Tom Burghardt
Antifascist Calling…
October 7, 2008

Ten months before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved an updated version of the U.S. Army’s secret operational Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

A draft document published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks entitled, “Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” dated 19 January 2001, spells out changes in Army doctrine.

Issued by Headquarters, Department of the Army and signed off by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Secretary of the Army, the document is affixed with a warning: “Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.” The restricted document as published by Wikileaks states:

History. This regulation is a revision of the original regulation that was effective on 10 July 1989. Since that time, no changes have been published to amend the original.

Summary. This regulation on the Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program has been revised to update Army COOP policy and extend the requirement for all-hazards COOP planning to all Army organizations. Classified information contained in the 1989 version of this AR has been removed and placed in a classified HQDA Operations Plan (OPLAN).

Applicability. This regulation applies to the Active Army, the U.S. Army Reserve (USAR), and when federalized to the Army National Guard (ARNG). In the event of conflict between this regulation and approved OSD or JCS publications, the provisions of the latter will apply. (”Army Regulation 500-3, Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources. Army Continuity of Operations (COOP) Program,” 19 January 2001, p. 3) [emphasis added]

Read the rest of this entry »

October 4th, 2008

Zeitgeist - Addendum , exploring the Federal Reserve System, IMF, World Bank, debt based finance and more, has just been released and made available at Google video, YouTube, and of course the official Zeigeist website. Considering recent economic events it is sure to be watched by millions of outraged citizens worldwide and feared by the elite few.

truthout.org
Wednesday 01 October 2008
by: Robert Schwartz, Labor Notes

An overlooked order by the Labor Board’s lead lawyer this summer dealt a serious blow to the rights of U.S. workers to protest government policies.

    On May Day 2006, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers walked off their jobs to protest restrictive immigration legislation. Some were fired, and brought complaints to the board. Ronald Meisburg, the National Labor Relations Board general counsel, responded by posting a directive on “political advocacy” this July that enables bosses to immediately fire employees who participate in work stoppages of a political nature.

The directive, as yet apparently unnoticed by both unions and labor lawyers, cannot be appealed. Read the rest of this entry »

CBSNews.com
With Election Day rapidly approaching, a new report, obtained exclusively by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian, raises serious questions and exposes flaws in the way states maintain their voter registration rolls.

States and counties regularly update their voter registration rolls for accuracy, removing people who have moved, died, or committed a felony. It is known as “voter purging.”

But, the new report by the non-partisan public policy and law institute, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law provides troubling new insight into the process. There are no national standards and as a result, the cleaning up of voter rolls is not as precise as it should be and eligible voters are often wrongly removed.

The Brennan report calls the nationwide process “chaotic,” “shrouded in secrecy”, “riddled with inaccuracies”, “prone to error” and “vulnerable to manipulation.”

Read the Brennan Report here

Read the rest of this entry »

By David Sirota, AlterNet.
Posted October 4, 2008.

We now face market forces uninhibited by democratic governance. The bailout is an aggressive attempt to trade democracy for autocracy.

The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair — stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror.

As a financial crisis became a political panic, capitalism murdered democracy (ironically, while pursuing a vaguely socialist bailout). Only, unlike a typical horror story, the dead body wasn’t hidden, it was dumped in the nation’s public square. Read the rest of this entry »

October 1, 2008 at 11:59:00

by Roger Shuler
www.opednews.com

Author Naomi Wolf has written an essay about what might be ahead in a Republican-dominated America, and it is disturbing reading–on multiple levels.

Wolf’s primary thesis is that Sarah Palin is more than just John McCain’s running mate; she is the designated weak figurehead at the top of a coming police state in America.

Wolf became queasy when she saw Palin embrace lawlessness by defying subpoenas from the Alaska Legislature. Wolf became even more alarmed when she saw Palin use mafia-style tactics against critics. Read the rest of this entry »

September 23, 2008 at 17:07:56

by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

www.opednews.com

RFK, Jr.: There are about 30 scams the Republicans are deliberately using, particularly in the swing states to get Democratic voters off the rolls. These scams originate in the so-called Help America Vote Act, which was passed after the Florida debacle in the year 2000. It was originally suggested by Democrats and Republicans, but it was passed by a Republican Congress with a Republican senate and a Republican president. And instead of reforming what happened in Florida it basically institutionalized all the problems that happened in Florida. And institutionalized a series of impediments that make it very difficult for Democrats to register, for Democrats to vote and then for Democrats to have their votes counted.

One of these requirements under HAVA is called ‘the perfect match,’ and what that does is little known but it is devastating. A quarter of the voters in Colorado have just been removed from the rolls because of this–[and] just this one scam. And what it does is, they use a computer system to compare your registration application to all [your] other government records in the state. So they’ll look at your Social Security records, your Motor Vehicle records, and any time you’ve had any interaction with the government, and if there is any information on your voter registration that is different than the information on another government record that they find, they remove you from the voting rolls. Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Published on Sunday, September 21, 2008 by the Huffington Post

by Larisa Alexandrovna

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.
- Julius Caesar

In 2000, the long fought for and long admired democracy of the United States of America began a slow and steady decline toward fascism - a Bush family tradition - with the installment of a president - a man the citizens overwhelmingly rejected (although the funny math told a still believed myth) - by a few corrupt judges on the US Supreme Court. That coup is now nearly complete and checkmate is all but unavoidable.

