Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Jason Bermas presents Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined produced by Alex Jones. The film can be pre-ordered here http://infowars-shop.stores.yahoo.net…, and will be available on April 15t.

Alex Jones introduces a sneak peak of the Jason Bermas film Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined. Pre-order now at http://infowars-shop.stores…

Invisible Empire: All Conspiracy, No Theory

Jason Bermas’ highly anticipated documentary Invisible Empire exposes the New World Order in their own words, by painstakingly showing how the elite have not only conspired to create a dictatorial global government in private, but have publicly stated their agenda hundreds of times in public.

EDMUND H. MAHONY
The Hartford Courant
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Medical experts will be watching closely Monday when a scientist who says she has been intermittently paralyzed by a virus designed at the Pfizer laboratory where she worked in Groton opens a much anticipated trial that could raise questions about safety practices in the dynamic field of genetic engineering.

Organizations involved in workplace safety and responsible genetic research already have seized on the federal lawsuit by molecular biologist Becky McClain as an example of what they claim is evidence that risks caused by cutting-edge genetic manipulation have outstripped more slowly evolving government regulation of laboratories.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

McClain, of Deep River, suspects she was inadvertently exposed, through work by a former Pfizer colleague in 2002 or 2003, to an engineered form of the lentivirus, a virus similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Medical experts working for McClain believe the virus has affected the way her body channels potassium, leading to a condition that causes complete paralysis as many as 12 times a month.

“If a worker in a plant as sophisticated as Pfizer is becoming infected with a genetically engineered virus, then I think the potential is everywhere,” said Jeremy Gruber, president of the Council for Responsible Genetics, a public interest group created to explore the implications of genetic technologies.

Full story here.

George Washington Blog
Thursday, March 18, 2010

As I pointed out in 2007:

The 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees.

The official 9/11 Commission Report states:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these “detainees” have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot. Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting.

In other words, the 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand.

The Commission didn’t really trust the interrogation testimony. For example, one of the primary architects of the 9/11 Commission Report, Ernest May, said in May 2005:

We never had full confidence in the interrogation reports as historical sources.

As I noted last May:

Newsweek is running an essay by [New York Times investigative reporter] Philip Shenon saying [that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees]:

The commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda’s history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it.

The panel raised no public protest over the CIA’s interrogation methods, even though news reports at the time suggested how brutal those methods were. In fact, the commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.

That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission’s final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain.

And yet it is a distinct possibility that Al Qaeda suspects who were the exclusive source of information for long passages of the commission’s report may have been subjected to “enhanced” interrogation techniques, or at least threatened with them, because of the 9/11 Commission….

Information from CIA interrogations of two of the three—KSM and Abu Zubaydah—is cited throughout two key chapters of the panel’s report focusing on the planning and execution of the attacks and on the history of Al Qaeda.

Footnotes in the panel’s report indicate when information was obtained from detainees interrogated by the CIA. An analysis by NBC News found that more than a quarter of the report’s footnotes—441 of some 1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program, including the trio who were waterboarded.

Commission members note that they repeatedly pressed the Bush White House and CIA for direct access to the detainees, but the administration refused. So the commission forwarded questions to the CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel’s behalf.

The commission’s report gave no hint that harsh interrogation methods were used in gathering information, stating that the panel had “no control” over how the CIA did its job; the authors also said they had attempted to corroborate the information “with documents and statements of others.”

But how could the commission corroborate information known only to a handful of people in a shadowy terrorist network, most of whom were either dead or still at large?

Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. …

Kerrey said it might take “a permanent 9/11 commission” to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

Abu Zubaida was well-known to the FBI as being literally crazy. The Washington Post quotes “FBI officials, including agents who questioned [alleged Al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaida] after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home” as concluding that he was:

[L]argely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other “enhanced interrogation” measures.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

For example:

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida’s capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA’s harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida’s information.

“I don’t have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted,” Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. “He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn’t believe him. The problem is they didn’t realize he didn’t know all that much.”

***

“They said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” said Coleman, recalling accounts from FBI employees who were there. ” ‘This guy’s a Muslim. That’s not going to win his confidence. Are you trying to get information out of him or just belittle him?‘” Coleman helped lead the bureau’s efforts against Osama bin Laden for a decade, ending in 2004.

Coleman goes on to say:

Abu Zubaida … was a “safehouse keeper” with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.

***
Looking at other evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he had severe mental problems that called his credibility into question. “They all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone,” Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. “You think they’re going to tell him anything?”

