Updates & Weekly Round Up for February 21
Sunday, 21. February 2010
This coming week will mark the fourth month of our website’s operation. During the last two weeks I’ve been talking with our team members and friends in the online forums and activism community, and evaluating our website’s success and the feasibility of continuing and expanding it.
I’m happy to report that during the last four months we have achieved every single objective set prior to launching this site. And, I am proud to have gathered a distinguished team of journalists, analysts, authors, and an editorial cartoonist whose work is based on truth and real issues.
I believe that during this four-month trial phase Boiling Frogs Post has established a solid track record with what it has accomplished, and a view of what it can accomplish given your support and backing. Also, in this short time span the Boiling Frogs Show has been able to present you with over 20 distinguished experts and whistleblowers from the fields of journalism, intelligence, grassroots activism, academia, and foreign policy.
Thousands of you have been visiting this website daily, and only you will determine whether we can continue and expand this unique forum. As you know, this site is solely dependent on its readers, you, and has no ties to any institution, foundation, organization or corporation. This is the only model I see fit to be called an independent news and views venue, untainted by external pressures, special interests or partisan flavoring.
Starting next week, and for the next few weeks, we’ll be running our online fundraising campaign, and we’ll let you determine the outcome. I am counting on every single one of you, and asking you to support, spread the word, and recruit the support of others you know.
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Here are a few noteworthy links:
Another case of TSA overkill
Daniel Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer
Did you hear about the Camden cop whose disabled son wasn’t allowed to pass through airport security unless he took off his leg braces?
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Activist’s case will test U.S. anti-terrorism law
David G. Savage, LA Times
Ralph Fertig hardly resembles a terrorist, but the soft-spoken 79-year-old pacifist and human rights activist from Los Angeles might well qualify as one under the government’s strong anti-terrorism law.
He is the lead plaintiff in a Supreme Court case to be heard next week that will test whether speaking out on behalf of an oppressed foreign minority — represented by a group that’s been deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. — can result in a long
In 1996, Congress expanded the anti-terrorism law, imposing a prison term of up to 15 years for providing “training” or “expert advice or assistance” to a designated international terrorist group. The ban on supporting terrorists forbids sending not only money, weapons and fighters, but also charitable funds. Government lawyers say it even forbids filing a legal brief or writing an op-ed essay on behalf of a designated terrorist group.
For his part, Fertig says he wants no part of terrorism or violence, but rather the freedom to advocate for the rights of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. He is troubled that Kurds can be punished for speaking their own language or displaying their national colors. And he believes the 1st Amendment protects his right to counsel Kurdish leaders to steer away from violence and to take their cause to the United Nations.
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No Justice Forever: America’s New Foreign Policy of Indefinite Detention
Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, The Public Record
It is tempting to assume the decision to hold detainees indefinitely is based on a review of credible evidence. But if the evidence is so persuasive, why not introduce it in a court of law and secure a legitimate conviction? Time and again, federal courts have proven fully capable of handling terrorism cases. In fact, the Bush administration successfully prosecuted at least 319 terrorism or terrorism-related cases in civilian courts.
If the evidence is not reviewed by a court of law, who does review the evidence and determine the fates of individual suspects? The evidence is classified and the identities of those making the determinations are closely guarded. This process is entirely secret and inherently un-American. A system that authorizes indefinite detention based on secret evidence can only result in distrust and suspicion.
I represent Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti citizen who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than eight years without a trial. In my July 2009 letter to the Washington Post, I explained how every time I visit my client he asks whether I have news of justice for him. Each time, I am forced to answer “I have no justice today.” Assuming Fayiz would someday have his “day in court,” I prepared him for the probability that “justice” would come in the form of a military commission – a second-rate judicial system largely designed to permit rumor as evidence. Unfortunately, I am now left to wonder whether Fayiz will ever be afforded any semblance of justice.
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Hold on to your underpants
Tom Engelhardt, Asia Times
The 9/11 attacks, which had the look of the apocalyptic, brought the fear of terrorism into the American bedroom via the TV screen. That fear was used with remarkable effectiveness by the Bush administration, which color-coded terror for its own ends. A domestic version of shock-and-awe – Americans were indeed shocked and awed by 9/11 – helped drive the country into two disastrous wars and occupations, each still ongoing, and into Bush’s “global war on terror”, a term now persona non grata in Washington, even if the “war” itself goes on and on.
…The fear of terrorism has, by now, been institutionalized in our society – quite literally – even if the thing we’re afraid of has, on the scale of human problems, something of the Will o’ the Wisp about it.
That fear has been embedded in what once was an un-American word, more easily associated with Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany: “homeland”. It has replaced the words country, land, and nation in the lexicon of the terror-mongers. The “homeland” is the place that terrorism, and nothing but terrorism, can violate. In 2002, that terror-embedded word got its own official government agency: the Department of Homeland Security, the second “defense” department, which has a 2010 budget of US$39.4 billion (while overall “homeland security” spending in the 2010 budget reached $70.2 billion). Around it has grown up a little-attended-to homeland-security complex with its own interests, businesses, associations and lobbyists, including jostling crowds of ex-politicians and ex-government bureaucrats.
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US compensates Afghans for death, damage from war
Christopher Torchia, AP
The American units carry a list that gives guidance on payouts:
The death of a child or adult is worth $1,500-$2,500,
loss of limb and other injuries $600-$1,500,
a damaged or destroyed vehicle $500-$2,500,
and damage to a farmer’s fields $50-$250.…
Justice Department Formally Ends Anthrax Investigation
Jason Ditz, AntiWar
The Justice Department today formally ended over eight years of investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, releasing hundreds of pages of documents and a “transcript” from 2008 which attempted to implicate Dr. Bruce Ivins in the attacks.
Officials have been trying for years to pin the attacks on Dr. Ivins, a prominent anthrax researcher, despite a paucity of evidence supporting this claim. The 2008 transcript suggested Ivins may have launched the attacks and simply forgotten about them, or possibly done them while sleepwalking and never been aware of them.
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Before Ivins was blamed, officials told the media that another scientist, Dr. Steven Hatfill, was likely to blame. Dr. Hatfill successfully sued the Justice Department for $5.8 million for wrongfully implicating him.
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camusrebel Says:
Hey Sibel, congratulations on reaching your 4 month goals. I plan to participate in next weeks drive.
One thing that bugs me about the Anthrax case is the letter. Paraphrasing it read, “blah, blah, blah….9/11, blah, blah…be very afraid”. So, ok…Ivins wrote that? Sent it to Senators who were having second thoughts about the Patriot Act? Oh, and as a lifelong democrat he also made sure to send some to an obscure paper in Florida because….wait for it…..they published pictures of the drunken Bush girls. So, he came up w/this brilliant scheme after the attacks? Or before?
If you research it even a little bit it becomes clear there is no way Ivins could have done this and no way he committed suicide.
Just like Mike Connell and Paul Wellstone and Pat Tillman were murdered.
camusrebel Says:
also in the letters: Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great.
What exactly was Bruce Ivins motive again? A mild mannered left leaning egghead. Postmarked on Sept 18, from new jersey when Ivins can prove he was busy in Frederick MD that day. Just blatantly ridiculous.
zaknick Says:
excellent site
http://ampedstatus.com/
remo Says:
killers . suicides….everywhere the bodies Barry Jennings stepped over, led out of number 7 by the firemen of 911. No body else said anything. Only Barry , and he is dead too,
they say…..
As to a weekly roundup.
Watching the Dubai assassins enter the lift,
after the dreadful deed was done,
two by two[this is biblical]
ones gaze couldn’t help but wander, drawn, to the rubber gloved hand , absent minded worn ,
on the left and lower arm of one of those killers there.