Let me first point you to the Bush administration’s so-called Wall Street bailout bill, here, so that you can see for yourself that this treachery is being conducted in the light of day. Fascism is finally and formally out of the right-wing closet even if the F word is not yet openly being used (although it should be, and often).

Now, if you do not yet understand that the Wall Street crisis is a man-made disaster done through intentional deregulation and corruption, I have a bridge in Alaska to sell to you (or Sara Palin does anyway). This manufactured crisis is now to be remedied, if the fiscal fascists get their way, with the total transfer of Congressional powers (the few that still remain) to the Executive Branch and the total transfer of public funds into corporate (via government as intermediary) hands. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday, September 12, 2008 | 07:14 AM

“As with any contract, the parties to the agreement may modify the covenants by mutual agreement only.”

-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson

Hank Paulson’s God Complex just got bigger. The Director of Government Bailouts, and head of the Socialism Departmant at Treasury has informed Congress to back off his turf.

“All your legislation belongs to us!”

Now, last I checked, it was Congress that had the power of authorization disbursements, and that Treasury does not have the authority to spend 5.3 trillion dollars. Comrade Paulson does not seem to understand the way the different branches of government work in the United states, and is apparently unfamiliar with a little parchment called the Constitution. Perhaps we can get Ron Paul to explain how these things work to our friend from the People’s Republic of Goldman.

Read the rest of this entry »

The riveting excerpts below are from the revealing accounts of 20 award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. Join in building a better world by helping to spread this news across the land.

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report [on hormones in milk], Fox fired the general manager [of our station]. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes that the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination in 48 hours. We pleaded with [him] to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” [After we refused] Fox’s GM presented us an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000, but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. [After declining] we were fired. (click for more)

Read the rest of this entry »

Kingpins of Military-Industrial complex say they will “brand” websites they consider “trustworthy and reliable sources of information”

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
September 15, 2008

A foundation populated by the giants of business, banking, government and military wants to “vet” websites and limit the spread of information that it says creates “conspiracy theories”.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), fronted by Internet creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, says it is worried about the way the web has been “used to spread disinformation”.

Speaking to the BBC, Berners-Lee said that there needed to be a new system that would give websites a “label for trustworthiness” once they had been proved reliable sources. Only then would the rise of “cult thinking” be avoided according to Berners-Lee.

“On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable,” Berners-Lee said. “A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging.”

Read the rest of this entry »

thepeoplesvoice.org
09/08/08
Jim Kirwan

Secret FEMA Plan To Use Pastors as Pacifiers in Preparation For
Martial Law.

Since that day our bumbling boy wonder stole the office of president, some have wondered about the ulterior purposes behind this administration and its nefarious doings. They have not been alone in this mini-quest. Part of the dilemma for anyone who truly wants to understand these actions and re-actions is that ‘nothing they do’ within the circles of power and greed seems to make any logical sense.

Ordinary criminal schemes are usually easy to decipher. Money trails can be found, and their telltale tracks followed to whatever may have been the point of such an effort. But this ’super-plan’ for domination includes the complete destruction of most (or all) that matters - and none of it makes sense to the civilized world. Read the rest of this entry »

RawStory.com

Daily Newscaster

September 4th, 2008

By: D. H. Williams @ 7:29 PM - EST

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.

Alternate Delegate Dennis Rothacker from Florida said “We were done taking the picture when Secret Service started walking into the room and surrounded us. There were about 30 of them. When they searched my bags they took my Ron Paul sign and turned a deaf ear to my complains, they just walked away.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli interviews Amy Goodman right as she was released from jail about what took place .

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
www.democracynow.org

September 1, 2008

Contact:
Denis Moynihan 917-549-5000
Mike Burke 646-552-5107, mike@democracynow.org

ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ
Read the rest of this entry »

TheUptake.comSat. Aug 30, 2008. Saint Paul, MN Police Department raids a home at 951 Iglehart Avenue at gunpoint. The journalists include a contributing photojournalist with “Democracy Now”, whose host Amy Goodman appears in this clip jumping a fence to question police officers.This is part of a series of police actions on the eve of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.After several hours, all those detained were released. No arrests. No property was seized as result of the search warrant. The clip ends with an interview with homeowner Mike Whalen. At the start of the clip, a neighbor shouts to the media and onlookers that we could all come into her backyard to see the detained people held in the adjacent backyard.Video by Chuck Tomlinson

 Salon.com
Glenn Greenwald

Sunday Aug. 31, 2008 11:46 EDT

As the police attacks on protesters in Minnesota continue — see this video of the police swarming a bus transporting members of Earth Justice, seizing the bus and leaving the group members stranded on the side of the highway — it appears increasingly clear that it is the Federal Government that is directing this intimidation campaign. Minnesota Public Radio reported yesterday that “the searches were led by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office. Deputies coordinated searches with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Today’s Star Tribune added that the raids were specifically “aided by informants planted in protest groups.” Back in May, Marcy Wheeler presciently noted that the Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force — an inter-agency group of federal, state and local law enforcement led by the FBI — was actively recruiting Minneapolis residents to serve as plants, to infiltrate “vegan groups” and other left-wing activist groups and report back to the Task Force about what they were doing. There seems to be little doubt that it was this domestic spying by the Federal Government that led to the excessive and truly despicable home assaults by the police yesterday.
Read the rest of this entry »