ACLU, FireDogLake’s Marcy Wheeler and RawStory broke the story yesterday that (quoting RawStory):

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission’s request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would “cross” a “line” and obstruct the administration’s ability to protect the nation.

“In response to the Commission’s expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation,” the letter read. “There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross — the line separating the Commission’s proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government’s ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks.”

***

“The Commission staff’s proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line,” the letter continued. “As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees.”

Destruction of Evidence

The interrogators made videotapes of the interrogations. The 9/11 Commission asked for all tapes, but the CIA lied and said there weren’t any.

The CIA then destroyed the tapes.

Specifically, the New York Times confirms that the government swore that it had turned over all of the relevant material regarding the statements of the people being interrogated:

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission ….

“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

But is the destruction of the tapes — and hiding from the 9/11 Commission the fact that the tapes existed — a big deal? Yes, actually. As the Times goes on to state:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Indeed, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The CIA also is refusing to release any transcripts from the interrogation sessions. As I wrote a year ago:

What does the fact that the CIA destroyed numerous videotapes of Guantanamo interrogations, but has 3,000 pages of transcripts from those tapes really mean?

Initially, it means that CIA’s claim that it destroyed the video tapes to protect the interrogators’ identity is false. Why? Well, the transcripts contain the identity of the interrogator. And the CIA is refusing to produce the transcripts.

Obviously, the CIA could have “blurred” the face of the interrogator and shifted his voice (like you’ve seen on investigative tv shows like 60 Minutes) to protect the interrogator’s identity. And since the CIA is not releasing the transcripts, it similarly could have refused to release the videos.

The fact that the CIA instead destroyed the videos shows that it has something to hide.

Trying to Create a False Linkage?

I have repeatedly pointed out that the top interrogation experts say that torture doesn’t work.

As I wrote last May:

The fact that people were tortured in order to justify the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 is gaining attention.

Many people are starting to understand that top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.

Indeed, the Senate Armed Services Committee found that the U.S. used torture techniques specifically aimed at extracting false confessions (and see this).

And as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times:

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

[A]ccording to NBC news:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”

• One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

In fact, the self-confessed “mastermind” of 9/11 also confessed to crimes which he could not have committed. He later said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information – telling them what he thought they wanted to hear – in an attempt to stop the torture. We also know that he was heavily tortured specifically for the purpose of trying to obtain false information about 9/11 - specifically, that Iraq had something to do with it.

***

Remember, as discussed above, the torture techniques used by the Bush administration to try to link Iraq and 9/11 were specifically geared towards creating false confessions (they were techniques created by the communists to be used in show trials).

***

The above-linked NBC news report quotes a couple of legal experts to this effect:

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says he is “shocked” that the Commission never asked about extreme interrogation measures.

“If you’re sitting at the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than guess,” said Ratner, whose center represents detainees at Guantanamo. “Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore their conclusions are suspect.“…

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University’s School of Law, put it this way: “[I]t should have relied on sources not tainted. It calls into question how we were willing to use these interrogations to construct the narrative.”

The interrogations were “used” to “construct the narrative” which the 9/11 Commission decided to use.

Remember (as explored in the book The Commission by respected journalist Philip Shenon), that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was an administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of “public myths” thought to be true, even if not actually true. He wrote an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the process, controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission’s inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).

***
As constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley stated:

[The 9/11 Commission] was a commission that was really made for Washington – a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties – a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals.

Other Obstructions of Justice

The failure of the government to allow the 9/11 Commission to speak with the detainees directly and the CIA’s subsequent destruction of the interrogation videotapes isn’t the first obstruction of justice by the government regarding the 9/11 investigations.

For example:

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:
  

  Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . .
  * * *

  The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

  In his book “Intelligence Matters,” Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said “the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.” On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter “a smoking gun” and said, “The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House.”

Lee Brodie
CNBC
Thursday, March 18, 2010

The market melt-up appeared to be losing steam on Thursday due to chatter the Fed may hike the discount rate again, after the bell.

What’s the word on the Street?

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

If you believe in history repeating itself, you may want to take pause, says Guy Adami. The last time the Fed raised the discount rate was February 18^th, a Thursday, after the close. And the next day was options expiration, which is what we’re looking at today. I think there’s a reasonable chance they do it. I’d get flat. Looking at the broad market, I can’t help but wonder if the market wants to reverse and go down and this becomes the catalyst.

