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.

Updates & Announcements

It’s been a roller-coaster week and I expect that to continue for the next few days. My week was taken up with the latest frenzy surrounding the congressional campaign on the whistleblower protection bill. Also, I was presented with a very interesting development in a case that seems to be related to my state secrets privilege case. Due to the confidentiality involved with an ongoing court case and several attorney parties I cannot discuss the details now, but stay tuned; more to come very soon.

Next Saturday I will be leaving for four weeks. I’ll be overseas and mostly on the road, moving from one place to another. The posting on this site will be light, but in addition to publishing my Boiling Frogs Interviews, I’ll try to provide you with occasional posts and updates.

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Announcing Mizgin’s Desk

I am proud to announce that starting this month this site will feature exclusive articles by a great researcher and analyst, Mizgin Yilmaz. For the last few years Mizgin has been one of my best sources and the go-to-person on issues, developments, and cases related to the Kurdish regions of Southeast Turkey and Northern Iraq, Turkey, and Central Asia. Not only does she have great research and analytic capabilities, but she also has reliable hard-to-come-by sources in ‘places and areas’ where no American journalists dare to venture. Mizgin is fluent in several languages, thus is able to find, read, and analyze news and documents in and from that part of the world. Her expertise and education in the history and politics of these regions, her research and linguistic capabilities, a fearless approach, and an articulate and fiery writing style are some of many ingredients that make Mizgin’s work shine as solid and dynamite. As you can tell I am a big fan of her work, but I’ll stop here and let you judge my choice and admiration based on reading her upcoming pieces!

Coming Very Soon: Jamiol Presents

Our regular visitors are familiar by now with Paul Jamiol’s wonderful political cartoons. Newcomers can just scroll down the main page and see a few more of his recent works. Soon Paul will be creating exclusive cartoons for this site on our related topics and posts. I am honored to have him as a contributor and a partner. I am expanding this site and his contribution will enrich the content. After my return this website will go through a bit of a facelift, and after that you’ll get to see Paul’s work regularly. Meanwhile you can visit Paul’s website and enjoy his work!

The Boiling Frogs Show

Well, what can I say! It’s been really incredible. I love working with Peter. It is as if we operate from one mind when it comes to our spontaneous questions for our guests. It’s been so informative (for us too!), thought provoking, revelatory, and fun, fun, fun. Really! This week we’ll be interviewing Richard Barlow and Joe Trento on the nuclear black market and related issues, many of which go unreported by the media. After my return Peter and I will hopefully find a solution that will allow us to offer our show more frequently. Our list of future guests keeps growing and the number of cases and issues we want to cover keeps increasing. We must find a way!

Speaking of Peter, he recently interviewed Mark Klein, the AT&T whistleblower who exposed the NSA’s secret splitter room in San Francisco. Klein discusses the illegal interception of Americans’ communications, the cover up by most MSM outlets, the irresponsive Congress, and more. Klein recently self published his book “Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine…and Fighting it.” The book is now available at Amazon. I encourage you to visit Peter’s site to listen to this important interview.
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I am working on a couple of other exciting projects for this site and will report back on that soon, after my return. Meanwhile please help me spread the word on this site and our Podcast show. Thank You.

123 Real Change- Progress Report & Notes

Hard to believe it’s already been a month since I finally got down to it, joined the blogosphere, and started this blog. Originally I thought the blog would be limited to a few posts per month, mainly short commentaries on issues and topics of interest to me, and maybe an op-ed piece or two. Well, that changed, and did so quickly!

The lengthy series on ‘Dissecting the MSM’ ended up becoming a project of its own. I have 3 parts done, and one last post, part 4, Corporate Ownership & Public Demand, to go. I think I should be able to wrap that one up before the end of this month. I already have an idea and notes on my next series, and I think you will find it interesting and controversial; at least I hope you will. I won’t give out more but please stay tuned.

I have two reports on Project Expose MSM and am reviewing two other cases to see whether they are ‘solid’ and supported sufficiently to be published. It is quite difficult, but interesting and fun nonetheless. Exposing these cases is only step one. What we need to do is decide how to translate the knowledge of these cases into action. More on this later…

We have also had a few fun TGIF posts. For these I am running out of ‘fun’ but relevant ideas, and welcome your suggestions on our future TGIF topics. The criteria: Fun, humorous, and relevant to our general discussion areas. Please bring in your ideas. You can post them under the ‘comments’ section of our last TGIF on June 5.

We have had over 25,000 visitors here in one month. This really exceeded my expectations for the first month. Most importantly I have been truly amazed by the depth of the comments you’ve posted: articulate, thought provoking, independent, and all that expressed and communicated respectfully and civilly. I have to admit, my biggest fear was to end up with lots of ‘one-liner’ shallow, ultra partisan, and or propagandist comments; the ultimate turn off and at times nauseating trend I’ve observed on many sites/blogs throughout the years. I am delighted to have you and your voice. I am learning a lot from you. Please don’t stop. For those of you among the 25,000 who have not added your voice yet: please join us. Let us hear and learn from you. Whether you are conservative, liberal, libertarian, realist, neocon…doesn’t matter, join the discussion and add your voice; enrich the discussion we are having here.

