Citizen Journalism News and Citizen Journalism Videos 3298 items | updated Mar 19 2010
Collective Journalism (CJ) is Current's citizen journalism program. If you want to get involved with telling the stories about how you and your community are affected by news and issues, this is the place. This page is curated by the staff on the CJ team, and features CJ content aired on the TV network, but this is where you can upload your work, suggest ideas, leave your webcam reactions and link to news stories. more
What is Collective Journalism?
Why ‘Collective' not Citizen?
What type of journalism do you do?
How can I contribute?
What is a Collective Work?
What's the deal with pay?
Collective Journalism FAQ
What is Collective Journalism?
"Collective Journalism" is Current's brand of citizen journalism. We produce collaborative reports or group investigations about the issues and stories that matter to our generation. Collective Journalism is open to contributions from anyone, anywhere in the world.
Why ‘Collective' not Citizen?
We're "Collective" because we're all in this together. Working on stories together means that we cover more ground, get more perspectives and include as many different voices as possible.
What type of journalism do you do?
At Current, the news is personal. That's why we like to have stories told in the first person, directly by the people who are involved. Most of our stories follow a narrative structure where it's more of short documentary than a traditional broadcast news lecture. We strive for accuracy at all costs, and all of our work is vetted by our team of staff journalists before it hits TV. Collective Journalism is not a reactionary unit that chases police cars and bright lights, rather, we encourage all of our contributors to strike out with their own original angles on stories.
How can I contribute?
Start uploading!--Its really that simple. There are many ways to get involved, like producing an element of one of our larger Collective Works, where you contribute to our group investigations of important issues. Contributing can also be as simple as recording a video diary to as ambitious as shooting your own 3-7 minute pod. Check out our assignments as posted, or let us know if you have another idea!
What is a Collective Work?
Collective Works are CJ's signature product. In our Collective Works Hub, we post all the group investigations we're working on at any given time. Feel free to start working on one of the assignments listed, or suggest your own. Unlike old school news organizations—our entire assignment board is front and center so we all can work off the same page.
What's the deal with pay?
Current TV pays for most material we put on our TV channel, with the exception of Submitted Materials (i.e. video diaries, vlogs, or blogs, etc.) uploaded to the website. In terms of Collective Journalism, the first few projects are done "on spec"--meaning we don't make an offer until we see an uploaded work. Then if we make an offer, the price is negotiated between the producer and our staff journalists. For more details please check out the Terms of Use on our website.
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Belavezha Accords requested search by biased Glenn Beck and Fox
Belavezha Accords is nothing but some hyped up american history event that Fox news is using as a peg to distract people from the important issues at hand like Health Care reform for everyone. Glen Beck as always gives out a dramatic rant about his love for the United States of America but somehow manages to make the US worse by creating idiotic audiences who think Glenn Beck knows something. Fox News claims to have balanced news reports but anyone with half a brain can tell that they are biased. This Belavezha Accords that they want you to look up is just a hoax. Just something to add drama. They are trying to compare the United States to the Soviet Union and how the US is slowly going to a communist route. This is of course completely false as health care reform is merely about giving universal access to a basic necessity of like such as medicine, doctors, hospitals and life saving treatments. belavezha accords is just another fancy thing that may make you think they know, but they don’t. Please, do your own research and see what the Fox News network is trying to make you do. Find your own facts. Belavezha Accords requested search by biased Glenn Beck and Fox is a post from:Belavezha Accords is nothing but some hyped up american history event that Fox news is using as a peg to distract people from the... more-
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McCain and Lieberman's "Enemy Belligerent" Act Could Set U.S. on Path to Military Dictatorship | | AlterNet
Glenn Greenwald calls the bill "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades."
March 19, 2010 |
Senator John McCain (L) of Arizona listens as Senator Joe Lieberman (R) of Connecticut speaks during a press conference in Washington, DC. The two senators unveiled legislation Thursday aimed at requiring that suspected "high-value" terrorists face interrogation and trial by the US military, not civilian questioners and courts.
Photo Credit: AFP/File - Saul Loeb
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On March 4th, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bill called the "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010" that, if passed, would set this country on a course to become a military dictatorship.
The bill is only 12 pages long, but that is plenty of room to grant the president the power to order the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of anyone -- including a U.S. citizen -- indefinitely, on the sole suspicion that he or she is affiliated with terrorism, and on the president's sole authority as commander in chief.
The Act begins with the following (convoluted) requirement:
Whenever within the United States, its territories, and possessions, or outside the territorial limits of the United States, an individual is captured or otherwise comes into the custody or under the effective control of the United States who is suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities, and who may be an unprivileged enemy belligerent, the individual shall be placed in military custody for purposes of initial interrogation and determination of status in accordance with the provisions of this Act.
In other words, if at any point, anywhere in the world, a person is caught who might have done something to suggest that he or she is a terrorist or somehow supporting a terrorist organization against the U.S. or its allies, that person must be imprisoned by the military.
For how long?
As long as U.S. officials want. A subsequent section, titled "Detention Without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents," states that suspects "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners." In a press conference introducing the bill earlier this month, Sen. Joe Lieberman said, "I know that will be -- that may be -- a long time, but that's the nature of this war."
As constitutional expert Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, "It's basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla -- arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges." What happened to Padilla, a notorious perversion of justice in a country that claims to be a democratic standard-bearer, would thus go from being an exception to the rule itself.
As "war on terror"-era legislation goes, Greenwald calls the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act." This is a sobering statement, especially given the intense controversy the MCA generated at the time of its passage, in the heady weeks preceding the 2006 midterm elections. Then-Senator Obama was one of only 34 senators who voted against it, calling it "sloppy," and expressing his wish that "cooler heads … prevail after the silly season of politics is over."
Now, however, as president, Obama has helped pave the way for such radical legislative efforts as the one introduced by McCain and Lieberman, by embracing -- and re-branding -- the military commissions he once opposed.
"Belligerents" are the new "Combatants"
Three years after Obama eloquently opposed the Military Commissions Act, the now-president signed a Military Commissions Act of his own, as part of the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill. The law, which sought to overhaul the discredited Bush-era military commissions for "alien enemy combatants," introduced what is apparently turning out to be an important new term to the counterterror lexicon: Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent, defined as "an individual who: 1) has engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners; or 2) has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."
Months before, in March of 2009, the Obama administration announced that it was phasing out the term "alien enemy combatant," even as it held on to the authority to hold terror suspects indefinitely. "Unprivileged Enemy Belligerent," then, was its replacement.
As Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner wrote last fall, "this is a cosmetic change, not a real improvement, which mirrors the administration's decision to drop the enemy combatant formula in habeas litigation at Guantanamo Bay."Glenn Greenwald calls the bill "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in... more-
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How Our Entire Economy Became a Ponzi Scheme | | AlterNet
We're only just discovering how widespread the rip-off schemes riddling our economy are.
March 18, 2010 |
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Every great American boom and bust makes and breaks its share of crooks. The past decade -- call it the Ponzi Era -- has been no different, except for the gargantuan scale of white-collar crime. A vast wave of financial fraud swelled in the first years of the new century. Then, in 2008, with the subprime mortgage collapse, it crashed on the shore as a full-scale global economic meltdown. As that wave receded, it left hundreds of Ponzi and pyramid schemes, as well as other get-rich-quick rackets that helped fuel our recent economic frenzy, flopping on the beach.
The high-water marks from that crime wave, those places where the corruption reached its zenith, are still visible today, like the 17th floor of 885 Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, the nerve center of investment firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities -- and, as it turned out, a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history. Or Stanfordville, a sprawling compound on the Caribbean island of Antigua named for its wealthy owner, a garrulous Texan named Allen Stanford who built it with funds from his own $8 billion Ponzi scheme. Or the bizarrely fortified law office -- security cards, surveillance cameras, hidden microphones, a private elevator -- of Florida attorney Scott Rothstein, who duped friends and investors out of $1.2 billion.
The more typical marks of the Ponzi Era, though, aren’t as easy to see. Williamston, Michigan, for instance, lacks towering skyscrapers, Italian sports cars, million-dollar mansions, and massive security systems. A quiet town 15 miles from Lansing, the state capital, Williamston is little more than a cross-hatching of a dozen or so streets. A “DOLLAR TIME$” store sits near Williamston’s main intersection -- locals affectionally call it the "four corners" -- and its main drag is lined with worn brick buildings passed on from one business to the next like fading, hand-me-down jeans. It’s here, far from New York or Antigua, that thanks to two brothers seized by a financial fever dream, the Ponzi Era made its truest, deepest American mark.
Jay and Eric Merkle, active church members and successful local businessmen, were well known among Williamston’s residents. In 2004, the brothers discovered that an oil-and-gas venture, which they had invested in and which promised them quick, lucrative returns, was a scam. They’d been duped. Their next move should have been simple: turn in the crooks and get on with their lives, their pockets a few dollars lighter. Jay and Eric, however, grasped the spirit of their age and made another decision entirely -- they teamed up with the guys who had ripped them off, in the process switching from prey to predator.
That first venture actually floundered, but in 2005, court records show, they started their own Ponzi scheme, Platinum Business Industries (PBI). Based in Williamston, PBI claimed it was socking its investors’ money into lucrative oil and gas exploration opportunities in Oklahoma and Texas, and it promised the investors absurdly high returns -- 6% a month, or 72% a year. Despite such promises, the brothers assured town locals handing over their hard-earned dollars that little risk was involved. Even if the energy exploration didn’t pay off, the land acquired by PBI was valuable and could be sold to offset any losses.
Like Madoff in Palm Beach, the Merkles in Williamston exploited local ties -- church and family -- to reel in new investors; and like Madoff's investment fund, PBI, too, was a complete sham, and a classic Ponzi scheme -- that is, an investment scam in which existing investors’ returns are paid for with money from new investors. In the case of PBI, there was no energy exploration in Oklahoma and Texas.
Some of the money they received from later investors the Merkles used to pay off earlier ones and give their scheme the look of success. But in their case, there was a rub. The Merkles were distinctly creatures of the Ponzi Era: they evidently couldn’t help themselves. Even as they ran their own Ponzi racket, documents show, they were getting fleeced. What they weren't paying out in fake returns the Merkles bet on high-yield, get-rich-quick schemes in the U.S. and abroad that had nothing to do with oil and gas -- and other Ponzi schemers and con artists were robbing them blind.
More at the link:We're only just discovering how widespread the rip-off schemes riddling our economy are. March 18, 2010 | LIKE... more-
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GORDON DUFF: ATTORNEY GENERAL HOLDER HINTS AT BIN LADEN DEATH, FINALLY : Veterans Today
SAYS BIN LADEN “WON’T” BE TAKEN ALIVE…DOES HE MEAN “CAN’T?”
HOLDER SEEN AS SOFTENING PUBLIC TO ACCEPT BIN LADEN’S DEATH IN 2001
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
The scandals from the Bush era seem endless, endless and never dealt with. One of the biggest is the hunt for Osama, a hunt that cost hundreds of lives and, literally, billions of dollars, a hunt that unofficially ended with Osama bin Laden’s death on December 15, 2001. We knew it, Pakistan knew it and Benezir Bhutto even announced it long ago. For years, America has been chastising her allies and even her own military for their failures, especially the failure to catch Osama bin Laden. Now we are warned it will be impossible. No kidding.
Last month I was briefed by the highest sources of the Pakistani military. One of our more private discussions was on bin Laden. I know, we know and they know he is dead. Nobody has seen nor heard from bin Laden since he announced HE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11. However, a series of sadly phony videos and audio tapes have been released, all tracked down to sources tied directly to Israeli intelligence services, have been presented by the media without any verification, a media, frankly, also tied directly as with FOX, ABC, NBC and CBS or as with CNN, through Wolf Blitzer, also to Israeli intelligence services.
Now, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced, in his own sly way that “bin Laden won’t face trial.” Holder knows something. He knows what they know in Israel, Afghanistan, Pakistan, France, Britain, Germany, Canada, Iran, India and so many other countries, something America has been afraid to admit.
Why?
How do you lie for years, a fraudulent lie, not only lying about bin Laden’s death but lying about his involvement in terrorist acts. In fact, we have no idea who was responsible for 9/11, not really. We saw planes, we also tracked down some suspicious payments and have clear evidence of a highly complex conspiracy, one that goes much further than 19 hijackers whose remains have never been found.
So many lies, Barb Olson’s phone call to her husband about “box cutters” never happened, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and General Myer lied under oath as did many who testified before the commission and now we find much of the evidence was falsified or many issues, like Building 7, the one that was “pulled down” with no engineer or preparation, were never allowed to be investigated. In fact, the Commission was a fraud. Here is how they put it:
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9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue .
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Commission Chair Tom Kean and co-chair Lee Hamilton authored Stonewalled by the C.I.A., outlining how the 9/11 Commission was crippled by lies and destroyed evidence at the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”
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9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”
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9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”
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And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said ”At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened”.
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He also said ”I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”
WHY DIDN’T I HEAR OF THIS BEFORE?
Funny thing, whenever a “news cycle” with one of these stories came around, so did a new bin Laden tape or terror alert. If not that, it was a new operation announced in Iraq or something else. As time went on, the Commission moved on with life, realizing that we were sunk so deeply into a quagmire of lies that they felt nothing could be done. For every question, a new lie, a new terror alert, a new invasion, a new enemy, a new “evil doer” came into view, torture, rendition, Soviet style “show trials” or military tribunals pushed a real search for the truth out and away.
TWO WARS, FALSE PRETENSES AND A DEAD BIN LADEN TO FIGHT
When President Bush did a stand-up routine joking about looking for missing WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) he thought his “cover story” for Afghanistan would stay intact. Anything can seem funny, not matter how inappropriate when you are a class clown who has never had to meet an obligation of any kind, personal, professional, military or otherwise. A joke or two and, if challenged, the tantrum of the typical narcissist put on as a show. For 8 long years Bush thru hundreds of tantrums, dozens of them public. A review of the very few news conferences from the Bush era show continual deception and a total lack of understanding, not only of geopolitics or military operations but of the moral questions involved in going to war under false pretenses.
People can be killed, Amerians, Iraqis, soldiers, children and in numbers uncountable. Death and suffering became so common place that Americans said nothing when the sacrifice and suffering of their own troops became subjects of humor and derision by a President, Cabinet and Congressional leadership conveniently short of real military experience though nearly all were “of age” during the Vietnam War.
HOLDER, TRUTH’S “BACKDOOR MAN”
Holder’s carefully crafted warning that bin Laden would never be taken alive is to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the announcement so many should fear, fear if they know what it is really saying. He is not saying that he has done a psychological profile on bin Laden, he isn’t even saying bin Laden was probably killed recently. America is being softened up by President Obama’s “backdoor man.”
Holder is telling us, those of us who were briefed long ago, that bin Laden has been dead for many years but brought out from the grave at election time, “bilking Congress for money” time and “scaring the folks during their morning coffee time,” all done for profit, for show and at a cost in money and lives uncounted.
Everything said about Osama bin Laden has been deception. Think of every time bin Laden’s name has been used by a public official who had been briefed in December 2001 that Osama bin Laden was dead.
Every word they uttered on bin Laden, perhaps every word uttered on anything else has been a lie. Line them up, they number in the hundreds, so many names, so many liars. None of them died in a gully in Afghanistan while on a George W. Bush “Where’s Waldo” hunt.SAYS BIN LADEN “WON’T” BE TAKEN ALIVE…DOES HE MEAN “CAN’T?” HOLDER SEEN AS SOFTENING... more-
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Liars, cheats, thieves: the terrible truth about the mean greens - Telegraph
Every now and again there comes along a scientific study that proves beyond reasonable doubt what you instinctively know to be true: wine is good for you, exercise is dangerous, and self-righteous environmentalists are lying, cheating, thieving degenerates.
