Last weekend at the farmers Market I bumped in to an author, activist and a fairly popular blog-ist friend. I asked what he had been up to lately, and he said he was working with a group on bringing more pressure on Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney from the international community, and possibly getting them banned from entering certain countries. I asked him about his plans for our current president, his undeclared wars and black operations, and his still-in-the-making trail of civilian casualties-the babies and grandmothers and all…He sincerely answered my question without any hesitation, ‘Oh, no plans for that yet. Not yet… Maybe after we are done with Bush… Obama certainly deserves being banned, but right now we are busy with our current project targeting Bush and his evil entourage.’

It seems like every time I look around I see these activists/writers/blog-ists who are extremely busy with chasing that long-gone evil president, or maybe his ghost. The guy had eight years in the White House when he was engaged in planning and executing orders for atrocious practices, and neither Congress nor the media lifted a finger to do anything about it. Even though they could; in theory, that is. Despite all our activism and whistleblowing the man came out of it without a scratch; really.

Look, I am not saying the pursuit of George W. Bush is totally futile and a waste of time. I certainly don’t disagree with those who believe the previous administration should be held accountable. After all, what do people think when they hear the name Sibel Edmonds? The FBI linguist who was retaliated against and fired by Bush’s FBI, silenced and gagged by Bush’s Justice Department, and basically, slammed and quashed and attacked nonstop by the Bush Administration (while the US Congress and the media watched detachedly without a blink). So, no, I have justifiably more reasons than many to despise the Bush Administration and seek accountability and justice. Read more È

More Planes & Bombs for Libya, Libya in Pictures, the Covert War in Yemen, the Staggering Price Tag for Iraq-Afghan Wars, Budget Cut=Return to the Draft?, Echelon Incest, The Silent Liquidity Freeze & More

Newsworthy

NATO Calls for More Planes to Bomb Libyan Targets

Libya in Pictures: What the Mainstream Media Does Not Tell You

U.S. Strikes Said to Kill 8 in Yemen

Record Civilian Toll in Afghanistan in 2011

NATO Raid Kills 6 Civilians in Afghanistan

FBI to Investigate News Corp over 9/11 Hacking Allegations

Staggering Price Tag for Iraq-Afghanistan Wars

**** Read more È

Newsworthy

‘Deadliest Six Months’ for Civilians in Afghanistan

U.S. Building New Jails across Afghanistan

Iran Rejects US Claims of Role in Iraq Attacks

Libya Says 1,100 Dead in NATO War Crimes

Unfolding the Syrian Paradox

Canada: The Gift That Keeps Giving to Israel

CIA Officer May Face War Crime Charges

The “Secret� PATRIOT ACT

Lawmaker: US Airports are not Secure Enough

A False Narrative About Fannie Mae

Select Editorials

The New “Let Them Eat Cake!�

The Military Industrial Complex: The Enemy From Within

Wasted & Stolen Trillions for War

The Media’s Endless Propaganda for War

How Has Murdock Improved With Age

Video- The Secret History of the CIA: The CIA in Business with the Parent Group to Al-Qaeda?

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Are the elections results of US presidential elections determined by 2% of the population? Can the five million or so Jewish population be counted as the US majority? Does the Israel lobby shape the majority of US voters’ decisions? Is Israel the main determinant of political elections’ results when it comes to high US public offices? I don’t know your take or answers to these questions, but we do have ‘theirs, on the record, loud and clear, and of course, delivered with hubris and cockiness:

Metzger to Obama: Release Pollard or lose reelection
By Jonah Mandel, Jerusalem Post

Chief Ashkenazi rabbi says he’s not making prophecy, just reflecting the feelings of US Jews who supported US president’s election.

Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger wants US President Barack Obama to know that unless he acts to release Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard, he will not be elected for a second time in November 2012.

“If Obama wants another term as president, he must immediately release Pollard,� the rabbi said on Saturday.
…

I don’t believe the above article is in need of any interpretation or explanation. It is pretty straightforward: Mr. President if you do A, we won’t let you get reelected, but if you do B, we will; yes, we have that much power and influence. The condition put on this one way negotiation has nothing to do with the topic I am discussing here. Period. In this case it is about Jonathan Pollard, the convicted Israeli spy who betrayed his nation and endangered lives. It could very well be about Iran: Mr. Obama you either attack or advocate for an attack on country X, and we’ll ensure you get reelected, or, stand against it, and lose your chance of getting reelected. Why? Because ‘we’ have that power. Because ‘we’ perceive country X as a threat to ‘us,’, and ‘we’ want you to put your nation at war for ‘us.’ 

