statism watch

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Flashback: CIA doctors face human experimentation claims | U.S. probes ‘inhumane’ CIA tactics under Bush | US justice department to investigate CIA over interrogation methods | Obama approves new interrogation unit | Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions” | Guantanamo’s closure window dressing – overseas CIA ‘black sites’ to stay | Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | After Obama praises torture ruling, civil liberties group appalled | Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ | Obama requests Guantánamo Bay tribunals suspension | Inauguration triggers joy, jubilation around world

AFP
February 3, 2010

WASHINGTON — An elite US interrogation unit will conduct “scientific research” to find better ways of questioning top suspected terrorists, US intelligence director Dennis Blair said Wednesday.

“It is going to do scientific research on that long-neglected area,” Blair told the House Intelligence Committee, without elaborating on the nature of the techniques being tested.

A spokesman for Blair, Ross Feinstein, also declined to detail “specific research projects” but stressed that any such projects would follow US law, which forbids torture, and abide by internal review safeguards.

Blair said the task would fall to an interagency group of top US interrogators from across the intelligence community dubbed the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG).

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Flashback: As Olympics loom, B.C. wants to force homeless into shelters in extreme weather

Lucy Hyslop, The Guardian
February 3, 2010

Oversized neon Olympic rings illuminate Vancouver harbour while a giant mural of a snowboarder mid-trick welcomes visitors to the airport. In the city centre, a sleek steel-and-glass Olympic clock is counting down to next month’s winter games.

But for 51-year-old Wayne, a homeless drug addict, looking up at the snowcapped mountains where the downhill competition runs will be fills him with dread.

“We’re all going to be cleared out of here before the Olympics,” he said, wrapped in a flimsy sleeping bag and clutching a bag of bottles plucked from street bins which he will exchange for money. “The clean-up will happen – they all want to hide the city’s black eye, right?”

That black eye is the Downtown Eastside (DTES), one of the most highly visible and divisive parts of the Canadian city’s involvement with the Olympics. The area is both ghetto and historic community. It boasts a high concentration of single-room accommodation and cardboard-and-shopping-trolley “homes” for Wayne and many of the region’s other 2,660 homeless people.

With Canada’s poorest postcode sitting within a city regularly ranked as the most livable in the world, the city’s leaders know Vancouver is preparing for a barrage of scrutiny: yards down the street, the British Columbia provincial government has even set up an information centre, DTES Connect, to try to showcase its work in the area to the world’s media.

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Flashback: China Google Hack Exploited Security Gaps Introduced By State Surveillance Provisions | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | Laptops fair game for border searches | Case for Internet spying not closed | Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | Bill would give president emergency control of Internet | UK ISPs condemn Internet surveillance plans | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | UK chases Obama on cybersecurity | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Should Obama Control the Internet? | Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets | Revamped copyright law targets electronic devices

Declan McCullagh, CNET News
February 3, 2010

Anyone with an e-mail account likely knows that police can peek inside it if they have a paper search warrant.

But cybercrime investigators are frustrated by the speed of traditional methods of faxing, mailing, or e-mailing companies these documents. They’re pushing for the creation of a national Web interface linking police computers with those of Internet and e-mail providers so requests can be sent and received electronically.

CNET has reviewed a survey scheduled to be released at a federal task force meeting on Thursday, which says that law enforcement agencies are virtually unanimous in calling for such an interface to be created. Eighty-nine percent of police surveyed, it says, want to be able to “exchange legal process requests and responses to legal process” through an encrypted, police-only “nationwide computer network.” (See one excerpt and another.)

The survey, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, is part of a broader push from law enforcement agencies to alter the ground rules of online investigations. Other components include renewed calls for laws requiring Internet companies to store data about their users for up to five years and increased pressure on companies to respond to police inquiries in hours instead of days.

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Harper is already in contempt – of this country. And the feeling is increasingly mutual.

