CIA pressures Obama
President Obama is reportedly wavering on a pledge to fully reveal Bush administration memos authorizing CIA torture. According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House is leaning toward withholding graphic details of tactics authorized in three classified memos from 2005. The details include approval for striking a prisoner’s head against a wall and the practice known as waterboarding. The issue is reportedly centering around warnings from top intelligence officials that the memos’ full disclosure would anger CIA employees and alienate them from the White House. President Obama faces a Thursday court deadline to act on releasing the memos under a lawsuit brought by the ACLU.
The Pakistani newspaper The News is reporting US bombing raids have killed 687 Pakistani civilians since 2006. During that time US Predator drones carried out sixty strikes inside Pakistan, but reportedly just ten of the strikes hit their actual targets.
President Obama has sided with the former Bush administration in claiming that prisoners held by US troops overseas have no US legal rights. On Friday, the Justice Department appealed a federal judge’s decision granting three detainees at the US military prison Bagram in Afghanistan the right to challenge their detention in US courts.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports the committee overseeing federal banking bailout programs is investigating the lending practices of institutions that received public funds, following a rash of complaints about increases in interest rates and fees. Last week, Bank of America told some customers that interest rates on their credit cards will nearly double to about 14 percent. The bank is also imposing fees of least $10 on a wide range of credit card transactions. Citigroup is pushing new loans that carry annual interest rates of 30 percent, while Wells Fargo is offering its own form of a payday loan that carry annual interest rates of about 120 percent. Last year, US banks and savings institutions collected nearly $40 billion in deposit account charges and fees for everything from ATM usage to balance transfers. The fees accounted for about 25 percent of the industry’s total revenue.
Newsweek is reporting the Obama administration has abandoned plans to restore a federal ban on certain semi-automatic assault guns despite a recent spate of killings. On Sunday, California Senator Dianne Feinstein told 60 Minutes she plans to hold off trying to renew the ban that she authored in 1994.
Leslie Stahl: “There is some sense that the President has so many crisis issues on his plate right now that the idea of bringing up guns, which is considered part of the culture wars, would be such a diversion.”
Sen. Feinstein: “I agree with you. I wouldn’t bring it up now.”
Stahl: “So you’re going to hold off?”
Feinstein: “That’s correct. I’ll pick the time and the place, no question about that.”
Clark University Cancels Finkelstein Lecture
In education news, Clark University in Massachusetts has canceled a scheduled speech by Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein after the Jewish campus group Hillel objected to his appearance. Finkelstein is known as one of the most prominent academic critics of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Clark University President John Bassett said Finkelstein’s speech on campus "would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding.”
At Central Connecticut State University, the opinion editor at the school’s newspaper has been dismissed because she is a member of a socialist club on campus. The paper’s editor fired Marissa Blaszko last month citing her antiwar activism and her membership in the Youth for Socialist Action club. Blaszko said, “We shouldn’t have to swear off our interest in activism, or hide our opposition to a war, to work for our campus newspaper.”
Special Mochronicle update on the Bilderberger Agenda-
Bilderberger conference was created to establish to link the New World Orders together once again, connecting America's NWO to the European elite families in order to prevent another world war, or the rise of any non-friendly nation from getting to powerful. Even though the United States has long been a friendly and an important equalizer in the world, they have pulled away from Europe's agenda when the skull and bones took control. Operation: WRB (water-reserve board) was put in place to set back the American economy and redistribute wealth from the U.S. to Europe and the true rulers of the world. The powers that be have persuaded Obama to borrow money in order to forceful spend its was out of its economic slump and the fate of America is on its tipping point. This year the Bilderberger Conference will offer two options, 1. America can stay the course and fall into a near collapse/long-term depression, or 2. get back in sync with Europe and set the table to join the E.U. (down the road)by pushing the EU agenda that has been bogged down in the last 8 yrs. Here are some projects that need attending. Carbon-Credit Market, Concentration Camps, Young Adult mandatory Civil Service training, Smother alternative media, Restricted International Travel in accordance with the E.U. guidelines, control of water, Keep trade laws loose. Pull out of Iraq. Build Missile Defence sites around Nuclear countries. 5-13-9 mochronicle
American Concentration Camps ? In the works for decades (youtube link) (FEMA camps ready for Martial Law)
Epic Director testifies, suggests changes on the DATA ACCOUNTABILITY and TRUST ACT.
Monsantos working on controling the worlds food supply
The Mochronicle Science Lab has theorizes that the swine virus is man-made ! Who, oh who would benefit from this disaster ?
The Suspects:
1. Monsanto, genetically engineered pigs. Perhaps if these super pigs are later found to be unaffected by the swine flu, it would make their bacon worth its fat in gold.
2. Roche Holding - the maker of Tamiflu. The ever-changing flu virus has already knocked off similar brands, as Tamiflu finds itself in similar threatened status. Tamiflu is found to be successful against the swine flu, giving it one last gold run. Normally a Tamiflu treatment cost $50. They have sold 220 million of these to the World Health Organization.
PIG FLU, PIG FLU, PIG FLU
Monsanto Patent on their version (genetically engineered) pig comes closer to reality as the "pig flu" ramps up. Do you believe in coincidence ?
Mochronicle searching for answers.
1. Some people infected with bird flu have had no contact with pigs. Remember madcow disease ?
2. This Flu has not been documented anywhere else leading the Mochronicle and others to believe that this is Pig Flu is Man-Made !
3. It is a fact that the Big Pharma is pouring money into governments to push National or Continental mandatory vaccinations which would earn them billion of dollars. And it is a fact that they are searching for and experimenting on viruses that have little current impact on the global spectrum. And it is a fact that at least one company has handed out flu shots to the public that have been (accidentally) contaminated with the bird flu. Or so they would like us to believe. But make no mistake, if there was an outbreak, man-made or not. Drug companies stand to make unbelievable profits.
x 9/11 Commission Lies To The Public, for our own good.
x Failed Nuclear Funding Measure Reinserted into Senate Budget Bill
x Obama administration keeps Bush's state secrets privilages
x New Report Demands Congress Reverse Key Parts of Patriot Act9/11 Commission Lies To The Public, for our own good.
posted be mccullough, Dvorak.org
posted be mccullough, Dvorak.orgThe 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.” 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.” 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.”
DemocracyNow.org Friday 4-10-09
Failed Nuclear Funding Measure Reinserted into Senate Budget Bill
On Capitol Hill, a controversial provision to fund nuclear power has re-emerged following its removal from the economic stimulus bill earlier this year. The so-called “low-carbon” energy provision would provide $50 billion over five years. Critics say the measure could lead to the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants. It was quietly accepted as an amendment to the Senate’s budget blueprint introduced last week. The same measure was removed from February’s economic stimulus bill following public protest.
Found on Digg.com
NJ: According to a Feb. 17 New York Times article, White House counsel Greg Craig said that the DOJ reviewed Mohamed v. Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. and "came to the conclusion that it was justified and necessary for national security" not to roll back the state secrets privilege the Bush administration had initially invoked.
From Digg.com and The Public Record pubrecord.org
New Report Demands Congress Reverse Key Parts of Patriot Act
Written by William Fisher Monday, 30 March 2009 06:00 By William Fisher
One of the nation’s leading legal rights groups is calling on the U.S. Congress to make major changes in the USA Patriot Act to reverse parts of the hurriedly passed law that have been found unconstitutional or have been abused to collect information on innocent people.
On December 31, 2009, three provisions of the Patriot Act will expire unless reenacted. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says this proves lawmakers with “the perfect opportunity for Congress to examine all of our surveillance laws.”The Patriot Act was rushed through a stunned congress, with virtually no debate, shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The Act substantially expanded the powers of law enforcement agencies. The ACLU says many of these expanded powers have been abused, and that “the public has yet to receive real information about how these powerful tools are being used to collect information on Americans and how that information is being used.”
The ACLU's recent report, Reclaiming Patriotism, says, “Congress should begin vigorous and comprehensive oversight hearings to examine all post-9/11 national security programs to evaluate their effectiveness and their impact on Americans’ privacy and civil liberties. This oversight is essential to the proper functioning of our constitutional system of government and becomes even more necessary during times of crisis.”
Mike German, Policy Counsel on National Security, Immigration and Privacy, for the ACLU -- and a former FBI agent who resigned from the agency in protest of what he saw as continuing failures in the FBI counter terrorism program -- told us, "The Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments and the Mukasey Attorney General Guidelines have vastly expanded the government's authority to pry into Americans' private lives, even without suspecting wrongdoing. The American people have the right to know how these powers are being used, and Congress has the duty to find out.”The guidelines adopted by Bush-era Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 loosened restrictions on the FBI to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion.
The ACLU report identifies sections of the Patriot Act that need to be amended. These are:
National Security Letters (NSLs): The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit, Doe v. Holder, the Second Circuit Court of Appeal struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records. The FBI has admitted numerous incidences of NSLs being improperly used.
The “Material Support” statute: This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial. The law gives the government the power to shut down charitable organizations suspected of financing terrorist activities with virtually no notice and no due process.
The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails. The ACLU and many other similar groups are seeking amendments to provide “meaningful privacy protections and judicial oversight of the government's intrusive surveillance power.”
The ACLU report charges that “More than seven years after its implementation, there is little evidence to demonstrate that the Patriot Act has made America more secure from terrorists. But there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violated the rights of innocent people and squandered precious security resources.”
It declares, “The framers of the Constitution recognized that giving the government unchecked authority to pry into our private lives risked more than just individual property rights. These patriots understood from their own experience that political rights could not be secured without procedural protections. The Fourth Amendment mandates prior judicial review and permits warrants to be issued only upon probable cause.”
“Stifling dissent does not enhance security,” the report concludes. It contends that the Patriot Act “vastly – and unconstitutionally – expanded the government’s authority to pry into people’s private lives with little or no evidence of wrongdoing.”
Little is known about the government’s use of many of its authorities under the Patriot Act, but raw numbers available through government reports reflect a rapidly increasing level of surveillance. The statistics show skyrocketing numbers of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, National Security Letter (NSL) requests and Suspicious Activity Reports while terrorism prosecution numbers are down. The government has increased the numbers of terrorism investigations it has declined to prosecute.
Reports from the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) revealed the government’s widespread misuse of NSLs and the authorities contained in Section 215, which allow the FBI to demand information about innocent people who are not the targets of any investigation
The first two IG audits, covering NSLs and section 215 orders issued from 2003 through 2005, were released in March of 2007. They confirmed widespread FBI mismanagement, misuse and abuse of these Patriot Act authorities.
The NSL audit revealed that the FBI managed its use of NSLs so negligently that it literally did not know how many NSLs it had issued. As a result, the FBI seriously under-reported its use of NSLs in its previous reports to Congress. The IG also found that FBI agents repeatedly ignored or confused the requirements of the NSL authorizing statutes, and used NSLs to collect private information against individuals two or three times removed from the subjects of FBI investigations.
In March 2008, the IG released a second pair of audit reports covering 2006 and evaluating the reforms implemented by the DOJ and the FBI after the first audits were released in 2007. The new reports identified many of the same problems discovered in the earlier audits. The 2008 NSL report showed that the FBI issued 49,425 NSLs in 2006 (a 4.7 percent increase over 2005), and confirmed the FBI is increasingly using NSLs to gather information on U.S. persons (57 percent in 2006, up from 53 percent in 2005).
The 2008 IG audit also revealed that high-ranking FBI officials, including an assistant director, a deputy assistant director, two acting deputy directors and a special agent in charge, improperly issued eleven “blanket NSLs” in 2006 seeking data on 3,860 telephone numbers. None of these “blanket NSLs” complied with FBI policy and eight imposed unlawful non-disclosure requirements on recipients