One thing is certain,.
the evils wrought upon the silent dead millions by the butchers of the holocaust,
by that gloved hand in another form,
had clearly been wrought AGAIN,
upon another poor soul.
in the silent scream of his own tortured death,
in that room.
alone.
cinderman Says:
TSA… I’m getting weary of the stories of harassment! What bs. I’ve got quite a tale I’ll tell some day in detail about my brother who also happens to be a pilot for a major airline. He was helping a friend’s kid go thru security with a parrot in a cage. The TSA jerk made him extract the parrot from the cage, so the two could be screened separately. Mayhem ensued when the parrot refused to be caged again in the holding room and started to bite thru computer terminal wires. All this “security” shit is beyond the pale. The solution is simple: boycott all unnecessary air travel. Unfortunately the masses are just too cowardice. If we really want to change things, we need to think seriously about serious mass boycotts. Letters to our congressmen are absolutely a worthless waste of time and stamps.
Greg Bacon Says:
Gosh, it’s a good thing the Bush WH started taking Cipro a month before the anthrax attacks!!!
That’s almost as lucky as former AG John Ashcroft, who stopped riding on commercial flights in July of 2001 and started flying on chartered flights!!!
Good thing the FBI desroyed the anthrax samples, that were shown to be of the Ames variety, that came from the Dugway Proving Ground!!!
Nothing like removing and destroying evidence, like removing and shipping to China all those WTC steel beams that could’ve been tested for explosives.
But actually investigating these attacks would take away from the “Death to America, Death to Israel,” PR campaign, wouldn’t it?
contextofnocontext Says:
Re Ivins&Anthrax
I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth a repeat: Check out this very well-made doc on the Anthrax provenance (in 7 parts on Youtube) with related information on various Weapons programs and timely suicides.
Re Big Brother/No Justice
Say what you will about the “conspiracy theorists” and those who practice the (i)paranoid style(/i) in American Politics but this story is about as unsurprising as it is despicable to that particular camp. Sure everyone’s familiar with it at this point, but I’m still marveling.
Here in NYC the Police Officers who, by the accounts of legitimate witnesses, used a baton to rectally assault yet another citizen and then deny him medical service have been acquitted of all charges. The Police Officers who unloaded on unarmed Sean Bell and his friends have also been cleared of any wrongdoing. The various elements of these cases strongly suggest, IMHO, that the class issues involved in our maturing Police State will always trump the supposed racial issues.
This is exactly why, if there are any legitimate Tea Party people left, they’d be smart to adopt that famous black American patriot Joe Louis as the ultimate example of what the IRS/GVT does to its most outstanding citizens. Nobody got it worse than Joe Louis and he’s a pretty amazing example of the Political Pincer Attack: Robbed by the racist, corrupt country he still believed in enough to fight for then abandoned and denigrated by a political movement that didn’t see any use for him.
Rambling perhaps, but tis the Tax season after all and everyone’s gotta give that “pound of flesh” to finance a system many would like to see significantly dismantled, a system which only grows in its ability to victimize us.
Mike Says:
Yes, the letters are here http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/102301.htm The anthrax in the letters were apparently “weaponized” with silicon:
“Silicon was used in the 1960s to weaponize anthrax. Through an elaborate process, anthrax spores were coated with the substance to prevent them from clinging together so as to create a lethal aerosol. But since weaponization was banned by international treaties, research anthrax no longer contains silicon, and the flask at Fort Detrick contained none. Yet the anthrax grown from it had silicon, according to the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. This silicon explained why, when the letters to Sens. Leahy and Daschle were opened, the anthrax vaporized into an aerosol. If so, then somehow silicon was added to the anthrax. But Ivins, no matter how weird he may have been, had neither the set of skills nor the means to attach silicon to anthrax spores. According to the FBI lab, 1.4% of the powder in the Leahy letter was silicon. “This is a shockingly high proportion,” explained Stuart Jacobson, an expert in small particle chemistry. “It is a number one would expect from the deliberate weaponization of anthrax, but not from any conceivable accidental contamination.”
From “must read” article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575011421223515284.html
Reminds me of Dr. Stephen Jones’ finding of defense contractor developed thermite in dust from the WTC collapses: http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
And will my congressman listen to me about this? Waste of stamps indeed, it seems.
T Says:
Does anyone know where Chris Dodd is going after he leaves the Senate?
I have a feeling he’ll turn lobbyist for the banking sector.