I'm exaggerating only a little. Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices – whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage – the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.
The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics", to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping.
This "moral balancing" argument, however, clearly has its limits. Most people are sufficiently balanced without having to swing to opposite ends of the moral spectrum. We can give money to charity without dipping into the company till at the same time. Every good act doesn't necessitate a bad one. To every action, there is not an equal and opposite reaction. Buying an expensive courgette with a bit of mud on it need not turn you into a tyrant.
No, what this study really does is to confirm our deep-rooted suspicion that there is something fishy about people who profess to be greener than thou. Those climate-change scientists in East Anglia didn't do their cause any favours with their emails. The most inconvenient truth for Al Gore was when reporters discovered just how large his home energy bills were.
As with the worst type of religious zealot, there is nothing more annoying than the zeal of the converted, especially when it is tainted with the hypocrisy of self-righteousness. As we report today, people are more likely to buy environmentally friendly produce in shops than on the internet. Being seen to be green is more important than anything else. I wonder whether that will change if it now becomes a case of being seen to be mean.
We should, of course, distinguish between the quiet, worthy faith of the majority, who recycle when they remember and try not to fly long-haul to New Zealand more than twice a month, and the infuriating, evangelical minority, who pour white paint all over nice, black 4x4s.
We've always suspected they were bullies. In the Seventies British film Nuts in May, Mike Leigh hilariously skewered the sort of couple whose supposed love of the environment – and why do so many of these people live in towns? – is really just a device to stop everyone else having fun.
And now, at last, we have confirmation that they're tight as well. They might be willing to pay over the odds for a lovingly tended carrot, but in every other area of normal human activity, their greenness is merely a mask for miserliness. The wind turbine, the tandem bike with a dangerous little buggy on the back for the twins, the self-denying holidays in Wales… Get a boiler! Get a car! Get out of here!
We have been kind to these unkind people for far too long. Now that their halo has fallen and they can no longer boast their green credentials as a shorthand for moral superiority, it is time to fight fire with fire. How about a little compensatory ethics of our own? Double the tax on organic food as a deterrent; it is clearly a starter drug to a lifetime of amorality. Stop and search anyone in a Prius. Conduct dawn raids on north London allotments. Otherwise, one can only imagine the sort of dystopia that would ensue if these mean little green men were allowed to run amok.Every now and again there comes along a scientific study that proves beyond reasonable doubt what you instinctively know to be... more-
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Government Warned 9/11 Commission ‘Not To Cross The Line’
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Documents recently obtained by the ACLU show that the government warned the 9/11 Commission against getting to the bottom of the September 11 terror attacks in a letter signed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet.
In a letter dated January 6, 2004, the Commission was refused permission to question terrorist detainees, with inquiry leaders Hamilton and Kean being told there was “A line that the Commission should not cross,” in the course of its investigation.
A PDF of the letter (page 26) can be read here.
The government urged the Commission, “Not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees,” according to the letter, citing the need to “Safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks.”
The warning was just one example of how the Bush administration fiercely struggled to prevent the 9/11 Commission from conducting a deeper probe into the attacks. Bush and Cheney refused to appear before the Commission separately and both refused to testify under oath, instead meeting with panel members informally and in private, with no recordings of the meeting allowed.
“It appears that David Addington took the lead on refusing the 9/11 Commission’s request,” writes the FireDogLake blog. “It appears Addington got the draft of the letter from 9/11 Commission–which was addressed to Rummy and George Tenet. Tenet and Addington clearly had a conversation about how to respond. But it seems that Addington drafted the response, got Condi, Andy Card, and Alberto Gonzales to review it, and then sent it to Tenet (and, presumably, Rummy) to okay and sign the letter.”
As FireDogLake rightly points out, this was part of an attempt to cover-up the systematic torture of detainees which did not fully come to light until the Abu Ghraib scandal was exposed in April 2004.
However, the refusal to allow access to detainees was also undoubtedly so that the Commission members couldn’t later blow the whistle on the fact that the men were nothing more than patsies and goat herders who had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks.
As we have constantly emphasized in the face of establishment media spin that has demonized the mere act of questioning the official 9/11 story, the majority of the 9/11 Commission members themselves have all gone on record to publicly slam the official story as untrue.
The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission – John Farmer – said that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon was engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.
Senator Max Cleland, who resigned from the 9/11 Commission after calling it a “national scandal”, stated in a 2003 PBS interview,
“I’m saying that’s deliberate. I am saying that the delay in relating this information to the American public out of a hearing… series of hearings, that several members of Congress knew eight or ten months ago, including Bob Graham and others, that was deliberately slow walked… the 9/11 Commission was deliberately slow walked, because the Administration’s policy was, and its priority was, we’re gonna take Saddam Hussein out.”
Cleland, speaking with Democracy Now, said,
“One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.
In 2006 the Washington Post reported that several members of the 9/11 Commission suspected deception on part of the Pentagon. As reported,
“Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.”
9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerry also has unanswered questions. As reported by Salon, he believes that there are legitimate reasons to believe an alternative version to the official story.
“There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version,” Kerry said. The commission had limited time and limited resources to pursue its investigation, and its access to key documents and witnesses was fettered by the administration.
Commissioner Tim Roemer, speaking to CNN, stated that Commission members were considering a criminal probe of false statements. As quoted,
“We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting,” Roemer told CNN. “We were not sure of the intent, whether it was to deceive the commission or merely part of the fumbling bureaucracy.”
Despite the fact that the majority of 9/11 Commission members have openly attacked the official story, the corporate media still frames any suspicion surrounding 9/11 as baseless conspiracy fodder at best, and at worst – terrorist and extremist propaganda.Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Wednesday, March 17, 2010 Documents recently obtained by the ACLU show that the... more-
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Obama Talks Health Care & Asks Fox News to Stop Interrupting - Video
The president took a break from leaning on House members to pitch his health care plan to Fox News. You know the president was going to have a up hill battle dealing with Fox News ...
Things got a little testy, but Fox’s Bret Baier ended up apologizing for interrupting so much and the president was able to get his message out....
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/obama_asks_fox_news_to_stop_interrupting_20100317/?lnThe president took a break from leaning on House members to pitch his health care plan to Fox News. You know the president was... more-
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ZAGrrl: 6 Ways Law Enforcement Uses Social Media to Fight Crime
From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law enforcement agencies, and not just to fight Internet-related crimes. We’re talking about solving crimes that are happening on the street and in your community.
According to Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and organizer of the SMILE (Social Media In Law Enforcement) Conference being held in Washington D.C. this April, adoption of social media is still in the “very, very, early stages,” but she sees it making an upward turn. “I expect 2010 will be a monumental year,” she said.
But many police departments that have embraced social media are still trying to figure it out.
“Most agencies … are not significantly proactive with keeping up with content and updates,” said Terry Halsch from CitizenObserver.com, developers of the tip411 system for police agencies. “There are some limitations because of uncertainty of how secure information is, how can it be efficiently maintained, [and] the risks and liabilities of entering the world of social media.”
Below are six different ways law enforcement is utilizing social media and real-time search to enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and ultimately prevent criminal activity.
1. Police Blotter Blogs
A police blotter is the record of events at a police station. Traditionally, a desk sergeant kept a register of these events. Nowadays, Twitter (Twitter) feeds, blogs, YouTube (YouTube), and Facebook (Facebook) Fan Pages are being used by captains and chiefs to put out the digital equivalent of the police blotter in real-time.
Publishing a register of crimes and arrests in an area has been an online activity for a while now, especially through local newspaper websites. But social media is allowing many police officers on the scene to report the publicly available details of a crime for themselves. Reporters are getting their facts directly from a stream of real time-data and blog posts coming from the department.