Now you may say, ‘hey, that’s a ludicrous empty threat! Give or take two percent of the voting population can’t carry that level of influence over a United States President!’ And, you will be wrong; flat out wrong. It is true that the population of American adherents of Judaism was around 5 million, 1.7% of the total US population in 2007, and including those who identify themselves culturally as Jewish (but not necessarily religiously), around 6.5  million, 2.2% as of 2008. But who ever claimed that these things are all about size, and that only size matters?!!! If you don’t have the size you go about compensating for it; don’t you? Well, that’s exactly what ‘they’ have been doing, and doing successfully. How? In more than one way: Read more È

“There is no recent credible first-hand information on when bin Laden was last seen,� writes Asia Times Online correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad in his December 12, 2009 article, “Osama Can Run, How Long Can He Hide?�. This line, however, is tucked seventeen paragraphs into an article in which early on Shahzad asserts, “There is little dispute that bin Laden and his close associates, including his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, move around in the vast and inhospitable mountainous territory that straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; the porous border exists only as a line on a map.�  

Shahzad quotes US national security advisor James Jones saying that “intelligence reports suggest that the Al-Qaeda chief is somewhere inside North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border.�  Shahzad doesn’t indicate whether or not he followed up on Jones’s statement by asking Jones how credible those suggestive reports were and why they were credible. Instead, he lends his own organization’s credibility to Jones’s statement. “Interaction with generally well-connected militant sources,� he writes, “leads Asia Times Online to believe that bin Laden, 52, is alive and healthy, despite a history of kidney trouble.�  

What kinds of well-connected militant sources are they and why should they be believed?  What proof that bin Laden is alive have these sources offered?  How has Shahzad confirmed what they told him about bin Laden being alive? Read more È

This week we interviewed Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower; the interview should be posted in 3 or 4 weeks. I know you’re going to find it interesting and enlightening. Speaking of AT&T, check out our contributor Ishmael’s informative interview with Jeff Farias here.

I have a few noteworthy tidbits below. Don’t pay attention to their publication dates, since the issues, these cases and reports, are ‘timeless’ in nature.

Another Police State Government Villains & an Irate Minority Fighter Story

This week the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a privacy watchdog organization, released a comprehensive and eye-opening report on a bogus subpoena issued by a US attorney in Indiana to force Indymedia.us , an independent alternative news site to hand over all the data containing about their users who visited the site on a particular day. Not only that, consistent with other National Security Letters practices, the Justice Department issued gag order to prevent the site from speaking about the subpoena:

The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.

Because Indymedia follows EFF’s Best Practices for Online Service Providers and does not keep historical IP logs, there was no information for Indymedia to hand over, and the government withdrew the subpoena. However, as the report describes, that wasn’t the end of the tale: Ms. Clair wanted EFF to be able to tell the story of the subpoena and shine a light on the government’s illegal demand, yet the subpoena ordered silence. Under pressure from EFF, the government admitted that the subpoena’s gag order had no legal basis, and ultimately chose not to go to court to try to force Ms. Clair’s silence despite earlier threats to do so.

This is another story of our government villains determined to butcher the Constitution and speed up our descent towards a police state. This is another example illustrating how government abuses are thriving and expanding in secrecy. In this case, it took an irate, a determined, and a believer in Constitutional Rights, to get up and challenge the attempted despotism. In this particular case, the despotic villains backed down. But as EFF appropriately questions:

How often does the government attempt such illegal fishing expeditions through internet data? How many online service providers have received similarly bogus demands, and handed over how much data, violating how many internet users’ privacy? How many of those subpoena recipients have been intimidated into silence by unconstitutional gag orders?

Let’s hope the number of those who choose to speak up and fight back keeps increasing. But meanwhile, in addition to sitting and wishing and hoping, let us each be one of the irate minority who keeps on fighting until we become the majority, and the villains are restrained and ruled by we the people.

The Deceitful Media Pimping Tyranny

Freedom daily had a well-presented piece by James Bovard on the US media. I get tons of links and references everyday, and usually all I can do is a quick glance. With this one I was hooked after the first paragraph, and I’m sure those of you who’ve been visiting my site for a while would know why:

Why do politicians so easily get away with telling lies? In large part, because the news media are more interested in bonding with politicians than in exposing them. Americans are encouraged to believe that the media will serve as a check and a balance on the government. Instead, the press too often volunteer as unpaid pimps, helping politicians deceive the public. Read more È