9/11 – A Cheap Magic Trick

By Jonathan Turley
January 13, 2012
Washington Post

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 31, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens. At what point does the reduction of individual rights in our country change how we define ourselves?

While each new national security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet, objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.

These countries also have constitutions that purport to guarantee freedoms and rights. But their governments have broad discretion in denying those rights and few real avenues for challenges by citizens — precisely the problem with the new laws in this country.

The list of powers acquired by the U.S. government since 9/11 puts us in rather troubling company.

Assassination of U.S. citizens

President Obama has claimed, as President George W. Bush did before him, the right to order the killing of any citizen considered a terrorist or an abettor of terrorism. Last year, he approved the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi and another citizen under this claimed inherent authority. Last month, administration officials affirmed that power, stating that the president can order the assassination of any citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. (Nations such as Nigeria, Iran and Syria have been routinely criticized for extrajudicial killings of enemies of the state.)

Indefinite detention

Under the law signed last month, terrorism suspects are to be held by the military; the president also has the authority to indefinitely detain citizens accused of terrorism. While the administration claims that this provision only codified existing law, experts widely contest this view, and the administration has opposed efforts to challenge such authority in federal courts. The government continues to claim the right to strip citizens of legal protections based on its sole discretion. (China recently codified a more limited detention law for its citizens, while countries such as Cambodia have been singled out by the United States for “prolonged detention.”)

Arbitrary justice

The president now decides whether a person will receive a trial in the federal courts or in a military tribunal, a system that has been ridiculed around the world for lacking basic due process protections. Bush claimed this authority in 2001, and Obama has continued the practice. (Egypt and China have been denounced for maintaining separate military justice systems for selected defendants, including civilians.)

Warrantless searches

The president may now order warrantless surveillance, including a new capability to force companies and organizations to turn over information on citizens’ finances, communications and associations. Bush acquired this sweeping power under the Patriot Act in 2001, and in 2011, Obama extended the power, including searches of everything from business documents to library records. The government can use “national security letters” to demand, without probable cause, that organizations turn over information on citizens — and order them not to reveal the disclosure to the affected party. (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan operate under laws that allow the government to engage in widespread discretionary surveillance.)

Link to the rest of the article 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free

[Update]: The program did well, airing 678 times in 32% of all U.S. television households, reaching a gross audience of 2,731,200 viewers.

A five minute version of the newly-released documentary, “Architects & Engineers – Solving the Mystery of WTC 7,” is now showing on National Public Television stations across the United States. The mini-doc will run as part of the “Spotlight On” series of educational, short five minute programs that have been broadcasting nationally on Public Television for 19 years. *Narrated by Ed Asner.

Spotlight On: A Strong Alternative to Advertising. Public Awareness Programming.

- Guaranteed 500 National Airings on Public Television
- Guaranteed 3 Million Viewers
- Confirmed Nielson-based Monitoring Report
- Approximately 40%-60% airings in Prime Time

http://www.trivue.org – Architects and Engineers

Please report any airings you see to: MediaOutreach@AE911Truth.org

Saman Mohammadi
Infowars.com
January 13, 2012

“This year we are witnessing not just a series of brutal but fundamentally independent human rights violations committed by disparate governments around the globe. This year we are witnessing something far more fundamental and far more dangerous. This year we are witnessing the orchestrated destruction by the United States of the very basis, the fragile scaffolding, upon which international human rights have been built, painstakingly, bit by bit by bit, since the end of World War II.” – William F. Schulz, former Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, speaking in 2003. (1).

There is a conspiracy of silence about the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, otherwise known as the “Indefinite Detention Bill.”
This treasonous violation of the rights of American citizens and all human beings on “Battlefield Earth” must be understood in the larger political and historical context of the American Deep State, which professor and author Peter Dale Scott says “refers to a parallel secret government, organized by the intelligence and security apparatus, financed by drugs, and engaging in illicit violence, to protect the status and interests of the military against threats from intellectuals, religious groups, and occasionally the constitutional government,” (2).

The American Deep State has covertly created an indefinite detention regime in the United States based on acts of state terrorism and other forms of political violence such as assassinations.

The false flag September 11 attacks in 2001 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 stand as the pivotal historical events in the bureaucratic formation of the American Deep State and its total takeover of the American constitutional republic.

Link to the rest of the article Systematic Silence About NDAA Proves Plot To Destroy U.S. Is Real, Vindicating Conspiracy Theorists

By Russ Baker
Aug 31, 2011

As I write this, a new day is dawning in Libya. The “people’s revolt” against yet another tyrant is unquestionably exciting, and the demise (political and/or otherwise) of Muammar Qaddafi will, of course, be widely hailed. But barely below the surface something else is going on, and it concerns not the Libyan “people”, but an elite. In reality, a narrowly-based Libyan elite is being supplanted by a much older, more enduring one of an international variety.

