We went to Washington to help launch the Afghan American Women’s Association established in honor of a lifetime of humanitarian achievements by Sima Wali. We came away with a clear picture that the women of Afghanistan will continue to have a strong, clear and uncompromising voice in Washington. In listening to the women of this Afghan/American partnership two things were clear: 1. No matter what happens with American foreign policy, Afghan/American women are not going back to the depredations visited upon them by a political system maddened by greed and its dreams of conquest. 2. Afghan/American women will no longer be fooled by politicians who promise democracy and reconstruction but deliver warlordism and corruption.

Our visit was also a chance to update first hand what was new and different in the administration’s AfPak policy from what had gone before. Washington has spent a lot of money in Afghanistan. American soldiers and civilians are dying there. October of this year has been the worst on record. But the debate, anchored as it is in Washington’s needs and perceptions and not Afghanistan’s, continues to circle the most critical issues without ever landing on solutions that might bring on a satisfactory close.

The U.S. has been at war in Afghanistan for eight years. But 9 months into the new administration Washington continues to plow along with a losing game plan and an absence of understanding about the nature of the war, how to end it, or even how to fight it.

The biggest part of the problem that Washington faces is Washington itself. It is now clearer than ever that Washington’s current policy derives from a military agenda and not a civilian one. In fact it may now be impossible for Washington to return to a government orchestrated strategy of nation-building anywhere after thirty years of privatized foreign policy and military buildup that favored profit driven development schemes at the expense of civil society. An entire industry now exists to lobby against any efforts to reverse the trend, change the status quo or even to make private contractors accountable for the taxpayer money they receive. A new book by Allison Stanger, titled “One Nation Under Contract,” outlines the dimensions of a problem where the private sector has become a “shadow government” operating outside the law with billions of federal dollars, but little to no accountability for how or where the money is spent. 

At the Pentagon the problem runs even deeper. The national security state built up during the cold war was designed to protect the US and the west from a Soviet threat. The perceptions created to convey the illusions of strength and invulnerability became a substitute reality to which all others defaulted. Over time, “cold” war became a new normal, rarely challenged by that other normal called reality. But at its core, the new normal was an illusion, based on a phony war and supported by the communal belief that it was better than the cost and terror of a real war that would actually be fought and perhaps lost.

The post cold war national security state on which America’s approach to Afghanistan is based never returned to reality once the cold war was over. In fact, the illusion had so enraptured those in power; they could neither foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union nor accept its demise. But Washington’s blind faith in the new normal disguised its flawed character and as the Clinton and Bush administrations built upon its illusory strength, the stage was set for failure.

That failure has finally occurred in Afghanistan and the consequences will be devastating yet Washington continues along in a dreamlike haze, narrowing the argument to simplistic Vietnam era clichés while the world moves on without it. According to well informed sources, the administration has pushed Hamid Karzai for the run-off election in the belief that it will legitimize his rule in order that General McChrystal can get his troops to go on fighting. What this ignores is that a corrupt, incompetent government stacked with Tajik warlords is abhorrent to everyone in Afghanistan – Pashtun and Tajik alike. 

Washington’s current policy may lead to outright civil war between the majority Pashtun population and the remnants of the so-called Northern Alliance of Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek tribes. Whether this is intended as an intentional prelude to partitioning Afghanistan and redrawing the map of Central Asia remains to be seen. But whatever the end result of Washington’s apparent confusion over policy in Afghanistan, it will have little success until the Afghan people and the population of Pakistan’s Western territories are brought politically into the decision making. Empowering the people of the region to seek positive change would disempower the Taliban and change the game. President Obama still has the credibility to do that, but his window of opportunity is closing fast.
 

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration.  Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media. 

Melvin Goodman discusses the steady decline of the CIA in the last three decades. He provides his well-argued criticism of the mainstream media, especially the Washington Post Editorials which have been acting as defenders and apologists for the CIA. Mr. Goodman talks about Robert Gates’ record during the Reagan Era, the broken political and policy making process in Washington today, the CIA torture & Secret Assassination team, Blackwater, needed reforms within the Intelligence Community, and more!

Melvin A. Goodman is a fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC and adjunct professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. He served at the CIA as senior Soviet analyst from 1966-1990 and as professor of international security at the National War College from 1986-2004. He resigned from the CIA in 1990 to protest the politicization of intelligence on the Soviet Union and testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1991 against the confirmation of Robert M. Gates as director of central intelligence. At the time of his resignation, Goodman was a member of the Senior Intelligence Staff. He is the author and co-author of five books on international relations including “The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze,” “The Phantom Defense: America’s Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion,” and “Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk.”

Here is our guest Melvin Goodman unplugged!

 

 Interview with Melvin Goodman [76:02m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Forming the Irate Minority Club

Those of you who are getting here from our old place: Good to see and have you here. Those of you who are visiting my blog for the first time: Welcome and hope to have you here regularly. And those of you who somehow stumbled upon this site because of a typo or a confused link: This may just be the site you’ve been looking for, or not; take your time and check out a few old posts and comments, and you may decide to become one of our regulars, or not;-)

First, before I go any further, I want to thank Scott with Twerp Laboratories for my beautifully designed and executed new home, and for working with me so hard, patiently and diligently. 

Next, I want you to meet our current team members here. In the next few days we’ll introduce you to several additional members.

…

For the last few months I have been either in meetings or on the phone with many veteran investigative journalists and producers. We’ve been talking about the current sorry state of our media. We’ve been discussing the lack of bold and independent investigative reports and exposés. We’ve been sharing our views on ways to do something about it. We’ve been talking business: How can we collaborate and form a venue where we can present some of the significant stories, cases, news, and editorials that have been covered up, blacked out, or simply designated as radioactive topics too hot to touch?

Many seasoned and well-respected journalists have found themselves in this place where they are utterly disgusted with the mainstream venues. At the same time many feel discouraged and put off by the utterly partisan, uninformed, and frankly unprofessional wanna-be journalist alternative sites, many of which end up recycling mainstream news, albeit with different headlines and added partisan angles. After all, what’s the point of assuming the ‘alternative’ title when all you do is recycle YouTube videos of Olbermann, Maddow, or Fox pundits? Why waste millions of pages on the net to discuss, tear apart, and by doing so bolster the Coulters or Malkins of the pundit world? Why spend a gazillion hours on Karl Rove’s unpunished evil deeds which will never be punished, and totally ignore, or even justify and apologize for the current highly questionable deeds of the new administration? No wonder why we have been stuck in this vicious cycle! No wonder why we’ve been running from one scandal to another, from one symptom to the next, chasing our own tails and yet getting nowhere!

Okay, back to starting this site and project. After months of these discussions I decided to stop the ‘talk & complain’ cycle, and come up with an idea, a tangible objective, and a goal to follow and move (hopefully forward!) towards; to actually do something about it. At least try to do something about it. And with this came the decision to get this website designed and made functional, have some of these well-respected journalists and others come on board in support of this project, make arrangements to offer my Podcast Interview Series more frequently, and work on other ingredients – which you will hear more about once we are up and operational.

In each step of this work and planning I’ve been told ‘Impossible,’ or, ‘almost impossible’ to the feasibility of accomplishing this without strings, without baggage, and without  those little compromises here and there adding up to ‘selling your soul.’ Although discouraging, especially when it comes from my seasoned DC friends, I’ve been working to make this a reality, and I remain positive and hopeful. Why?

Because I know I am not alone. I’ve gotten to know others, both in person and through my old blog site, who share the same disillusionment with the current two-sides-of-the-same-coin political party system, the same disgust with a fluff oriented and establishment-driven media, propaganda and agenda-spreading partisan pseudo sites, and the same state of alarm with our nation’s continuous speedy descent towards a police state. This is why I chose the quote from Sam Adams for this website:
 

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

We are what Sam Adams referred to as ‘the irate minority.’ And I have established this site to invite all of you to join me, where we, the irate minority, are the majority – in hopes of increasing our numbers enough to enable us to bring about real changes – not those crafted and marketed by our lobby-serving politicians and their tentacles within the media.