The longer the rumor is out about a hike in the discount rate, the less traders believe it, adds Steve Grasso. But that’s not the only factor dragging down stocks right now. There are also worries about Greece. New reports suggest they may need to go the IMF. It seems investors are selling the market and sitting on their hands waiting to hear what’s fact and what’s fiction.

Full story here.

Caroline Binham
Bloomberg News
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Traders’ mobile-telephone calls may be taped in an effort to stamp out insider trading, according to proposals from the U.K. financial regulator.

Cell phones used for business shouldn’t be exempt from rules requiring banks and brokerages to record employees’ calls, that the Financial Services Authority can listen to later, under proposals the agency said may take effect as soon as next year. Around 22,000 phones would be covered, the FSA said.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

“Some would say that it is about time that mobile-phone technology should catch up with the procedures for other communication types,” said Tony Woodcock, a lawyer at London- based Stephenson Harwood. “But it does mean that determined miscreants will find other means such as private mobiles, or others’ mobiles, to effect the trading more clandestinely.”

The U.S. insider-trading case against Galleon Group LLC’s chief executive officer, Raj Rajaratnam, was brought using evidence in part from mobile-phone conversations the government got permission to wiretap.

Full story here.

BBC News
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Five children poisoned to death in a village in India may have been “sacrificed”, police say.

They say that the children were killed in Maharashtra state by a childless couple in a suspected black magic ritual to enable them to conceive.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

The couple and parents of the accused husband have been arrested. Officials say post-mortem results are awaited.

Black magic is sometimes carried out in poorer parts of India by people who believe it will provide benefits.

Full story here.

TPUC
Thursday, March 18, 2010

I am indebted to my good friend and fellow Freeman on the land, for allowing me to use his documentation for this:-

Let me fill you in on the background so you have the case history:-

“Jim” (As we will call him”) is a Freeman on the Land along with us (More on that here www.TPUC.org & www.thinkfree.ca) – and a few months back he decided (Like many of us) that he wasn’t going to pay the UNLAWFUL Council tax that they were trying to enforce upon him via thier unlawful statute legislation. So he stopped paying:-

In due course he started receiving the threatening letters until one day the “summons” appeared on his doormat. (Note: A summons is merely an invitation to attend their place of business to discuss a punishment – its an offer – Read more -  just as the Council Tax Bill is an offer to contract with them – read more on this).

The “invitation” was to appear before Wirral Magistrates Court for a hearing concerning the issuing of a liability hearing. Now as we all now ALL magistrates courts are merely a trading styles of the “run for profit” company called “Ministry of Justice” – see below and you can get a copy of the document I have acquired clearly showing:-

1. The corporate status of the Ministry of Justice
2. The Directors (Lord Falconer of Thoroton & Others)
3. The fact that Ministry of Justice has County Court Jugements against it
4. The trading styles of MOJ (Top right – which includes “Magistrates Courts”

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE IS A BUSINESS

Now call me blonde but I would say this is pretty damned conclusive that we are dealing with a corporate court convened by a corporation to simply lift money from you and I.

So … “Jim” jotted the council a little letter which is shown below:-

FIRST LETTER TO WIRRAL COUNCIL

Jim sent this letter about THREE WEEKS before the date that the hearing was due to be heard on.

So … the DAY BEFORE the hearing, Jim received a phone call from the Wirral Council LEGAL DEPARTMENT and what they said was staggering …

THEY WERE GOING TO WITHDRAW THE APPLICATION FOR A LIABILITY ORDER!

1. Now this is incredible that on the back of one letter they decide to withdraw and more importantly confirms the following:-
2. Council tax is UNLAWFUL, as you and I well know that if these leeches had once ounce of a lawful case for taking this money then they would fight it to the death

They KNOW Council Tax is unlawful and are simply robbing those who haven’t woken up to the facts yet to the tune of £140,000,000,000 per annum (thats 140 BILLION of our money!)

So, Jim being the experienced fellow he is – asked them to email him with confirmation that they were going to withdraw and printed below is their email.

WIRRAL COUNCIL CONFIRMATION OF WITHDRAWAL BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO LAWFUL CASE

Jim then asked for further clarification in a formal letter and here is the letter that they sent!

LETTER FROM WIRRAL COUNCIL CONFIRMING THEIR WITHDRAWAL FORM COUNCIL TAX LIABILITY HEARING

Then Jim asked them to confirm in writing that because there was now NO LIABILY that the council tax was no longer due.