Individual cops aren’t about to turn into citizen journalists anytime soon, but the police are able, through social media and real-time updates, to provide essential information that the public and news gathering agencies need to know. Journalists today often use the web for their first line of research, and rely on web-based police reports for many of the details they need for a story.
“We don’t just release the police report; we write our own story and post it to our website,” said Mark Economou, the Public Information Manager for the Boca Raton Police Department in Boca Raton, Florida in a post on ConnectedCops.com. “Even more interesting, we are finding the media is just cutting and pasting our stories to their sites, both in television and print.”
The Boca Raton Police Department has developed their own branded web platform that they call Viper. Social media is a very important part of their strategy, and like anyone adopting social media into a plan, they use it to support and enhance the work they already do.
2. The Digital “Wanted Poster”
Boyton Beach Facebook Image
In the vein of an Old West “Wanted” poster, displayed in the most trafficked area of town, modern-day law enforcement agencies are posting descriptions of criminals on today’s most trafficked spots — namely the social web.
With millions of users, extraordinary reach, and the lightning-fast exchange of text, photos, and video, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are ideal for getting the word out about wanted persons with up-to-the-minute updates.
The Boynton Beach Police Department is a good example. On their Facebook Fan Page, the department put up a post with the headline, “Police need help identifying motorcyclist who robbed man at ATM.” In the post there was a photo from the ATM machine of the crime in progress. The department also cross-posted the information to their Twitter page.
In the UK, the Leicestershire Constabulary is one of a number of police departments focusing on being hyper-local and involved with the community through social media. Their website has a section titled “Can you help?” which is formatted like a blog, and contains posts about ongoing criminal investigations, and a “Wanted Poster” and “Missing Persons” area with photos and requests for residents to respond with any leads they might have.
The stories are also fed to a Facebook Page that is very interactive and updated constantly. They also maintain a Twitter profile, a YouTube account, and the department offers the ability to subscribe to their news feed via RSS. It’s an impressive mixture of social media tools that seems to work fluidly and update automatically.
3. Anonymous E-Tipsters
Tips from the community have been a time-honored way that citizens have worked with the public to fight crime.
Consulting companies are developing very sophisticated ways for the public and the police to interact online. The tip411 program developed by the CitizenObserver Corporation is marketed to law enforcement as a web-based notification toolset. Citizen participation has always been a big part of fighting crime, and the people at tip411 stress that social media “acts as a ‘force multiplier’ by empowering your community to get involved.”
“Anonymous text tip systems are gaining significant traction because they enable young people to provide information without fear of retribution, i.e. ‘Snitches get Snitches,’” said CitizenObserver’s Terry Halsch.
The program allows tipsters to send information anonymously through a variety of means including “anonymous web chat, text tips and secure social media publishing.” Filtered alerts can then be pushed out through a police department’s central location to other web mediums. Bundled with other offerings, tip411 can then be published with Google Maps (Google Maps) to create a clickable, interactive crime “heat map” of sorts where others can click on links directly to add more information and tips based on location. This program is meant to encourage increased interaction between the police and the community through real-time web tools.
“It doesn’t matter to us where the information comes from,” said Detroit’s Chief of Police, Warren Evans, a tip411 user. “We just want the information so we can act on it. I want people to know that they can feel safe using this system to communicate with us directly.”
4. Social Media Stakeout
Social media advocates stress listening as a part of any brand’s online marketing strategy. Listening to the bad guys doing bad things has always been a part of police work. It’s important for police to search the real-time web to target particular keywords and phrases being passed around on social media. Use of social media monitoring has a strategic, tactical and operational application for law enforcement.
Boston Police Department Superintendent John Daly spoke about using Twitter search to monitor chatter around the Boston area in real-time. He’s very sensitive to the implications of engaging in this type of search, as many police departments are.
“We have to be very careful because there’s a Big Brother aspect to this,” Daly said.
He stressed that they were not looking at “everyday messages,” as he put it, but specific tweets that signaled something they should be looking into.
“But when people start saying, ‘What’s that smoke coming from the Hancock Tower?’ or ‘Why is everybody running around Copley Place –- is something going on?’ — if two or three things come in we look at patterns, trends, something maybe we should be paying attention [to]. So it’s sort of an early warning system.”
5. Thwarting Thugs in the Social Space
More at the link:From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law enforcement agencies, and not... more-
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An American Dream: Christopher Hignite’s Story / Scratch a child support case and solve a murder
Prepared for Ky State Representative Stan Lee
By Christopher Hignite with the assistance of Henry Schankula
November 6, 2007
corrected, with emmendations and additions
November 28, 2007
I: Introduction
On April 26, 2007 Lt. Keith Stevens of the Lexington-Fayette County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the home of my mother, Jane Hignite, with whom I live. My mother was there as was my youngest sibling, Brandon, a 27 year old man who was born with Downs Syndrome. Lt. Stevens told my mother that he had a summons to serve me in a child custody case. The County Attorney’s Office had been looking for me for quite a while, he said. Now that they had caught up with me I was in big trouble. To my brother Brandon, Lt. Stevens said “What do you think of your brother now. You are an uncle and he didn’t even tell you. We’re going to put him in jail for a long time.” My mother told Lt. Stevens that I was at work delivering pizzas and that he would find me downtown at my place of employment, A Slice of Chicago.
Lt. Stevens left his business card with my mother. He then came to Slice of Chicago, marched into the back of the building where the pizzas are made and loudly demanded to know where I was, stating again for all to hear that Chris Hignite was in a lot of trouble. Stevens was told by the owner of Slice that I was on a delivery and that he, Stevens, could wait outside for me to return. When I did return, Stevens handed me a copy of a Civil Summons issued for me on November 11, 1997 and signed by Robert M. True and Amy Fowler, a Summons to appear in the case of Michelle Brizendine and her daughter, Madison. Later I would learn that this Civil Summons had been occasioned by a Court Complaint pursuing child support issued on November 4, 1997, and signed by Fayette County. Margaret Kannensohn and her assistants Byron L. Ockerman, Christopher E. Hutchison, R. Barry Minton.
On April 27, 2007 I called family court attorney Jenny Scott and on May 1, 2007 my mother and I met with her. Ms. Scott had already collected copies of papers from the County Attorney’s office, and after some discussion of the case, I signed a contract with her, for an initial fee of $750, to represent my interests in the upcoming case. I pointed out to Ms. Scott that, in the upper right corner of the original of the copy with which I had been served someone, at some time, had written by hand ‘07-17-06’. Ms. Scott noted with interest that the section entitled ‘Proof of Service’ had not been filled in or signed by either Stevens or myself, thus making the document appear as if it had never been served at all. “But,” she said, “I do not want to make a deal out of it”.
A further set of facts is even more remarkable. On April 26, 2007 Lt. Keith Stevens told my mother that the County Attorney’s Office had been looking for me “for quite a while”. On June 28, 2007 The DNA nurse told me, in the presence of Michelle and Madison Brizendine, that her paperwork showed that three attempts had been made to serve the summons. [The DNA nurse stated, by the way, that she “didn't work for the city but for the testing facility”; nevertheless, her office has doors adjoining those of both the County Attorney and the Family Court Judge, and she also has access to their mutual conference room.] On May 1, 2007 my attorney, Jenny Scott also told me that three attempts had been made to serve the summons and she showed me a copy of a piece of stenographer’s notebook paper bearing three signatures and three dates. Ms. Scott noted, again with considerable interest, that she had never seen the summons attempts listed on a separate piece of paper; furthermore, that in every other case she had known the dates of attempts to serve a summons and the names of the servers were written on the back of the summons itself. “But,” she said, “I do not want to make a deal out of it”. Finally, in the last week of October, my attorney, told me that nobody now remembered the note listing three attempts to serve the Summons, but that the County Attorney’s office claims it can produce a carbon copy of a note on scrap paper of one attempt to serve it. And, yes, you guessed it, my own attorney, Jenny Scott, did not want to make a deal out of it.
