The program is designed to respect individual sensibilities regarding privacy, modesty and personal autonomy to the maximum extent possible, while still performing its crucial function of protecting all members of the public from potentially catastrophic events.”
Related posts:
|
|
New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania Posted: 04 Aug 2010 08:18 AM PDT From truthout — On Friday, the Polish Border Guard Office released a number of documents to the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which, for the first time, provide details of the number of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland between December 5, 2002, and September 22, 2003, and, in one case, the number of prisoners who were subsequently transferred to a secret CIA prison in Romania. The documents (available here and here) provide important information about the secret prison at Szymany, in northeastern Poland, and also add to what is known about the program in Romania, which has received far less scrutiny. The existence of the prisons was first revealed in The Washington Post on November 2, 2005, although the Post refrained from “publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials.” However, on November 6, 2005, Human Rights Watch identified the countries as Poland and Romania, and stated that it had seen “flight records showing that a Boeing 737, registration number N313P – a plane that the CIA used to move several prisoners to and from Europe, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in 2003 and 2004 – landed in Poland and Romania on direct flights from Afghanistan on two occasions in 2003 and 2004.” Although the Polish and Romanian governments denied the claims, Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the Council of Europe, concluded in a report in June 2007, based on two years’ research and interviews with over 30 current and former members of the intelligence services in the United States and Europe, that he had enough “evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania.” Marty also identified both sites, noting that the flights to Romania flew into the Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield, and also explained how the flights were disguised using fake flight plans. In September 2008, a Polish intelligence official confirmed that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA had held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty in northeastern Poland. He said that only the CIA had access to the prison, and that, although Prime Minister Leszek Miller and President Aleksander Kwasniewski knew about it, “it was unlikely either man knew if the prisoners were being tortured because the Poles had no control over the Americans’ activities.” It was not until March 23, 2009, however, that the first details of specific flights into Szymany were officially confirmed in Poland, when the Polish Air Navigation Service Agency released information about a Lockheed L100-30 Hercules, registration number N8213G, which had flown in on February 4, 2003. This was followed up on September 16 with far more incriminating records, demonstrating that a notorious “torture jet,” a Gulfstream V, registration number N379P, had flown into Szymany on six occasions between February 8 and September 22, 2003, (see here and here), and on June 2 this year, a further release identified a Gulfstream IV, registration number N63MU, which had flown in on July 28, 2005. Friday’s revelations by the Polish Border Guard Office are, however, even more significant, firstly because they include, for the first time, confirmation that N63MU flew into Poland on December 5, 2002, and secondly, because they provide details of the number of passengers on seven of the flights, as follows:
Who Are the “High-Value Detainees” Held in Poland? In identifying these 20 passengers, the documents provide more questions than answers, as it is not known how many of them were prisoners, and how many were US government operatives accompanying them. However, what can be stated with certainty is that three of the men who arrived on December 5, 2002, were the HVDs (HVDs) Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who had all been held previously in a secret CIA prison in Thailand. Don’t miss a beat – get Truthout Daily Email Updates. Click here to sign up for free. In the CIA Inspector General’s Report on “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003),” published in May 2004, but only made publicly available last August, it was stated that the “enhanced interrogation of al-Nashiri continued through 4 December 2002″ and that, “after being moved, al-Nashiri was thought to have been withholding information,” indicating that it was at this time that he was rendered to Poland. Moreover, in research for a “Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism,” published by the United Nations in February this year, an analyst
This, clearly, is the flight identified in the newly released documents as having flown into Poland via Dubai. In addition, according to information provided to “ABC News” by “[c]urrent and former CIA officers” in December 2005, seven other high-value detainees, as well as Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and bin al-Shibh, were held in Poland, while an 11th, Hambali, was held elsewhere (possibly on the British island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, which is leased to the US). “ABC News” identified these men as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Waleed bin Attash, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi, Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, Hassan Ghul and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Of these seven, Hassan Ghul (whose whereabouts are still unknown, although he was reportedly held in a Pakistani prison in 2006) and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (who was one of 14 HVDs transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006) were seized in 2004, outside of the period from December 2002 to September 2003 covered by the documents, but the other five may all have been held in Poland. In April 2009, Der Spiegel reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (another of the 14 HVDs, and the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) was flown to Szymany on March 7, 2003, and if this is the case (and the date, noticeably, corresponds with one of the dates in the newly released documents), then it is possible that Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who was seized with him on March 1, 2003, (and who was also transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006), was the other passenger who arrived with him on that date – although it is also, of course, possible that the second passenger was an interrogator or a psychologist. As for the others identified by “ABC News,” Waleed bin Attash (another of the 14 HVDs), seized in Karachi, Pakistan, on April 29, 2003, could be the passenger delivered on May 6, and Mohamed Omar Abdel-Rahman, one of the sons of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh,” imprisoned in the US, could have been on any of the flights. Seized in Quetta in February 2003, his detention has never been officially acknowledged by the US authorities, and his current whereabouts are unknown. More contentious are the claims that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi were held in Poland. Al-Libi, the emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, which was closed down by the Taliban in 2000 after he refused to cede control of it to Osama bin Laden, was, notoriously, rendered by the CIA to Egypt soon after his capture in Afghanistan in December 2001, where, under torture, he came up with the false allegation that Saddam Hussein was working on a chemical weapons program with al-Qaeda, which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. According to an account by the journalist Stephen Grey, al-Libi was rendered back to Afghanistan in November 2003, and according to another account, by a Libyan who talked to al-Libi in a prison in Tripoli before his suspicious death last May, he was rendered from Egypt to prisons in Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan, before his return to Afghanistan, where he was held in three separate prisons run by, or under the control of the CIA, before his eventual return to Libya (possibly in 2006). As a result, although it’s possible that he was also held in Poland for a while, it is by no means certain. As for al-Sharqawi (also identified as Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj or Abdu Ali Sharqawi), the available reports suggest that, after he was seized in a house raid in Pakistan in February 2002, he was rendered to Jordan, where he was held for nearly two years – and tortured on behalf of the CIA – before being transferred to the CIA’s “Dark Prison” near Kabul, and then, via Bagram, to Guantánamo, where he arrived in September 2004. As with