This project, these objectives, can only be accomplished with your support. Your voices, your ideas, and your suggestions in the comment section are all needed in order to make this site truly rich, informative, and effective; so please go ahead and register, and become a member of our ‘irate minority club.’ Your active participation in getting our information and messages out, and in bringing others here in search of a home for the irate minority, is the only way to build up our numbers, thus make our collective voices audible. And only through you contributions can I:

Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
Present independent editorials and analyses
Showcase original editorial cartoons
Facilitate lively discussions
Maintain and Manage this Website

 I cannot do this without you. Going with foundational and organizational funding always comes with many strings attached. And that would defeat our purpose here. Reaching out to large corporations comes with its own baggage, and that too would defeat my purpose. That leaves me and you.

Please join me here at ‘Boiling Frogs Post,’ home of the irate minority, and please contribute what you can in order to make these goals a reality. Many thanks for all you do.

Sibel Edmonds

Founder & Publisher- Boiling Frogs Post

I don’t know what you think of our ex President Harry Truman; as with all our presidents he too came with a mixed bag of good and bad. For our discussion here it really doesn’t matter where we stand on Truman. On the other hand, the quote provides an excellent starting point for my Part III of the Makings of a Police State: National Security Letters. I wish we could bring President Truman back to life and ask him the following question:

Mr. President, if forcing only one American to shut his mind and close his mouth means that all Americans are in peril, what happens when thousands of good American citizens are forced to shut their mouths?

I wonder what his answer would be. Perhaps something like ‘…then all Americans are in real deep trouble!’ Or, ‘…then we are all doomed!’ Or maybe, ‘…then all Americans deserve it for not rising up and grabbing our pitchforks!’

If you think I am talking in riddles and hypotheticals, you are dead wrong, and can be thankful to our media for keeping you in the dark. Here is a documented statement on the state of our liberties when it comes to the government forcing us to shut our mouth when we see and witness evil & wrongdoing:

A federal appeals court may have slapped the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year for its misuse of gag orders to prevent discussion of government investigations conducted under the authority of National Security Letters, but that hasn’t slowed the feds very much. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, despite a court’s finding that such gag orders are constitutionally suspect and should be subject to judicial review, the FBI continues to muzzle recipients of the controversial letters, preventing them from participating in public debate over the Patriot Act and the security state.

National Security Letters are powerful tools that allow federal agents to obtain information about investigation targets from third parties, such as telephone companies, financial institutions, Internet service providers, and consumer credit agencies on their own say-so, without judicial review. Some 47,000 such letters were issued in 2005 alone, according to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (PDF). The letters don’t receive much public discussion, probably because many of the recipients are also issued gag orders, forbidding them to discuss the experience.

Okay, let me preempt you before you rush and make wrong assumptions about who the recipients of these government gag orders are, before you start envisioning the stereotyped boogie-looking-men in shalvars with long flea-infested curly dark beards:

Unable to speak out about their experiences as the subjects of National Security Letters, recipients of such letters, including businesspeople and librarians, can only stand on the sidelines while the discussion is conducted in theoretical terms.

That’s right! We are talking about good ole ordinary American citizens like librarians, small business owners, and in some cases healthcare providers. Also, the 47,000 number mentioned above is only for the year 2005. In a report published by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee an Inspector General Report delivered to Congress found that there were 143,074 NS Letters requested in two years, between 2003 and 2005. And here is another fire-raising fact from the same report:

From the 143,074 NSLs requested, there was only 1 confirmed terrorism-related conviction.

That’s right. And each NSL may demand tens of thousands of records containing private information on Americans. So please do the math by multiplying 143, 074 with let’s say 1000 to be safe, and let it sink in. Now put that number next to the ‘1’ terrorism case they had, and try to come up with a single sane reason or justification for our government going after, demanding, obtaining and then keeping these records.