I, however, did want to make a deal of it. It was Wednesday, October 31. There was a hearing of the case scheduled for November 1 at 9 a.m. The County Attorney was asking the judge for a summary ruling that my attorney Ms. Scott called “devastating”. I had cleared the fact that I could not be at this hearing and we had agreed that Ms. Scott would act in my interest. Both Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning I tried unsuccessfully to reach Ms. Scott by phone and in person. I then hand-delivered and slid under her office door a letter of instructions containing the specific wording of several motions which I wished to have entered into the court record. That evening my mother, Jane, and my brother, Cory visited Michelle Brizendine at her home. And on Thursday morning, Ms. Jenny Scott sold me down the river.
Ms. Scott had decided to settle the matter herself. She said that she didn’t want to cause ill relations with anyone in the County Attorney’s office. She said that my motions would be have been ignored by the Judge. I told her I didn’t care if the judge ignored or denied the motions; the very fact that the record showed that an attempt had been made to enter them would have done the trick. Ms. Scott said she had taken what she thought was the best offer and that she didn’t want to do battle.
Today, on November 6, 2007 at 4:29 p.m. my attorney, Jenny Scott finally returned a number of calls that I had made to her. She said again that she had read my motions, she said there were “valid points” in all of them. Nevertheless, she would be the laughing stock of family court if she had attempted to file them, she was a family court lawyer, she did not sign on with me to take on the County Attorney’s office, and perhaps I needed to see a criminal lawyer. To put the matter as she herself had put it at our very first meeting: “My daddy told me not to shit where I eat.”
The motions, “the valid points” that would make Ms. Scott “the laughing stock of family court” were based on these following six claims:
Please go to link for full story:http://www.higgyforcity.com/News.htmlPrepared for Ky State Representative Stan Lee By Christopher Hignite with the assistance of Henry Schankula November 6, 2007... more-
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An American Dream: Christopher Hignite’s Story / Scratch a child support case and solve a murder
Prepared for Stan Lee
By Christopher Hignite with the assistance of Henry Schankula
November 6, 2007
corrected, with emmendations and additions
November 28, 2007
I: Introduction
On April 26, 2007 Lt. Keith Stevens of the Lexington-Fayette County Sheriff’s Department arrived at the home of my mother, Jane Hignite, with whom I live. My mother was there as was my youngest sibling, Brandon, a 27 year old man who was born with Downs Syndrome. Lt. Stevens told my mother that he had a summons to serve me in a child custody case. The County Attorney’s Office had been looking for me for quite a while, he said. Now that they had caught up with me I was in big trouble. To my brother Brandon, Lt. Stevens said “What do you think of your brother now. You are an uncle and he didn’t even tell you. We’re going to put him in jail for a long time.” My mother told Lt. Stevens that I was at work delivering pizzas and that he would find me downtown at my place of employment, A Slice of Chicago.
Lt. Stevens left his business card with my mother. He then came to Slice of Chicago, marched into the back of the building where the pizzas are made and loudly demanded to know where I was, stating again for all to hear that Chris Hignite was in a lot of trouble. Stevens was told by the owner of Slice that I was on a delivery and that he, Stevens, could wait outside for me to return. When I did return, Stevens handed me a copy of a Civil Summons issued for me on November 11, 1997 and signed by Robert M. True and Amy Fowler, a Summons to appear in the case of Michelle Brizendine and her daughter, Madison. Later I would learn that this Civil Summons had been occasioned by a Court Complaint pursuing child support issued on November 4, 1997, and signed by Fayette County. Margaret Kannensohn and her assistants Byron L. Ockerman, Christopher E. Hutchison, R. Barry Minton.
On April 27, 2007 I called family court attorney Jenny Scott and on May 1, 2007 my mother and I met with her. Ms. Scott had already collected copies of papers from the County Attorney’s office, and after some discussion of the case, I signed a contract with her, for an initial fee of $750, to represent my interests in the upcoming case. I pointed out to Ms. Scott that, in the upper right corner of the original of the copy with which I had been served someone, at some time, had written by hand ‘07-17-06’. Ms. Scott noted with interest that the section entitled ‘Proof of Service’ had not been filled in or signed by either Stevens or myself, thus making the document appear as if it had never been served at all. “But,” she said, “I do not want to make a deal out of it”.
A further set of facts is even more remarkable. On April 26, 2007 Lt. Keith Stevens told my mother that the County Attorney’s Office had been looking for me “for quite a while”. On June 28, 2007 The DNA nurse told me, in the presence of Michelle and Madison Brizendine, that her paperwork showed that three attempts had been made to serve the summons. [The DNA nurse stated, by the way, that she “didn't work for the city but for the testing facility”; nevertheless, her office has doors adjoining those of both the County Attorney and the Family Court Judge, and she also has access to their mutual conference room.] On May 1, 2007 my attorney, Jenny Scott also told me that three attempts had been made to serve the summons and she showed me a copy of a piece of stenographer’s notebook paper bearing three signatures and three dates. Ms. Scott noted, again with considerable interest, that she had never seen the summons attempts listed on a separate piece of paper; furthermore, that in every other case she had known the dates of attempts to serve a summons and the names of the servers were written on the back of the summons itself. “But,” she said, “I do not want to make a deal out of it”. Finally, in the last week of October, my attorney, told me that nobody now remembered the note listing three attempts to serve the Summons, but that the County Attorney’s office claims it can produce a carbon copy of a note on scrap paper of one attempt to serve it. And, yes, you guessed it, my own attorney, Jenny Scott, did not want to make a deal out of it.
I, however, did want to make a deal of it. It was Wednesday, October 31. There was a hearing of the case scheduled for November 1 at 9 a.m. The County Attorney was asking the judge for a summary ruling that my attorney Ms. Scott called “devastating”. I had cleared the fact that I could not be at this hearing and we had agreed that Ms. Scott would act in my interest. Both Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning I tried unsuccessfully to reach Ms. Scott by phone and in person. I then hand-delivered and slid under her office door a letter of instructions containing the specific wording of several motions which I wished to have entered into the court record. That evening my mother, Jane, and my brother, Cory visited Michelle Brizendine at her home. And on Thursday morning, Ms. Jenny Scott sold me down the river.
Ms. Scott had decided to settle the matter herself. She said that she didn’t want to cause ill relations with anyone in the County Attorney’s office. She said that my motions would be have been ignored by the Judge. I told her I didn’t care if the judge ignored or denied the motions; the very fact that the record showed that an attempt had been made to enter them would have done the trick. Ms. Scott said she had taken what she thought was the best offer and that she didn’t want to do battle.
Today, on November 6, 2007 at 4:29 p.m. my attorney, Jenny Scott finally returned a number of calls that I had made to her. She said again that she had read my motions, she said there were “valid points” in all of them. Nevertheless, she would be the laughing stock of family court if she had attempted to file them, she was a family court lawyer, she did not sign on with me to take on the County Attorney’s office, and perhaps I needed to see a criminal lawyer. To put the matter as she herself had put it at our very first meeting: “My daddy told me not to shit where I eat.”
The motions, “the valid points” that would make Ms. Scott “the laughing stock of family court” were based on these following six claims:
Please go to link for full story:http://www.higgyforcity.com/News.htmlPrepared for Stan Lee By Christopher Hignite with the assistance of Henry Schankula November 6, 2007 corrected, with... more-
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The Twilight of the Elites - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years - TIME
In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment.
In the wake of the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority, this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority. Scholarly research shows a firm correlation between strong institutions, accountable élites and highly functional economies; mistrust and corruption, meanwhile, feed each other in a vicious circle. If our current crisis continues, we risk a long, ugly process of de-development: higher levels of corruption and tax evasion and an increasingly fractured public sphere, in which both public consensus and reform become all but impossible.