al-Libi, however, it is possible that at some point he was transferred to Poland. A Program Still Shrouded in Secrecy Given the intense secrecy that still surrounds the HVD program, all that we can state with certainty is that, in May 2005, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Bradbury of the Office of Legal Counsel stated in a memo (updating the notorious “torture memos” of August 1, 2002, by John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee) that the CIA had, by that point, “taken custody of 94 prisoners [redacted] and ha[d] employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these detainees.” These figures do not include prisoners rendered to prisons in other countries that were not directly under CIA control. As these are essentially the only details about the program’s scope that have ever been made publicly available, it is impossible to state with any certainty how many of these 94 prisoners were held in Poland. However, research undertaken for the UN’s secret detention report indicated that the majority of the 94 were probably held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, and the figure of ten men in Poland that was cited by “ABC News” is close to the figure quoted by Marty, who noted, “a single CIA source told us that there were ‘up to a dozen’ high-value detainees in Poland in 2005, but we were unable to confirm this number.” If this is the case, then the 20 passengers referred to in the newly released documents may include just eight prisoners, with two more – Hassan Ghul and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani – arriving in 2004, and the rest being interrogators and psychologists. One more question, however, concerns the origin of one of the flights. Although the first flight came from Bangkok via Dubai, and the rest appear to have flown directly from Kabul, Afghanistan, the flight on February 8, 2003, which contained seven passengers, and left the next day with four passengers (again, perhaps US personnel) arrived from Rabat, Morocco. Given that Morocco was one of a handful of countries (along with Jordan, Egypt and Syria) that were used either as proxy torture prisons or in order to “disappear” prisoners entirely, it is possible that the flight picked up three prisoners in Morocco, and flew them on to Poland. If this is the case, then three possible candidates are Abu Zubair al-Haili, a Saudi seized in Morocco in June 2002, who was known as “the Bear,” because of his size, and who was reported to be “one of the top 25 al-Qaeda leaders,” and to have had “a very close relationship to Abu Zubaydah,” plus two other Saudis seized with him. The whereabouts of all three men have never been explained by either the US or the Moroccan authorities, although, in September 2002, The Independent reported that al-Haili was “in U.S. custody.” Romania’s Role in the CIA’s Secret Prison Program The final piece of the jigsaw revealed by the new Polish documents concerns Romania, as it seems clear that, on September 22, 2003, five prisoners were taken from the Polish prison to what may, at the time, have been a new project in Romania. In his report for the Council of Europe, Marty stated:
Marty added:
While this avenue remains to be explored, the UN secret detention report suggested that three of the men held in Romania may have been the Yemenis Salah Nasser Salim Ali (seized in Indonesia in August 2003), Mohammed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah (seized in Jordan in October 2003) and Mohammed al-Asad (seized in Tanzania in December 2003), who, after being held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, were transferred in April 2004 to “an unknown, modern facility apparently run by United States officials, which was carefully designed to induce maximum disorientation, dependence and stress in the detainees … Research into flight durations and the observations of Mr. al-Asad, Mr. Ali, and Mr. Bashmilah suggest that the facility was likely located in Eastern Europe.” All three were eventually transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005, but they were clearly more fortunate than the other men rendered to Romania, whose stories have never emerged, and are as unknown as those of the five men transferred from Poland to Romania on September 22, 2003, whose existence has just been revealed. In conclusion, while the release of these documents provides only a tantalizing glimpse into a program that is still shrouded in secrecy, it also provides some much needed information to be used in an attempt to compel the Polish government, the Romanian government and, most of all, the US government, to stop pretending either that these prisons did not exist, or that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” and to come clean about both the prisons and the men held there.
Related posts:
|
|
Obama Executive Order Makes States Coastal Jurisdictions Subject to U.N. Treaty Posted: 04 Aug 2010 08:09 AM PDT From MORPHcity Thirty states will be encroached upon by Obama’s Executive Order establishing the National Ocean Council for control over America’s oceans, coastlines and the Great Lakes. Under this new council, states’ coastal jurisdictions will be subject to the United Nations’ Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) in this UN Agenda 21 program. America’a oceans and coastlines will be broken into 9 regions that include the North East, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Gulf Coast, West Coast, the Great Lakes, Alaska, the Pacific Islands (including Hawaii) and the Caribbean. Because of the decades of difficulty that the collectivists have had trying to ratify the Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST), Obama is sneaking it in through the back door, by way of this Executive Order establishing the Council. Because LOST is a treaty, Obama’s Executive Order is not Constitutional as treaty ratification requires 2/3 approval from the Senate. Michael Shaw said that the Agenda 21 Convention on Biodiversity treaty of 1992 failed to pass Congress so it was executed through soft law and administratively on local levels, and Obama’s Executive Order is a similar soft law tactic to enact the LOST treaty. In fact, our Constitutional form of government is being completely destroyed because buried in the CLEAR Act (HR 3534) there is a provision for a new council to oversee the outer continental shelf- it appears that this Regional Outer Shelf Council will be part of the National Ocean Council. This means that if Congress makes the CLEAR Act into law, then the implementation of the UN Law Of Sea Treaty, as part of the National Ocean Council’s agenda, will be “ratified” in a convoluted and stealth manner, in full opposition to the Constitution and its intent. The excuse for this extreme action is because of the emergency in the Gulf of Mexico. Obama and Congress have always had the legal and military power to force BP Oil to take all necessary action to stop the gusher and clean the oil spew. While there is evidence that the problems in the Gulf have been a result of collusion and planned incompetence, it begs the question, why in world should America’s oceans and resources be controlled by Obama appointees? NATIONAL OCEAN COUNCIL MEMBERS: John Holdren, Obama’s science and technology advisor, is the co-chairman of this new council. He is also a depopulation enthusiast and advocates sterilization by way of using infertility drugs in water and food as well as forced abortions which he describes in his book “Ecoscience”. Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Department of Interior, and its subagency, MMS (Minerals Management Service) has authority over offshore drilling and responsibility for enforcing spill prevention measures. The Department of Interior’s BLM (Bureau of Land Management) is the entity that controls federally managed land extending across 30% of America in 11 western states. Last week, Congressman Louie Gohmert said that Ken Salazar personally prevented drilling on land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, thereby also preventing energy independence. In addition, the federal lands have been grossly mismanaged and present fire dangers. The federal government is $3.7 billion in arrears for maintenance of the federally managed lands. US Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, by way of the US Forestry Service and US Fish & Wildlife Service, has been complicit in the decline of our country’s food independence. For example, US Fish & Wildlife (along with the Department of Commerce) shut the water off in California using Endangered Species Act; it was later proven that partially treated sewage was the primary culprit in killing the salmon and delta smelt that was previously blamed on farmers. This is phony environmentalism. The US Forestry Service has also misused the Endangered Species Act to limit farmers and ranchers. Remember that the USDA co-owns the Terminator Gene patent with Monsanto that makes seeds sterile. Lisa Jackson is the EPA administrator who has threatened to impose 18,000 pages of new regulations to curb global warming which is based on lies, claiming that carbon dioxide is a danger to human health. Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: it is unclear how these two federal appointees will enhance environmental ’sustainability’ over oceans and coasts. Traditionally, national security threats (like the War on Terror) have been used by the federal government to take control of resources. For example, many years ago when the interstate highway systems were first being built, the Feds got in on the action by claiming that they were building a defense highway system, and they encroached into an area that belonged to the states. Interestingly, there were no overhead structures on highways originally because of the Feds’ claim that large missiles would be transported on these “defense” highway systems. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, a leading globalist, is likely to plunge our country into international entanglements and subjugation, based on her past performance; an example is her support of the UN Small Arms Treaty, which is contrary to the Constitution. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are logical choices for this destructive council as some of the planned funding for this program will come from permits and leases (oil drilling leases, for example). These agencies will limit America’s energy independence. Click here to see the full list of the 24 member council. THE SMOKING GUN: Agenda 21 Sustainable Development is the overarching blueprint for depopulationa and total control, and the National Ocean Council is clearly an Agenda 21 program: The National Ocean Council is headed by John Holdren, an avowed eugenicist which is selective breeding through brutal means like forced abortion. The National Ocean Counci’s own report (Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning, pg. In fact, the report says that it will be guided by the Rio Declaration in cases “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” (pg. The 3 primary tools of Agenda 21’s phony environmentalism are global warming, water shortages and the Endangered Species Act; the National Ocean Council intends to exploit all of these tools to their full extent. The National Ocean Council’s main objective is to sink American sovereignty through the United Nations Law Of Sea Treaty (LOST) with the intended result of domination by the UN over our coasts and the Great Lakes. LOST originated in the 1970s as a wealth redistribution plan to benefit Third World countries. LOST sets rules for commercial activity beneath the high seas and establishes new international bureaucracies and a tribunal to interpret and apply rules to sea activity. And LOST can proceed with those rules, even against US objections! LOST threatens to complicate deep sea mining. LOST sets a precedent that US rights are dependent upon the approval of international entities. LOST also extends to ocean flowing rivers. REGIONALISM: Michael Shaw pointed out that non-elected councils are increasingly expanding their jurisdiction through air quality boards, water quality boards, sewer systems, transportation districts, metropolitan planning, etc. to gain control over resources. Often, large corporations and financial interests form Public- Private Partnerships with the government within these councils. Breaking areas into regions and placing authority with non-elected councils is a Communist trick used to hijack resources, thereby usurping local and state power by re-zoning the areas that do have Constitutional authority. Appointed bureaucrats are untouchable because their jobs are not dependent upon serving the voting population. And they are usually inaccessible to the public and do not have to face those who are affected by their “insider” decisions. When state and local governments become corrupt, the public is able to confront them eye to eye, but distant bureaucrats can avoid accountability. Regionalism is used as a psychological tactic to intimidate state legislatures into creating the system for a new political and economic order. Obama’s Executive Order that has created the 9 new regions amounts to re-zoning, and his appointed bureaucrats are answerable only to him. In David Horton’s testimony in 1978 on regionalism, he said that the State of Indiana made this declaration, “Neither the states nor Congress have ever granted authority to any branch or agency of the federal government to exercise regional control over the states.” Horton further stated that Congress holds all legislative power that is granted in the Constitution, as opposed to Executive Orders that are not legislative. Therefore, Obama’s Executive Order for re-zoning and appointing a governing body to usurp state and local power is Constitutionally invalid. The public must become aware of state sovereignty and the Tenth Amendment to demand that state and local governments assert these Constitutional laws and principles. COASTAL AND MARINE SPATIAL PLANNING REPORT: This is a general overview of the new National Ocean Council’s goals based on its 32-page report that uses indirect language and acronyms in order to confuse the public and local lawmakers. Depopulation advocates, globalists and collectivists, like John Holdren, faced opposition a few decades ago when they clearly expressed their objectives, so now documents are written in complicated and clouded language to fool those they wish to control. This report states that the Council’s jurisdiction will extend from the continental shelf to the coast AND additional inland areas will be involved. The National Ocean Council identifies “partners” as members of each regional planning body that will include federal, state, local and tribal authorities, with a top-down hierarchy of control. The intentions of the Council are stated on page 8 of the report that include implementing LOST and other international treaties. The report also states that the Counci’s plans shall be implemented by Executive Orders, in addition to federal and state laws. This section mentions ‘global climate change’ which is a new term used as a substitute for ‘man made global warming’ after manipulated data and lies were exposed in numerous global warming scandals. ‘Climate change’ is blamed for sea level rise and acidification of oceans; evidence exists that these are more global warming deceptions. The stated goals of the Council include regulating investments, collaborating with unidentified international agencies, controlling public access to oceans and “protecting” ecosystems. This means that commerce and trade will be controlled by the Council, the UN will gain power over American oceans and the Great Lakes through UN subagencies, public access will be limited and the Endangered Species Act will be unleashed, with heavy regulations. Incidentally, the Endangered Species Act is based on 5 international treaties. It has never had a successful result: of the 60 species that have been de-listed, not a single species was saved as a result of any restrictions stemming from the Endangered Species Act! The targeted areas for Endangered Species Act regulations are the the Great Lakes, the Gulf Coast, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, South Florida and the San Francisco Bay (the Bay Delta is where the irrigation water for farmers was was cut off using the Endangered Species Act, causing food shortages, an increase in food imports and massive economic devastation). While this report does not clearly outline how the National Ocean Council’s schemes will be financed, regulatory permits for all activity on the water and mining (oil) leases will play a part, along with tax increases. The report does indicate that grants and assistance programs will be available so that state, local and tribal authorities will support the Council’s “efforts”. In other words, the Council will try to buy off the state and local governments to “collectively use” them for a base of support and influence. (pg. 28) Strings are always attached to federal money. The federal government and the Council are reliant on state and local governments for implementation through state and local legal authority, which means that state and local authorities hold the power to implement or refuse the Council’s directives, especially under the Tenth Amendment. However, the report does state that disputes will be settled by consensus, if consensus fails, then the decisions will ultimately be made by the President. He is Commander in Chief of the Navy and has the power of the military behind him. Further, the report indicates that legislative changes and more Executive Orders may be necessary to achieve control. An important point is made on page 5, which states, “Strong partnerships among Federal, State, tribal and local authorities, and regional governance structures would be essential to a truly forward-looking, comprehensive CMSP effort.” This