It's a long way down.

The week is closing with a double whammy. This could be a touchstone week; one we will be able to look back on in the upcoming months and years as the week where the tide turned. The real law is being laid out for us and the true nature of our government is crystal clear.

We started the week with our government providing us with the facts of how the laws of the United States really work. There are two sets of rules and laws in this country. One, which applies to the citizens and another, which applies to government and corporations. We have to follow our rules; they have no rules.

By giving the telecom industry total immunity for their complacency in spying on American citizens the government has told us loud and clear that our rights are nothing but a shadow. We have ”rights” as far as the government deems we deserve them and none of them are absolute. The telcos are immune because they were/are in effect, agents of the government by allowing the alphabet agencies into their COs.

I swear, if I could ditch the phone and an Internet connection and all means of communication other than face to face, I would. Why make it easier for the masters to keep tabs on me? Why add more of my data to their database? While I don’t subscribe to the philosophy of removing one’s self entirely from “the grid”, I do believe on lowering your footprint in the grid. Then again, a void of information on a person could, in itself, spark even more curiosity on their part.

Based on this outcome with the telcos, don’t be surprised in the upcoming years when you live down wind of a toxic energy plant, spewing God knows what into the air, and they have immunity from the government for polluting your air because the government deemed it vital. If the government deems it necessary, tough shit for you and me. You and I aren’t the shareholders in this country and we cannot command resources the government deems vital.

The double whammy is rearing it’s head this morning. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been clinging to life for months, today the shit is hitting the fan in regards to their financial health. Rumors are flying, with even Charles Schumer piping in, that the feds are set to take control of both. When this happens our national debt doubles at the least…least.

What happens if this occurs? We fall off the cliff we have been toeing. All shares of stock in Freddie and Fannie would be worthless with shareholders getting jack shit in return, and who owns this stock? Every financial institution in America. Think the Bank of America buys stocks in $100 blocks? Hell no. They buy stock, bonds, commodities and derivative packages in blocks of hundreds of millions of dollars.

If this happens our government will take every mortgage under these financials into their portfolio. You will be paying your mortgage directly to the Federal Reserve. If this happens our government will double the national debt overnight and the value of the dollar will plummet. Think gas is high now? Wait until these fuckers bail out Freddie and Fannie. Think food is outrageously priced now? Just wait. The dollar and all treasury bonds will truly be Monopoly money at this point.

Who gets fucked? Everyone. Worldwide fucking. The largest owners of US Treasuries are China and Japan, bye bye Asian market values. The majority of OPEC nations peg their currency and the price of oil to the US$, their inflation skyrockets and the price of oil in dollars will inflate like a puff adder about to be stepped on. This snake will bite us all.

Pissed off because the Arab nations have been burning through money like it was cheap generic cigarettes? Don’t worry, they were spending dollars for all these years and Dubai bought the Chrysler Building with those same worthless dollars. If you own the largest pile of horseshit in the world, you might have a lot to spread around, but in the end you own a lot of horseshit.

What happens if Freddie and Fannie collapse with no government intervention? A lot of the same. The government will still take receivership of their assets and try to sell the crap to other financial companies, or like the Bear Stearns sweetheart deal, they’ll fund someone to take over the pieces of the pie that once was Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We still pay for it, national debt still skyrockets and the dollar still plunges in value.

Time to put on that scratchy old 7” mono copy of Floyd Cramer’s “Last Date”, brace for the fall out and wait for the music to end. It is coming.

Fossett, the B-52 story and the 9/14 Air Force stand down

(Note from the CT Blogger 9/27/2007: for more commentary on this story please follow this link, or click the subject tags at the end of this post.)

Several of the conspiracy theory message boards and websites with original content have been hotly discussing the nexus of missing aviator Steve Fossett, the B-52 nuke incident from last week and the announced stand down by the US Air Force on the 14th of this month. Some of the theories range from the Fossett disappearance is the cover story for a missing nuke from the B-52 incident, to ideas that a false flag event could occur on the 14th with what suspiciously seems like a missing nuke since Air Force reports can't agree on whether 5 or 6 Advanced Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles were aboard the bomber.