Okay, back to what our President Truman considered ‘being in peril.’ Let’s get a bit up close and personal with one of the thousands of NSL recipients. This one happens to be extraordinarily brave since we have his name. Thousands of other recipients are prohibited, or intimidated into think they are, from disclosing their identity – thanks to the Gag Provision imbedded in this unconstitutional police tool called NSL, handed to our federal police by our Congress. Let’s get a bit acquainted with the brave NSL and gag order recipient, a librarian named Peter Chase, through an article published by the Baltimore Sun:

“In 2005, Mr. Chase, the director of the Plainville, Conn., public library and then-vice president of a consortium of 26 Connecticut libraries, received an FBI demand for library patron records via a National Security Letter authorized under the Patriot Act. The FBI also imposed a gag order prohibiting him from speaking to anyone about the demand – including Congress, when the Patriot Act was up for reauthorization in 2005.

Now, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Chase has finally won the legal battle and has torn the Bush administration’s tape from his mouth. So he’s speaking out, and this is what he has to say: “The government was telling Congress that it didn’t use the Patriot Act against libraries and that no one’s rights had been violated. I felt that I just could not be part of this fraud being foisted on our nation.””
…

Here is what I find the most disheartening, alarming, and simply frightening point in the above story: Peter Chase is one of only three brave Americans who have actually challenged the gag order imbedded in NSLs. Meaning what? Meaning of over 200,000 people who have received these unconstitutional police letters and the accompanying gag orders, ONLY 3 have found the courage, conviction, and real patriotism to stand up and challenge this assault on their constitutional rights and those of the entire nation. If this doesn’t rattle us Americans, the inhabitants of the land of the free, then may we deserve this and the highly probable worse to come.

Less than two months after the September 11 terrorist attack, while driven by panic and hysteria, our elected representatives rushed to enact the PATRIOT ACT, which was speedily, and conveniently, drafted by the Executive Branch. This unconstitutional set of laws handed our federal police and intelligence agencies unprecedented power to secretly and arbitrarily spy into Americans’ lives without any justification, any evidence of wrongdoing, or any oversight whatsoever.

Here are a few highlights on National Security Letters (NSL):

A National Security Letter (NSL) is a letter request for information from a third party that is issued by the FBI or by other government agencies with authority to conduct national security investigations. Government agency issues the request for information without prior judicial approval. Obtaining NSL requires no probable cause or judicial oversight. They also contain a gag order preventing the recipient of the letter from disclosing that the letter was ever issued. The non-disclosure rules have helped prevent the full extent of the NSL program from becoming known, as the FBI has systematically underreported to Congress the number of letters sent. Unlike other subpoenas and warrants, no approval from the Judicial Branch is required to issue an NSL. An NSL may be issued by “the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or his designee in a position not lower than Deputy Assistant Director at Bureau headquarters or a Special Agent in Charge in a Bureau field office designated by the Director” with no checks and balances in place until after the NSL has been delivered.

An internal FBI audit found that the bureau violated the rules more than 1000 times in an audit of 10% of its national investigations between 2002 and 2007. According to the September 9, 2007 New York Times report on the FBI’s use of NSLs to obtain broader information for data mining purposes, “In many cases, the target of a national security letter whose records are being sought is not necessarily the actual subject of a terrorism investigation and may not be suspected at all. Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the F.B.I. must assert only that the records gathered through the letter are considered relevant to a terrorism investigation.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/washington/09fbi.html?_r=1 )

In April, 2008, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that the military was using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans’ Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies. The ACLU based its allegation on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over to it by the Defense Department in response to a suit the rights group filed in 2007 for documents related to national security letters.
…

The fear factor and the accompanying hysteria were the initial ingredients leading to the enactment of these laws befitting dictatorships and police states. The Bush-Cheney Administration’s war-mongering and absolute power-externally and internally, doctrine, kept the Patriot Act alive and in full implementation. The media fulfilled its significant role in promoting the fear-mongering which was, and is, the necessary ingredient in hushing the critics and hooraying the architects and implementers of the Patriot Act. Then came the President of Changes, and here is what he’s been doing to not only keep these unconstitutional police powers alive, but actually bolster them even further:

Last month, in a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration went on record supporting the extension of key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including the provision that gives the government the power to subpoena library records of any individual. The sections that our president is so keen to keep alive and take even further; allow roving wire taps on multiple phones, access to business records, and a never-used provision to conduct surveillance of a non-U.S. citizen who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.
…

This same president, while an Illinois State Senator, considered the PATRIOT Act shoddy and dangerous and pledged to replace it. Well, as with all his promises of ‘change,’ he has done a hundred eighty degree change on this one, and been advocating for the continuation and expansion of this draconian police-state tool. You can read my brief piece on President Obama’s PATRIOT ACT Advocacy here.