means that the states, local governments and tribes have power. Our collectivist government needs the consent of the state, local and tribal authorities, to implement this scheme, otherwise, the feds wouldn’t bother to include these Constitutional authorities. If the state, local and tribal authorities are aware of, and willing to act on their Constitutional authority, then they can limit this federal power grab through the Tenth Amendment. The report further states that signing onto the Council’s plan would be an “express commitment by the partners to act in accordance with the plan…” (pg. 20) Therefore, it is imperative that all of the states be aware of the Council’s intended usurpation and carefully protect their Constitutional jurisdictions and sovereignty. There are 30 states that will be affected by this new council. (pg. 12) The Council’s strategy plan will go into effect immediately, fully developing Agenda 21 objectives and undue UN influence within 5 years. Interestingly, one article said that if state, local and tribal authorities choose not to participate in in writing the plans, the plans would be written without them. Therefore, it bears repeating that state and local governments must protect their Constitutional authority when dealing with the Council. The Constitutional authority that states and local governments have can only be taken if the power is given away. SAVING OUR COUNTRY: If your freedom is important to you, the most effective action that you can take is to e-mail this article and Michael Shaw’s “Understanding Agenda 21 Sustainable Development” booklet to all of your State Legislators, County Commissioners/ Superintendents and City Council members. Tell all of your friends, co-workers and neighbors about Agenda 21 Sustainable Development and how it is destroying our country. The National Ocean Council is detrimental on so many levels and the time to act is now. If state and local officials refuse to stand up against this federal incursion, they must be thrown out of office in favor of representatives who support the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment.
Related posts:
|
|
The Mandatory ‘Service’ Bill and the Coming Mass Murder in Iran Posted: 03 Aug 2010 09:31 PM PDT From InfoWars.com — Rep. Charles Rangel may be in trouble because he is your standard corrupt district of criminals opportunist, but that has not killed his mandatory slavery bill. On July 15, Rangel introduced H.R. 5741, the Universal National Service Act, and it was referred to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel on July 23. Even though the bill does not have co-sponsors, it is currently under debate. “I have introduced legislation to reinstate the draft and to make it permanent during time of war. It is H.R. 5741, and what this does is to make everyone between the ages of 18 and 42 – whether they’re men or women, whether they’re straight or gay – to have the opportunity to defend this great country whenever the president truly believes that our national security is threatened,” Rangel said from the floor of the House. Rangel specifically said the legislation is designed to be used “during time of war.” On the day before Rangel’s slavery bill went to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, Texas Rep. Louis Buller Gohmert introduced House Resolution 1553. It has since been referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Expressing support for the State of Israel’s right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel,” Gohmert’s resolution states. Language contained in the resolution condemns Iran “for its threats of annihilating the United States and the State of Israel” (threats Iran has never issued) and supports the use of “all means of persuading the Government of Iran to stop building and acquiring nuclear weapons” (nuclear weapons Iran does not have and does not possess the capability to produce). Gohmert’s bill supports Israel’s “right” to use “all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran.” In 2007, Mohamed El Baradei, at the time the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran did not have nuclear material and also stated that the country did not have a weaponization program. Also in 2007, the National Intelligence Council, where U.S. mid-term and long-term strategic policy is formulated for the intelligence community, stated “with moderate-to-high confidence… Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.” “There is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to produce nuclear weapons,” said Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while speaking out against sanctions on Iran. In July 21, the day before Gohmert introduced House Resolution 1553, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the U.S. and Russia know that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons. Despite the fact there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program and no indication Iran plans to attack Israel, let alone the absurd notion it will attack the United States, Israel and the United States are preparing to attack Iran. The claim Iran plans to attack the United States is ironically reminiscent of the neocon accusation that Saddam Hussein planned to attack the U.S., one of several obvious falsehoods used as an excuse to invade. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel have been shuttling between Washington and Tel Aviv, pushing for crippling economic sanctions that even they concede will not change Iran’s nuclear policy. These sanctions are being put in place, both by the United States and its allies. The open prediction that they will fail is meant to indicate just one thing — military attacks are inevitable,” writes Muhammad Sahimi for PBS. “The rhetorical rationale for attacking Iran keeps coming out of Washington. Most astonishingly, there is a resolution before the U.S. Congress, signed by one-third of the Republican caucus, that urges support for Israeli military attacks on Iran…. The resolution, H. Res. 1553, represents a green light for a bombing campaign. It provides explicit support for military strikes.” The bomb Iran consensus was underscored late last month when former CIA director Michael Hayden told CNN’s State of the Union that a military attack against Iran “seems inexorable.” Hayden added that in his “personal thinking, I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes.” In other words, for Hayden, mass murder is preferable to diplomacy. “The next step is tough sanctions, economic sanctions. Frankly it’s a last chance for Iran to avoid giving the rest of the world, including the United States, a hard choice between allowing Iran to go nuclear and using military power to stop them from doing that,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman in April. “We have to contemplate the final option,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.” “The administration needs to expand its approach and make clear to the Iranian regime and the American people: If diplomatic and economic pressures do not compel Iran to terminate its nuclear program, the U.S. military has the capability and is prepared to launch an effective, targeted strike on Tehran’s nuclear and supporting military facilities,” former senator Charles S. Robb and retired general Charles Wald wrote for the Washington Post on July 9. Slaughtering innocents is a “terrible thing,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., but “sometimes it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time.” Graham made this ludicrous statement regardless of the fact Iran has never threatened to attack Israel. It is based on a mistranslation of a speech delivered by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad published in the New York Times. The Times played a big role in the Iraq invasion when Judith Miller published neocon lies about aluminum tubes and other such patently fallacious nonsense. Neocon lies ultimately resulted in the murder of more than a million Iraqis, a total approaching Nazi war crimes. As should be expected, the neocons figure big in the Iran attack plot now unfolding. “If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iran government’s ability to wage conventional war against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float.” Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute wrote earlier this year. In other words, according to neocons over at the criminal organization largely responsible for mass murder in Iraq, Iran should be reduced to a parking lot in order to prevent it from responding to an attack. Neocon Reuel Marc Gerecht explains how the United States will be sucked into an Israeli-launched attack against Iran. “What is important to understand about this campaign is that the aim of Gerecht and of the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu is to support an attack by Israel so that the United States can be drawn into direct, full-scale war with Iran,” writes historian Gareth Porter.