I have a few ideas and projects for the future of this blog. Some of them may be considered ambitious, but so what? I’ll do my best to implement them. One of these ideas will involve participation of a few solid investigative journalists I know and consider friends. Another one has to do with weekly Podcast interviews…However, before I start pitching and implementing them I need to get this blog, the number of visitors, and the number of posted comments to the next benchmark. I am hoping to establish a monthly average of 50,000 unique ID visitors by this fall. Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Surely. This also will largely depend on you and your support to get us there. Again please bring your ideas and suggestions. Those of you who happen to be savvy (I am certainly not savvy) in blogging and website promotion (cross-posting, RSS Feed, Digg, Reddit, etc.): I appreciate any help you can provide in this area…E-mail me if you are interested and can spare a little time to pitch in and help implement these ideas.

This is it for my brief monthly round up on this blog’s monthiversary. Now, it is your turn. Let me know what you think.

P.S.

Peter Lance’s ‘Triple Cross’ & Patrick Fitzgerald

This coming week the paperback edition of Peter Lance’s latest HarperCollins investigative book TRIPLE CROSS is being released. The book is highly critical of Fitzgerald, particularly with respect to his interaction with al Qaeda master spy Ali Mohamed, and is already creating lots of controversy. I just received my signed copy from Peter, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.

So far Patrick Fitzgerald has sent four threat letters to HarperCollins, Lance’s publisher, threatening to sue if the book is published. He claims the book has defamed him and put him in a “false light.”

Here is an article covering the latest on Lance’s book and Fitzgerald:

Ann Sparanese, the New Jersey Librarian who has waged anti-censorship campaigns in the past, sent an email to thousands of librarians nationwide chastising Fitzgerald for his attempt to pulp the book and calling it “A Book to Watch.” Here is the link: http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=1454#comments

Lance’s Press Conference will be held this Tuesday, June 16, at 9:30 a.m., in the John Zenger Room of the National Press Club, 529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC 20045. I am invited to attend, and hopefully will make it there and report on it further here.

Okay, this was supposed to be a brief monthly round up! I’ll wrap it up here before it turns into a novella, and leave you with the latest from

Paul Jamiol:

Favorite Quotes on MSM

As you must already know I have a ‘thing’ for well-crafted, punchy, witty, deep, or sometimes ultra sarcastic quotes. I truly envy those who can deliver a loaded message, a deep philosophical thought, or a mucking criticism, in a few wisely selected words and in one or two simply but effectively crafted sentence(s). Just take a look at my previous analyses and op-ed pieces. You see what I mean?!!! I am certainly not ‘talented’ that way How do I make up for it? Well, again as you can see, I borrow theirs, and place them in the openings and closings of my humble writings. Just in case people don’t have the time to read the painfully longer part written by me!

Okay, I am going to list a few favorite quotes of mine, those related to the media in general, and invite you to bring in and post yours. Here goes:

• What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
– W. H. Auden

• Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.– Thomas Jefferson

• People shouldn’t expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the ‘fringe’ media. — Ted Koppel

• The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.- – Eric Sevareid

• Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We’re supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We’re not supposed to be their megaphone. That’s what the corporate media have become. – - Amy Goodman

And, here is the latest cartoon on the MSM by Paul Jamiol; priceless, isn’t it?

Have a nice weekend!

Cartoons and Political Activism

Editorial Cartoons, also known as political cartoons, can be powerful and effective in explaining political issues and current events. Cartoons can evoke compassion and ignite outrage. They can promote ideals and act as catalysts to propel action for change through creative use of visual art.
They help shape public opinion (positively and negatively).

A few days ago, after publishing my latest op-ed piece on President Obama’s Changes on Change, I received an e-mail from Paul Jamiol, a great cartoonist who has done some really good work in depicting our nation’s downslide. He sent me the link to his recent cartoon which is related to the op-ed piece I wrote; great job, indeed! Check it out below:

Here is another good one published a while ago during one of my MSM related campaigns:

I encourage you to check out Paul’s website to see his activism expressed so effectively in cartoons – summing up important issues better than 1000 word pieces.

Now here is your turn: What do you think of political cartoons and their role today? Who is/are your favorite cartoonist(s)? Why? Also, if you can, share (provide the link) with all of us your favorite cartoon (only one cartoon, please!) related to the topics we’ve been discussing (MSM, Need for ‘Real Change,’ Campaign lies and ‘pre-selected’ candidates…). If you don’t have one already, you may want to spend a few minutes browsing the Net – it is fun, uplifting, and also highly stimulating-nothing like a well-executed punchy cartoon to get that critical thinking going….