Flashback: Thousands of Canadians protest shuttering of Parliament | Anti-prorogation protest dogs PM | Harper says Parliament brings ‘games’ and ‘instability’ | PM Harper downplays detainee torture scandal, prorogation | PM suspends Parliament | MPs vote public inquiry into Afghan detainees, Tories ignore majority motion | Ottawa won’t budge on secrecy laws | Information commissioner quits, Ottawa chided for lacking ‘guts’ | Watchdog alarmed by Harper’s information clampdown | Decision to prorogue parliament sets ‘very dangerous’ precedent: constitutional expert | Harper halts parliament amid row | Comedian begins asking Harper question, cuffed by RCMP | Tentacles of Secrecy Grip Tightly | PM’s tactic `authoritarian’ | Parliament losing power, author says | Information lockdown: How Harper Controls the Spin | Elected Parliamentarians Neutered by PM-Appointed ‘Courtiers’ | ‘What is it they’re trying to hide?’ NDP asks for military export data | The Mulroney Affair: Why politicians seek out the rich | Harper to create government-run media centre: report | Steven Harper and the Bilderbergers Secret Meeting

CBC News
February 3, 2010

The Conservative government has violated the Constitution and will be in contempt of Parliament if it continues to refuse to release uncensored documents regarding the Afghan detainee issue, a constitutional law professor says.

“The executive is really placing itself above Parliament. For the first time that I know in Canadian history, the executive is saying we are superior to Parliament,” said Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa professor who was speaking at an informal hearing of the parliamentary committee looking into the Afghanistan detainee issue.

Mendes was referring to the Harper government’s refusal to hand over uncensored documents, despite a motion passed in the House of Commons to do so.

“This is nothing more than an open defiance of Parliament. Nothing more, nothing less,” he said.

The hearing, considered informal because Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament, was attended by opposition members but no Conservative MPs.

“The refusal to release the uncensored documents is a violation of the Canadian Constitution. This is the equivalent to a defiance of a judicial subpoena,” Mendes said.

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The control freaks are closing in. And you have a ‘need to know’ – no license required.

Flashback: UN agency calls for global cyberwarfare treaty, ‘driver’s license’ for Web users | Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites | Australia introduces web filters | Obama Wants Computer Privacy Ruling Overturned | UK Internet surveillance plan to go ahead | Security boss calls for end to net anonymity | Case for Internet spying not closed | Planned Internet, wireless surveillance laws worry watchdogs | UK ISPs condemn Internet surveillance plans | UK to found new ‘cyber-security’ units attached to national eavesdropping centre | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | UK plans to integrate ‘cybersecurity’ centre with US, Canada | Cybersecurity Is Framework For Total Government Regulation & Control Of Our Lives | Obama Set to Create A Cybersecurity Czar With Broad Mandate | EU wants ‘Internet G12′ to govern cyberspace | UK Home Secretary has secret plan to surveil, ‘Master the Internet’ | Munk Centre researchers discover botnet, call for international cyberspace ‘legal regime’ | NSA Dominance of Cybersecurity Would Lead to ‘Grave Peril’, Ex-Cyber Chief Tells Congress | Do We Need a New Internet? | Defense Contractors See $$$ in Cyber Security | RCMP to helm a Canadian “cyber-security strategy” | Sweden approves wiretapping law | Law Professor tells tech conference: plans to shut down Internet already on deck

Paul Joseph Watson, PrisonPlanet.com
February 3, 2010

Time Magazine has enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon to back Microsoft executive Craig Mundie’s call for Internet licensing, as authorities push for a system even more stifling than in Communist China, where only people with government permission would be allowed to express free speech.

As we reported earlier this week, during a recent conference at the Davos Economic Forum, Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer for Microsoft, told fellow globalists at the summit that the Internet needed to be policed by means of introducing licenses similar to drivers licenses – in other words government permission to use the web.

His proposal was almost instantly advocated by Time Magazine, who published an article by Barbara Kiviat - one of Mundie’s fellow attendees at the elitist confab. It’s sadistically ironic that Kiviat’s columns run under the moniker “The Curious Capitalist,” since the ideas expressed in her piece go further than even the free-speech hating Communist Chinese have dared venture in terms of Internet censorship.

“Now, there are, of course, a number of obstacles to making such a scheme be reality,” writes Kiviat. “Even here in the mountains of Switzerland I can hear the worldwide scream go up: “But we’re entitled to anonymity on the Internet!” Really? Are you? Why do you think that?”

Kiviat ludicrously compares the necessity to show identification when entering a bank vault to the apparent need for authorities to know who you are when you set up a website to take credit card payments.

“The truth of the matter is, the Internet is still in its Wild West phase. To a large extent, the law hasn’t yet shown up. Yet as more and more people move to town, that lawlessness is becoming a bigger and bigger problem. As human societies grow over time they develop more rigid standards for themselves in order to handle their increased size. There is no reason to think the Internet shouldn’t follow the same pattern,” she writes.

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Flashback: Americans Deserve a Transparent Federal Reserve | Federal Reserve Appeals Order to Disclose Emergency Bank Loans | Judge Orders Federal Reserve To Disclose Who Received Bailout Trillions | Former NY governor Spitzer: Federal Reserve is ‘a Ponzi scheme, an inside job’ | Hands off the Fed, Bernanke warns Congress | US Senate Blocks Bill To Audit The Fed As Government Prepares For Second Round Of Looting | Congressman Ron Paul Slams Federal Reserve’s New Dictatorial Powers | Federal Reserve To Be Given Sweeping New Powers | HR 1207: Battle To Audit The Fed Has Only Just Begun | Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout | Banks won’t say where U.S. bailout money going | Paulson, Bernanke defend change of plan: $700-billion now to be given directly to banks | Congress Accuses Federal Reserve Bagman Of Bailout “Bait and Switch” During Angry Hearing | U.S. government won’t use bailout fund to buy troubled assets | The Bush gang’s parting gift: a final, frantic looting of public wealth | Why Paulson’s Plan is a Fraud | Congressman Ron Paul: Bailout Will Destroy Dollar, World Economy | Congressman Ron Paul Schools Fed Chairman Bernanke on the Bailout Plan

Robert Murphy, Mises.org
February 3, 2010

San Jose State economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel tells all his students that the easiest way to understand the Federal Reserve is to think of it as a giant, legalized counterfeiter. I had always known that the Fed and other central banks were like counterfeiters, but I still thought that the actual mechanics of open-market operations and so forth actually provided some important distinctions.

In large part because of my frequent email exchanges with Hummel, I now realize that I was being naïve. Once you understand the details of modern central banking, you are able to step back and see that it truly is a way for the government to use the printing press to pay its bills. All of the complicated process of targeting interest rates through buying Treasuries simply hides this essential point — and perhaps deliberately so.

An Old-Fashioned Monarch With a Printing Press

Before we examine Fed operations, let’s start with something simpler. Suppose there is a powerful monarch reigning over a large, industrialized country. The monarch has managed to wean his subjects off commodity money such as gold or silver, and instead they use fiat notes, rectangular slips of paper featuring the king’s portrait. The king has a printing press at his disposal, which gives him unlimited ability to create more slips of paper with which he can buy goods throughout his kingdom.

At first, one might think that our hypothetical king has infinite wealth. But upon reflection, we see that there are actually pragmatic limits on how much new money he will print up each year. It’s true that there are no legal constraints on how many notes he can create, but the more monetary inflation he sows, the greater the price inflation he will reap.

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He would know, wouldn’t he.

Flashback: Domestic threats biggest Olympic security concern: expert | UK terror threat raised to ’severe’ | Indian airports on alert after report of hijacking plot | More troops on the streets: U.S. terror alert expands to transit and stadiums | Media hypes terror plot, despite the fact no one is charged with terror | Homegrown terror threat still real, Public Safety Minister warns alongside Homeland Security counterpart | Military readies reservists for threats to ‘domestic front’ | Ex-CSIS Agent, ‘Security Expert’, Paints Pipeline Explosion as “Terror” | ‘Lone wolf’ terror threat on rise, report warns | US Experts Can’t Agree on Whether ‘Al-Qaeda’ Poses a Threat, Look to ‘Leaderless Jihad’ in America | Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts | Former British Ambassador Says Liquid Bomb Terror Alert Is “Propaganda”

Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com
February 3, 2010

CIA boss Leon Panetta told Congress today that “homegrown extremists” working for al-Qaeda will strike America in three to six months. The recruits will be “clean” and have no traces to the phantom terrorist organization, according to Panetta and other intelligence officials.

“The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11. It is that al-Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect,” Panetta told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It’s the lone-wolf strategy that I think we have to pay attention to as the main threat to this country,” he said.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said changes made since the ludicrous Christmas non-bombing over Detroit “would he able to identify and stop someone like the Detroit bomber before he got on the plane. But he warned a more careful and skilled would-be terrorist might not be detected,” reports the Associated Press.

Within hours of the hyped non-bombing evidence emerged revealing the incident was a false flag attack. “Eyewitness testimony pointing to a man helping the accused terrorist board without a passport, along with an unusual cameraman documenting the attempted attack on board the plane raise more than red flags– they point towards an intelligence operation, run as a drill, meant to conjure up public support for a number of fronts in the continuing ‘War on Terror,’” Aaron Dykes wrote for Infowars.com on December 29, 2009.

Over the weekend British “spies” (as described by the New York Post) reportedly found evidence al-Qaeda is planning to insert “surgical bombs” inside suicide bombers. “Male bombers would have the explosive implanted near their appendix or in their buttocks; women would have them inside their breasts, Britain’s Daily Mail reported over the weekend.”

MI5 said the development was triggered by the introduction of body scanners at airports

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Flashback: U.S. deploys land and sea-based missile shield in the Gulf to deter attack from Iran | UK: Tony Blair attempts to shift focus to Iran as ‘global threat’ at Iraq war inquiry | Iran admits jailed protesters were beaten to death | Iranian commanders assassinated, Iran fingers Western intelligence | IAEA members question Iran nuclear intel authenticity | US military could strike Iran, but at what cost? | Another War in the Works | Iran to allow nuclear site inspection | Iran plays into Obama’s hands with disclosure of nuclear facility | UN approves nuclear ‘disarmament’ resolution | Tens of thousands march in Iran | Obama scales back missile defence shield in Europe | Israel ‘will attack Iran this year’ if West does not cripple Tehran with sanctions | Brookings Publication mentions possibility of ‘Horrific Provocation’ to Trigger Iran Invasion | Blast at Iranian mosque raises tensions in run-up to presidential election | Netanyahu: We may be forced to attack Iran | Proposed Missile Shield seen as Provocation by Russia | Neo-cons still preparing for Iran attack | Russia threatens to ’strike’ Poland in wake of U.S. missile plan | Cheney Considered False Flag Operation to Justify War with Iran | US scales up covert destabilization efforts in Iran, continues funding ‘al-Qaeda’ | Israelis ‘rehearse Iran attack’ | Israeli official says attack on Iran ‘unavoidable’ | Bush ‘plans Iran air strike by August’ | U.S. Navy starts exercises in Gulf waters | U.S. National Intelligence Estimate: Iran stopped nuclear weapons work in 2003 | Cheney Orders Media To Sell Attack On Iran | U.S. sending third aircraft carrier to the Middle East | US aircraft carriers in Persian Gulf | Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh: US Indirectly Funding Al-Qaeda Linked Sunni Groups in Move to Counter Iran | Former CIA Officer – US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran

The Guardian
February 3, 2010

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he has ‘no problem’ giving uranium to west for further enrichment, but wants it back within five months

US and European officials today reacted sceptically to Iran’s offer to send uranium abroad for enrichment as a way of ending its standoff with the west.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said yesterday that Iran was ready to send uranium overseas as requested by the UN.

Speaking in an interview with state television, he said Iran would have “no problem” giving the west its low-enriched uranium and taking it back several months later when it had been enriched by 20%.

“If we allow them to take it, there is no problem. We sign a contract to give 3.5% enriched uranium and receive 20% enriched after four or five months,” the president said.

He dismissed concerns voiced by what he described as “colleagues” that the west would not return the uranium, saying Iran would respond to that by continuing to produce its own enriched uranium.

The French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said his interpretation of the Iranian offer was that Tehran was “trying to buy time”.

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