Tyranny Response Team Exposes Mobile Guard Tower

"Recently members of the South New Jersey Tyranny Response Team while driving down a slow backstreet in a small New Jersey town found this, a mobile guard tower!

With tinted windows hiding the "authorities" from the public, a hydraulic lift system and cameras on each side, the tower was an intimidating structure. This is a small town with low crime and the tower was placed next to a clean and well maintained city park.

What could the reason behind this be? Conditioning? Perhaps a trial run to see reaction of the people? As we watched, we saw others slow down and stare in wonderment. No one approached the Guard Tower. It seems no one complained either because the Prison Guard Tower was later brought back again for a few days.

We thought that it could be for the train station. But then why wouldn't they just put an officer in the station? Why the blacked out windows? Why is it positioned in the middle of the park and not closer to the train station?

This is clearly meant to condition all the local citizens to accept the police state that is now America. Our nation is supposed to be based on liberty and freedom, now it has been turned into a virtual prison with literal guard towers on small streets, cameras at intersections and body scanners at our airports. This is all meant to show you that you are no better to those with the power than any common criminal. It is about conditioning, not safety.

Please, stop accepting this sort of conditioning and start working to prevent the growing police state that is now choking our once free nation."

And here is the commercial for the unit, dubbed 'Skywatch':

C.I.A. Secrets Could Surface in Swiss Nuclear Case

A seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to hide its relationship with a Swiss family who once acted as moles inside the world's most successful atomic black market hit a turning point on Thursday when a Swiss magistrate recommended charging the men with trafficking in technology and information for making nuclear arms.

The prospect of a prosecution, and a public trial, threatens to expose some of the C.I.A.'s deepest secrets if defense lawyers try to protect their clients by revealing how they operated on the agency's behalf. It could also tarnish what the Bush administration once hailed as a resounding victory in breaking up the nuclear arms network by laying bare how much of it remained intact.

"It's like a puzzle," Andreas Müller, the Swiss magistrate, said at a news conference in Bern on Thursday. "If you put the puzzle together you get the whole picture."

The three men — Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco — helped run the atomic smuggling ring of A. Q. Khan, an architect of Pakistan's nuclear bomb program, officials in several countries have said. In return for millions of dollars, according to former Bush administration officials, the Tinners secretly worked for the C.I.A. as well, not only providing information about the Khan network's manufacturing and sales efforts, which stretched from Iran to Libya to North Korea, but also helping the agency introduce flaws into the equipment sent to some of those countries.

The Bush administration went to extraordinary lengths to protect the men from prosecution, even persuading Swiss authorities to destroy equipment and information found on their computers and in their homes and businesses — actions that may now imperil efforts to prosecute them.

While it has been clear since 2008 that the Tinners acted as American spies, the announcement by the Swiss magistrate on Thursday, recommending their prosecution for nuclear smuggling, is a turning point in the investigation. A trial would bring to the fore a case that Pakistan has insisted is closed. Prosecuting the case could also expose in court a tale of C.I.A. break-ins in Switzerland, and of a still unexplained decision by the agency not to seize electronic copies of a number of nuclear bomb designs found on the computers of the Tinner family.

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DEA Transformed Into Global Intelligence Organization

The Drug Enforcement Administration
has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a
reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation
so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it
against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables.

In far greater detail than previously seen, the cables, from the cache obtained by WikiLeaks
and made available to some news organizations, offer glimpses of drug
agents balancing diplomacy and law enforcement in places where it can be
hard to tell the politicians from the traffickers, and where drug rings
are themselves mini-states whose wealth and violence permit them to run
roughshod over struggling governments. Diplomats recorded
unforgettable vignettes from the largely unseen war on drugs: In Panama, an urgent BlackBerry message from the president to the
American ambassador demanded that the D.E.A. go after his political
enemies: "I need help with tapping phones."

In Sierra Leone, a major cocaine-trafficking prosecution was almost
upended by the attorney general's attempt to solicit $2.5 million in
bribes. In Guinea, the country's biggest narcotics kingpin turned out to be the
president's son, and diplomats discovered that before the police
destroyed a huge narcotics seizure, the drugs had been replaced by
flour. Leaders of Mexico's beleaguered military issued private pleas for
closer collaboration with the drug agency, confessing that they had
little faith in their own country's police forces.

Cables from Myanmar, the target of strict United States sanctions,
describe the drug agency informants' reporting both on how the military
junta enriches itself with drug money and on the political activities of
the junta's opponents. Officials of the D.E.A. and the State Department declined to discuss
what they said was information that should never have been made public. Like many of the cables made public in recent weeks, those describing the drug war
do not offer large disclosures. Rather, it is the details that add up
to a clearer picture of the corrupting influence of big traffickers, the
tricky game of figuring out which foreign officials are actually
controlled by drug lords, and the story of how an entrepreneurial agency
operating in the shadows of the F.B.I.
has become something more than a drug agency. The D.E.A. now has 87
offices in 63 countries and close partnerships with governments that
keep the Central Intelligence Agency at arm's length.

Because of the ubiquity of the drug scourge, today's D.E.A. has access
to foreign governments, including those, like Nicaragua's and
Venezuela's, that have strained diplomatic relations with the United
States. Many are eager to take advantage of the agency's drug detection
and wiretapping technologies. In some countries, the collaboration appears to work well, with the drug
agency providing intelligence that has helped bring down traffickers,
and even entire cartels. But the victories can come at a high price,
according to the cables, which describe scores of D.E.A. informants and a
handful of agents who have been killed in Mexico and Afghanistan.

In Venezuela, the local intelligence service turned the tables on the
D.E.A., infiltrating its operations, sabotaging equipment and hiring a
computer hacker to intercept American Embassy e-mails, the cables
report. And as the drug agency has expanded its eavesdropping operations to keep
up with cartels, it has faced repeated pressure to redirect its
counternarcotics surveillance to local concerns, provoking tensions with
some of Washington's closest allies.

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Pentagon's Christmas Present: Largest Military Budget Since World War II

By Rick Rozoff, OpEd News

On December 22 both houses of the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a bill authorizing $725 billion for next year's Defense Department budget.

The bill, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, was approved by all 100 senators as required and by a voice vote in the House.

The House had approved the bill, now sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law, five days earlier in a 341-48 roll call, but needed to vote on it again after the Senate altered it in the interim.

The proposed figure for the Pentagon's 2011 war chest includes, in addition to the base budget, $158.7 billion for what are now euphemistically referred to as overseas contingency operations: The military occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

The $725 billion figure, although $17 billion more than the White House had requested, is not the final word on the subject, however, as supplements could be demanded as early as the beginning of next year, especially in regard to the Afghan war that will then be in its eleventh calendar year.

Even as it currently is, the amount is the highest in constant dollars (pegged at any given year's dollar and adjusted for inflation) since 1945, the final year of the Second World War. With recent U.S. census figures at 308 million, next year the Pentagon will spend $2,354 for every citizen of the country at the $725 billion price tag alone.

Last year's Pentagon budget, by way of comparison, was $680 billion, a base budget of $533.8 billion and the remainder for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In July of this year Congress approved the 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act which contained an additional $37 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Next year's defense authorization of $725 billion compares to, according to the Center for Defense Information, a Pentagon budget of $444.6 billion in 1946; $460.4 billion in 1968, the highest yearly amount during the Vietnam War; and $443.4 billion in 1988, the highest during the eight years of the Ronald Reagan administration's massive military buildup. (Numbers in 2004 constant dollars.) [1]

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates American military spending for 2009 to have accounted for 43 percent of the world total. Carl Conetta, co-director of the Project on Defense Alternatives, earlier this year estimated the 2010 U.S. defense budget to constitute 47 percent of total worldwide military expenditures and to amount to 19 percent of all American federal spending.

In addition, Pentagon spending has increased by 100 percent since 1998 and "the Obama budget plans to spend more on the Pentagon over eight years than any administration has since World War II." [2]

With 2.25 million full-time civilian and military personnel, excluding part-time National Guard and Reserve members, the Defense Department is the U.S.'s largest employer, outstripping Walmart with 1.4 million employees and the U.S Post Office with 599,000. [3]

"Add in what Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and the Energy departments spend on defense and total US military spending will reach $861 billion in fiscal 2011, exceeding that of all other nations combined," according to Todd Harrison, senior fellow for Defense Budget Studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. [4]

In April Robert Higgs of The Independent Institute advocated that the budgets - in part or in whole - of the departments of Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, Energy, State and Treasury and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) should be calculated in the real military budget, which would in 2009 would have increased it to $901.5 billion.

"Adding [the] interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon's outlays alone."

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How the Elite Talk in Code

Posted on Economic Policy Journal:

It has long been a contention of mine that the super elite talk in a kind of code that keeps them out of trouble. They know full well among each other what needs to be done in certain tight situations, but you will never hear any of them speak it. They sort of ride above the fray and think to themselves that they are not manipulating anything, when, in fact, they are attempting to manipulate the entire world!

The recent comments attributed to David Rubenstein at Carlyle Group suggest that he has not yet, and may never, master elite code talk. He may be close to them, but as long as he does not fully understand code talk, he is a tool and nothing more.

A perfect example of code talk comes from a true master insider, George H.W. Bush, when his son, Neil, was caught red handed in the middle of the S&L crisis as a director of Sliverado Bank.

Did Bush lay out his cards and call in his operatives and say pull some strings, get my son out of this investigation (Remember Bush was president at the time.) No. Bush is too smooth. In his published collection of letters, All The Best, George Bush, he shows us how the heat is delicately taken off Neil. On page 449, there is this letter to Thomas Ludlow Ashley.

Ashley is a Yale University grad, and member of the secret society Skull and Bones along with Bush. Here's the letter:

The Honorable Thomas Ludlow Ashley
Association of Bank Holding Companies
Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Lud,

Thank you for your good memo December 8th.

I would appreciate any help you can give Neil. He tells me he never had any insider dealings. He got off the Board early--long before I was elected President. The Denver paper apparently ran a very nice editorial about him on that. He is an outside director, and thus I guess has liability, but I can't believe his name would appear in the paper if it was Jones not Bush. In any event, I know that the guy is totally honest. I saw him in Denver and I think he is worried about the publicity and the "shame". I tell him not to worry about that but any advice you can give as this matter unfolds would be greatly appreciated by me. If it turns out there has been some marginal call, or he has done something wrong, needless to say there will be no intervention from his dad. But, I'm quite confident this is not true...

Warm regards,

George

Notice how smooth. No talk about getting Ashley anything for taking care of the matter. The nice touch about if Neil "has done something wrong", but the clear finish, he didn't.

The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." But Neil was not indicted on criminal charges, a civil action was brought against him and the other Silverado directors. It was eventually settled out of court, with Bush paying $50,000 as part of the settlement.

Ashley had done his job.

Bush has used Ashley in other tight situations. How does Ashley get paid for his "services"? Who really knows? But I can take a guess. Ashely is currently a director ofLayalina Productions, Inc., which produces Arabic-language television programming for broadcast in the Arab Middle East.

He is also a director of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation.

Iraq Freedom Congress: A Message of Solidarity to Our Comrades in France

On behalf of all IFC affiliate organizations, forces, figures and supporters we declare our support and solidarity with the fair and just demands of the workers in France.

Your persistency on continuing strikes, demonstrations and protests have boosted the morals of the workers around the world and encouraged us to stand against the policies of G8, G20, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions that intended to force the workers to carry the heavy weight of the economic crisis. The austerity announced by Greece and Britain, and the adoption of the retirement law in France are the first steps toward taking away all labour rights that were realized through struggles of centuries.

We in Iraq Freedom Congress consider each progress you make for the well-being of workers and a better world for humanity is an achievement and victory for all freedom-loving people around the world. We believe that your continued struggle is the sole approach to stand against the governments of Europe which have started launching attacks on the gains of workers and all segments of society such as retirement, social services and social security... etc.

Here in Iraq, the eyes of the workers and the disadvantaged are looking forward to your daily fight, which in fact is a revolutionary experience and a source of hope to continue their fight against the policy of outlawing trade union work including freedom of association, strike and demonstrations, demonizing any opposition to the occupation policy and the imposition of IMF conditions on Iraq, which means more unemployment, poverty and deprivation...

Once again we renew our support and solidarity with your fight and your just demands

Long live the fight of workers in France

Samir Adil of / Iraq Freedom Congress

26-10-2010

~ IFC ~ via Smygo ~