While the federal police and intelligence agencies snoop on ordinary Americans and slap them with gag orders (forced by fear to shut their mouths), the public outrage appears to be in very short supply. Well, when you think of it, if of the known 200,000 + recipients only 3 refuse to shut their mouth, what would be a reasonable expectancy for hundreds of millions of Americans who don’t think these police-state practices affect their lives whatsoever?

How in the world did we get here? With hundreds of thousands of Americans being forced to shut their eyes, minds, and mouths, are we all in peril? In real big trouble? Doomed? And if you are like me and answer ‘yes,’ where is the outrage translated into action? Are we still sitting and waiting for a lobby and interest driven Congress to act in our behalf? Do we hope to see a President’s changes on his promised changes do yet another 180 degree change and change this? Or have we given up all hope and chosen to sit on the sidelines with our mouths shut waiting to be totally doomed?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

John M. Cole discusses his 18 year journey at the FBI as a Counterintelligence and Counterespionage Operations Manager. He talks about Turkish and Israeli espionage operations in the US, the infiltration of the Bureau by a Pakistani spy, abuses of FISA applications, the TRILOGY software fiasco, and more.

John M. Cole, Former Veteran Intelligence Operations Specialist, worked for 18 years in the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division as an Intelligence Operations specialist and counterespionage manager. Cole is the author of While America Sleeps – now available at Amazon.

*Sibel’s Note- This interview was recorded prior to the cover story by the American Conservative Magazine. For a recent interview with John Cole visit Peter B Collins site: http://www.peterbcollins.com/podcast-45/

Here is our guest John Cole unplugged!

 

 Interview with John Cole [75:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Is there a Surprise Factor here?

Last month, in a letter from the Justice Department to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Obama administration went on record supporting the extension of key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, including the provision that gives the government the power to subpoena library records of any individual.

The sections that our president is so keen to keep alive and take even further; allow roving wire taps on multiple phones, access to business records, and a never-used provision to conduct surveillance of a non-U.S. citizen who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Last week the Committee obliged and passed a bill to renew all of the PATRIOT powers that were set to expire at the end of the year.

Here is the reaction by one of the exasperated civil liberties groups, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

“…the Committee this morning voted to accept seven Republican amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act to remove the few civil liberties protections left in the bill after it was already watered down at last Thursday’s Committee meeting. Surprisingly and disappointingly, most of those amendments were recommended to their Republican sponsors by the Obama Administration.”

Here is the section I have a bit, okay more than a bit, of a problem with: ‘Surprisingly.’ Surprisingly?! Don’t take me wrong. I am, and have been, a big supporter of EFF, and applaud their great work, especially in the case of NSA illegal eavesdropping. But Surprisingly? How could anyone be surprised with this move, when it is absolutely consistent with every single move this President has made since he took office? When it comes to the draconian State Secrets Privilege, he’s been advocating, using, and even pushing further this common law fit only for monarchs and kings. When it comes to secrecy and classification to cover up the deeds of those implicated in torture and rendition, this President has proven to be a relentless advocate. Same with this President’s support and advocacy of illegal wiretapping of Americans… Now why in the world would this move, his consistent efforts to expand executive branch power, meaning his power, to take away our civil liberties, to further our descend towards a police state, be a surprise to all these well-intended and well-informed legal communities? Am I missing something? If so, could someone please enlighten me? Because this is where I stand on this:

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, fool us three times, shame on all of us!

I am working on Part 3 of ‘The Makings of a Police State,’ which will cover the notorious National Security Letters. Stay Tuned.

