AT&T whistleblower: I was forced to connect 'big brother machine'
11/07/2007 @ 9:17 pm | Filed by David Edwards and Jason Rhyne

A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984.

Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that a copy of all internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," said Klein. "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those internet cables into the secret room -- and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the internet."

The dollar’s slide: 1/3 down and falling faster

We’ve posted this before - but as the ailing US currency drops through $1.47 against the euro and $2.10 against sterling, it merits a second (and updated) airing.

The chart comes from Sempra Metals, who make a couple of additional points:

* The US dollar has now lost more than a third of its value (-35%) against a basket of major currencies since Feb 2002.

* The decline is accelerating. The USD has shed -12.5% of its value in the last year, -3.5% in the last month, and -1.5% in the last week alone.

Frontline/World
Extraordinary Rendition

Tuesday, November 6, 10:00pm
CHANNEL 6 (KVIE)

The Season 7 opener examines the CIA's use of "rendition," in which suspected terrorists are interrogated in foreign countries where torture is common. Extraordinary Rendition, an investigation into one of the darkest corners of the Bush Administration's war on terror -- the CIA's controversial rendition and interrogation program.

Also: Ayurveda, a form of holistic medicine in India, is explored.
Time: Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 10:00pm PST

DiFi:

The attorney general nominee's answers on torture are clear, and he will rise to the challenges of the job.

I'm going to focus on the sanctioned torture by this administration and our alleged Representatives and leave aside the other "qualifications" Mr. Mukasey is alleged to have in spades, if I get time later this week I'll get into his so-called national security qualifications. I've got a few videos for you Dianne

.

But first I think you should read the following because it calls into question his veracity and sincerity in his answers to the Judicial Committee in regard to how he'll run the Dept. of Justice ...

Yea, sure, his answers are clear in that he thinks the Fourth Amendment is merely precatory (advisory)

US Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey has written a very lawyerly letter to the Senate Judiciary committee. The letter fails to use the word “waterboarding” although the acceptance of a cast-iron prohibition on “torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” might fairly be seen to cover banning it. The letter might be enough to peel off a few votes on the torture issue.

If you read the letter with any care, however, you will see that it very carefully refuses to say that — even in the face of the FISA legislation occupying the field

How many more reasons do we need to get rid of ALL private mercenaries?

State to Blackwater: Nothing You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law
Jeremy Scahill | Posted October 30, 2007 | 05:53 PM (EST)

Apparently there is one set of rights for Blackwater mercenaries and another for the rest of us. Normally when a group of people alleged to have gunned down 17 civilians in a lawless shooting spree are questioned, investigators will tell them something along the lines of: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." But that is not what the Blackwater operatives involved in the September 16 Nisour Square shooting in Iraq were told. Most of the Blackwater shooters were questioned by State Department Diplomatic Security investigators with the understanding that their statements and information gleaned from them could not be used to bring criminal charges against them, nor could they be introduced as evidence. In other words, "Anything you say can't and won't be used against you in a court of law."

ABC News obtained copies of sworn statements given by Blackwater guards in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, all of which begin, "I understand this statement is being given in furtherance of an official administrative inquiry," and that, "I further understand that neither my statements nor any information or evidence gained by reason of my statements can be used against me in a criminal proceeding." Constitutional law expert Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says the offering of so-called "use immunity" agreements by the State Department is "very irregular," adding he could not recall a precedent for it. In normal circumstances, Ratner said, such immunity is only granted after a Grand Jury or Congressional committee has been convened and the party has invoked their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination. It would then be authorized by either a judge or the committee.

This is not exactly a surprise to the Corps of Engineers

Iraqi dam seen in danger of deadly collapse

Failure could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, killing up to 500,000

By Amit R. Paley
Updated: 10:22 p.m. PT Oct 29, 2007

AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq - The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. "The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam's deficiencies.

"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the Army Corps concluded in September 2006, according to the report to be released Tuesday. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."

Behind-the-scenes wrangling

Cheney Visits Hunting Lodge That Hangs The Confederate Flag

Last week, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported that Vice President Dick Cheney was planning to go hunting in upstate New York over the weekend. The paper reported that Cheney would “head to the Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in LaGrangeville” on Monday morning.

Yesterday, Cheney spent eight hours hunting at the “secluded Hudson Valley gun club where well-heeled enthusiasts shoot ducks and pheasants.” It was his second visit to the club; the previous trip was in fall 2001.

Although Cheney did not shoot anyone on this hunting excursion, the New York Daily News reports that the trip still managed to stir up problems for the Vice President:

Nobody got shot, but Vice President Cheney still fired up controversy Monday when he went hunting at a private club that hangs the Confederate flag.

A Daily News photographer captured the 3-by-5 foot Dixie flag affixed to a door in the garage of the Clove Valley Gun and Rod Club in upstate Union Vale, N.Y.

Dubya has a heart attack and dies. He goes to hell where the devil is
waiting for him.

"I don't know what to do here," says the devil. "You're on my list, but
I have no room for you. You definitely have to stay here, so I'll tell
you what I'm going to do. I've got 3 people here who weren't quite as
bad as you. I'll let one of them go, but you have to take their place.
I'll even let you decide who leaves."

Dubya thought that sounded pretty good, so he agreed. The devil opened
the door to the first room. It was former President Richard Nixon in a
large pool of water. Nixon kept diving in and surfacing, gasping for
air, then immediately diving back into the water over and over and
over. Such was his fate in hell.

"No!" Dubya said. "I don't think so. I'm not a good swimmer and I don't
think I could do that all day long."

If you missed Jeremy Scahill on Bill Moyers Journal, you can watch it here:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10192007/watch.html

October 19, 2007

On September 16, 2007, Blackwater contractors, during a complex confrontation in downtown Baghdad, shot and killed Iraqis in the crowded Nisour Square.

The FBI and State Department are currently investigating the incident, yet it further sheds light upon a growing private sector security force in Iraq and elsewhere, that many fear has not been held accountable to the same degree as have US military officials.

Jeremy Scahill has been covering Blackwater for THE NATION and other publications for more than three years. He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and is the author of BLACKWATER: THE RISE OF THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL MERCENARY ARMY, published by Nation Books. He is also an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for DEMOCRACY NOW!.

Thursday, Oct 18, 2007

9-10:30am: CSU Sacramento, Hinde Auditorium, University Union. 6000 J St., Sacramento. Sponsored by Center for Practical and Professional Ethics, FMI: 916-278-4162, cppe@csus.edu

12:30-1:50pm: Sierra College, Room W110, Sierra College, 500 Rocklin Rd, Rocklin.
Time: Thursday, October 18, 2007 - 10:00am PST

Seymour Hersh is to speak in two days @ U.C. Davis. I'm throwing a couple background articles in this post on what to expect if the psychopathic neo-cons get their way; click the 1st pic for Mr. Hersh's recent interview with Keith Olberman, and the second for the possible Iranian response. The first message (not really an article) is on the wargaming of the radicals and how they could get their way, and then Mr. Hersh's interview in the latest SNR

.

How it might begin

9/26/2007 1:33:58 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time

Note: I worked with an engineer at SAI (now SAIC) who told me they'd done computer modeling of this for the CIA at the El Segundo office back in the early 70's. This is actually similar to one of the scenarios that they came up with. There were three areas of the world that they figured would be the flash point - the Middle East, Central America, and Southeast Asia - any one of which has been so politically unstable for so long that almost any event could start WW III. They figured it would start with some small conflict which would quickly drag the "superpowers" into it and that would be the beginning of the end for all of so-called 'modern' civilization.

The Alarming Parallels Between 1929 and 2007

Has deregulation left the economy at risk of another 1929-scale crash? Should the Fed keep bailing out speculators? Robert Kuttner testified yesterday before the House Financial Services Committee.

Robert Kuttner | October 2, 2007

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee:

Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Robert Kuttner. I am an economics and financial journalist, author of several books about the economy, co-editor of The American Prospect, and former investigator for the Senate Banking Committee. I have a book appearing in a few weeks that addresses the systemic risks of financial innovation coupled with deregulation and the moral hazard of periodic bailouts.

In researching the book, I devoted a lot of effort to reviewing the abuses of the 1920s, the effort in the 1930s to create a financial system that would prevent repetition of those abuses, and the steady dismantling of the safeguards over the last three decades in the name of free markets and financial innovation.

Your predecessors on the Senate Banking Committee, in the celebrated Pecora Hearings of 1933 and 1934, laid the groundwork for the modern edifice of financial regulation. I suspect that they would be appalled at the parallels between the systemic risks of the 1920s and many of the modern practices that have been permitted to seep back in to our financial markets.

Although the particulars are different, my reading of financial history suggests that the abuses and risks are all too similar and enduring. When you strip them down to their essence, they are variations on a few hardy perennials -- excessive leveraging, misrepresentation, insider conflicts of interest, non-transparency, and the triumph of engineered euphoria over evidence.

I got this picture from Amnesty International. We should all make a display like this in our front yards for Halloween.

How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength
By MARIO M. CUOMO | October 7, 2007 | Op-Ed Contributor

SENATORS Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagues are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 already provides that only Congress has the power to declare war. Perhaps the founders’ greatest concern in writing the Constitution was that they might unintentionally create a president who was too much like the British monarch, whom they despised. They expressed that concern in part by assuring that the president would not have the power to declare war.

Because the Constitution cannot be amended by persistent evasion, this mandate was neither erased nor modified by the actions or inactions of timid Congresses that allowed overeager presidents to start wars in Vietnam and elsewhere without making a declaration.

I've just recently read about Presidential Airways at wired.com and thought that'll make a nice short little blog in itself, but, since posting to this website is all voluntary and only done in our spare time, I completely forgot all about it because I just didn't have the time until I ran across the following ... and had to make time

Ever see this plane??? ... Hold that thought

So, last week I'm reading thinkprogress.org and run across the story below and of course have to read it.

Pentagon Issues Blackwater New $92 Million Contract

[Scroll down to the third paragraph. I'm going to emphasize a few things]

Presidential Airways, Inc., an aviation Worldwide Services company (d/b/a Blackwater Aviation), Moyock, N.C., is being awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) type contract for $92,000,000.00. The contractor is to provide all fixed-wing aircraft, personnel, equipment, tools, material, maintenance and supervision necessary to perform passenger, cargo and combi Short Take-Off and Landing air transportation services between locations in the Area of Responsibility of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. This contract was competitively procured and two timely offers were received. The performance period is from 1 Oct. 2007 to 30 September 2011.

Well, well, well, Presidential Airways, we meet again. Whooda thunk it? Do you know what an IDIQ contract is? IDIQ stands for Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity, which means they get their $92 million contract no matter what; they could make 1,000 flights for the DoD or they could only be obligated for one flight and they would still get the $92 million of your tax payer supported money.

Blackwater: Not in Our Backyards
Schwarzenegger should never turn over the state’s security to mercenaries, even after an emergency.
by Patt Morrison | Published on Thursday, October 4, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times

If you turned on C-SPAN on Tuesday and thought for a moment that you’d punched in some all-action-movie channel by mistake, I can’t blame you.

What was coming out of the television? Talk of Christmas Eve gunplay in Baghdad. An Iraqi vice president’s security guard killed by a drunken off-duty private security contractor. The shooter was fired and quickly hustled out of Iraq. And live from the Beltway, a set-piece battle of wits between a glowering congressman and a resplendently barbered former Navy SEAL who started a business called Blackwater USA.

What? No Chuck Norris?

Blackwater founder Erik Prince at the hearing proudly defended his employees as “Americans working for America protecting Americans.” But a congressional staff report, drawn from Blackwater and State Department internal reports and e-mails, recounts derring-don’t stories of shootings and reckless road smashups. A brigadier general in Iraq, Karl Horst, has complained that security contractors “run loose in this country” and that the Army has “no authority” to rein them in.

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
by Helen Thomas | Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

Tuesday, Oct 16, 12 - 1pm

Our good friend, Colonel Ann Wright, will be in Sacramento to speak about resigning from the Bush Administration. Please come out to support this courageous woman!

Learning Resources 105, Sacramento City College, 3855 Freeport Blvd, Sacramento
More info: Cultural Awareness Center, SouzaM@scc.losrios.edu
Time: Tuesday, October 16, 2007 - 1:00pm PST

BEACH IMPEACH 4, Oct. 7 at 11am at the Berkeley Marina 1500 impeachers and our very special guest, Cindy Sheehan, will spell out for Congress what exactly IS on the table.

More Special Guests:
Cynthia McKinney(former US Representative from Georgia)
Michelle Shocked(popular musician)
Time: Sunday, October 7, 2007 - 12:00pm PST

Interview With Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh: "The President Has Accepted Ethnic Cleansing"
By Charles Hawley and David Gordon Smith | Der Spiegel | Friday 28 September 2007

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the way in telling the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the First Amendment.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was just in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Once again, he said that he is only interested in civilian nuclear power instead of atomic weapons. How much does the West really know about the nuclear program in Iran?

Seymour Hersh: A lot. And it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is this just another case of exaggerating the danger in preparation for an invasion like we saw in 2002 and 2003 prior to the Iraq War?