Self defense is not an option. If Iran responds to an attack — and its leadership has stated repeatedly it will — the U.S. will become directly involved. “Gerecht’s argument for war relies on a fanciful nightmare scenario of Iran doling out nuclear weapons to Islamic extremists all over the Middle East. But the real concern of the Israelis and their lobbyists, as Gerecht’s past writing has explicitly stated, is to destroy Iran’s Islamic regime in a paroxysm of U.S. military violence,” writes Porter. This “paroxysm of U.S. military violence” will undoubtedly call for adding a fresh crop of bullet-stoppers and that is where H.R. 5721 comes into play. As Rangel noted, his bill will provide under government imposed mandate that “everyone between the ages of 18 and 42 – whether they’re men or women, whether they’re straight or gay – to have the opportunity to defend this great country” from imaginary and trumped-up enemies. Rangel’s bill may never make it out of committee. The attack on Iran, however, is all but a foregone conclusion.
Related posts:
|
|
After Afghan War Leaks, Revisions in a Shield Bill Posted: 03 Aug 2010 08:53 PM PDT I guess “freedom of the press” really means “freedom of the government approved press.” — From The New York Times — WASHINGTON — Democratic senators who have been working on legislation providing greater protections to reporters who refuse to identify confidential sources are backpedaling from WikiLeaks, the Web site that recently disclosed more than 75,000 classified documents related to the Afghanistan war. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, Democrats of New York and California, are drafting an amendment to make clear that the bill’s protections extend only to traditional news-gathering activities and not to Web sites that serve as a conduit for the mass dissemination of secret documents. The so-called “media shield” bill is awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. “WikiLeaks should not be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “Our bill already includes safeguards when a leak impacts national security, and it would never grant protection to a Web site like this one, but we will take this extra step to remove even a scintilla of doubt.” The bill would allow reporters, when faced with subpoenas seeking to compel them to testify about their confidential sources, to ask a federal judge to quash the demand rather than fining or jailing them for contempt of court if they refuse to comply. About three dozen states have such a law for state courts. Under the bill, federal judges would evaluate requests to quash a subpoena by balancing the public interest against the need to identify a source, providing different levels of protection depending on the nature of the case. The information seeker would also have to exhaust all other means of obtaining the names before seeking a journalist’s testimony, though matters involving threats to national security would be exempted from some protections. It is not clear whether WikiLeaks — a confederation of open-government advocates who solicit secret documents for publication — could be subject to a federal subpoena. Federal courts most likely do not have jurisdiction over it or a means to serve it with such a subpoena. Moreover, WikiLeaks says that its Web site uses technology that makes it impossible to trace the source of documents that are submitted to it, so even if the organization were compelled to disclose a source, it is not clear that it would be able to do so. Still, in case WikiLeaks or a similar organization sought to invoke a shield law, proponents of the legislation are trying to create legislative history that would show judges that Congress did not intend for the law to cover such organizations. The idea, aides said, would be to add language bolstering a section defining who would be covered by the law as a journalist — an area that can be tricky in an era of blogging and proliferation of online-only news media outlets. Paul J. Boyle, senior vice president for public policy at the Newspaper Association of America — which supports the bill — said Senate aides had asked his group to consult on the proposed changes. Mr. Boyle argued that the WikiLeaks case could, paradoxically, help supporters of the bill. He contended that the increasing use of subpoenas to pressure reporters to identify sources created incentive for would-be leakers to send material to a group like WikiLeaks rather than to a traditional news organization subject to American law and having editorial controls and experience in news judgment.