This does bring to mind the curious story of professional golfer Payne Stewart, who died in a plane crash in 1999. Many 911 theorists have made note that the planes used in the attacks may have been remotely piloted and Stewart's crash has been pulled into the theory. Their belief is that Stewart's plane was a test run for remote piloting an aircraft for a long distance and under conditions that would have alerted NORAD and the FAA.

Did the B-52 incident result in an Empty Quiver for the Air Force, as has been discussed on the boards? We'll never know, unless a nuke just so happens to go off at an unlikely place at an unlikely time. How would we know something is fishy? We wouldn't as it is known that in a martial law situation the Government will sieze all communications capabilities in the US. The odd and most unexplained issue about the B-52 incident is the source.

We know nothing of the source, I cannot even locate the original story online which began this intreresting event. The general belief is that a whistleblower from within the military got the story out but to whom it was reported to is a mystery to me. It seems this simply showed up on the AP newswire and everyone ran the story. We know that the AP doesn't do investigative journalism and their reporters aren't the sort of visible faces one would expect a whistleblower to seek out.

In some ways I believe the who, what, when, where and why of the act of reporting this story is just as odd as the actual story itself.

Executive Branch Three Card Monte

The past week has brought to light an aspect of the Bush administration that has only been reported peripherally. The revelation that VP Cheney is not only violating the Presidential Records Act intentionally but has also created his own security and classification system for documents and is claiming that he, his office and his responsibilities are not connected to the Executive Branch, shouldn’t be surprising. The fact that no one seems to give a damn and holy hell is not being raised is surprising. Cheney’s control over the shadow government has been documented several times since the 9/11 attacks, what we are now seeing are glimpses of the mechanisms he has put in place to work behind a veil of secrecy of his own creation.

Several months after 9/11 there was an article published by Time Magazine that provided a general overview of Cheney’s whereabouts in the days and weeks following the disaster. Site R was described and vague details of how the shadow government operates were given. Cheney is many things, but dumb and disorganized he is not. The processes we are now being seeing for the first time, such as his customized document classification system are simply the surface gloss covering what he and his office and henchmen are doing as day-to-day work.

The fact that the Fourth Estate is rolling over and purring like a content kitten and not making this a major news story is one more piece of evidence that the so-called “Liberal Media Bias” is simply a fable and term used by propagandists. Our senior members of the Executive Branch are showing all of us once again that they believe the laws of the land do not apply to them, that they are above the law and complicit in this conspiracy to circumvent the law is our mass media, the Fourth Estate.

The details of what Cheney and his staff are and have been doing in secret will most likely never be learned. Document shredding appears to be a full time job at the Naval Observatory and we have seen first hand that those who are the leaves on this tree of power do not open their mouths, even with the threat of prison hanging over their head. Their loyalty is to individuals and to the maintenance of power, not to our nation and certainly not to their fellow Americans. The scandal that brews beneath the surface of this process in the office of the VP may never see the light of day, and it never will if the corporate news leaders have their way.

But few care and why should they with Paris Hilton nearing the end of her jail stint and an interview ready to happen with the giant of journalism, Larry King. We have pregnant white women being murdered to satisfy your news jones and if that isn’t enough to satisfy our need to be informed about the world around us we still have Barry Bonds waiting in the corner with his juiced race to surpass Henry Aaron for the home run record. With race, murder, sports and celebrity to ponder who needs to spend time thinking about boring politics?

Blackwater gets serious

There has been quite a bit of discussion going on at various blogs and alternative news sites over the past few days regarding the lawsuit by Blackwater Security Consulting against the families of the 4 Blackwater contractors who were killed in Fallujah in 2004 in a now infamous attack. The background and shadowy details of Blackwater and it’s right-wing extremist president, Erik Prince, has been garnering more and more attention of late with books being published about him and this private army, as well as the troubling rise of contractors in Iraq. I’ve posted briefly about Prince in an earlier post but to get a more well rounded set of information about him I strongly advise the reader to spend some time Googling his name.

One of the most worrisome aspects of this lawsuit against the families is the effect it could have on other families who may wish to sue Blackwater in the future if their loved ones meet their demise in Iraq or elsewhere in the world. It could also have a chilling effect on any potential Government investigations into their work in the “War on Terror”. Among the attorneys who are pursuing the lawsuit against the families are Fred Fielding (current counsel to President Bush), Joseph Schmitz (former Inspector General of the Pentagon), Kenneth Starr (of the infamous Starr investigation of President Clinton) and Cofer Black (former Director of the CIA Counter Terrorism Center).

What Blackwater has done in retaining these lawyers in this case is troubling when you consider their connections to the upper echelons of the recent power structure in Washington. Fielding’s involvement is quite troubling as his presence creates a direct pipeline of information between the President, Rove, Cheney and Blackwater. Attorney/Client privilege is supposed to prevent information from leaking out of cases like this but do we really believe that these people care about the law and privacy? One thing about those who wield true power in this country is that they do not view the laws of this nation as something that applies to them.

The last thing Blackwater needs is to have it’s inner workings exposed before the American public, especially in a case that would generate public sympathy for the families of the deceased contractors. In fact, a full disclosure of the inner workings of Blackwater is what this nation needs. We need to wake up to the dangers presented by a rogue, private army being led by a far right-wing extremist that is being supported by extremist ideologues within our own Government.

Has the President declared the entire US population to be enemies of the state?

A significant and terrifying revelation came to light in this week’s round of testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The revelation is subtle and nuanced and a small amount of decoding is necessary to unravel its meaning, but it is there. Former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey testified that Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counselor Alberto Gonzales attempted to trick then Attorney General John Ashcroft into reauthorizing a domestic eavesdropping program while he was hospitalized. This, of course, is what was widely reported but the details of that program and the reasons why it was not reauthorized is the actual story.

From statements made by government and White House officials from the President all the way down the chain of command, its obvious that they are talking on one level and we are listening on another. This is being brushed aside by many as classic Orwellian Doublespeak but what they say and how they parse their words, combined with their actions and those of the telecommunications industry point to a much more sinister and frightening reality.

First off, most people assume that the comments made by the President and various government officials about this situation are directly focused on the FISA and warrantless wiretap situation. In actuality, when they testify and comment to the press they are actually referring to other programs being run at this very moment. Let’s look at this item by item:

1) FISA – While the focus of the media, political and conspiracy theory commentators and the average citizen has been placed on FISA there are comments being made by those involved in this scandal that are obviously intended to divert our attention away from the authorization of wiretapping program that circumvented FISA. The question has been “why was FISA circumvented?” when the question should have been, “What program are you using that supersedes FISA and under what authorization?”

2) The AT&T/NSA collusion – No one in the government or the telecommunications industry wants us to know more about the authorization which forced the telcos to allow the US Intelligence Community to literally tap into all data and voice transmissions coming and going from US soil. They are attempting to hide something much deeper than what we see on the surface.

3) The program that the White House was trying to trick Ashcroft into authorizing is not FISA or the AT&T/NSA programs. Comey, Gonzales and Bush have admitted so by deflecting questions or giving misleading answers for.

4) The program that the White House sought approval for from Ashcroft was so illegal and so un-Constitutional that every person who refused to sign off on the program threatened to resign if it were authorized.

5) The details of this program are not yet known, but this much is known: the program was indeed authorized by someone and it allows for spying at levels far beyond what we are being told with sweeping powers far beyond the pale of any program in history.

The press and the rest of us make much of the President’s power grabbing exploits and the un-Constitutional aspects of these powers. One thing has been overlooked. In all cases a justification has been made for their legality by Bush neophytes even if the justification is flawed and self-serving. The actual legality and Constitutional standing of these authorizations have not been contested to date because we have not seen the documents that are allowing the programs in question. What we have seen in the form of FISA, the AT&T/NSA wiretapping and even with the torture authorization scandal are appearing to this blogger to be nothing more than a smokescreen. Something is peering from the cracks that are forming in this smokescreen.

My belief, based on Bush administration history is that there is a massive and all-encompassing surveillance program that has been authorized behind the FISA and AT&T/NSA programs that is beginning to be seen in pieces. The White House is desperate to maintain the FISA and AT&T/NSA facade but their actions and words hint that those two cases are not their central concern. Their actions and words are directed at a program that is sitting directly behind those two cases. This program, a Program X as it were, is so invasive and overwhelming that their greatest fear is that it’s existence will be known.

What could this program entail? At this point all we can do is guess but based on the issues at stake, the methods and means used and the severity of the fallout my guess is this:

The President has secretly declared that all Americans are potential enemies of the state and he has authorized all Intelligence Agencies of the federal government to monitor, classify and identify who we are. To expedite this process, all of the major telecommunications providers, the owners of the backbone, have been federalized. In other words, an undeclared and modified state of martial law is in effect. This explanation would cover the lengths the government has gone to in hiding the details of the FISA and AT&T/NSA scandals. It would also explain the curious Doublespeak being used in discussing these cases. What we see our government doing and what it really is doing are two different things. What we are allowed to know and what is easily discovered by investigative journalists are smokescreens to draw our attention away from what lies behind them.

Commentary - The message or the messenger?

The 9/11 truth movement has had a a major public airing following a celebrity endorsement from Rosie O'Donnell. Gaining mainstream publicity is one thing, to gain publicity when a celebrity does a verbal data dump to approximately 3.1 million daytime TV viewers is another. The fallout, as should be expected, was swift. The 9/11 truth movement followers tell us that Rosie's statements are proof that the the idea of a massive conspiracy involving the 9/11 attacks is now a mainstream idea as evidenced by her statements. The 9/11 conspiracy skeptics tell us that science debunks all of the 9/11 truth movements theories, and that O'Donnell is just an unfunny, ignorant, overweight lesbian who should be ignored.

Personal attacks are nothing new in this arena. When you prescribe to an "out in left field" idea it should be expected that scorn will follow you. In the case of O'Donnell's comments we see more than an attack against her beliefs, we see an attack against her based on personal feelings. I'll admit that I am not a fan of Rosie O'Donnell and have never watched her TV shows, personally, I find her grating. But, I think that is part of her shtick as a performer. It's a part of her delivery method as an entertainer, much like a shock jock or a blue comedian.

It's interesting to me that the debunkers, who pride themselves on their logic and adherence to science and scientific methodology would include the personal insults that are being used in debunking her statements. It's not necessary and in the long run I don't think it helps their cause. It makes O'Donnell a sympathetic individual because the attacks are so personal and so specific. Does her sexuality, weight or physical attractiveness have anything to do with the belief that 9/11 was an inside job? No. Does her pushy vocal style have anything to do with the belief that the government planned and executed the 9/11 attacks? No. Does her profession have anything to do with the belief that the NIST report on the collapse of the buildings is wrong? Well, yes, there is a connection there but the rebuttal by referencing her profession is a straw man argument. Following the argument that a non-scientist's opinion is worthless in regards to the report findings is no different than dismissing the typical registered voter's opinion if they are not a political science major.

I'm not a believer in the 9/11 truth movement. There are aspects of the 9/11 attacks which raise red flags with me but many of the pillars that the followers of the movement stand on don't jibe with me. I don't believe explosives were in Towers 1 and 2. I don't believe that a directed energy beam was used. I don't believe that thermite was used to bring down Towers 1 and 2. But there is more than enough evidence that key government officials ignored warnings and many were guilty of dereliction of duty. NORAD's response on that morning was nothing short of criminal. Trade Center 7's collapse is too convenient and unexplainable based on the reasons given for it's destruction. But I won't join the movement because of those irregularities. The tone of the attacks against O'Donnell are not surprising and they are not a sign that the 9/11 truth movement is based on scientific fallacies. The tone of the attacks is a sign that even those who pride themselves on their adherence to scientific standards are not above confusing the messenger with the message.

News - Stovepiped intelligence

Truthout.org is reporting on the cooked intelligence that led the US into war in Iraq.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040607A.shtml

The Defense Department's Inspector General has issued a report on this which backs information that many of us have known for a long time. Officials placed within the Pentagon intentionally provided the White House with false intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion. Congress may have seen the same intelligence that the White House saw but that intelligence was blatantly false.

The war on terror will be a major CT subject for many years to come.