For more than 35 years, Gallup has polled Americans about levels of trust in their institutions — Congress, banks, Big Business, public schools, etc. In 2008 nearly every single institution was at an all-time low. Banks were trusted by just 32% of the populace, down from more than 50% in 2004. Newspapers were down to 24%, from slightly below 40% at the start of the decade. And Congress was the least trusted institution of all, with only 12% of Americans expressing confidence in it. The mistrust of élites extends to élites themselves. Every year, public-relations guru Richard Edelman conducts a "trust barometer" across 22 countries, in which he surveys only highly educated, high-earning, media-attentive people. In the U.S., these people show extremely low levels of trust in government and business alike. Particularly distrusted are the superman CEOs of yore. "Chief-executive trust has just been mired in the mid- to low 20s," says Edelman. "It started off with Enron and culminates in Citi."
Such figures show that the crisis of authority extends beyond narrow ideological categories: Big Business and unions, Congress and Wall Street, organized religion and science are all viewed with skepticism. So why is it that so much of the country's leadership in so many different walks of life performed so terribly over this decade? While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1971133_1971110_1971117,00.html#ixzz0iQYu4JDjIn the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall... more-
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Final destination Iran? - Herald Scotland | News | World News
Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for a possible attack on Iran.
The Sunday Herald can reveal that the US government signed a contract in January to transport 10 ammunition containers to the island. According to a cargo manifest from the US navy, this included 387 “Blu” bombs used for blasting hardened or underground structures.
Experts say that they are being put in place for an assault on Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities. There has long been speculation that the US military is preparing for such an attack, should diplomacy fail to persuade Iran not to make nuclear weapons.
Although Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.
The Sunday Herald reported in 2007 that stealth bomber hangers on the island were being equipped to take bunker-buster bombs.
They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran
Dan Plesch, director, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, University of London
Although the story was not confirmed at the time, the new evidence suggests that it was accurate.
Contract details for the shipment to Diego Garcia were posted on an international tenders’ website by the US navy.
A shipping company based in Florida, Superior Maritime Services, will be paid $699,500 to carry many thousands of military items from Concord, California, to Diego Garcia.
Crucially, the cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs.
“They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, co-author of a recent study on US preparations for an attack on Iran. “US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” he added.
The preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision. He may decide that it would be better for the US to act instead of Israel, Plesch argued.
“The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely,” he added. “The US ... is using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.”
According to Ian Davis, director of the new independent thinktank, Nato Watch, the shipment to Diego Garcia is a major concern. “We would urge the US to clarify its intentions for these weapons, and the Foreign Office to clarify its attitude to the use of Diego Garcia for an attack on Iran,” he said.
For Alan Mackinnon, chair of Scottish CND, the revelation was “extremely worrying”. He stated: “It is clear that the US government continues to beat the drums of war over Iran, most recently in the statements of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
“It is depressingly similar to the rhetoric we heard prior to the war in Iraq in 2003.”
The British Ministry of Defence has said in the past that the US government would need permission to use Diego Garcia for offensive action. It has already been used for strikes against Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 Gulf wars.
About 50 British military staff are stationed on the island, with more than 3,200 US personnel. Part of the Chagos Archipelago, it lies about 1,000 miles from the southern coasts of India and Sri Lanka, well placed for missions to Iran.
The US Department of Defence did not respond to a request for a comment.Hundreds of powerful US “bunker-buster” bombs are being shipped from California to the British island of Diego Garcia... more-
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Barack Obama, former CIA agent
I recently had the pleasure of talking with Dr. James David Manning who has been ministering to the people of Harlem since 1981. He is now the Senior Pastor at ATLAH which stands for All the Land Anointed Holy, Manning's inspired name for Harlem as of September 14, 1991.
Dr. Manning heads the Columbia Obama Treason Trial which is scheduled for May 14-19, 2010 at the ATLAH building at 38 West 123rd Street in ATLAH, New York, 10027. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court have failed in their duties to uphold the Constitution and address the legitimacy and other questionable issues surrounding the White House's current resident. So, Dr. Manning, being a longtime resident of the Columbia University area, the school that Obama allegedly attended, began an intense investigation into Obama's educational background and discovered some profound discrepancies.
According to Dr. Manning, Obama (born in 1961) enrolled at the very pricey Occidental College in Los Angeles, California in 1979 and was recruited there in 1980 by the CIA which has made it a practice since its inception to recruit college students. He was, by his own admission, a "C" student, a dope smoker and a member of the Marxist Club at Occidental, a co-educational liberal arts college. In 1981, Obama allegedly transferred from Occidental to Columbia University. It is atypical for a student to begin their education in one four-year school and then transfer to another school. Columbia University requires that incoming students pass certain academic requirements which Obama apparently lacked. However, Columbia had a foreign student program and the CIA has major connections and influence with Columbia and the nation's other educational facilities.
The CIA needed Muslims or others who were fluent in Farsi and who could easily blend into the Muslim environment in the Middle East. The CIA persuaded Columbia University to extend their foreign student program to Obama, now a Columbia student, so that he might travel to Pakistan and enroll in the universities around Karachi in addition to the Patrice Lumumba School in Moscow. [1] The school, one of Russia's most prestigious universities was founded on February 5, 1960 as The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (PFUR). It was renamed the Patrice Lumumba School on February 22, 1961. On February 5, 1992 the university re-adopted its former name. According to their web site, "The main aim was to give young people from Asia, Africa and Latin America, especially from poor families, an opportunity to get University education and to become highly qualified specialists. The students were admitted through non-governmental organizations, governmental establishments, and the USSR embassies and consulates." [2]
Obama, as an undercover agent, was the lead agent in the arms and money supply for the CIA-trained Taliban Army against the Soviet Army war machine. His actions were integral to the Taliban's success in their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Obama, it is publicly acknowledged, went to Pakistan in 1981. There is no way of knowing how often Obama traveled between Pakistan and Russia. According to Dr. Manning, Obama was an interpreter for the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. When Obama completed his CIA operations in the mid 1980s and returned to the U.S. he persuaded the State Department to maneuver his entrance into Harvard Law School; since the CIA, the U.S. president's personal agency for black operations throughout the world, also has connections to federal and state politicians, they managed to arrange Obama's entrance to yet another elite school in 1988.
Percy Ellis Sutton, a civil-rights activist and lawyer, was the Manhattan Borough President from 1966 to 1977. He was an intelligence officer with the Tuskegee Airmen, the name of a group of African American pilots who were part of the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. Sutton entered Harlem politics and became a leader of the Harlem Clubhouse, known as the "Gang of Four" which has controlled Democratic politics in Harlem for at least fifty years. His Clubhouse allies were New York City Mayor David Dinkins, U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, and New York Secretary of State Basil Paterson, father of the currently beleaguered David Paterson who replaced Spitzer as New York Governor in 2008. Percy Sutton wrote a letter to Harvard officials requesting that they admit Obama as a student after a hiatus of five years (from 1983 when he allegedly left Columbia to 1988).
Despite a five-year absence from the rigors of college activity he was accepted at Harvard where he excelled and on February 5, 1990, was elected president of the venerable celebrated Harvard Law Review, the highest student position at Harvard Law School, a term that lasts for one year. [3] After graduation he could have worked in any leading law firm except that he lacked the proper citizenship qualifications which would have come to light during the interview and normal background checks pursued by major law firms. Moreover, his academic deficiencies at Occidental College would have disqualified him from the top law firms. Furthermore, he was a CIA operative in the Middle East during the time that he was supposed to be attending Columbia University. So despite his Harvard achievements, Obama became a Saul Alinsky-style community organizer in South Chicago which alleviated the necessity of providing a legitimate background check. [4]
In 1990, Obama accepted a job with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a law firm which represented civil rights cases but also represented Rezmar Corp. owned by Chicago slumlord, Tony Rezko. The law firm helped Rezmar Corp. get more than $43 million in government funding. As early as 1995, Rezko started contributing to Obama for his political aspirations. In 2003, Rezko was a fundraiser for Obama's Senatorial campaign as part of a group that raised over $14 million. In 2006, Rezko was found guilty of sixteen out of twenty-four charges filed against him.