Related posts:
|
|
Obama Drops His Latest Pledge to Withdraw Combat Troops from Iraq Posted: 03 Aug 2010 07:37 PM PDT As we’ve said all along, the war in Iraq will not be ending anytime soon. Ending the war in Iraq is not in the interest of the real owners of this country. For those who still don’t get it, here are different video segments going back to 2002 where Obama clearly states he opposed the war in Iraq. Pay attention as he first says he will bring the troops home in 2008. He then changed from that and gave the impression that the war would end in 2009. His next lie was to say ending the war in Iraq would be the first thing he would do if elected President. From there he said 16 months, then promised August of 2010 and now it appears to be by the end of 2011, etc. etc. etc. etc. If you really think the war in Iraq is going to end in 2011, I would suggest you seek help to treat your delusions. Perhaps you think I’m nuts? Well, answer this one question: Why would an individual so openly opposed to the invasion (since 2002) of Iraq now be delaying it’s end now that he can actually end it? If you personally labeled something evil and destructive for the past 8 years and you now had the power to end that evil and destruction, would you do it? Open your minds, people. There is a much bigger game going on. If you don’t know what the CFR, Bilderberg, Club of Rome, Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family, Henry Kissinger, the IMF, NAFTA, Agenda 21, etc. all have in common, start educating yourself. See here, here and here for starters. Once you understand the bigger game being played you’ll see everything from a completely different perspective and everything the government does will begin to make sense rather than seem baffling. — From IPS News Wire — WASHINGTON, Aug 3, 2010 (IPS) – Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by Sep. 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011. Obama declared in a speech to disabled U.S. veterans in Atlanta that “America’s combat mission in Iraq” would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of “supporting and training Iraqi security forces”. That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on Feb. 27, 2009, when he said, “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by Aug. 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, “I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months.” Obama said nothing in his speech Monday about withdrawing “combat brigades” or “combat troops” from Iraq until the end of 2011. Even the concept of “ending the U.S. combat mission” may be highly misleading, much like the concept of “withdrawing U.S. combat brigades” was in 2009. Under the administration’s definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of U.S. forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to “advise and assist” Iraqi forces. An official who spoke with IPS on condition that his statements would be attributed to a “senior administration official” acknowledged that the 50,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline will have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn. The official also acknowledged that the troops will engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be “mostly” for defensive purposes. That language implied that there might be circumstances in which U.S. forces would carry out offensive operations as well. IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat U.S. troops might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by U.S. troops if it feels it necessary. Obama’s jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media. Obama’s apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the Sep. 1 deadline in his Feb. 27, 2009 speech generated headlines across the commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue. At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic forces backing a long- term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011. He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the evidence indicated it was a falsehood. Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press Mar. 1, 2009, Gates said the “transition force” remaining after Aug. 31, 2010 would have “a very different kind of mission”, and that the units remaining in Iraq “will be characterised differently”. “They will be called advisory and assistance brigades,” said Gates. “They won’t be called combat brigades.” But “advisory and assistance brigades” were configured with the same combat capabilities as the “combat brigade teams” which had been the basic U.S. military unit of combat organisation for six years, as IPS reported in March 20009. Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama’s combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House. That plan had been developed in late 2008 by Gen. David Petraeus, the CENTCOM chief, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. They came up with the idea of “remissioning” – sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams — as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it. The “remissioning” scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in Chicago on Dec. 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later. It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the “remissioning” ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years. Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama’s public declaration and the reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the news media – including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories about the military’s “remissioning” scheme – failed to report on it. The “senior administration official” told IPS that Obama is still “committed to withdrawal of all U.S. forces by the end of 2011″. That is the withdrawal deadline in the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008. But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued U.S. military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government. In November 2008, after Obama’s election, Gen. Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks “what the U.S. military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015″. Odierno said he “would like to see a …force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000″, which would still be carrying out combat operations. Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the region’s oil resources – and that it be openly labeled as such – according to Ricks. In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno’s “remissioning” dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline. Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were still ongoing. In July, Odierno suggested that a U.N. peacekeeping force might be needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued U.S. presence there might be requested by the Iraqi government. *Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.
Related posts:
|
|
Posted: 03 Aug 2010 06:18 PM PDT From Cryptome — “The job of the Chief Scientist is to “call bullshit” when someone has an idea that will never work.” Chet Uber, Project Vigilant Based on this material retrieved from Google cache, Project Vigilant is a fraud. The recent stories about Chet Uber recruiting volunteer Internet spies at Defcon, bragging about having 600 volunteers and advising Adrian Lamo to inform on Bradley Manning have been based on public relations hyperbole. This material shows: 1. It has no physical address, no proof of legal existence, no assets, no evidence it is governmentally authorized to steal personal and business data, and to train and criminally direct volunteers to steal personal and business data around the world for ostensible government use. 2. No evidence that the stolen personal and business data is provided to governments in compliance with law governing such data. 3. Personal information on volunteers is being harvested for undisclosed purposes by offering a pretentious training and vetting process to ostensibly assure protection of national security secrets around the globe, with claims that federal agencies like the State Deparment will be involved. No qualifications to train in or handle national security secrets are offered. 4. Unpaid services by volunteers are being solicited under guise of patriotism to avoid or minimize financial accounting, salaries, insurance and health benefits, taxation and government oversight. 5. Notable persons have been induced to legitimate Project Vigilant by allowing their names to be used, or used without their permission or knowledge. 6. A plan to enlist children as spies. 7. In January 2010 there were no “fully vetted” volunteers. 8. Most of the project’s officer and advisory positions remain unfilled; the positions appear to be bogus. 