Richard Barlow discusses his experience as a counter-proliferation intelligence officer with the CIA in the 1980s, his work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense under Dick Cheney, and his incredible journey in trying to stop the proliferation efforts of the now infamous A.Q. Khan. He talks about the ‘real politics’ involving our relations with Pakistan and the Congress’ role, the draconian State Secrets Privilege, current disheartening status of whistleblower protection laws, and more!

Richard Barlow worked as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counter-proliferation intelligence officer in the 1980s. He learned that top U.S. officials were allowing Pakistan to manufacture and possess nuclear weapons, and that the A.Q. Khan nuclear network was violating U.S. laws. He also discovered that top officials were hiding these activities from Congress, since telling the truth would have legally obligated the U.S. government to cut off its overt military aid to Pakistan at a time when covert military aid was being funneled through Pakistan to Afghan Jihadists in the war against the Soviets. Barlow’s response: to organize the first interagency efforts to go after the A.Q. Khan nuclear network, well before it spread nuclear weapons to Iran, North Korea and Libya. After engineering the arrests of Khan’s nuclear agents operating in the U.S. in 1987, Mr. Barlow was sent by high levels of the CIA to testify before Congress, where he revealed that certain members of the Reagan administration had been misleading Congress. Barlow’s efforts to enforce the law and tell the truth caused Congress to come within an inch of terminating aid to Pakistan. As a result, he was persecuted as a traitor by some cold warriors in the CIA and State Department, shutting down his operations and clouding his future in the Agency.

For additional information on Richard Barlow and related documents visit POGO.

Here is our guest Richard Barlow unplugged!

 

 Interview with Richard Barlow [78:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Mounting Civilian Casualties …Silently

The latest bombing in Afghanistan killed at least nine Afghan civilians, including six children. Here are a few excerpts from the report:

“Nine civilians including six children were killed in a NATO air strike targeting a Taliban position in restive southern Afghanistan, the provincial governor’s office said on Thursday.”Six children and three women were killed and another three civilian men were wounded,” he said.”
…

“Ehsanullah, an elder from Khoshal village, where the strike took place, earlier told AFP that Haji Kot Aka’s house was hit late Wednesday.”They had four guests at home when the bombing took place. The bomb killed Aka, his wife, four children and three of the guests. One of the guests was wounded,” he said.

Civilian casualties are a sensitive issue in Afghanistan, creating a rift between President Hamid Karzai’s government and international forces as well as resentment on the ground against foreign troops.”

Here is a section from my op-ed piece last May on Mr. Obama’s presidency and the mounting casualties in Afghanistan:

Here is the first paragraph in a New York Times report on May 15, 2009:

“The number of civilians killed by the American air strikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.”

The report also includes the disagreement over the exact number of ‘Civilian Casualties’ in Afghanistan by our military airstrike:

“Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count.”

Does it really matter – the difference between 147 and 117 or just 100 when it comes to children, grandmothers…innocent lives lost in a war with no well-defined objectives or plans? If for some it indeed does matter, then here is a more specific and detailed

report:

“A copy of the government’s list of the names, ages and father’s names of each of the 140 dead was obtained by Reuters earlier this week. It shows that 93 of those killed were children — the youngest eight days old — and only 22 were adult males.”

Maybe releasing the photographs of the nameless unrepresented victims of these airstrikes should be as important as those of torture. Because, from what I see, they and their loss of lives have been reduced to some petty number to fight about.

…

Now I am going to ask the same question: Where are these photographs in the no-coverage coverage of Afghan casualties by our simply despicable mainstream media? Why don’t they show us the real ugly face of our aimless, objective-less, but nonetheless vicious assault tagged as a War on Terror in Afghanistan?

Remember this picture from the Vietnam War?

The picture above, and many similar pictures and war footage, helped shape our public opinion in regard to another senseless war and vicious assaults on civilians. It helped open our people’s eyes to the real horrors of war. It led to mounting pressure from our people demanding an end to these atrocities.

Well, after searching and searching, and searching more I found only a couple of pictures depicting the real face of our war in Afghanistan. For reasons I am sure you all are aware of our corporate media-Government Joint Venture, and in fact many pseudo alternative ones, don’t want our public to see these pictures, since they would speak more than a thousand words and help shape opinions again.