Barack Obama had been employed for a short summer stint as an associate with Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, the same law firm that Harvard graduate Michelle Robinson worked for from 1988 to 1991. She became his trainer and supervisor and, as such, may have handled any background information. Michelle Robinson, through the efforts of Valerie Jarrett, then-deputy chief of staff for Mayor Richard Daley, became an assistant to the mayor. Robinson later became an "economic development coordinator." Obama married the politically connected Michelle Robinson in October 1992 in the Trinity United Church of Christ. This gave him citizenship and credibility. [5] In 1993, according to the Records at the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois, Michelle Obama, as an attorney, was "voluntarily inactive and not authorized to practice law" per her request. After she gave up her law license, Michelle Obama worked for the University of Chicago Medical Center where she received a very generous annual salary of $317,000. [6]
Dr. Manning, an African American, asserts the following:
More at the link:I recently had the pleasure of talking with Dr. James David Manning who has been ministering to the people of Harlem since 1981.... more-
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Katrinas 100,000 Toxic Trailers Are No Bargain - Truthdig
The Obama administration is making a big health care mistake. I’m not talking about the final push for comprehensive reform legislation, which is righteous and necessary. I mean the sale of more than 100,000 contaminated trailers and mobile homes—a move that could make people sick.
The trailers are a legacy of the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina. They were purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as temporary housing for displaced Gulf Coast residents, but some people who moved into them reported burning eyes, irritated throats, headaches and nosebleeds.The Obama administration is making a big health care mistake. I’m not talking about the final push for comprehensive reform... more-
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Is Our Sexed-up Society Creating Prosti-Tots? | | AlterNet
Super-sexualized 'prosti-tot' culture posits hotness -- as opposed to, say, math -- as a girl's highest attainable goal.
March 11, 2010 |
Last week’s YouTube sensation was the adorkable 12-year-old Avery, all haystack hair and crooked glasses and giant Bugs Bunny teeth, lip-syncing in her messy bedroom to the Ke$ha mega-hit "TiK ToK.” (Sample lyrics: “I'm talking about everybody getting crunk, crunk / Boys tryin' to touch my junk, junk.”)
What’s awesome about Avery is that -- especially given the other sagaciously smart-ass material on her YouTube channel -- it’s safe to say she is totally in on the joke. (Doofy kid + “brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack” = funny!) She’s not trying, pathetically/disturbingly, to be grownup “hot.” She’s letting her creative eccentric ironic sarcastic confident dweeb flag fly. “I’munna fight!” indeed.
But much of Avery’s charm comes from the fact that she embodies a refreshing counterpoint to (if not commentary on) everything that is disturbing these days about pop culture for young girls. In other words, she’s not Azucena Diaz, the Peruvian 9-year-old who remade Britney’s “Toxic” video shot into terrifying soft-porn (and was then applauded for it, when she wasn’t being enthusiastically slut-shamed, slash, threatened with sexual assault). Diaz is not just shaking what God gave her. (Though God did appear to give her an unusually large budget.) She is shaking what we gave her and her tween peers: the super-sexualized "prosti-tot” culture that re-packages porn as mainstream "sexy" and posits “hotness” -- as opposed to, say, math -- as a girl’s highest attainable goal.
Just a small sampling of what we get from teen culture’s role-model-o-matic: mini-Miley Noah Cyrus, following in the pole-dancing steps of her big sis, sharing her rendition of “Smack That,” and dressing up as Hermione Granger a diminutive dominatrix for Halloween. Recently came the “news” that 9-year-old Noah was launching a lingerie line for little girls. That she is in fact doing no such thing (the error has reportedly been traced to the otherwise unimpeachable Perez Hilton) is “not the point,” writes Marjorie Ingall at Tabletmag.com. “The point was that it seemed completely credible, because hey, look at her.”
Also: Suri Cruise’s red lipstick, Brazil’s 7-year-old “samba queen,” slutty undies in the juniors department, Toddlers & Tiaras, baby’s first stilettos (which, we understand, are supposed to be "heelarious"), Bratz.
What’s going on? Why the ever-more-aggro sexualizing of ever-younger girls -- even as abstinence-only crusaders and their ilk try, fatuously, to wish their sexuality away?
“The most basic answer is that it’s highly profitable,” says Meenakshi Gigi Durham, professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Iowa and author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. “These sexualized images are all commercially driven. The younger the demographic advertisers target, the more they can create cradle-to-grave consumers.” (And gone-to-early-grave parents.) Tweens were already the “most powerful consumer group since the baby boom" -- a $335 billion market -- in 2004. By 2007, according to Durham, the tween market had reached $700 billion worldwide.
more at the link:Super-sexualized 'prosti-tot' culture posits hotness -- as opposed to, say, math -- as a girl's highest attainable... more-
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Alert the Government! - Jewish Internet Defense Force
If you were worried about the U.S. Government keeping track of you....Well, now they have the support of Israeli citizens. Free Speech? Think Again! Your opinion might get you in trouble. You are now a virtual Anne Franke in the internet attic with nowhere left to hide.
Alert the Government!
1. Pro-terrorist and antisemitic content on the web poses a serious threat. Much of this content can be found on areas like Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress, Wikipedia, etc.
This content is often against these ISP's own terms. For example, Facebook's terms state:
One cannot "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable"
Also, one cannot "upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available content that would constitute, encourage or provide instructions for a criminal offense, violate the rights of any party, or that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law"
2. Despite a massive campaign to report these groups to Facebook and to the Media, Facebook barely made a dent in removing them. However, we do give them credit for removing 106 problematic groups impacting over 125,000 people active in them (due to our concentrated effort of reporting groups.)
3. There are hundreds more which have not been deleted despite thousands of complaints. There are also many more new groups created daily, so the problem is spiraling out of control.
4. Therefore hatred and cyber jihadists continue to grow stronger despite operating against Facebook's terms, and in some cases against international and regional laws.
5. We do not understand why. Perhaps this excerpt from a popular blog about Facebook might explain:
"Recently Shimon Peres suggested that Israelis and Jews worldwide use Facebook to fight anti-semitism in addition to inviting Mark Zuckerberg to Israel. I asked him about his thoughts on Facebook as a tool to fight anti-semitism and if Facebook would take proactive measures to fight against it. Mark believes that Facebook need to focus on building useful communication tools and that the users can use these tools to connect and generate more worldly perspectives. As such Facebook does not need to be proactive about it. When asked about whether he will visit Israel next year, he said maybe."
6. Politicians know that the future is in the hands of the younger generation. Let them know your concerns by writing. Please ask them to do whatever they can to help combat the serious problems of pro-terrorist and other hate groups all over Facebook (and the web.) Let them know that you feel much of the activity happening here might be illegal (since there are groups actively promoting illegal terrorist groups here) and that a proper government investigation should be considered.
7. We believe the following steps are now necessary:
-Contact the White House here: Contact the President!, Contact the Vice President!
-Contact your Attorneys General by State: http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php
-Contact your Senators: http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state.cfm
-Contact your State Reps: https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
-Contact any other local law enforcement agencies as needed.
-Keep it simple. Make sure you use your name, age, where you are from, and let them know that seeing all of this on Facebook is not making you feel comfortable online and that you would like to see our government doing more about it as you see this as another important front in the war which you feel is being neglected. Make sure you provide them a link which will take them to the most problematic material:If you were worried about the U.S. Government keeping track of you....Well, now they have the support of Israeli citizens. Free... more-
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Public input period for federal fishery strategy has ended - ESPN
Personal note: Federal control of state and private waters. Communist? Socialist?
The Obama administration has ended public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.
This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.
Fishing industry insiders, who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force, had grown concerned that the public input would not be taken into account.