9. Mission statements and categories of activities are empty boilerplate. PROJECT VIGILANT Public Relations Site StaffSubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 23:58 All of the Divisions are managed by the Command Staff, which is described in detail under staff but includes the Director of VIGILANT, Deputy Director of VIGILANT, and the Assistant Deputy Director. Not in the Chain of Command but in charge of access to the Command Staff and managing the Directors Administrative Assistants, Research Associates and Protocol Officers. In Support of the Command Staff are the Office of the General Counsel, Office of Public Affairs, and multiple high level Advisory panels Strategic Advsiors, Ethics Advisors, and Legal Adivsors. The final position that rounds out the Command Staff is the Chief Scientist. This position is not in competition with the Director of Science & Technology (S&T). The Chief Scientist is an advisor to the Director and has no staff or position directly related to S&T, and most importantly the Chief Scientist is not focused specifically on issues of information theory, but rather is intended to be a classically trained scientist with a diverse background in the hard and soft sciences. An example of a person qualified for this position could be an MD, or PhD in Genetics or Astrophycis. The idea is that this person is someone that has the skills from math to lanuguages to advise the Director on the theoretic possibilites that are proposed for all the Directorates and as importantly from our clients and partners. The job of the Chief Scientist is to “call bullshit” when someone has an idea that will never work. As a list Staff Includes: *Chief of Staff /.. more to come .. / Chief of StaffSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 04:16 The Chief of Staff’s position is currently opened. If you are interested please contact us. Director’s Ethics AdvisersSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 04:45 [No entries] Director’s Strategic AdvisersSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 04:36 Fred Baker, [Chair] IETF/Cisco DirectorsA sends: ——— http://projectvigilant.us/securedrupal/?q=node/25 Submitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 04:13. The following individuals are the directors of Project VIGILANT for the years of 2010-2012. Chet Uber, Director Kevin Manson, ESQ. JD., Deputy Director George Johnson, Assistant Deputy Director. Directors Executive Staff[No Google cache] General Counsel’s OfficeA sends: Retrieved from Google’s “not cached” cache: ——— http://projectvigilant.us/securedrupal/?q=node/26 General Counsel’s Office. Submitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 04:23. Mark Rasch, ESQ, JD., General Counsel. If you are interested in serving on the General Counsel’s staff or as a legal assistant to this office please contact us DivisionsSubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 22:34 By 2006 we had formally created divisions, job postings, chain of command, a chain of succession and job descriptions for most of postions whether existing or for in the future. To be fully staffed the current estimate is approximately 1600 volunteers. As of January 1, 2010 we had refined the divisions of Project VIGILANT and we have just over 550 of the needed volunteers. The Divisions are currently: * Intelligence & Analysis Each Division is headed by a Director and has a Deputy Director. All of the Divisions are managed by the Command Staff, which is described in detail under staff but includes the Director of VIGILANT, Deputy Director of VIGILANT, and the Assistant Deputy Director. There is a Chief of Staff, who is not in the Chain of Command but in charge of access to the Command Staff and managing the Directors Administrative Assistants, Research Associates and Protocol Officers. In Support of the Command Staff are the Office of the General Counsel, Office of Public Affairs, and multiple high level Advisory panels – Strategic Advsiors, Ethics Advisors, and Legal Adivsors. The final position that rounds out the Command Staff is the Chief Scientist. This position is not in competition with the Director of Science & Technology (S&T). The Chief Scientist is an advisor to the Director and has no staff or position directly related to S&T, and most importantly the Chief Scientist is not focused specifically on issues of information theory, but rather is intended to be a classically trained scientist with a diverse background in the hard and soft sciences. An example of a person qualified for this position could be an MD, or PhD in Genetics or Astrophycis. The idea is that this person is someone that has the skills from math to lanuguages to advise the Director on the theoretic possibilites that are proposed for all the Directorates and as importantly from our clients and partners. The job of the Chief Scientist is to “call bullshit” when someone has an idea that will never work. Intelligence & AnalysisSubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 23:03 The Intelligence & Analysis (I&A) Division is responsible of using all legal means of monitoring the obversable activities around the globe, especially those that happen on the networks around the globe. We monitor all countries in the globe, and this reporting is rolled up in the military designations for those portions of the the world. In the United States we monitor each state and roll those up into nine minor regions and four major regions. Again looking for patterns in the noise. The other part of I&A focuses not on the collection of the way we analyze the observations. We use a wide variety of methods from correlation to bit-level comparisons of repeated observed events in an an attempt to find the pattern in the noise. The patterns that we are looking for are those that reveal the 5% of the world that has no conscious. The people that will take a rifle to work and kill their entire office, the student that will do the same to their school mates, the extremist groups that will encourage lone wolfs to go into a church and kill another human being because they don’t approve of their work, the domestic and foreign terrorists that the United States, United Kingdom and the other allies have identified as a threat to our way of life, or the facist groups that go beyond complaining about the blacks and the jews and actually curb them, burn them alive, and of their own free will go beyond free speech act in a way that deprives other human beings of their life. It is hard to in one paragraph like I just wrote to describe what we look for because the the truth is we are really looking for “what hasn’t yet ever happened, what is likely to happen based on what we believe indicates behaviors in the real world (digital or physical). The problem is as we currently see it is what Dr. Fred Cohen proved in his thesis and later mathematical work — That you can always get punched in the nose once. Malware and “bad behavior” has been proven to suffer from the halting problem. So the best we can hope for is to have a mechanism driven by the best science possible that will provide those in Intelligence to spot the most likely bad things. We look at attacks in three modes: what may happen (prediction), what is happening (incident response), and what has happened (digital forensic evidence examination). We pray for prediction, we learn from digital forensic evidence examination. I&A has the role to “constantly watch” and try to “Attribute Actions to Actors”. The current Director of Intelligence & Analysis is AJ Fardella, the Deputy Director is Andrew Hoyle. / .. more to come .. / Liasons & PartnershipsSubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 23:52 Liaisons and Partnerships (L&P) is a new Division that was created to remove some of the load off of Mission Support (MS) related to dealing with the absolutely necessary job of forming, handling, managing the relations with one our most important assets or clients and our corporate, academic, institutional, and governmental partners. We have at this come down to a short list for the director of this division. We have offered the Directors job to one person who we are negotiating with to develop the roles, Standard Operation Procedures, and the goals for this Division. I will keep it short. It is better to under-promise and over-deliver, than to do the reverse. / .. more to come .. / Mission SupportSubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 23:14 Mission Support is the Division where the rubber meats the road. Mission Support is responsible for: * Recruiting … * and much more. Mission Supports current Director of over a year now is Michael Karash, the former Fire Chief of Key West, Florida. The Deputy Director, who was moved from I&A recently to help out as we are growing quickly is Michael Tomasiewicz, CISSP. / .. more to come .. / Science & TechnologySubmitted by chet.uber on Sun, 01/24/2010 – 23:11 Science & Technology (S&T) is the oldest and my orginal home in Project VIGILANT. The current Director of S&T Dr. Doug Jacobson, Ph.D. currently on the faculy of Iowa State University in Ames. Dr. Jacobson brings new blood to what was a thriving department that had lapsed. We have a policy of nominating the Director and they are responsible of bringing into Project VIGILANT new blood as there Deputy. We ask them to find someone they know, trust and respect – because the Deputy is the Directors shadow and they must work together closely. By forcing the Director to choose, we strengthen Project VIGILANT. Dr. Jacobson chose well and selected Dr. Christophe Veltsos, Ph.D on the faculty of Minnesota State The following are dormant, active or the planned sub-divisions of S&T. * Information Theory / .. more to come .. / Volunteerism and VettingSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 05:23 Project VIGILANT is conducted by BBHC Global LLC, which characterizes itself as a Not-Just-For-Profit business in that a large portion of profits of