This is the letter they and this is probably (in my opinion) one of THE single most important documents in the fight against Council Tax as it PROVES beyond ANY DOUBT that we DO NOT HAVE TO PAY this UNLAWFUL COUNCIL TAX.

Look at the bit in red!

LETTER FROM WIRRAL COUNCIL CONFIRMING THAT COUNCIL TAX DOES NOT HAVE TO BE PAID

So not believing a word of the Council or the courts Jim rocked up to the court on the morning of the Liability hearing and standing as a Freeman on the Land asked the Judge to confirm the withdrawal of the other side which the Judge duly confirmed. The judge then told Jim that he needn’t have turned up and then Jim hit with it.

“I know that sir, but there is the small matter of mys costs”

BAM! – They were not expecting that one!So, Jim has now duly entered a claim for costs of £1,400  against Wirral Council which is still ongoing at this time as the courts are trying to play silly buggers with Jim – he has even had one judge step down and refuse to adjudicate in favour of his costs – as you can see – its a stitch up!

Anyway – Jim has some other things planned and I will keep you abreast of developments but there you have it.

A UK Council running away from a court hearing because they KNOW they dont have a LAWFUL leg to stand on and the whole Council Tax is a scam to relieve you and I of money.

Satirical slap down fails to mention that millions of Americans will receive American Community Survey, which demands personal information about every aspect of their private life

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Stephen Colbert’s satirical slap down of paranoia surrounding the 2010 Census on his Comedy Central show last night may have been funny, but only for the ignorant, since most of the issues he mocked are verifiably true and a serious concern for any American who cares about their privacy.

During the course of the 6 minute skit, Colbert made fun of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for her warning last year that the Census Bureau played an integral role in collecting information that was later used by the government to intern Japanese-Americans in prison camps.

The establishment-left Huffington Post website, which censors any material it deems to be a “conspiracy theory,” including former Governor Jesse Ventura’s article on 9/11 last week, carried a blurb about the Colbert piece which appeared to put Bachmann’s claim in the same category.

Watch the clip below. A shorter version of the clip available to viewers outside the U.S. can be watched here.

However, the fact that information culled from Census statistics was later used by the government to round up Japanese-Americans is manifestly provable.

“A clear picture has emerged in the last decade that the Census Bureau aided the War Department in interning West Coast Japanese-Americans by providing information on the ethnic makeup of neighborhoods,” reported the New York Sun in March 2007.

The article cites the work of sociology researcher at Fordham University, William Seltzer, and history professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Margo Anderson, who in a paper show how in 1943, “At the behest of the Secret Service, the Census Bureau drew up a list of 76 people living around the D.C. metro area gleaned from the 1940 census.”

“As far as we are aware, this is the first time that conclusive evidence has been offered that a list of personally identifiable information from the 1940 census was provided to another federal agency,” Mr. Seltzer said.

Census Bureau official Christa Jones did not doubt the veracity of the documents nor the conclusion of the paper, that information was provided by the Census Bureau which was later used by the government to locate suspected dissidents, a fact Michele Bachmann has been lambasted as a kook merely for highlighting.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

Colbert, who made his name by lampooning the Bush administration’s abuses of the bill of rights, invokes the ignorant stance of liberals who claim conservative paranoia surrounding the Census is overblown because the Census is inherently Constitutional.

While it’s true to say that the government asking how many people live in your house is perfectly Constitutional, what Colbert hides is the fact that some versions of the 2010 Census being sent out to millions of Americans include dozens of personal questions that go above and beyond anything allowed by law.

Colbert’s whole skit relies on the Census comprising just 10 simple questions, and this is the version he uses in the piece, yet millions of Americans are receiving a form accompanying the Census which runs to a staggering 69 questions, most of which pry into the most sensitive areas of their lives.

Failure to answer The American Community Survey carries similar threats of penalties to the Census itself – fines, harassment and home visits from Census goons. The American Community Survey demands answers to all kinds of personal issues that the government has no business sticking its nose into. Some of the questions asked are listed below.

1. How much is your mortgage? Do you have have a second mortgage? How much is your mortgage payment?

2. What’s your highest level of education? What is your ancestry or ethnic group?

3. Have you attended a school in the last 3 months?

4. Do you have health insurance? Are you hard of hearing, blind or have a mental condition?

5. Do you have difficulty dressing or bathing?

6. Are you married or did you get married recently? And, how many times have you been married?

7. Have you served in the military? Do you receive military disability benefits? If so, what is your rate of disability (30, 40, 50)?