"When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big-game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario," said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.
"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard-working American families and small businesses are being ignored.
"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."
Unless more anglers speak up to their Congressional representatives so their input will be considered, it appears the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March. President Barack Obama then could possibly issue an Executive Order to implement its recommendations.
Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling. As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled "Transition Green" shortly after Obama was elected in 2008.
What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper, according to Morlock.
In late summer, just after the administration created the task force, these groups produced "Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy." This document makes repeated references to "overfishing," but doesn't reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.
Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias with their attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.
Also, recreational angling and commercial fishing have been lumped together as harmful to the resource, despite protests by the angling industry.
Morlock's evidence of collusion -- the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force's recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February.
On Feb. 12, the New York Times reported on that "President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."
Anglering for access
Click here for archive
Morlock fears that "what we're seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There's no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.
"Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It's all just an excuse to put us off the water."
In the wake of the task force's framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition again voiced their concerns to the administration.
"Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic," said CSF President Jeff Crane.
Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, "There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.
"Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."
This is not the only access issue threatening the public's right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.
"With what's being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans," he said. "Under the guise of 'marine spatial planning' entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.
"Every angler needs to be aware because if it's not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.
"We have one of the largest voting blocks in the country and we need to use it. We must not sit idly by."Personal note: Federal control of state and private waters. Communist? Socialist? The Obama administration has ended public... more-
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Former CIA Pilot Tells of Guns and Drugs Shipments : Veterans Today
Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, former CIA pilot, reported the illegal shipments of guns and drugs to Congress. Plumlee said he flew into former MCAS El Toro, CA, a number of times, in unmarked C-130s in the early hours of the morning.
Colonel James Sabow, USMC
However, the death of Marine Colonel James Sabow is not some crackpot conspiracy tossed around by those with nothing else to do.
Last week’s tragic shooting of two guards at the Pentagon was definitely the result of a mentally unbalanced individual who apparently was consumed with the death of Marine Colonel James Sabow at MCAS El Toro in January 1991.
Robert "Tosh" Plumlee, Santa Elena, Costa Rica, mid-1980s
The truth is that experts outside of the Defense Department believe that the forensic evidence supports that Colonel Sabow was murdered. According to Dr. David Sabow MD, his brother, the motive was to prevent him from telling about the shipments of cocaine into the U.S. to fund the Contra war in the 80s.
Independent investigations by others and the overwhelming forensic evidence strongly suggests murder. There was no reason in the world after Vietnam, 27 years in the Marine Corps with an outstanding record, the rank of colonel and a wife and children, that Col. Sabow would commit this act.
Michael A. Jacobs, attorney and retired supervisor of the Orange County District Attorney’s Homicide Trials Division, believes that homicide is supported by:
(1) compressed fracture to the right rear occipital skull and the resulting hemorrhaging beneath the skull and
(2) the large amount of aspirated blood found in the alveoli of Colonel Sabow’s lungs.
Jacobs told Congressman Duncan Hunter that “Colonel Sabow’s death could not have been a suicide but had to have been a homicide inflicted by the hands of another.”
Former Lt. Col. Anthony Verducci, a Marine Corps JAG [attorney] who was stationed at MCAS El Toro in 1991, wrote Dr. Sabow, “I have reviewed x-rays, crime scene photos, and letters submitted by forensic pathologists and other experts about Col. Sabow’s death… these materials lead me to believe that Colonel Sabow did not die of a self-inflicted gunshot wound [my emphasis]. As a Marine, former prosecutor, and citizen, I believe that an impartial law enforcement agency must review this case.”
Deadly Setup for a Whistleblower
Colonel Sabow, Assistant Chief, MCAS El Toro, had been removed from his position a few days before his death, pending the outcome of an investigation for a minor infraction relating to the carrying of personal items on an official military flight.
Friends close to Jim Sabow say the charges were concocted strictly in an effort to keep him from blowing the lid off clandestine federal drug running that he became aware of, with the planes actually landing at El Toro.
Dr. David Sabow, a retired neurologist and the younger brother of Colonel Sabow, said his brother was pressured to retire but told others that he would accept a court martial, since he had nothing to do with the shipment of cocaine in civilian aircraft to the U.S. In doing so, Dr. Sabow said his brother unknowingly signed his own death warrant.
A former CIA pilot, Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, is very familiar with the events surrounding Col. Sabow’s untimely death. He says that the word being spread from military personnel at El Toro through his group, was that Col. Sabow had discovered illegal flights coming into El Toro Marine Air Base at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., obviously carrying illegal contraband, and that he intended to blow the whistle. He had also heard that Col. Sabow was going to be relieved of his duties because of his intention to report the drug shipments.
Plumlee is convinced that Col. Sabow was murdered to silence him.
“These trips were approved by military intelligence personnel attached to the Pentagon, with CIA logistical support. They were made in total secrecy to the extent that other government agencies were not aware of the existence of these flights, or of the operation. The pilots were given a specific coded transponder number to squawk so their aircraft would not be challenged by U.S. Customs aircraft when patrolling the U.S. border.” – Former CIA pilot Tosh Plumlee
“It is highly probable that Col. Sabow became aware of the night flights into El Toro, as his base housing was on the landing flight path. A serious hitch in the operation came when a new loadmaster assigned to El Toro complained about the unregistered planes landing at night and demanded that they be registered, but a senior officer ordered him to shut up and to stop insisting on registration. The loadmaster complained to the inspector general, which prompted the IG to come to El Toro for an investigation.”
Plumlee said, “He was willing to expose the operation that sent American weapons into Latin America on American cargo aircraft, and he would prove that he had no hand in bringing illegal drugs into the country on return trips.”
Col. Sabow’s wife Sally Sabow, told her brother-in-law that the day before her husband was killed, a senior officer entered Col. Sabow’s home, and was observed shaking his finger in Col. Sabow’s face, shouting, “You will never go to a court martial…”
Drugs, Weapons and El Toro
“These trips were approved by military intelligence personnel attached to the Pentagon, with CIA logistical support. They were made in total secrecy to the extent that other government agencies were not aware of the existence of these flights, or of the operation. The pilots were given a specific coded transponder number to squawk so their aircraft would not be challenged by U.S. Customs aircraft when patrolling the U.S. border.”
He says it began in the 1980s, when the U.S. Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne were sent to Costa Rica for maneuvers. A large number of weapons were sent with them.
“However, some of the weapons did not return to the United States and were later taken off the books by the military, marked as either lost or destroyed and reported to the Government Accounting Office as such”.
“When the weapons were repaired and tested at China Lake and Twentynine Palms, in California, they were staged and once again flown back from El Toro Marine Air Base to Latin America, via Mexico, to be supplied to the Contras, the American-financed rebel group seeking to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua”.
“These flyways and airstrips were secretly recorded by undercover flight crews and reported to various government interdiction agencies in the United States. In 1986, an early operation known by the code name, ‘Penetrate,’ was shut down because of the politically explosive Iran-Contra matter.”
According to Plumlee, an American DEA agent from Guadalajara, Mexico, by the name of Kiki Camarena, was killed because of his knowledge concerning the “CIA-Mexico” thing, as it was widely known among the covert civilian pilots.
Tosh Plumlee emailed a copy of a February 1991 letter from former Senator Gary Hart to Senator John Kerry, Chairman, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications and a redacted summary transcript of his testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from August 1991. The Senate report shows that Plumlee was a “former deep-cover military and CIA asset from 1956 to 1987 with a long history of CIA activities in Central America, Cuba, and Mexico.”
A little less than a month before Gary Hart’s letter to Senator Kerry, Marine Colonel James Sabow was found dead by his wife in his backyard at MCAS El Toro. Although there’s no connection to his death, the letter does describe in some detail the illegal arms and narcotic shipments made to fund the Contra war.
Conclusion and more at the link:Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, former CIA pilot, reported the illegal shipments of guns and drugs to Congress. Plumlee said he... more-
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