the business are put in to make Project VIGILANT exist. When people want to get involved with Project VIGILANT we make it clear that while there are potentially tangible monetary benefits to participating that the project was clear a 100% Volunteer effort. If you are thinking that getting involved as an individual, going through vetting and becoming a fully vested member please keep in mind that it is a volunteer effort. Your participation as a volunteer depends on two things, your interest and the time that you have to commit. For some positions, like advisory committees, and domain experts you can by with as little as one (1) hour per month and fulfill your position. For other positions like being involved as a Assistant or Associate Director you can expect to be putting in more like (one) 1 hour or more per week. These jobs require that you are able to meet scheduling conditions as well as things have to be completed on time and more meetings are involved; which means scheduled times for doing things are more necessary. For positions like Principal Investigators, Senior Scientists, Scientists, Collection Officers, Collection Managers, and Research Associates you can expect to be putting putting in one (1) to two (2) or more hours per day. Whatever it takes for your job to be completed is the time you will be asked. Directors, Deputy Directors, and members of the command staff outside of advisory positions are expected to put in one (1) to four (4) or more hours a day towards their goals. You have scheduled events, you are managing people, your are expected to have enough free time that you can commit a significant amount of your time to do your job. In the areas or Liaisons and Partnership that hours are general very low, but the timing can be more erratic, you need to have freedom in your schedule so you can meet with Liaisons when this is need and partners when this is needed. These can be tried to run on a schedule but the reality is we never know when a corporate partner or government or other Liaison is going to be needed. The position with the absolute lowest time but can come at any time are related to Domain Experts in both Intelligence & Analysis and Science & Technology. In general for domain experts we tend to look for the person or people who create a protocol or area in which we work. Because they know the area so well that one hour of their time is 50 of someone who only uses the protocol. We currently have people in the areas of IMAP and SPAM that may have been called on once a year. We only need them when working on a problem we need their help on an issue say on IMAP that only the person who designed it could be of use and we would send our a call for them with a very specific description of the problem ask them about designing it. Time and availability are the functions to look at when selecting where you volunteer in. These are just some of the areas ad we will work on expanding and working on this area. /.. more to come .. / VolunteerismSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 05:11 For the first time since 1996, we have opened up our project to “walk-ons.” We knew by 2006 after the creation of the formal structure for the day-to-day operation of the project that we would have to grow an order of magnitude in six years. Despite our best efforts to use or existing methods to “court” those with skills we absolutely need, the process was talking one day/volunteer and at that rate we would never make our goal. Because of this we created a formal project within Mission Support to deal with recruiting recruiters; and have planned to go public with our needs for top of the line wet-ware. So if you are very good at what you love to do. Please look for lists on this page of job titles and skill sets. The first official postings are slated for July 15, 2010. Project VIGILANT (VIGILANT) is a division within the “Not Just for Profit” entity BBHC Global LLC (BBHC) It is supported by the profits of BBHC Global LLC. Currently Project VIGILANT gives away its intelligence to help aid in the protection of Public Safety and National Security; and has a long term goal of developing new technologies and methodologies that will be provided through Technology Transfer to non-governmental owners of Critical Infrastructure; as well as all elements of the U.S. Government, Federal, Tribal, State or Local. The inclusion of transfers to Five Eyes, NATO, and other countries with which the United States has Mutual Defense treaties is subject to approval by not only BBHC, but the State Department. Our tools are powerful, and we constantly work and will continue to work in a compartmentalized manner to prevent corporate and other espionage possibilities. We are very particular about who we allow into our vetting program KILGORE. KILGORE is the compartment within VIGILANT in which non-vested members get their basic training. This includes participation in group chats, which help to determine whether the new volunteer has ability to work in an environment where ‘Mission, Team, Self’ is the focus. Also we have an extremely diverse staff and it is important for us to determine any potential problems related to prejudice as diversity is something we embrace, and we feel this is a factor that makes us strong. A list of other typical things that occur in KILGORE are: * You sign your first of many Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) * Fill out an Exclusionary Document which is permission to run a credit check, background check and to validate your CV. It also has questions in it designed to weed out vigilantes, mentally unstable people, and those who are not truly joining for the right reasons. The next part of the Exclusionary questions, asks if you have had any felonies in the last seven years, if you use drugs, if you are an United States Citizen, and if you have every been convicted of domestic abuse, child endangerment and a number of other items. Basically it is you baring your soul. To be up front if you lie to us, and we find that you have – you are automatically disqualified. Lying is not tolerated — truthfulness is an essential part of vetting Some things can be ‘waived.’ We are more interested in who you really are, who you want to become, and that you want to make the country a safer place to live. Who you were is important, but if truthful a significant number of ‘weaknesses’ can be dealt with. For example, things like experimental drugs use or even recreational use can be wavered depending on the type of drug, type of use and the time period in which you used drugs. The final part of this document asks you to take an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The time in KILGORE is generally from 30-90 days. If you already have a Federal S or TS clearance it waives the need for the background check, but the NDA and exclusionary questions portions of your volunteer application still must be filled out. We have had people go through vetting, in as quick short a period as a week. Once you pass vetting you become a fully vested member of VIGILANT. Explorers and Junior VolunteersSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 20:57 In 2002 while working with Winn Schwartau and the concept for having a merit badge in Boy Scouts for “Computer Security Awareness” was put forth by the three of us. I was a Scout we were having long discussions about when and how ethics should be taught in the school system. We prepared the material based on Winn Schwartau’s book, “Internet & Computer Ethics for Kids: (and Parents & Teachers Who Haven’t Got a Clue.)”, and we ran it through the Mid-America Council which represents Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota; and it was ran all the way through to the Top of the Boy Scout system. We were told that they were not adding any more merit badges for probably ten more years. Currently Winn is using his critically acclaimed book online is is focused on Kid’s Aged 7-12th grade. Our Ethics Committee is still discussing whether who a child is, their ethical make is hardened by 13 or is it at a higher age. If it is lower than one opinion is that we should be using his material at lower age levels and integrating into all curriculum’s, not just being taught separately. For example, plagarism and stealing should be taught every time an assignment is given and the focus on these areas would be woven into the entire curriculum at the lowest grade possible (as low as fourth) in order to make sure that the issues of Ethics can take hold while their being is formed. Additionally we are looking at a situation similar to Explorer posts, where we work we work with kids in high school and college from ages 17-21 to participate as Junior Volunteers in our programs. We have areas in Science & Technology and Intelligence & Analysis in which youths this age with proper supervision can and will be included into Project VIGILANT. This project will be going through review of both our Legal Advisers and Ethics Advisers to determine the viability of such a proposition, and are hoping to have a decision by Q2 2010. Fully Vetted Active-Duty LEO VolunteersSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 05:29 [No entries] Fully Vetted VolunteersSubmitted by chet.uber on Mon, 01/25/2010 – 05:27 [No entries]
Related posts:
|
incorporates a section of the 1992 Rio Declaration which is an original UN Agenda 21 document!