8. Did you work for money last week? Where?

9. How did you get to work LAST week?

10. What time did you leave home to get to work LAST week? Were you absent from your job last week?

11. Have you looked for work within the last 4 days? How many weeks (or hours) did you work in the last year?

12. How much income did you have in the last year? From where and/or who?

13. Do you receive Social Security, retirement? What are your sources of your income?

And that’s not even all of them! In all, there are 69 questions most of which include numerous sub-sections.

Is it any wonder that people are paranoid of the state demanding a treasure trove of their personal information when the government was recently caught having secretly taken DNA from every American baby born since the 60’s without consent and storing it in a Pentagon database?

The American Community Survey is completely unconstitutional since it violates the 5th amendment which protects Americans from self-incrimination. The public has a right to be concerned and paranoid – we live in a police state where new technology is increasingly being abused to harvest our personal information by a government clearly out of control and a system that has resolved to target anyone who dares attempt to extricate themselves from the matrix as a domestic extremist.

Colbert’s satirical send up of an Infowars.com link to an article that speculated how GPS coordinates could be used to target dissidents seemingly implies that the notion GPS coordinates were being collected at all was a wacky conspiracy theory, when in fact the Census Bureau’s own press release states that “The operation will use new hand-held computers equipped with GPS to increase geographic accuracy.”

The video below explains how the Census is getting personal while the Census Bureau itself refuses to answer any questions about what it does with the private information collected about millions of Americans via the American Community Survey.

Russia Today
Thursday, March 18, 2010

Jesse Ventura talks about corporate media control and how the government is targeting the Internet for regulation and censorship. Ventura also talks about how Fox News refuse to have him on to talk about his new book. “O’Reilly won’t have me on because he can’t bully me and he knows it,” says Ventura, challenging O’Reilly to a debate.

“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.”

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Thursday, March 18th, 2010

In a combative interview with Fox News presenter Bret Baier last night, Barack Obama said he is not worried about House Democrats’ plan to pass the health care reform bill without a traditional vote, indicating that the process is not important.

“Do you support the use of this Slaughter rule? The deem and pass rule, so that Democrats avoid a straight up or down vote on the Senate bill?” Baier asked the president.

“I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate.” Obama replied after extolling the virtues of his health care proposal.

“Washington gets very concerned about these procedural issues in Congress.” Obama added.

“This is always an issue that’s — whether Republicans are in charge or Democrats in charge — when Republicans are in charge, Democrats constantly complain that the majority was not giving them an opportunity, et cetera.” the president said.

Earlier this week, speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that she might attempt to pass the Senate health-care bill without having members vote on it, by way of “self-executing rule”.

The move would allow Democrats to vote to strip out controversial portions of the Senate bill and then “deem” that the entire package has passed without a second, direct vote.

“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” Pelosi said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”

Pelosi indicated that more reform will follow “Once we kick through this door”.

Those comments have caused uproar as the week has unfolded, yet the president said nothing last night to discourage the use of the deem and pass rule.

Pelosi’s plan has been denounced as unconstitutional, with The Wall Street Journal for one, noting that the “deeming” procedure is unprecedented, since Congress has never before passed a comprehensive reform bill using the method.

The Constitution itself states, “Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States.”

Legal scholars have also pointed to a 1998 Supreme Court ruling that the two houses of Congress must approve “precisely the same text” before any bill can become a law.

The idea that the reform bill would be forced through in such a way has in part prompted the State of Idaho to pass a measure requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if residents are forced to buy health insurance.

Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states, with Virginia already confirming it will follow suit.

Even one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s floor whips, U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, has said that the parliamentary move would be “disingenuous” and harm the credibility of Congress.

When pressed further by Baier last night, the president refused to be drawn on the issue:

OBAMA: The key is to make sure that we vote — we have a vote on whether or not we’re going to maintain the status quo, or whether we’re going to reform the system.

BAIER: So you support the deem and pass rule?

OBAMA: I am not —

BAIER: You’re saying that’s that vote.

OBAMA: What I’m saying is whatever they end up voting on — and I hope it’s going to be sometime this week — that it is going to be a vote for or against my health care proposal. That’s what matters. That’s what ultimately people are going to judge this on.

“The reason that I think this conversation ends up being a little frustrating is because the focus entirely is on Washington process. And yes, I have said that is an ugly process. It was ugly when Republicans were in charge, it was ugly were in Democrats were in charge.” Obama also stated.

Watch the interview: