Navigate through the list below for websites to check of a growing list of professionals calling for a new (read "real") investigation of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks on America.

• Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
• Firefighters for 9/11 Truth
• Journal of 9/11 Studies
• Lawyers for 9/11 Truth
• Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth
• 911 Blogger.com
• 911 Truth.org
• Patriots Question 9/11
• Pilots for 9/11 Truth
• Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice
• Scientific Panel Investigating Nine-Eleven
• Veterans for 9/11 Truth

Recently, a group of 52 politicians from around the globe have added their dissident voices in questioning the official 9/11 accounts of what happened on Black Tuesday in September 2001.

Here's the online petition of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (www.pl911truth.com):

WHEREAS the Bush-Cheney administration’s public interpretation of the 9/11 attacks has had radical, largely negative, consequences for the United States of America and the world as a whole; and

WHEREAS the official investigations of these attacks that have been carried out thus far were led by individuals closely aligned with, or even employed by, the Bush-Cheney administration; and

WHEREAS the conclusions of these investigations differ radically from those that have been reached by independent researchers with various kinds of professional expertise; and

WHEREAS organizations of such researchers---including Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth---have called for a new, truly independent, investigation; and

WHEREAS we believe it is long past time for political leaders to heed these calls;

THEREFORE we, the undersigned members of Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, ask President Barack Obama to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11.

Pl911truth was chartered by a handful of courageous politicians ("No, Virginia, 'courageous politician' isn't oxymoronic after all"), most of them American. But it was Japanese politico Yukihisa Fujita who rocked legislative world on 10 January 2008 when he denounced the official (read "American") 9/11 story before colleagues in the House of Councilors.


(Watch part 2, 8 1/2 minutes, here.)

So, my fellow Americans, inform your DC congress critter about the Pl911truth.org. Let them know you know they're invested in a threadbare conspiracy theory rather than the cumulative facts that comprise the Truth on 9/11.

The West Wing (Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, John Spencer, Rob Lowe et al.) had a fine seven-year run (1999-2006) on NBC.

In this episdoe, White House senior staffer Toby Zigler (Richard Schiff) confesses to leaking classified information of existence of the military's space shuttle to the New York Times to save stranded civilian astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

Enjoy

In the media lexicon operating among Obama White House officials, up is down, left is right, war is peace, fascism is democracy and U.S.-backed narco-traffickers are allies. Where is the difference of those Democrat politicians American voters have sought since November 2006 after sweeping out the GOP-controlled Congress and White House?

New York sociology professor emeritus James Petras's analysis in May 2009 of Obama-as- politically-sanitized-Bush-Cheney-fascism deserves attention among gooey-eyed "progressives" and bloggers who seemingly assume "black power" would never recycle that "rich white power" GOP position toward Afghanistan (and Iraq).

Obama’s Animal Farm: Bigger, Bloodier Wars Equal Peace and Justice

“The Deltas are psychos… You have to be a certified psychopath to join the Delta Force…”, a US Army colonel from Fort Bragg once told me back in the 1980’s.

. 05.17.2009

Now President Obama has elevated the most notorious of the psychopaths, General Stanley McChrystal, to head the US and NATO military command in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s rise to leadership is marked by his central role in directing special operations teams engaged in extrajudicial assassinations, systematic torture, bombing of civilian communities and search and destroy missions. He is the very embodiment of the brutality and gore that accompanies military-driven empire building. Between September 2003 and August 2008, McChrystal directed the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations (JSO) Command which operates special teams in overseas assassinations.

The point of the ‘Special Operations’ teams (SOT) is that they do not distinguish between civilian and military oppositions, between activists and their sympathizers and the armed resistance. The SOT specialize in establishing death squads and recruiting and training paramilitary forces to terrorize communities, neighborhoods and social movements opposing US client regimes. The SOT’s ‘counter-terrorism’ is terrorism in reverse, focusing on socio-political groups between US proxies and the armed resistance.

McChrystal’s SOT targeted local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan through commando raids and air strikes. During the last 5 years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld period the SOT were deeply implicated in the torture of political prisoners and suspects. McChrystal was a special favorite of Rumsfeld and Cheney because he was in charge of the ‘direct action’ forces of the ‘Special Missions Units. ‘Direct Action’ operative are the death-squads and torturers and their only engagement with the local population is to terrorize, and not to propagandize. They engage in ‘propaganda of the dead’, assassinating local leaders to ‘teach’ the locals to obey and submit to the occupation. Obama’s appointment of McChrystal as head reflects a grave new military escalation of his Afghanistan war in the face of the advance of the resistance throughout the country.

The deteriorating position of the US is manifest in the tightening circle around all the roads leading in and out of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul as well as the expansion of Taliban control and influence throughout the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Obama’s inability to recruit new NATO reinforcements means that the White House’s only chance to advance its military driven empire is to escalate the number of US troops and to increase the kill ratio among any and all suspected civilians in territories controlled by the Afghan armed resistance.

The White House and the Pentagon claim that the appointment of McChrystal was due to the ‘complexities’ of the situation on the ground and the need for a ‘change in strategy’. ‘Complexity’ is a euphemism for the increased mass opposition to the US, complicating traditional carpet ‘bombing and military sweep’ operations. The new strategy practiced by McChrystal involves large scale, long term ‘special operations’ to devastate and kill the local social networks and community leaders, which provide the support system for the armed resistance.

Obama’s decision to prevent the release of scores of photographs documenting the torture of prisoners by US troops and ‘interrogators’ (especially under command of the ‘Special Forces’), is directly related to his appointment of McChrystal whose ‘SOT’ forces were highly implicated in widespread torture in Iraq. Equally important, under McChrystal’s command the DELTA, SEAL and Special Operations Teams will have a bigger role in the new ‘counter-insurgency strategy’. Obama’s claim that the publication of these photographs will adversely affect the ‘troops’ has a particular meaning: The graphic exposure of McChrystal’s modus operandi for the past 5 years under President Bush will undermine his effectiveness in carrying out the same operations under Obama.

Obama’s decision to re-start the secret ‘military tribunals’ of foreign political prisoners, held at the Guantanamo prison camp, is not merely a replay of the Bush-Cheney policies, which Obama had condemned and vowed to eliminate during his presidential campaign, but part of his larger policy of militarization and coincides with his approval of the major secret police surveillance operations conducted against US citizens.

Putting McChrystal in charge of the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan military operations means putting a notorious practitioner of military terrorism – the torture and assassination of opponents to US policy – at the center of US foreign policy. Obama’s quantitative and qualitative expansion of the US war in South Asia means massive numbers of refugees fleeing the destruction of their farms, homes and villages; tens of thousands of civilian deaths, and eradication of entire communities. All of this will be committed by the Obama Administraton in the quest to ‘empty the lake (displace entire populations) to catch the fish (armed insurgents and activists)’.

Obama’s restoration of all of the most notorious Bush Era policies and the appointment of Bush’s most brutal commander is based on his total embrace of the ideology of military-driven empire building. Once one believes (as Obama does) that US power and expansion are based on military conquests and counter-insurgency, all other ideological, diplomatic, moral and economic considerations will be subordinated to militarism. By focusing all resources on successful military conquest, scant attention is paid to the costs borne by the people targeted for conquest or to the US treasury and domestic American economy. This has been clear from the start: In the midst of a major recession/depression with millions of Americans losing their employment and homes, President Obama increased the military budget by 4% - taking it beyond $800 billion dollars.

Obama’s embrace of militarism is obvious from his decision to expand the Afghan war despite NATO’s refusal to commit any more combat troops. It is obvious in his appointment of the most hard-line and notorious Special Forces General from the Bush-Cheney era to head the military command in subduing Afghanistan and the frontier areas of Pakistan.

It is just as George Orwell described in Animal Farm: The Democratic Pigs are now pursuing the same brutal, military policies of their predecessors, the Republican Porkers, only now it is in the name of the people and peace. Orwell might paraphrase the policy of President Barack Obama, as ‘Bigger and bloodier wars equal peace and justice’.

A new documentary on giant agri-business food production released 12 June reveals more appropriate commercial jingles would be "What's the doctor's number?" and "Where's the shame?".

Kentucky "straight shooters" for Jesus doing me proud to be a Southern Appalachian American. A new church tradition in Louisville makes it too easy for uppity BBC Brits to poke the finger of fun at Americans who still love the 19th century.

A pastor in the US state of Kentucky told his flock to bring handguns to church in what he said was an effort to promote safe gun ownership.

Pastor Ken Pagano told parishioners to bring their unloaded guns to New Bethel Church in Louisville for a service celebrating the right to bear arms.

He said he acted after church members voiced fears the Obama administration could tighten gun control laws.

When the service began, some 200 people were present, AP news agency said.

"We are wanting to send a message that there are legal, civil, intelligent and law-abiding citizens who also own guns," Mr Pagano told the congregation.

"If it were not for a deep-seated belief in the right to bear arms, this country would not be here today," he said.

Pastor Ken Pagano says he wants to show that gun owners are law-abiding

The pastor also held a handgun raffle, as well as providing information on gun safety.

"I wish more churches did this, I wish more people did this," the Louisville Courier-Journal quoted one attendee, Doreen Rogers, as saying.

"For some reason, most people think that carrying guns is sinful. It's not. I think my life is worth protecting."

About 10 members of a private local militia also attended, the Courier-Journal said.

A coalition of religious groups and campaigners held a rival gun-free event at the same time on the other side of Louisville.

"The idea of wearing guns to churches or any sacred space I think many people find deeply troubling," organiser Terry Taylor told AP.

In the US, the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. There are thought to be more than 200 million firearms in private hands.

But some gun owners fear that the new administration in the White House could try to challenge or amend some gun ownership laws.

Critics of the laws, meanwhile, link high levels of gun crime with high levels of gun ownership.

I reprise this disturbing 84-minute documentary chronicling the biggest criminal swindle of the American 21st century--though the 2008 global economic meltdown and ensuing U.S. trillions in welfare bailout for banks, insurance companies (AIG the most infamous) and car manufacturers may rival the 9/11 hoax.

Time will confirm the significance of this later crime.

In any event, the U.S. is devolving into one of those Third World "banana republic" police states our wealthy ruling elite so fondly sponsored throughout Latin America since the 19th century.

Here's a blurb on the documentary provided in the margin notes at Google Video:

... The families present their 2 1/2 year struggle to create an investigation and inquiry into the events of 9/11 -- which was at first heavily resisted and even explicitly prohibited by the President and Vice-President. For an example of contrast in funding; the internal disruption of a Clinton-Lewinski "sex scandal" the event was awarded a budget of 100 million dollars in total. Initially the 9/11 Commission was only allotted 3 million dollars and their time-limit was severely cut beyond the expectations of those who brought it into existence.

Should U.S. history books ever become honest, they will chronicle how the manufactured subprime financial meltdown and ensuing banking bailout preceded the High Court's refusal to support the last vestiges of traditional American law that protected average, middle-class investors.

The U.S. Supreme Court's refusal on 8 June to hear lawyers for teachers and firemen's pension fund is, according to financial advisor and author Peter Schiff, tantamount to ending the rule of law in the United States. Read Schiff's online commentary here.

June 12, 2009

Property Rights Take a Hit

“Crony capitalism” is a term often applied to foreign nations where government interference circumvents market forces. The practice is widely associated with tin-pot dictators and second-rate economies. In such a system, support for the ruling regime is the best and only path to economic success. Who you know supersedes what you know, and favoritism trumps the rule of law. Unfortunately, this week’s events demonstrate that the phrase now more aptly describes our own country.

On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from Chrysler’s secured creditors based on the government’s argument that the needs of other stakeholders outweighed those of a few creditors. In this case, the Administration concluded the interests of the United Auto Workers outweighed the interests of the Indiana teachers and firemen whose pension fund sued to block the restructuring. Given the enormous financial support that the UAW poured into the Obama campaign, such partiality is hardly surprising.

When making their investment in Chrysler just a few months ago, the Indiana pension fund agreed to commit capital because of the specific assurances received from the company. In allowing this sham bankruptcy to be crammed through the courts, we have shredded the vital principal of the rule of law, and have become a nation of men, rather than one of laws.

The risk that legal contracts can now be arbitrarily set aside will make investors think twice before committing capital to distressed corporations. Oftentimes enforcing contracts imposes hardships. That’s precisely why we have contracts.

Without absolute faith that deals will be honored, it will be extremely difficult for U.S. companies to borrow money. This will be particularly true for those companies already struggling with too much debt. Without the ability to issue secured debt, how will such companies access the necessary capital to turn around? If secured creditors cannot count on the courts to enforce their claims, they will not put their capital at risk. What good is being a secured creditor if courts can allow the assets securing your claim to be sold for the benefit of others?

Another problem with the government imposing losses on secured Chrysler creditors is that in its bailouts of financial companies (like Citigroup and AIG), the government took steps to specifically pay back creditors, even when those creditors should have been wiped out. This inconsistency and lack of equal protection further undermines faith in our economy.

The message here is clear: loan money to financial entities with friends in Washington and no matter how risky the loan, taxpayers will bail you out if it goes bad. However, loan money to a unionized manufacturer, even if prudently secured by real assets, and you have as much chance of getting your money back as finding Jimmy Hoffa’s body.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, testimony on Thursday from former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis revealed a concerted effort on the part of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to pressure Lewis into hiding relevant financial information regarding Merrill Lynch losses from B of A shareholders. Recently released e-mails make it clear that the government threatened to remove corporate leaders if they failed to go through with the merger and keep quiet about the losses.

Again, the justification for the interference seemed to be the “greater economic good” the merger would serve. The right of B of A shareholders to be informed that their company was about to buy a financial black hole was clearly considered to be an acceptable sacrifice.

More importantly, the fact that two of the highest-ranking government officials can conspire to violate both securities laws and private property rights is abhorrent to everything America supposedly stands for. If they get away with it, which I believe they will, the precedent and the message will be chilling.

As a broker who specializes in foreign investments, I am always wary of political risk. I must consider how the threat of arbitrary government action could undermine the value of my investments. However, recent events show that political risk is now greater here than abroad, and U.S. assets, which have historically traded at premium valuations based on faith in our legal system, will soon trade at discounts to reflect this new threat. The fear of having contracts abrogated or property rights violated when doing so serves some contrived greater good will substantially raise our cost of capital and further reduce our competitiveness.

For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read Peter Schiff’s book "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse".

We closer we look at the $5 billion money trail left on Capitol Hill from 1998 to 2008, the more last autumn's "Banskters' Bailout" resembles patiently planned looting.

On 9 March 2009, MSNBC Countdown's Keith Olberman cites chapter and verse in chronicling how banksters bought and paid for Congress to remove all financial safety nets to leave consumers--but especially homebuyers--protectionless against illegal financial scams.

As the biggest financial heist in American history become patently obvious to so many, we wonder what draconian containment strategies our Ruling Elite will deploy to save themselves from an eventual public backlash.



Here's an excerpt of a 4 March press release by Robert Weissman and Harvey Rosenfeld of Wall Street Watch--the group publishing a 231-page report (pdf; executive summary here) Olberman references in the first minute of his 9 March report--that characterizes the backroom machinations and resultant snake-oil deal made by Wall Street.

Steps to Financial Cataclysm Paved with Industry Dollars

March 4 - The financial sector invested more than $5 billion in political influence purchasing in Washington over the past decade, with as many as 3,000 lobbyists winning deregulation and other policy decisions that led directly to the current financial collapse, according to a 231-page report issued today by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation.

The report, "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America," shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation. Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone. The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led to the financial meltdown. These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act to stop predatory subprime lending.

"The report details, step-by-step, how Washington systematically sold out to Wall Street," says Harvey Rosenfield, president of the Consumer Education Foundation, a California-based non-profit organization. "Depression-era programs that would have prevented the financial meltdown that began last year were dismantled, and the warnings of those who foresaw disaster were drowned in an ocean of political money. Americans were betrayed, and we are paying a high price -- trillions of dollars -- for that betrayal."... read more

Do you think the 111th Democrat-controlled U.S. House Committee on Financial Services (Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA,chair) will exercise its prerogative to subpoena witnesses to investigate these allegations by MSNBC and Wall Street Watch?