The media, as is so often the case, has botched its job. Thus virtually all of its resources over the past six months have gone into providing us with an entertainment, a horse race, a battle, with almost no insight into the deeper situation..

***

It’s true that Qaddafi, like many—perhaps a majority of—rulers in his region, was a thug and a brute, if at times a comical figure. But one doesn’t need to be an apologist for him—nor deny the satisfaction of seeing the citizenry joyously celebrating his ouster—to demand some honesty about the motives behind his removal. Especially when it comes to our own government’s role in funding it, and thus every American’s unwitting participation in that action.

Let’s start with the official justification for NATO’s launch of its bombing campaign—for without that campaign, it’s highly improbable the rebels could ever have toppled Qaddafi. We were told from the beginning that the major purpose of what was to be very limited bombing—indeed, its sole purpose—was to protect those Libyan civilians rebelling against an oppressive regime from massive retaliation by Qaddafi. Perhaps because of NATO’s initial intervention, the feared Qaddafi-sponsored, genocidal bloodletting never did occur. (At least, not beyond the military actions one would expect a government to take when facing a civil war: after all, remember General Sherman’s “scorched earth” policy in the US Civil War?). However, protecting civilians apparently didn’t generate sufficient public support for intervention, so we started to hear about other purported reasons for it. Qaddafi was encouraging his soldiers to…commit mass rape! And giving them Viagra! And condoms!

Link to the rest of the article The Libya Secret: How West Cooked Up “People’s Uprising”

The Telegraph
By Adrian Blomfield,
Middle East Correspondent
11 Jan 2012

The script, by now, is familiar enough. An assassin riding a motorcycle weaves through Tehran’s morning traffic towards his target, almost invariably a Peugeot 405, the vehicle of choice for officials on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Leaning out a hand, the motorcyclist attaches a magnetic explosive device – sometimes called a “sticky bomb” — to the door nearest the man he is trying to kill and then speeds off. Seconds later, the bomb is detonated by remote-control. It is so sophisticated that only the target is killed. Those sitting next to him, or in front or behind him, escape with just cuts and bruises.

Wednesday’s target was Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, killed in his vehicle in front of a university campus in east Tehran. A chemist by training, he was a deputy director at Iran’s main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, a role given to him because of his expertise in gas separation technology, a technique vital to the enrichment process.

He was the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist to be targeted in the past two years and the fourth to die. The only survivor was the biggest prize of all. In November 2010, Fereydoun Abbasi, now the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation was well trained enough to recognise what the clicking sound on the door of his car meant. He and his wife leapt clear just in time. That same day, on the other side of the Iranian capital, Majid Shahriari, one of Mr Abbasi’s colleagues, was less fortunate as he fell victim to another motorcycle assassin.

Iranian officials were quick to apportion blame on Wednesday for the latest attack, directing angry accusations at both the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and at the Americans.

Link to the rest of the article Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist is a familiar story

Paul Craig Roberts
January 11, 2012

Only the blind do not see that the US government is preparing to attack Iran. According to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “Active war preparations directed against Iran (with the involvement of Israel and NATO) were initiated in May 2003.” Link

Washington has deployed missiles directed at Iran in its oil emirate puppet states, Oman and the UAE, and little doubt in the other US puppet states in the Middle East. Washington has beefed up Saudi Arabia’s jet fighter force. Most recently, Washington has deployed 9,000 US troops to Israel to participate in “war games” designed to test the US/Israeli air defense system. As Iran represents no threat unless attacked, Washington’s war preparations signal Washington’s intention to attack Iran.

Another signal that Washington has a new war on its agenda is the raised level of Washington’s rhetoric and demonization of Iran. Judging by polls Washington’s propaganda that Iran is threatening the US by developing a nuclear weapon has met with success. Half of the American public support a military attack on Iran in order to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability. Those of us who are trying to awaken our fellow citizens start from a deficit that the minds of half of the US population are under Big Brother’s control.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency’s reports from its inspectors on the ground in Iran have made clear for years, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted any enriched uranium from its nuclear energy program. The shrill hype coming from Washington and from the neoconservative media is groundless. it is the same level of lie as Washington’s claim that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Every US soldier who died in that war died in behalf of a lie.

It could not be more obvious that Washington’s war preparations against Iran have nothing to do with deterring Iran from a nuclear weapon. So, what are the war preparations about?

