1. Since they can’t deal with the protesters flying ‘inside job’ flags, this isn’t a surprise:
“U.S. Drops Plan for a 9/11 Trial in New York City”
It’s a circular argument:
It’s claimed to be necessary to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year to provide the security necessary to conduct the trial because the US Government argues that there exists a terrorist organisation in the world, of which the accused Khaled Sheikh Mohammed was a mastermind, that committed (or attempted to commit) acts of terrorism such as 9/11, 7/7, 25/12 and has the intention and ability to commit more.
So, because the claimed trouble and expense of protecting the trial is so prohibitive, the claim of the threat posed by KSM and his alleged followers won’t be tested fairly in an open public trial.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22473
2. “The Pentagon pictures suggest an AGM-86 cruise missile struck on 911.”
http://exodus2006.com/missile2.htm
3. “Mr. Antiwar Republican
Modern “conservatives” who come upon this quotation sans attribution would doubtless hear some “America-hating” leftist talking. Learning that these are the words of a founding father of their movement should cause a few heads to explode.
These views were unremarkable to the conservatives of not so long ago for the simple reason that they followed logically from the worldview of those who wanted to limit the power and size of government and preserve the centrality of what Kirk called “the permanent things.” For Kirk and for Taft, war “was the enemy of constitution, liberty, economic security, and the cake of custom.” It had to be the very last resort, not only because it “would make the American President a virtual dictator, diminish the constitutional powers of Congress, contract civil liberties, injure the habitual self-reliance and self-government of the American people, distort the economy,” and “sink the federal government in debt” but also because it would “break in upon private and public morality,” destroying the very basis of our Christian civilization. The damage it would inflict “might require generations for the nation to recover”—like a brief but near-lethal encounter with pneumonia or cancer marks one for years—even if it was “a war of a few years’ duration.”
…
After the war, however, he did not, like many conservatives, jump on the Cold War bandwagon. He retained his principled anti-interventionist stance, albeit not always consistently, opposing the formation of NATO, questioning the concept of collective security, opposing the “victor’s justice” of the Nuremberg trials, and criticizing Truman’s decision to send troops to Korea without congressional approval—although he supported the effort once the troops were in the field. He attacked the growing power of the president to send troops anywhere, at any time, without consulting Congress—a precedent Truman set, which has had unfortunate consequences visited upon us to this day. It didn’t matter that Truman had the sanction of the United Nations Security Council; what he really needed was the consent of Congress, which he never sought until the troops had already arrived. If this were allowed, Taft maintained, then “on the same theory he could send troops to Tibet to resist Communist aggression or to Indo-China or to anywhere else in the world.” A few years later, the first American “advisers” would be sent to Indo-China to help the French secure their colonies—naturally without Congress’s consent—and a disastrous chapter in the history of U.S. interventionism started.
In an era when radio-shouters, vulgar hucksters, and out-and-out charlatans have taken the spotlight on the American Right, conservatives need to remember their past—to get back in touch with their roots. While the conservative movement is cut adrift, looking for an anchor, what could be better than the principled prudence of these two nearly forgotten giants, Kirk and Taft?”
http://amconmag.com/article/2010/mar/01/00040/
4. “The Value of Government Surveillance of Citizens
It’s amusing to watch U.S. officials protest the Chinese government’s surveillance of its own citizens. After all, isn’t it the U.S. government that secretly and illegally conspired with private telecom companies to record telephone conversations of private American citizens? And isn’t it the U.S. government that secured both civil and criminal immunity for the telecoms’ decision to sell out the privacy of their customers to the feds?
One of the aspects of the federal government’s telecom surveillance scheme that is rarely mentioned by the mainstream press goes to the heart of why government surveillance of its citizens is so valuable — to provide a means to keep the citizenry subdued and subservient through an subtle form of blackmail.
Prior to the NSA-telecom scandal, Americans had a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to their telephone conversations. They would feel free to talk about things with friends and relatives that they would never expect the authorities or the public to find out.
Some of the things discussed might be illegal in nature but other things might just be things that would be embarrassing if the public were to find out.
For example, conversations about the use or purchase of illicit drugs. Or married people having adulterous affairs. Or business people engaged in unethical conduct at work. Or hurtful gossip about friends and acquaintances.
The range of private communications that people would not want to be made public are endless — conversations that most everyone figured were private at the time they were taking place.
…
How could the government use that type of information against someone? Simple — by simply leaking it to a favored journalist, who proceeds to share the gossip with others until it begins to percolate within society, in much the same way that U.S. officials ensured that people found out that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. “
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-01-27.asp
5. “Pelosi stopped one CIA operation. So why not waterboarding?
Why is this important? Because on May 14, 2009, Pelosi, now speaker of the House, declared in a Capitol Hill news conference that she had opposed CIA waterboarding but was powerless to stop it. A former senior intelligence official told me in 2009 that he was shocked by Pelosi’s claim because, he said, “Speaker Pelosi herself has stopped covert action programs that she has been briefed on by going to the White House. In that very same time frame [after she learned about waterboarding] Pelosi had gone back to the White House [over] a separate covert action program, expressed strong opposition to it. And the remarkable part to me, the White House backed off the program, changed one aspect of the program . . . she was particularly opposed to. And literally, the finding was pulled back and revised.” If Pelosi had truly opposed waterboarding, he said, she had numerous ways to stop it — but she didn’t try.
…
Pelosi did none of those things when she learned about waterboarding. By her silence, Pelosi gave her consent — and then misled the media by claiming she was powerless to act. Journalists did not question Pelosi’s claims — and then they stopped questioning her. Pelosi announced that she would not take more questions on the topic, and the media complied. Reporters who relentlessly chased the Valerie Plame leak let the story drop”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012803564_pf.html
6. Amazing:
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