Apart from a few self-promoting C-SPAN sound bites of feigned outrage enacted in hearings that legislators steered clear of in droves, Frank et al. have initiated no oversight or investigative measures into the wholesale looting.

That inertia remains the status quo even after Frank's committee in February uncovered Citibank's sweetheart bailout deal by which the bank, rather than pay back taxpayer bailout loans as originally planned by Congress in its 2008 legislation, allows it to stiff the U.S. Treasury--that's you and me, folks--with over $230 billion in toxic debt.

Can there remain any reasonable doubt that all this looting intends to kill democracy's best and final chance to counteract wealthy U.S. fascists' quest for more global wealth and total domination?

Just listen for two minutes as Rep. John Haller (R-PA) reads the raw wording of this bill up for a vote before the U.S. House last summer.

As he nears the end of his statement, the religious values Republican is so disturbed by the classified wording that he utters "Jesus...".

Just what the fuck are my good-for-nothing congressman and senator doing with--and for--their salaries?

The Wall Street thieves--AIG in particular served as a foreign money conduit--continue to loot the U.S. Treasury with impunity--and now for their bankster pals abroad.

When do we have enough of this sheep shearing? For Christ's sake...

I apologize for being delinquent in registering these elite felonies, but hey, it's hard to stay current with the Democrat-abetted Beltway crime spree begun on the Bush-Cheney watch.

Here's an excerpt from the George Washington blog's 9 March 2009 entry:

Your Hard-Earned Money is Being Shipped to France, Germany and China

Under the guise of "bailing out" AIG, your hard-earned money is actually being shipped by the U.S. government to:

• French banks Société Générale and Caylon

• Germany's Deutsche Bank AG ($6 Billion between mid-September and December 2008)

• Royal Bank of Scotland

• HSBC Holdings (England)

Moreover, bailout money that went to Citigroup was loaned to Dubai, bailout money that went to Bank of America China was invested in China, and bailout money given to JP Morgan was invested in India.

And the government is in the process of providing billions more - along with trillions more in guarantees of worthless assets - to sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds.

And remember that the U.S. may have already given hundreds of billions to foreign banks. Indeed, foreign banks - including certain Chinese banks - can receive bailout money through the TARP program itself.... read more

Amazingly, Fox News' Fresno, California affiliate carries this 7.5 minute interview, at the end of which the female co-anchor confess she's more than a little freaked-out by architect Richard Gage's cataloguing of evidence that supports the view of controlled demolitions brought down the three (yes, three) World Trade Center buildings that fateful day.

Labels: 9/11, controlled demolitions, Richard Gage, WTC 7

The impending demise of mainstream print journalism is a proxy measure of our compromised Fourth Estate: The colossal disparity between urgent post-9/11 news read on the internet and what major U.S. papers instead printed as "news" finally is catching up with those sold-out cowards of mainstream journalism.

Of course, we are compelled to read news item online from a UK news daily:

... Philadelphia has all modern America can offer, for better or worse: wealth, crime, politics, sports, art and culture. But what it might not have soon is a newspaper.

It is running in a race no one wants to win: which major US city will be the first to lose all its daily papers? Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco, Miami, Denver and Newark are just a few of the other reluctant participants. The impact of losing all newspapers in these cities is potentially profound; many fear it would be a blow to American democracy. They worry that the watchdog role the press has played will be removed. The bedrock on which much of civic society has been built since colonial times will start to crumble. Yet one of these cities could lose all print news within a year.

Since the 1980s, internationally renowned social and media critic Noam Chomsky systematically revealed the deeply flawed nature of U.S. print coverage, characterizing American news reporting generally as propaganda --as supportive of anti-democratic thievery promulgated by a national but increasingly global elite.

Doesn't that aptly characterize the Bush-Cheney White House?

The internet and blogosphere's post-9/11 reportage of the B & C White House's democracy fire sale enabled Americans as never before to witness in real time Chomsky's "propaganda model" of US news coverage.

All you Big Papers that refused to tell the truth and stubbornly insulted the intelligence of your readers, I pray your demise is as soon as it is peaceful.

I confess I have moments when I miss unCurious George W. and his inane idiocies he so generously splashed across America's TV screens; I miss all his graceless spiting, nose-scratching, winks, nods, smirks and chronic inability to employ a successful three-syllable word vocabulary.

Bush oratory skills serves as an apt metaphor for the state of American democracy in the 21st century.

Granted, Obama is the kinder-gentler supporter of the wealthy and their fascism who oratory prowess is easy on the eye and ear; I'll eventually adjust.

But Bush's eight-year white House residency left me a lingering near-addiction for official idiocy.

Those TV nasties the Young Turks serve up in the clip about 10-minutes of Shurb's unbelievable impersonation of a world leader with an IQ of 78.

God bless you, George. Hope the alcohol is still holding out for you there in Crawford, Texas. But, hey, now you got Secret Service to make those 2AM runs for you to the liquor store in Fort Worth.

Glad I could contribute more of my tax dollars to another worthy Bush cause.

Labels: Doofus Boofus Bush, Shurb

Another onair affair at Fox News with an informed puglist refusing to fit into prefabricated conceptual box favoring the American ruling elite and their wealthy supporters.

Virg Bernero, major of Lansing, Michigan, provides a Fox News pundit "Greg" some basic schooling in American Class Economics 101.

It's so refreshing to hear an interview--albeit, one-sided--situate Wall Street bailout thievery in proper context of US "thirdworldization"--the "race to the bottom.

Greg, buddy, you were so lame at defusing the "class bomb" Major Bernero dropped on your set. Your hopwnder and Aussie "Rupert, Rupert" won't be pleased with your inability to shout down, Hannity-style, a guest unwilling to talk out of the economic and conceptual box you pundits force them them in.

While the Democratic Party once was populated by the likes of Virg Bernero, we now have collosal sell-outs of the Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid variety "looking out" for the rights of working-class America.

"Findings suggest asset forfeiture is a dysfunctional policy. Forfeiture programs, while serving to generate income, prompt drug enforcement to serve functions that are inherently contradictory and often at odds with the demands of justice."--Mitchell Miller & Lance H. Selva, Drug Enforcement's Double Edged Sword: An Assessment of Asset Forfeiture Programs (Twelve month empirical examination of the implementation
of laws from within the forfeiture program)

Here's a wager for you: FOX News Network has never reported on the rampant confiscation of property of Americans never charged with a crime.

In April 2000, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR), a California-based educational and public advocacy 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was instrumental in partially rectifying the rampant but legal confiscation of property by championing the nation's first federal legislation to reform civil asset forfeiture abuses by law enforcement officials around the U.S.

According to a 1994 report by PBS drug war correspondent Kyla Dunn on abuses in federal asset forfeiture

According to a report prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee, at least 90 percent of the property that the federal government seeks to forfeit is pursued through civil asset forfeiture. And although forfeiture is intended as punishment for illegal activity, over 80% of the people whose property is seized under civil law are never even charged with a crime according to one study of over 500 federal cases by the Pittsburgh Press. For this reason, critics say, the system can run roughshod over the rights of innocent property owners--and fail to distinguish them from the guilty.

The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA) simply reaffirmed basic constitutional rights we wrongly assumed existed for those innocent of any crime. CAFRA required the federal government

• must prove its case;
• is liable for damages to seized property; must return property to owners pending trial when possession would cause substantial hardship;
• may no longer require an owner to pay 10% cost bond just to contest the forfeiture in court;
• can no longer forfeit property from owners who prove their innocence; and
• must appoint counsel to some indigent claimants.

Apparently after passage of CARFA, states, county and city law enforcement agencies have taken the pace of federal agencies by ratcheting up passage of local asset forfeiture laws. The catch? Local law enforcement must rake a percentage from the top to pass along to the feds.

Amtrak Snitches on Americans

To circumvent CARFA's commonsense provisions, the feds also sought our some unusual
recruits to enlist int he "war on drugs." For example, the cash-strapped and underfunded public train system Amtrak have signed up with the DEA for 10% "revenue sharing."

The 24 June 2001 issue of the St. Petersburg Times (FL) reported this story:

Amtrak, the financially struggling national passenger rail system, has found a new way to generate revenue: by snitching.

In return for sharing its passenger manifest with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Amtrak gets a bounty of 10 percent of any seizures made from its trains. DEA agents use the information provided by the railroad to determine which passengers fit a "drug courier profile." Riders unlucky enough to have paid for their tickets with cash or purchased tickets at the last minute are questioned by federal agents who board the train at the Albuquerque, New Mexico stop. If one of these travelers is carrying a substantial amount of cash, DEA agents confiscate it as a drug asset and Amtrak takes 10 percent off the top.

The abuses of civil forfeiture -- in which police agencies profit by confiscating money and property in the name of drug control -- are so widely known even a Republican-controlled Congress felt the need to address some of them, last year passing the Civil Forfeiture Reform Act. But those changes came too late for On Hoang Thach, a Vietnamese immigrant with limited English who had $148,000 taken from him by federal agents as he was traveling from California to his home in Boston. According to his attorney, Penni Adrian of Albuquerque, Thach, 26, was singled out for questioning in February 2000 because he had a minority-sounding name, had paid for his one-way ticket with cash and didn't give a call-back number at the time of the reservation.

During the stop in Albuquerque, Thach was approached in his roomette by federal agents. The DEA says Thach gave an agent permission to search the fanny pack he was carrying. But attorney Adrian said Thach didn't understand what was happening.

After the $149,000 was found in the fanny pack, which Thach claimed was gambling proceeds, the bills were taken outside to a drug-sniffing dog. But the dog did not alert to the presence of drugs. So the agents tried again with a second dog. It finally provided the desired result. (Despite studies that show upward of 96 percent of all money in circulation is contaminated with drug residue, police use drug-dog alerts as a basis to claim the money is part of the drug trade.) Thach was not charged with a crime, but he has had to post a $5,000 bond and hire an attorney to help him get his money back. The federal trial is set for October.

Certainly it is unusual and suspicious for someone to be carrying that kind of cash, but there was no actual evidence of wrongdoing. Thach was carrying legal tender, that is before the agents relieved him of it. And no doubt Amtrak got its piece.

Updated 2007 FEAR notices

The organization updated its 2007 bulletin list in October 2008. Check out the listing below and see what law enforcement out in your neck of the woods are up to on asset forfeiture.

Indexed 2006 archive of FEAR-List Bulletins with full texts from linked articles follow the 2007 list.

January 2007 FEAR-List bulletins plus the following full text articles:
February 2007 FEAR-List bulletins plus the following full text articles:
March 2007, FEAR-List bulletins, plus the following full text articles:
ABC News: April 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles: Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier, Waterloo, IA

---

May 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles:

U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, May 22, 2007:
State of Texas v. Soileau, No. 05-20501


June 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles:


Failure to put forfeiture order in final judgment= clerical error(???): US v. Koch, No. 05-4263


July 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles:
August 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles:

September 2007, FEAR-List bulletins plus the following associated articles:

October 2007, FEAR bulletins with associated articles:

November 2007, FEAR-list bulletins plus the following associated articles:

December 2007 FEAR-list bulletins plus the following associated articles:

Setting the Record Straight on FISA

==

January-February 2006 FEAR-List bulletins plus full text of linked articles
We're presently indexing FEAR-List bulletins posted in 2006, please check back soon for additional months

Earlier FEAR-bulletin archives:



Prior Index to our archive of FEAR-List bulletins (may contain links to articles that are no longer available)

If you would like to volunteer to help index bulletins from prior years, please contact Judy Osburn.

2004 - January February March

2003 - Partially indexed

Selected bulletins from FEAR-List 1998

Archive of Early FEAR-List Bulletins -- 1994 - 1996

Selected bulletins from FEAR-List 1998

Archive of Early FEAR-List Bulletins -- 1994 - 1996