Read more ?

A Few New Developments in The Makings of a Police State

What happened to the month of September?! For me, it just flew by: The Krikorian Case, the American Conservative Magazine article, the latest from former FBI CI Specialist John Cole, several interesting interviews for our upcoming Boiling Frogs Show, building and designing my soon-to-be-launched website…and of course full-time motherhood and my part time job. Well, I am still standing!

I am expecting to have the new site up and running by mid October. Since ‘blogger’ doesn’t have a forwarding function I’ll post the notice for the new site as my last post to direct our readers to the site. It’s not going to be just a new site but the beginning of a new exciting project. Once the move is completed and we are settled, I’ll announce the names of my investigative journalist partners whom you all will recognize, together with a few other projects and objectives.

I’ve been running behind in publishing my next series of Boiling Frogs Interviews. In the next few weeks I’ll post interviews with John Cole (Former FBI CI Specialist), Melvin Goodman (Former CIA Analyst), Richard Barlow (Former CIA Analyst), and Steve Kohn (Attorney & the Founder of National Whistleblowers Center).

Speaking of interviews, here is the transcript of a great interview by Scott Horton with Philip Giraldi and Joe Lauria based on the American Conservative Magazine cover story.

Here is some semi-recent news and developments related to our ‘Police State’ topics I’ve been meaning to post, but for one reason or another were unable to actually sit down and do:

President of words but not actions

Those of you who’ve been following the latest on the President’s half-hearted promises on the future of the State Secrets Privilege may want to check out his latest action in ‘action’ and ‘implementation.’ The informed civil libertarians have been cautioning against celebrating our Attorney General’s vague announcement of improvements in using and implementing this privilege. They are right. The changes are in words only and cosmetic at best. As we all know the new administration has been defending, justifying and actually promoting the former administration’s abuses of this unconstitutional privilege. Here is the latest case:

The government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege in a pending lawsuit brought by a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent will not be affected by the new Attorney General policy limiting the use of the privilege, the Justice Department said last week, because it is already in compliance with the new policy.

In a September 24 appellate brief (pdf) in the case of Horn v. Huddle, Justice Department attorneys urged an appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that would authorize the parties in the lawsuit to disclose classified information to their attorneys. The Department also defended its use of the state secrets privilege.

An August 26 ruling in the case held that the parties’ counsel had a “need to know” the classified information possessed by their clients, and the court therefore directed the government to authorize the sharing of that information.

The government immediately objected. “The district court’s extraordinary order — compelling the government to grant security clearances and to authorize disclosure of classified national security information to private counsel… — unnecessarily usurps the Executive Branch’s authority and responsibility to protect from disclosure classified national security information as to which the state secrets privilege has been invoked,” the government argued in its September 24 brief.

The government also declared that the Attorney General’s new policy limiting the use of the state secrets privilege, which takes effect on October 1, would have no impact on the present case.

“The assertion of the privilege in this case satisfies the standards in the new policy concerning the applicable legal standards, narrow tailoring, and limitations on the assertion of the privilege. Moreover, the privilege as invoked in this case has been carefully reviewed by senior Department of Justice officials, who have determined that invocation of the privilege in this litigation is warranted,” the government brief stated.

That’s right. This, in addition to the rest (NSA & CIA extraordinary rendition cases). Make sure you cite these cases (among many others, including the mounting civilian casualties in Afghanistan) next time you hear one of those ‘Obama Apologists’ rant on about the greatness of this president …

President Fights to Keep the Worst PATRIOT ACT Provisions Extended & Alive

Our ‘President of Change’ has done another flip on one of his many campaign promises. Now Mr. Obama is vehemently seeking to have Congress extend all three expiring provisions of the so very unpatriotic and un-American PATRIOT ACT.

This is from a report released on Monday, September 15:

“Despite promises during the campaign that he would review certain of the most intrusive portions of the PATRIOT Act, President Barack Obama’s Justice Department today is calling for Congress to extend all three expiring provisions, though they were “willing to consider” civil rights protections “as long as they don’t weaken” the president’s powers under the act”

Among those provisions the administration is seeking to extend is the infamous Section 215: the provision which allows law enforcement access to library and bookstore records, without probable cause, for “national security” reasons. The American Library Association has been complaining for years that the provision was overbroad and many fear it could prove to have a chilling effect on the ability to read potentially subversive literature.

Another of the provisions the administration wants extended is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, which amends the FISA definition of “agent of a foreign power” to include people the government can’t establish as having any link to a foreign government or terrorist organization.”

You can read the rest of this article and supporting links here.

I know my readers are too sophisticated and informed to need any explanation of these unconstitutional provisions, so I won’t provide any. Come on, even the least informed citizen of this country should shudder after reading the ‘lone wolf’ provision. It says it plain and simple: the government doesn’t need ANY cause WHATSOEVER to target a citizen whenever and wherever it chooses to go after him/her. Period.

Let’s go ahead and add this to the long list of President Obama’s ‘changes on change.’ If you haven’t read my piece on this topic, Two Sides of the Same Coin, here is the link:

I am afraid at this rate soon we may deservedly call our new president ‘Bush Dark.’ Let’s hope I am wrong…

Girl Scouts: From Cookies to Guns?

Part I of my Police State Series was on ‘The National Security Generation’. As a reminder here are a few excerpts from that piece:

On May 15 this year Telegraph UK ran an article on a nationwide Boy Scouts training program on combating terrorism. The reported number of scouts between the ages of 14 and 21 who are currently enrolled in law enforcement and terrorism programs across the United States is around 35,000.

“Dressed in combat fatigues and armed with air guns firing tiny plastic pellets, they are taught how to assault buses, raid marijuana fields and rescue terrorist hostages from buildings.”

LA Times reports on Meade High School in Northern Maryland, the first high school in the country to offer a four-year course in Domestic Security. The article’s ‘sexy’ title goes like this: ‘The School Mixes Algebra, Homeland Security.’ The goal is identified as ‘to help graduates build careers in one of America’s few growth industries.’ By the ‘few growth industries’ they mean not only the intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security, etc, but all the parasitic related private contractors such as private weapons companies and mercenary contractor firms like well-known Blackwater.

“the 90 ninth-graders who chose the new homeland security program this last school year focused on topics torn from the headlines: Islamic jihadism, nuclear arms, cyber-crime, domestic militias and the like.”

Mother Jones reports further on Joppatowne High School:

“Dedicated to everything from architecture to sports medicine, “career academies” claim to offer high school kids focus, relevancy, and solid job prospects. Now add a new kind of program to the list: homeland security high. In late August, Maryland’s Joppatowne High School became the first school in the country dedicated to churning out would-be Jack Bauers. The 75 students in the Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness magnet program will study cybersecurity and geospatial intelligence, respond to mock terror attacks, and receive limited security clearances at the nearby Army chemical warfare lab.”

Here is more in another article covering the same topic on Chicago schools:

“One in 10 public high school students in Chicago wears a military uniform to school and takes classes — including how to shoot a gun properly — from retired veterans.
That number is expected to rise as junior military reserve programs expand across the country now that a congressional cap of 3,500 units has been lifted from the nearly century-old scheme.”

Now the Department of Homeland Security has decided to expand their ‘Homeland Security Youth’ doctrinarian program. Their new target: Girl Scouts. They appear intent on replacing our little girl scouts’ cookies with guns and their old line community work with snitching and militancy:

“The United States wants to enlist its 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the effort to combat hurricanes, pandemics, terror attacks and other disasters.”

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched a campaign Tuesday to entice the blue, brown and green-clad multitudes to be even more prepared, with the promise of a new patch if they pitch in.”

I tried to find some pictures of our soon to be transformed Scouts, but couldn’t find any. So I decided that these old pictures from the last century would work just as well:

The Homeland’s objective one: start them really young.

The Homeland’s Objective Two: Train and militarize for Homeland Security.

The Homeland’s Objective Three: Don’t forget the little girls.