In my judgment, the US government’s war preparations are driven by three factors.

One is the neoconservative ideology, adopted by the US government, that calls for the US to use its superior military and economic position to achieve world hegemony. This goal appeals to American hubris and to the power and profit that it serves.

Link to the rest of the article The Next War on Washington’s Agenda

By Pepe Escobar
January 7, 2012
Asia Times online

NEW YORK – Here’s a crash course on how to further wreck the global economy.

A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 – when no one was paying attention – imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran’s central bank. Starting this summer, anybody who does it is prevented from doing business with the US.

This amendment – for all practical purposes a declaration of economic war – was brought to you by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), on direct orders of the Israeli
government under Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

Torrents of spin have tried to rationalize it as the Obama administration’s plan B as opposed to letting the Israeli dogs of war conduct an unilateral attack on Iran over its supposed nuclear weapons program.

Yet the original Israeli strategy was in fact even more hysterical – as in effectively preventing any country or company from paying for imported Iranian oil, with the possible exceptions of China and India. On top of it, American Israel-firsters were trying to convince anyone this would not result in relentless oil price hikes.

Link to the rest of the article The US-Iran economic war

Wayne Madsen

Press TV
December 31, 2011

An American investigative journalist says the al-Qaeda is a fairytale terrorist group made up by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israeli spy agency, Mossad.

“In the US, the Zionist propagandists are spinning the fanciful tale that Iran was involved with “al-Qaeda,” the fairy tale organization concocted by Mossad and the CIA, in carrying out the 9/11 attacks,” Wayne Madsen wrote in an article published in Global Research.

Madsen was referring to the latest US allegation that Iran was involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

On December 22, a US federal judge in Manhattan alleged that Iran, together with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, had been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The court, meanwhile, withdrew Saudi Arabia’s name from the 10-year-old case, even though 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals.

Tehran has condemned Washington’s allegations as amateurish and baseless scenarios.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that the US is jeopardizing international peace and security by repeating such groundless claims.

He added that the US role in founding the al-Qaeda and supporting it is common knowledge.

The American journalist concluded that Iran is now facing an undeclared war being waged by the West and Israel.

“It is a war of computer viruses like the Israeli-developed Stuxnet, propaganda, support for armed insurgents, covert assassinations and sabotage, and political pressure against Iran’s friends around the world. This softening up of Iran is expected by the West to make a final military assault on the country a cake walk. ”

Interview of Dr. Paul Craig Roberts on the Alex Jones show.

by Daniel Hopsicker
13 November 2001 — Venice, Florida.

The first thing you notice about the airport in Venice Florida is that there is a Flying Trapeze planted down at the end of one of the runways. It is a strange juxtaposition.

While taking off or landing, the terrorist student pilots practicing ‘touch and go’s’ could look over and see tightrope walkers or aerialists dancing high above the ground while practicing gravity-defying stunts, at a circus school which is a vestige of Ringling Brothers & Barnum and Bailey Circus, which used to make its winter home here.

Come to Venice. Join the Flying Circus. Become a Human Missile.

Until Rudi Dekkers bought Huffman Aviation, Venice, Florida was best known as the Shark Tooth Capital of the World. But the flight training given to terrorists out at the local airport has now changed all that, and thrust this sleepy burg into the middle of one of American History’s worst nightmares.

Within hours of the September 11 attack authorities concluded that the terrorist pilots had shown such unusual skill in maneuvering commercial airliners toward their targets that at least one hijacker on each jet must have been trained right here in the U.S.

They were right.

Cut to Venice, Florida. Middle of the night.

The FBI swarms. Local police do the grunt work. Under bright klieg lights they carry away boxes upon boxes of records from Rudi Dekkers flight school. Remember Rudi?

“I don’t need anything from you, just a check to start flying,” said Dekkers, who likened flying lessons to shopping for groceries. “We’re just a business.”

The next day, the FBI is back again at the Venice Airport, this time down the block at Arne Kruithof’s flight school.

“It’s really just coincidence that terrorists chose such a place (as Venice) to be their training ground for the unspeakable,” says Venice City Manager George Hunt.

Determining whether that statement is true is complicated by the fact that the FBI has confiscated everything in sight looking remotely like evidence.

And the FBI isn’t talking.

“The FBI took all our files, everything,” said one local law enforcement official, after shaking his head ruefully when we asked if Rudi had any local ‘priors.’ He shrugs. He can’t tell. His files are now All Gone.

“They loaded two Ryder trucks right outside that (police station) window, then drove them right onto a C130 military cargo plane at Sarasota airport which flew out with Jeb Bush aboard.”

Click on link for the rest of the article Mohammed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus