Governance

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Jimmy Carter Defends Edward Snowden, Says NSA Spying Has Compromised Nation’s Democracy | The Huffington Post

jimmy carter edward snowden

Former president Jimmy Carter speaks at dedication ceremonies for the new George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, Thursday, April 25, 2013. (Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/MCT via Getty Images)

Former President Jimmy Carter announced support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden this week, saying that his uncovering of the agency’s massive surveillance programs had proven “beneficial.”

Speaking at a closed-door event in Atlanta covered by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Carter also criticized the NSA’s domestic spying as damaging to the core of the nation’s principles.

“America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time,” Carter said, according to a translation by Inquisitr.

No American outlets covered Carter’s speech, given at an Atlantic Bridge meeting, which has reportedly led to some skepticism over Der Spiegel’s quotes. But Carter’s stance would be in line with remarks he’s made on Snowden and the issue of civil liberties in the past.

In June, while Snowden was scrambling to send out asylum requests from an airport in Russia, Carter appeared to back the former NSA contractor’s efforts to remain out of U.S. custody.

“He’s obviously violated the laws of America, for which he’s responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far,” he told CNN, saying that nations were within their right to offer asylum to Snowden. “I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.”

Snowden has been hard-pressed to find support among U.S. politicians. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have declared Snowden a traitor who deserves to be prosecuted for his leaks. The White House has also been persistent in its attempts to bring him into custody. Last week, the administration criticized Russia for facilitating a meeting between Snowden and human rights activists. Snowden has since applied for temporary asylum in the nation, following complications surrounding transit to the Latin American nations that he’d been considering.

Source: The Huffington Post

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Edward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy – but do our leaders care? | The Guardian

Mike Rogers, CA 'Dutch' Ruppersberger

By Spencer Akerman
The Twitter account of House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, left, placed Edward Snowden in the company of two infamous double agents. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

According to US legislators and journalists, the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden actively aided America’s enemies. They are just missing one essential element for the meme to take flight: evidence.

An op-ed by Representative Mike Pompeo (Republican, Kansas) proclaiming Snowden, who provided disclosed widespread surveillance on phone records and internet communications by the National Security Agency, “not a whistleblower” is indicative of the emerging narrative. Writing in the Wichita Eagle on 30 June Pompeo, a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden “has provided intelligence to America’s adversaries“.

Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that “facts are important”. Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden’s leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea.

It’s true that information published in the press can be read by anyone, including people who mean America harm. But to conflate that with actively handing information to foreign adversaries is to foreclose on the crucial distinction between a whistleblower and a spy, and makes journalists the handmaidens of enemies of the state.

Yet powerful legislators are eager to make that conflation about Snowden.

The Twitter account of Representative Mike Rogers (Republican, Michigan), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, on 18 June placed Snowden and accused WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning in the same company as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, two infamous CIA and FBI double-agents. (The tweet appears to have been deleted.)

When I asked about the conflation, Rogers’ Twitter account responded: “All 4 gave critical national security information to our enemies. Each did it in different ways but the result was the same.”

Never to be outdone, Peter King, a New York Republican and former chair of the House homeland security committee, proclaimed Snowden a “defector” on 10 June. Days later, Snowden left Hong Kong to seek asylum in an undetermined country – a curious move for a defector to make.

Once elected and appointed leaders casually conflate leaking and espionage, it is a matter of time before journalists take the cue. For insight into the “fear and isolation that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is living through”, CNN turned to Christopher Boyce – who sold US secrets to the USSR before becoming a bank robber.

There are understandable suspicions that Snowden may have aided foreign intelligence services in order to aid in his escape from American criminal justice. While some have speculated that the Russian or Chinese intelligence services might have snuck a look at the highly sensitive intelligence material Snowden is carrying, that material is heavily encrypted. For what it’s worth, in a Guardian webchat I asked Snowden directly if he would trade access to his documents for asylum. He said he would not.

Perhaps Snowden lied. Perhaps he might change his mind. But all of that is far off in the realm of speculation. As things stand now, there is no evidence Snowden has aided any US adversary or intelligence service, wittingly or not.

Even the Obama administration has stopped short of terming Snowden a spy, even in the course of attacking his character. (Yes, he was indicted under the Espionage Act, but the actual charges against him are theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence information to an unauthorized person.) In an email meant to discredit Snowden in the press, an anonymous “senior administration official” told reporters on 24 June that Snowden’s ostensible idealism “is belied by the protectors he has potentially chosen: China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador”. That’s something to remember the next time Washington wants to talk about its commitment to human rights while cooperating with, say, China and Russia.

Edward Snowden Edward Snowden. Photograph: Reuters/The GuardianWhen asked directly if there was any evidence that Snowden had cooperated with any intelligence service or American adversary, the administration and Congress declined to provide any. The office of the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, declined to comment for this story. The Justice Department and the House intelligence committee didn’t even respond to inquiries.

By all means, consider Snowden a hero, a traitor or a complex individual with a mixture of motives and interests. Lots of opinions about Snowden are valid. He is a necessarily polarizing figure. The information he revealed speaks to some of the most basic questions about the boundaries between the citizen and the state, as well as persistent and real anxieties about terrorism.

What isn’t valid is the blithe assertion, absent evidence, that the former NSA contractor actively collaborated with America’s enemies. Snowden made classified information about widespread surveillance available to the American public. That’s a curious definition of an enemy for US legislators to adopt.

Source: The Guardian

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Carbon Offsets Could Create Loophole for Industry to Pollute as Usual | EcoWatch

LoggingBy Maureen Nandini Mitra and Michael Stoll

One hot day this spring John Buckley scrambled up a dusty slope of a patch of deforested land in the middle of California’s Stanislaus National Forest in the Sierra Nevada, five miles west of Yosemite National Park, and surveyed the bleak landscape: 20 acres of blackened tree stumps and the shriveled remains of undergrowth. On neighboring ridges, similar brown expanses dotted the green forest canopy. “This,” he said, spreading his arms wide, “is resource management.”

The denuded clearing is on a tract of private forestland owned by timber giant Sierra Pacific Industries that is close to being approved as a sort of carbon bank under California’s new cap-and-trade scheme. It will soon grow into a plantation of mostly Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and cedar.

Based on calculations of how much carbon the new and old trees in this forest area will remove from the atmosphere, the timber giant will soon be able to sell carbon credits, which regulators call “offsets,” to the largest California polluters so they can compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions. Looking to make a profit from their environmental practices, companies in forestry and other industries are rushing to meet the demand.

Buckley, an environmental activist from Tuolumne County, is dismayed that projects like these—that involve clearing out old, diverse forests and replanting the area with a handful of quick-growing timber varieties—are being considered as a means to enable California industries to emit more pollutants into the air.

Many environmentalists say that because it is notoriously difficult to prove that such projects actually reduce the state’s overall carbon footprint, California should proceed slowly in approving a vast expansion of the cap-and-trade market.

The plan is to start the Compliance Offset Program this summer. Sellers include some of the largest forestland owners in the U.S., dairy farms and companies that neutralize greenhouse effect-producing refrigerants. The program might also expand to other activities, such as methane capture from mining and rice farming.

Proponents say that by providing incentives to voluntarily reduce emissions and use new technology, the offset program could help California meet its legal requirement, set in 2006, to reduce its carbon footprint from all sources by about 16 percent by 2020, and even more in later years.

But critics call offsets a loophole that could undermine an effective cap-and-trade system. They say pledges of reductions that are not required by law often cannot be considered real, since companies might have made them anyway without the extra money from selling offsets. Left unchecked, the critics warn, poorly measured offsets could lead to an overall increase in California’s emissions. Read more…

Source: Earth Island Journal & EcoWatch

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OpenSecrets.org’s Resources on Politically Active Tax-Exempt Groups

The first congressional hearing triggered by the news that the Internal Revenue Service inappropriately targeted tea party groups for additional scrutiny begins Friday, and it’s clear the issue isn’t going away anytime soon.

The Center for Responsive Politics has been intensively researching and writing about politically active nonprofits — also known as 501(c)(4) organizations, or, more colloquially, “dark money” groups — for more than a year. Since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision freed them to participate more directly in electoral politics, they have been used to pour money into the system at an unprecedented rate.

There has been an explosion of spending by nonprofit groups over the last three election cycles, from less than $17 million in 2006 to well over $300 million in 2012.
nonprofit spending growth by type.JPG
These groups, unlike the more commonly known super PACs, are not required to divulge the names of their donors, and much of their spending is unreported, too. Their annual tax filings with the IRS list how much money they have, who their officers are and the recipients of any grants they may have made.

But when they spend their money directly in support of or opposition to a candidate, they must report to the Federal Election Commission. FEC data collected and analyzed by OpenSecrets.org shows that in the 2012 election alone, politically active nonprofits reported spending more than $308 million. Many millions more were likely spent on “issue ads” that escaped reported rules.

If you follow that link, you’ll notice none of the organizations at the top of our list are tea party groups. In fact, they have remained relatively small players in the game.
What we do know is that many of these groups on the list are conservative in nature — though they come in many flavors of conservative. There are several important liberal groups active in this area, as well, but right-leaning groups dominate. About 85 percent of the money that was spent by nonprofits in the 2012 cycle, as reported to the FEC, was paid out by conservative groups.
nonprofit spending growth by viewpt.JPG
We’ve also applied old-fashioned reporting in our effort to bring these groups to the public’s attention, in particular with our Shadow Money Trail series. Despite the current concern about IRS employees applying too much scrutiny to certain groups because of their political slant, we’ve actually found many instances where political operatives from across the spectrum seem to be taking advantage of the fact that the IRS generally applies very little scrutiny to these entities.

By painstakingly going through public tax returns filed by tax-exempt groups, we have been able to trace how some of the money has flowed between them. We have posted that information (here’s an example) when we have it.

Some of the topics we’ve covered in this series:
  • How conservative group American Committment seemed to make $10 million disappear by churning money between its various related groups.
  • How Obama’s dark money allies make big payments to political consultants.
  • The phenomenon of dark money mailboxes — social welfare organizations that act as way stations for dark money and have few or no activities of their own.
  • How one prominent liberal group churns money through a confusing web of similarly named 501(c)(4)s and 527 groups.

There are a host of other stories on our Shadow Money Trail page, including “Shadow Money Magic,” our five-part report on how some of these groups game the IRS.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

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Lost in Translation: An Important Note for International Reckoners | The Daily Reckoning

Buenos Aires, Argentina – If you’re planning a vacation to the United States of America in the foreseeable future, you would do well to refrain from employing any confusing colloquialisms in your social media updates prior to departure.

For Australians, that means no “cracking onto” members of the opposite sex…no getting “off one’s face”…no “tearing it up”…no “little rippers” and, we would think, no “barrakking” for anyone.

Our Irish friends will likewise wish to steer clear of referring to anything as “the gas,” from declaring intentions to “eat one’s head off” and from “throwing shapes,” “sucking diesel” or otherwise “effin’ and blindin’.”

We can only imagine to what extent our English Reckoners shall have to curb their delightfully colorful lingo to ensure a stateside journey (even relatively) free of let or hindrance at the gate, though we imagine no measure of self-censorship will be sufficient to guarantee a transit experience free of at least a touch of “Ye ol’ Liberty Grope.”

What’s all this caper then, eh? What’s the apple, the score, the bleedin’ apple core?

Apologies for the loose linguistics, weary reader. But a point begs its making; a point two British (would-be) tourists, Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting, discovered the hard way just last week.

Apparently rather chuffed at the upcoming prospect of a wee jaunt over the pond, Van Bryan and Bunting engaged in a bit of online banter before their big trip to the US. Mistake number one. The two were perhaps unaware that the Department of Homeland Security routinely trolls the global social media digital waves, setting up accounts to listen in on prospective threats to…um…the “Homeland.”

We can only imagine the hysterical frenzy that whipped around the DHS H.Q. when they discovered what Van Bryan, 26, had posted.

“Free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America x”

Not that it should matter, but “destroy” is popular English slang for “party”…an easily Googlable fact, one would think, for the highly skilled heroes manning the control tower at the Twitter and Facebook Counter Terrorism and Special Operations Unit for Liberty and Freedom of the Homeland… Patriot… Liberty… uh, never mind.

After making their way through passport control at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) last week, the pair were promptly detained by armed guards/heroes/patriots. But the real trouble was still to come.

The two were then informed that the DHS was on to their scheme to “destroy” (read: party in) America and (Could it be? No! Sweet Mother of Mercy!) their sick and twisted plot to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe!

“3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up!”

The pair explained that the tweet, which the DHS had considered a grave matter of national security was, actually, a reference from Family Guy, a popular television show produced in the Homeland itself…behind patriot lines!

“They asked why we wanted to destroy America and we tried to explain it meant to get trashed and party,” explained Bunting. “I almost burst out laughing when they asked me if I was going to be Leigh’s lookout while he dug up Marilyn Monroe. I couldn’t believe it because it was a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show.”

Department of Homeland Security staff, brave unwavering professionals as they are, were not deterred from their mission.

“It got even more ridiculous because the officials searched our suitcases and said they were looking for spades and shovels. They did a full body search on me too” explained Bunting.

Perhaps because grave-robbing spades and shovels have little to do with (most people’s idea of) partying, the DHS were unable to find any in the pair’s luggage or, strangely enough, on their person. Nevertheless, this was no time to take chances:

“I kept saying to them they had got the wrong meaning from my tweet but they just told me ‘you’ve really f***** up with that tweet boy’.”

Van Bryan, apparently thought to be the leader of the non-existent operation, was then cuffed, thrown in a cage inside a van and whisked away to a location where he could not be of harm to Homeland citizens. Read more…

Source: The Daily Reckoning

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A Banking Model That Works In The Badlands | The Daily Bail

By Wil Martindale

What’s The Big Deal About State Banks?  North Dakota Has The Answers

The only State in the Union chartered to be the primary depositor and guarantor of the deposits of its own bank is North Dakota.  All state funds are deposited into this bank (by law) and its deposit base becomes the capital reserve from which to create credit.

Our system of hopelessly insolvent mega banks across the nation has leveraged, gambled and lost it all in the insane derivatives casino.  Despite more than six months of massive taxpayer bailouts, credit markets are still frozen, the economy continues to collapse and 2.3 million more Americans have lost their jobs since Obama took office.

But North Dakota’s GNP has grown 56%, personal income has grown 43%, and wages have grown 34%.  The state not only has no funding issues, but this year it actually has a budget surplus of $1.2 billion, the largest it has ever had.

Why? Because of sound fiduciary oversight and proper management.

You see, the Bank of North Dakota does not employ 20,000 people at an average wage of $90,000 per year.  Employees do not receive $60,000 annual bonuses and executives do not take home $40,000,000 in compensation, bonuses and options.  The State Bank of North Dakota does not wager 1000 times it’s deposit base (as Goldman Sachs does with a credit exposure risk of 1056% to capital ratio) on the speculative derivatives casino in order to grossly reward the risk that brought down the world’s economies.

In point of fact:

The Bank of North Dakota (BND) was established by the state legislature in 1919 specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad Barons.  By law, the State deposits all its funds in the bank, which pays a competitive interest rate to the State treasurer.  The State, rather than the FDIC, guarantees the bank’s deposits, which are re-invested back into the State in the form of loans.  The bank’s return on equity is about 25%, and it pays a hefty dividend to the State, which is expected to exceed $60 million this year.  In the last decade, the BND has turned back a third of a billion dollars to the State’s general fund, offsetting taxes.  The former president of the BND is now the State’s governor.

The BND avoids rivalry with private banks by partnering with them.  Most private sector lending is originated by a local bank.  The BND then comes in to participate in the loan, share risk, and buy down the interest rate.  The BND provides a secondary market for real estate loans, which it buys from local banks.  Its residential loan portfolio is now $500 billion to $600 billion.  Guarantees are also provided for entrepreneurial startups, and the BND has ample money to lend to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans).  It purchases municipal bonds from public institutions, and it backs loans at 1% interest.  The BND also has a well-funded disaster loan program, which helps explain how Fargo, when struck by a disastrous flood recently, managed to avoid the devastation suffered by New Orleans in hurricane Katrina.

North Dakota has also managed to avoid the credit freeze, through the simple expedient of creating its own credit.  It has led the nation in establishing state economic sovereignty.

That is the key — establishing economic sovereignty at the level of the States -that is the last vestige of hope for this country.  TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution.

It truly must be obvious to anyone in America able to read and think for themselves that this federal government, bought and paid for by the economic Imperialists, with its ranks completely infiltrated by former Wall Street executives, simply DOES NOT HAVE the best interests of the average taxpayer in mind.

Not when we are being sucked dry by the continuing bailouts, which do nothing but place the middle class backbone of this country into a debtor’s prison of taxation, reduced social services, pay cuts, lost jobs, tighter credit, and with no end in sight to the greed and excess of the profit-obsessed, predatory money changers they serve.

This is why it’s so important to TAKE ACTION now.  Let the rest of the world deal with the White House.  Trust me, they will.  We the People must collectively take action at the level of the States, where politicians are still accessible and many still remember what it’s like to be true public servants.

If the pressure comes from the American taxpayer at the level of the States and the international pressure comes from the developed nation’s foreign governments, together, the real, hard – working people of the world can correct the problems on Capitol Hill, where neither body alone could.

TAKE ACTION in your state to be part of the solution now.

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9/11 Commission Charade | Lew Rockwell

911CommissionRpt-288Editor’s Note: I looked through my archives and brought forward this article in remembrance of the tragedy of 9/11 and the feeble investigation that followed. There’s are still  too many unanswered questions and government officials who were not held accountable for their actions, or failure to act, in the face of a national emergency. Shame on America for allowing this happen and destroying our country in the process.

By Ron Paul

August 24, 2004 – The 9-11 Commission report, released late last month (i.e., July 2004), has disrupted the normally quiet Washington August. Various congressional committees are holding hearings on the report this week, even though Congress is not in session, in an attempt to show the government is “doing something” about terrorism in an election year. The Commission recommendations themselves have been accepted reverently and without question, as if handed down from on high.

But what exactly is going on here? These hearings amount to nothing more than current government officials meeting with former government officials, many of whom now lobby government officials, and agreeing that we need more government! The current and past architects of the very bureaucracy that failed Americans so badly on September 11th three years ago are now meeting to recommend more bureaucracy. Why on earth do we assume that former government officials, some of whom are self-interested government lobbyists, suddenly become wise, benevolent, and politically neutral when they retire? Why do we look to former bureaucrats to address a bureaucratic failure?

The 9-11 Commission report is several hundred pages worth of recommendations to make government larger and more intrusive. Does this surprise anyone? It was written by people who cannot imagine any solution not coming from government. One thing you definitely will not see in the Commission report is a single critique of our interventionist foreign policy, which is the real source of most anti-American feelings around the globe.

The Commissioners recommend the government spend billions of dollars spreading pro-US propaganda overseas, as if that will convince the world to love us. What we have forgotten in the years since the end of the Cold War is that actions speak louder than words. The US didn’t need propaganda in the captive nations of Eastern Europe during the Cold War because people knew us by our deeds. They could see the difference between the United States and their Soviet overlords. That is why, given the first chance, they chose freedom. Yet everything we have done in response to the 9-11 attacks, from the Patriot Act to the war in Iraq, has reduced freedom in America. Spending more money abroad or restricting liberties at home will do nothing to deter terrorists, yet this is exactly what the 9-11 Commission recommends.

Our nation will be safer only when government does less, not more. Rather than asking ourselves what Congress or the president should be doing about terrorism, we ought to ask what government should stop doing. It should stop spending trillions of dollars on unconstitutional programs that detract from basic government functions like national defense and border security. It should stop meddling in the internal affairs of foreign nations, but instead demonstrate by example the superiority of freedom, capitalism, and an open society. It should stop engaging in nation-building, and stop trying to create democratic societies through military force. It should stop militarizing future enemies, as we did by supplying money and weapons to characters like Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It should stop entangling the American people in unholy alliances like the UN and NATO, and pledge that our armed forces will never serve under foreign command. It should stop committing American troops to useless, expensive, and troublesome assignments overseas, and instead commit the Department of Defense to actually defending America. It should stop interfering with the 2nd amendment rights of private citizens and businesses seeking to defend themselves.

More than anything, our federal government should stop deluding us that more government is the answer. We have far more to fear from an unaccountable government at home than from any foreign terrorist.

Source: Lew Rockwell

Resources:
911 Commission Report (pdf) & Response (pdf)
911 Historical Timeline
911 Video Archives (Camera Planet)
America and the World Beyond 911 by Johnny Liberty (pdf)
A Hard Rain (pdf)
Awaken to Consciousness by Dalai Lama (pdf)
Chief Arvol Looking Horse’s Perspective (pdf)
FAA Destroys Terror Tape (pdf)
Inside Job Music (mp3) by Don Henley
Let’s Roll 9/11
Lies a Sixth Grader Would Not Accept by Michael Ruppert
Painful Questions Ad (pdf)
Self-Evident Poem and Music (mp3) by Ani DiFranco
Reflections After 911 by Johnny Liberty (pdf)
USA Patriot Act (pdf)

NewWTC-288“There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious…

But even people who aren’t partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration’s dishonest case for war, because they don’t want to face the implications…

After all, suppose a politician – or a journalist –
admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war.
Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least a breach of trust.

So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened,
you have a moral obligation to demand accountability –
and to do so in the face not only of a powerful,
ruthless political machine but in the face of a country
not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited
9/11 for political gain. It’s a scary prospect.

Yet, if we can’t find people willing to take the risk –
to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy?”
–Paul Krugman, The New York Times, June 24, 2003

Intelligent News for the Rest of Us

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9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie | PrisonPlanet.com

9/11 Commission Counsel: Government Agreed to Lie About 9/11 140409top

By Paul Joseph Watson

The senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission – John Farmer – says that the government agreed not to tell the truth about 9/11, echoing the assertions of fellow 9/11 Commission members who concluded that the Pentagon were engaged in deliberate deception about their response to the attack.

Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (officially known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States), and is also a former New Jersey Attorney General.

Farmer’s book about his experiences working for the Commission is entitled The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11, and is set to be released tomorrow.

The book unveils how “the public had been seriously misled about what occurred during the morning of the attacks,” and Farmer himself states that “at some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.”

Only the very naive would dispute that an agreement not to tell the truth is an agreement to lie. Farmer’s contention is that the government agreed to create a phony official version of events to cover-up the real story behind 9/11.

The publisher of the book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, states that, “Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security.”

farmer

In August 2006, the Washington Post reported, “Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.”

The report revealed how the 10-member commission deeply suspected deception to the point where they considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”

Farmer himself is quoted in the Post article, stating, “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The [Norad air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

As we also reported in August 2006, released portions of NORAD tapes from 9/11, which were featured in a Vanity Fair article, do little to answer skeptic’s questions about the impotence of U.S. air defenses on 9/11 and if anything only increase focus on the incompatibility of the official version of events with what is actually known to have taken place on that day.

Make no mistake, Farmer is not saying that 9/11 was an inside job, however, Farmer’s testimony, along with that of his fellow 9/11 Commission members, conclusively demonstrates that, whatever really happened on 9/11, the official story as told to the public on the day and that which remains the authorities’ version of events today, is a lie – according to the very people who were tasked by the government to investigate it. This is a fact that no debunker or government apologist can ever legitimately deny.

Research related links:

  1. Mukasey Denies Request for Special Counsel to Investigate CIA Interrogators
  2. In Their Own Words: Admissions from the people who wrote the 9/11 Commission Report that it was compromised
  3. Lehman: Commission Purposely Set Up So that 9/11 Staff Had Conflict of Interest
  4. Walter Mondale and Mark Dayton Support New 9/11 Investigation
  5. Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame
  6. Pentagon Faxes Charges for September 11 Military Commission
  7. British Commission Hypes Bioterrorism Threat
  8. Commission Recommends U.S. Use ‘Direct Force’–If Needed–to Stop Iran, N. Korea Nuke Programs
  9. McCain’s Economic Snake Oil Commission
  10. What Do NORAD’s 9/11 Computer Chat Logs Reveal?
  11. UN Human Rights Official Wants Investigation Into US Government Role In 9/11

Source: PrisonPlanet.com

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The Insane Cost of Government | Uncommon Wisdom

By Larry Edelson

Editor’s Note: The American’s for Tax Reform Foundation’s Cost of Government Day Report is a mindbender. If this isn’t a steady march towards national, corporate socialism then what?

The Cost of Government Day (COGD), the day of the calendar year on which the average American worker has earned enough gross income to pay off his or her share of the spending and regulatory burdens imposed by government on the federal, state, and local levels, is now August 19, the latest date ever recorded.

In simple language, it means that the average American must work 230 days, or 63% of the year, to pay for the full cost of government.

That’s pretty darn amazing. And frightening. It essentially means that 63% of your labor output belongs not to you and the loved ones you care for, but to Washington.

Here’s how it breaks down:

  1. Federal spending: The average American worker has to labor for 104 days just to pay for federal spending, which consumes 28.6% of national income. That compares to 90 days in 2008, a 15.5% increase. The chief increase in costs were the bailouts of the financial crisis. The bailouts cost the average American 14 days of worth of work to pay for them.
  2. State and local spending: This is also costing us all, big time. In 2010 the average American had to work 52 days just to pay for state and local government expenditures.
  3. That’s up from 42.5 days in 1999. A whopping 22.3% increase in costs.
  4. The regulatory costs of the federal government: Another shocker ― the average American worker must labor 48 days just to cover the costs of federal regulations. And then there’s …
  5. Another 26 days you must toil to pay the costs of state and local regulations.

I don’t know about you, but the cost of government is insane. 63 out of every 100 hours you work is to pay for government?

You get to keep only 37% of your labor?

It’s high time we got rid of big government. That ratio needs to be inverted, at a minimum. We should keep at least 75% of our labor.

Government should cost far less, way less. Less than one-quarter of our labor output, in my opinion.

Source: Uncommon Wisdom