Friday, August 24

Spy Chips May Get Schooled

Quietly becoming ever bigger and stronger, Big Brother soon may be embedded in British school children's clothing. For years, recent Harvard grad Katherine Albretch tried to warn us it was coming.

On Tuesday (21 August), the London Guardian reported a UK school uniform manufacturer was considering embedding tracking technology in clothing of that nation's public school students.

With wealthier parents who have children enrolled in safer private schools apparently underrepresented in an opportunist (read "invalid sampling") online survey, Trutex found sufficient parental and student concern with school violence and student safety to suggest the firm would review the problem.
The Lancashire company, which sells 1m blouses, 1.1m shirts, 250,000 pairs of trousers, 200,000 blazers, 60,000 skirts and 110,000 pieces of knitwear each year, commissioned an online survey for 809 parents and 444 children aged between nine and 16. It said 44% of the adults were worried about the safety of pre-teen children and 59% would be interested in satellite tracking systems being incorporated in schoolwear. While nearly four in 10 pupils aged 12 and under were prepared to go along with the idea, teenagers were more wary of "spying".

Clare Rix, the marketing director, said: "As well as being a safety net for parents, there could be real benefits for schools who could keep a closer track on the whereabouts of their pupils, potentially reducing truancy levels.'....
Katherine Albretch (right), a newly minted Harvard Ph.D., is the coauthor of Spy Chips: How Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move, a 2005 book suggesting this spy technology fulfills Christian prophecy auguring "the mark of the beast."She further claims "the plan" of the then "$10 billion-a-year customer surveillance industry" would end the Fourth Amendment and personal privacy by eventually "chipping" every product produced with minute radio frequency identification (RFID) tracking tags.

"The problem with RFID has to do with the fact that the RFID tags can be so easily hidden into products—things people buy and carry—and the reader devices [a separate but related RFID technology] can be so easily hidden into aspects of the environment. This makes it extremely easy for someone who wants to observe and watch people in these surreptitious ways to do so. We’ve identified three different arenas that the RFID threat could come from: marketers, the government, and criminals," Albretch told Mother Jones magazine in December 2005.

While "privacy" already may no longer exist as most Americans now understand it, few national media outlets (most noticeably television) deem the topic worthy of coverage.

"The book makes a very persuasive case that some of America's biggest companies want to embed tracking technology into virtually everything we own, and then study our usage pattens 24 hours a day. It's a truly creepy book and well worth reading," noted the Boston Globe in a review.

"A chilling story about an emerging future in which spychips run amok as Big Brother and Big Shopkeeper invade our privacy in unprecedented ways," opined the Chicago Tribune.

Albretch maintains retail giant Wal-Mart is the principal commercial promoter of RFIDs through pressuring their vendors to incorporate the devices into their products so, as Wal-Mart tells the story, can better track its warehouse inventory. Though the company vowed to never use RFIDs at the "customer level," in 2003 Albretch learned Wal-Mart and Proctor and Gamble was monitoring female customers at a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma store--and then lied to cover up the duplicity.
"It proves what we've been saying all along," says Katherine Albrecht.... "Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and others have experimented on shoppers with controversial spy chip technology and tried to cover it up. Consumers and members of the press should be upset to learn that they've been lied to."

The [Chicago] Sun Times also reported that a live video camera trained on the shelf allowed Procter & Gamble employees, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to observe the Lipfinity display and consumers interacting with it.

"This trial is a perfect illustration of how easy it is to set up a secret RFID infrastructure and use it to spy on people," says Albrecht. "The RFID industry has been paying lip service to privacy concerns, calling for notice, choice and control. But companies like P&G, Wal-Mart and Gillette have already violated all three tenets when they thought nobody was looking. This is exactly why we oppose item-level RFID tagging and have called for mandatory labeling legislation."....
But no such legislation ever was enacted, at either the state or federal level.

In February, Milkhouse Mouse reported on the burgeoning cottage industry of "anti-snoop" counter-spy technology for neutralizing radio tracking devices, citing specifically the "RFID zapper."

Related: See The RFID Journal: The World's RFID Authority

Wednesday, August 22

U.S. Democrats Summering, Canadain NDP Challenging SPP

While Washington, D.C.'s two-party dog-and-pony show, currently configured as the 110th "Democrat- controlled Congress," is benignly neglectful of what 2008 GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has described as an unconstitutional Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), Canada's New Democrat Party (NDP) remains the lone voice in North America's political wilderness challenging the US-Canadian-Mexican power elite's intercontinental unification plan in the interest of ordinary citizens.

The future of U.S. politics--the system of power that distributes this nation's limited natural and economic resources among American families--was painfully evident a month after midterm congressional elections last November.

Foreign and domestic policy--the management of natural resources, the annual distribution of billions of tax dollars and approves White House requests for war and funds it, etc.--would safeguard now only the interests of the 15-20% wealthiest families.

On the other hand, less fiscally endowed Americans were left with the unenviable option of fending for themselves on a revamped economic playing field tilted in favor of Corporate Amerika.

Last November, U.S. voters cleaned "house" on Capitol Hill, sweeping out moribund Republican slackers for Democrats who were to pursue, among other changes required to counteract a dictatorial White Houses, a "new direction in Iraq."

Then in early December, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) told Truthdig's Joshua Sheer that Democrat House leaders proposed funding the war in "recommending that the Democrats support the appropriation that is going to be brought forward in the spring, for the purposes of [continuing to fund] the war in Iraq."

That "bait-and-switch" tactical sell-out of voters is an apt metaphor for Democrat comportment since last January when they convened their first House majority in twelve years. Veteran Democrats John Conyers and Henry Waxman, chairmen of the House Judiciary and Government Reform and Oversight, respectively, are noticeably remiss in activating their new subpoena power after years of threatening the Bush White House with accountability on a range of issues.

Americans seeking a sanctuary from the political vacuum savaging their lives would do well immigrating to Canada. There the historically center-left New Democrat Party has resisted U.S. Democrats' easy willingness of scamming the constituencies.
The NDP grew from populist, agrarian and democratic socialist roots. Today it's known for its relationships with non-governmental organizations and organized labour. While the party is secular and pluralistic, it has a longstanding relationship with the Christan left and the Social Gospel movement, particularly the United Church of Canada. However, the federal party has broadened to include concerns of the New Left, which advocates progressive issues such as gay rights, peace, and environmental protection.
In an e-newsletter Monday (20 August), the NDP announced its opposition to the White House's Security and Partnership Plan before a two-day Canadian summit in Quebec among Bush and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts.
...During two days of meetings, Stephen Harper, George Bush and Felipe Calderon will talk about 'deeply integrating' more than 300 areas - including health, safety, and environmental standards - between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Canadians could join a race to the bottom and lose the ability to make our own rules on everything from food labels, drug safety, water exports, air quality and immigration, to the military. Despite the SPP's potential impact on everyday Canadians, we've been kept in the dark and without a say. CEOs have been invited to huddle with the leaders in Montebello but average Canadians and public interest groups are literally being shut out.

The NDP is blowing the whistle on the SPP. The party forced Parliamentary Committee hearings on the SPP in April and is calling for full legislative review, public debate and a parliamentary vote before the SPP goes any further.
NDP spokeswoman Jessica Johnson promises House debate in Ottawa when Parliament reconvenes after its summer recess. “When Parliament reconvenes in the fall, the House will be debating several anti-SPP motions brought forward by the NDP. It is interesting to note the relatively seamless transition from Liberals to Conservatives on this issue.”

But expect no comparable response to SPP to be undertaken by their Democrat colleagues in Washington. Adjourned the entire month of August, they return after Labor Day in time to switch their summer cottons for darker autumn fabrics in anticipation of the seasonal revival of the D.C. party circuit.

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Wednesday, August 15

Canadians Massing for SPP Protest This Weekend

This morning my email inbox contained notices of grassroot actions in Canada beginning Sunday to protest a secretive SPP meeting in Quebec involving George Bush and his Canadian and Mexican counterparts.

"What is the SPP"--the Security and Prosperity Partnership--you ask? According to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty in Toronto (www.ocap.org)
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was established in March 2005, at a summit of the Heads of State of Canada, the US, and Mexico held in Cancun.

The SPP is not an official treaty; it is not a law that will be debated in the House of Commons. As such, it has been able to escape public scrutiny, and has been negotiated by business and government representatives at meetings from which the press are excluded.

The founding premise of the SPP is that an agenda of economic free trade and national security will result in prosperity.

But prosperity for who?

Since the North American Free Trade Agreement has implemented in 1994, it has brought wealth only to corporations and to a slim business class, while increasing poverty and displacement for the vast majority of people. In Mexico, NAFTA has created a 6 million job deficit, and is responsible for the displacement of millions of farmers who have left their homes to find work elsewhere in the borderland maquilas, and in the US and Canada.
Posted to his U.S. House website on, appropriately, last Halloween Eve, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas--the GOP's populist presidential candidate for 2008-- detailed how "SPP" was politically correct jargon masking an impending North American Union, a political and economic amalgam promoted by a wealthy elite to the detriment of average Americans.

In discussing the planned "NAFTA Superhighway"--80 mostly toll "commerce corridors" slicing north and south throughout the U.S.--to physically link America with Canada and Mexico, Paul said the construction project "will require coordinated federal and state eminent domain actions on an unprecedented scale, as literally millions of people and businesses could be displaced. The loss of whole communities is almost certain, as planners cannot wind the highway around every quaint town, historic building, or senior citizen apartment for thousands of miles."

Is it any surprise Dr. Paul 's views are dangerous to the quiet sell-out of Americans, and thus regularly are censored (and here and here) by the elite-controlled mainstream media?

From Sunday until Tuesday (19 August-21 August), OCAP and other Canadian groups are organizing protests in Ottawa and Montebllo against the SPP/NAU.

OCAP lists the following sites for more information on those groups :

www.nowar-paix.ca
www.nowar.ca
www.acp-cpa.ca
www.psp-spp.com
www.canadians.org/integratethis
http://noii-van.resist.ca

Sunday, August 12

Playing with Old DC Paradigm of Dems v. GOP

Last Saturday, Politico.com staff writer Lisa Lerer (right) reported that several former Justice Department civil liberties lawyers were going against their professional nature to gird their loins for a battle royale in retaliation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for their caviler termination.
...

After months of scandal, firings and some testimony from Gonzales that many on Capitol Hill found wholly unsatisfying, these ex-Justice Department employees are taking a rare step and fighting back.

Former employees of the Civil Rights Division are channeling their workplace rage into lobbying force. The government lawyers say they were ignored, disrespected and kicked out by Bush appointees. The attorneys describe an increasingly partisan workplace, where political appointees intimidated career lawyers and undermined civil rights to push political agendas.

...For a government lawyer, it's the equivalent of going postal. "These are people who have spent their entire lives being loyal [to the department]," said Mark Agrast, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress focused on legal issues. "It goes against their grain to speak out."

With Gonzales squarely in its sights, Congress is paying close attention. New nominees to the department are ducking for cover. And the ex-employees are just getting started....more
My dear Lisa. Have you noticed that "Showtime" Gonzales has remained in the 11oth Dems' "cross hairs" since January? How is it possible that just lawmakers have not charged that chronic liar with perjury?

So you really believe "Congress is paying close attention" to Gonzales' former subordinates in the civil rights division?

Dear lady, do get a grip. Any American who can read and possesses an IQ above room temperature can't possibly believe Democrats are offering an substantive alternative to their cross-aisle "rivals."

I'm sorry for you.

Friday, August 10

Weekly Fascism Buzz

Music and Political Censorship

1. Pearl Jam's Nixed Message to Bush

Over the weekend AT&T gave us a glimpse of their plans for the Web when they censored a Pearl Jam performance that didn’t meet their standard of “Internet freedom.”

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines — “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” were somehow lost in the mix.

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band,” Pearl Jam band members stated....

AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany Nels said the company goofed. Its Blue Room website is open to Internet users of all ages, so it tries to block "excessive profanity" from the broadcasts. It hires contractors to monitor the performances, and the broadcasts are delayed slightly to enable monitors to bleep off-color material. But those monitors aren't supposed to edit songs, just the stage patter between them, Nels said. "It's not our policy" to censor performances, Nels said, "and we regret the error." She added, "There was no profanity. It was a mistake."...more

2. CIA Bankrupt Vietnam War Protest Balladeer Buffy Sainte-Marie

PHOENIX - Nearly two decades after Cree singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie's song ''Universal Soldier'' was released and shipments of her records mysteriously disappeared, the truth of the censorship and suppression by the U.S. government became public.

Now, in federal court, Charles August Schlund III stated he is a covert operative and supports Sainte-Marie's assertions that the United States took action to suppress rock music because of its role in rallying opposition to the Vietnam War.

Sainte-Marie says she was blacklisted and, along with other American Indians in the Red Power movements, was put out of business in the 1970s.

''I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that [President] Lyndon Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationary praising radio stations for suppressing my music,'' Sainte-Marie said in a 1999 interview with Indian Country Today at Dine' College.

''In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked,'' Sainte-Marie said....more

Note: In his 2000 book The Covert War Against Rock, author and radio commentator Alex Constintine argued that the government's suppression of anti-war musicians singing about social change also included assassination; he argues the deaths of "Jim Morrison, Tupac Shakur, Michael Hutchence, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Phil Ochs, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, John Lennon, and The Notorious B.I.G." were CIA hits to undermine powerful messages contained in their respective music.

Flashback on Missives by Conspiracy Writer John Judge

1. Vietnam War Truth Still Awaiting the Telling

.... As you note, the war continues to this day in its horrible effects, and people here and there are still dying from it. Three times as many veterans committed suicide on returning home as died in combat, over 150,000, when the VA cut off releasing statistics in the 1970s. The Vietnamese government under Thieu and Ky similarly refused to release further statistics when the birth defect rates reached 25%.

I worked with GIs and with returning veterans of that war for years, and they are all haunted by the lie and what they were forced to do. There is still hardly any forum for the truth that must be told before this country can heal or take enough responsibility to change. Denial and national amnesia are what the system wants so it can continue to fight its wars abroad and here at home.... more

2. 13 September 2001 Response to Friend's inquiry after Flight 77 Crash in DC

"I am ok thanks, I felt the Pentagon blast shake my windows and decided to take a small trip to the Maryland suburbs until the situation calmed down. It was heading fast to martial law early on here, and they were clamping the exits. So, I packed a bag and went to see friends beyond the play zone. Nasty stuff.

The non-response (ground-to-air missiles -ed) as the Dulles plane flew over the White House and turned to go into the Pentagon is inexplicable that late in the scenario unless this was in inside job. I am sure there is a false sponsor ready to be handed to us.

Now the global corporate/military state will divide the world into "freedom loving free market people" and "terrorists" (meaning anyone who stands up to the neoliberal takeover) and act in unison against them with impunity. The Congressional consensus will be used to bolster Pentagon budgets, create excessive security measures, limit civil liberties, unleash open CIA skulduggery, and attack progressive movements here and abroad.

Retaliation militarily is the most likely and the worst possible response to this, it will escalate it into a permanent war. Rumsfeld told the troops today to be ready to make many more sacrifices for a while. The fraudulent and failed missile defense will get funded I am sure.... more

Chinese Gov't. Now Requires Reincarnation Applications

FROM next month, Tibetan living Buddhas will have to apply for reincarnation to the Chinese Government.

The new rules are "an important move to institutionalise the management of reincarnation of living Buddhas," the Xinhua news agency said.

According to the regulations, which take effect on September 1, all reincarnation applications must be submitted to religious affairs officials for approval, Xinhua said.

China is ruled by the Communist Party, which, despite being officially atheist, maintains strict controls over Tibetan Buddhism and all other religions....more

McProgramming Sheeple

Children find food in McDonald's packaging up to six times more appetising than the identical snacks in plain wrappers, research shows.

The study, designed to gauge the power of advertising, revealed that boys and girls as young as three found food tastier when they thought it was made by a big brand.

The phenomenon is not just restricted to fast foods, with youngsters finding that milk and carrots tastier when they believed they had been bought at McDonald's....more

Zimbabwe Cites NSA Program to Justify "Dictator's Tool Kit"

Yesterday, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe “signed into law the controversial Interception of Communications Bill, which gives his government the authority to eavesdrop on phone and Internet communications and read physical mail.” In order to defend the law, which has been called “the dictator’s tool kit,” Mugabe’s spokesperson pointed to President Bush’s wiretapping program:

Human rights lawyer Otto Saki told VOA [Voice of America} that the law interferes and undermines the enjoyment of rights enshrined in the constitution and is a sign Mr. Mugabe wants to consolidate his power by “any means necessary or unnecessary.”

But Communications Minister Christopher Mushowe said Zimbabwe is not unique in the world in passing such legislation, citing electronic eavesdropping programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa, among other countries.

Thursday, August 9

Amerika Watch: White House Brown-Shirting More Civil Liberties, Tax Dollars

The Administration ... appears to have used the war on terror as an excuse to eviscerate the basic protections afforded to us in the Constitution....We have seen so many transgressions by this Administration that it is easy to forget last week's scandal amid this week's new outrage.--Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), 4 August 2006

Though regular mainstream media news consumers have little opportunity to appreicate the fact, the Bush-Cheney White House is steamrolling civil liberties--many already languishing on life-support--at a dizzying rate.

Consider some recent White House episodes of "fascism-ization" ignored by U.S. news outlets.

On 5 August, London's Sunday Times reported that 51 Filipinos were "kidnapped" --apparently with tacit approval of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--to construct the Oil Administration's massive new embassy in Baghdad's green zone. With a budget that ballooned to $1.3 billion, the "fortified embassy - a cluster of 21 high-rise towers occupying 104 acres on the west bank of the River Tigris - will house 3,000 staff. It is regarded as one of the most dangerous building projects in the world."

Heightened global antipathy aroused by post-9/11 American policies also has prompted a $17.5 billion construction budget for 150 new embassies, a plan the State Department is implementing at the expense of other federal agencies, including Health and Human Services.

Among the Filipinos laborers flying to Iraq was Rory Mayberry, a UK emergency medical technician. He recently told Congress that his fellow passengers became so outraged minutes after take-off on learning their destination was Baghdad instead of the United Arab Emirates printed on their boarding passes that an machine"gun-toting air steward" had to order them back to their seats.

“Let me spell it out clearly. I was being smuggled past US security forces,” Mayberry told the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee of the complicity of U.S. authorities; he worked only briefly at the embassy construction site because of the slave-like conditions.

In an asinine statement following Mayberry's testimony, Democrat Henry Waxman, committee chair, intoned that human trafficking and forced labor were "sending exactly the wrong message to Iraq and the rest of the world about U.S. respect for human rights.”
We all can hear those labor slavers quaking with fear, Henry.

The White House's full-spectrum fascism also landed much closer to home last week when the Transportation Security Agency set up two check points for riders on Indianapolis's bus system. Though passengers' could assert their 4th amendment right against unreasonable searches, most still willingly submitted to agents patting them down and looking through bags and parcels before boarding.

But it is whistleblowers--those who leak stories on the White House's illegal secret programs--who are its favorite target despite federal laws protecting them from retribution. Two recently were singled out for special legal abuse who in 2004 revealed the Administration's torture and covert wiretapping.

Last year, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "in the most astonishing way" purposely blew promised anonymity for Joe Darby, a military policeman at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison who leaked the infamous photos of sadistic torture and abuse of Iraqis by army comrades.

According to the BBC
[Darby] was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.

"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says....

"I was afraid for retribution not only from [those photographed torturing and abusing Iraqis], but from other soldiers," he says.

..After Donald Rumsfeld blew his cover, he was bundled out of Iraq and lived under armed protection for the first six months.
Just days before the Democrat-controlled U.S. House voted 227-183 to capitulate on the White House's warrantless spying on Americans, the FBI also arrested Thomas M. Tamm, the DoJ intelligence review official who leaked details of the program to the New York Times. At the White House's request, the paper withheld Tamm's revelations until December 2005.

Though Bush said the warrantless wiretapping that bypasses Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) review courts was a necessary response to heightened terrorist threats after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a declassified document revealed the eavesdropping on Americans' electronic communication before 9/11.

According to the aptly name blog Crooks and Liars:
This past week, the Bush administration added insult to injury over its illegal program of NSA domestic surveillance. During the very time Congress was debating codifying President Bush’s lawbreaking by revising the FISA law many of his allies have been afraid to publicly challenge as unconstitutional, Alberto Gonzales’ DOJ was raiding the home of a former Justice official to identify the person who first brought the illicit program to light.

As Michael Isikoff details in Newsweek, a team of FBI agents raided the home of Thomas M. Tamm, a veteran prosecutor and former official of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) within DOJ:

The agents seized Tamm’s desktop computer, two of his children’s laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.

Even as Alberto Gonzales’ was feebly deflecting perjury charges by apologizing for “creating confusion” with his comments about “no serious disagreement” in 2004 within the administration over its NSA homeland spying scheme, the Attorney General was dispatching the FBI to investigate one of those purportedly disagreeable officials. Read on
The American Civil Liberities Union has an online factsheet before the House's warantless-affirming vote covering "the top ten distortions and lies used by the Bush Administration to justify the illegal NSA spying, and the legal realities every American should know."
MYTH: This is merely a "terrorist surveillance program."
REALITY: When there is evidence a person may be a terrorist, both the criminal code and intelligence laws already authorize eavesdropping. This illegal program, however, allows electronic monitoring without any showing to a court that the person being spied upon in this country is a suspected terrorist.

MYTH: The program is legal.
REALITY: The program violates the Fourth Amendment and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and will chill free speech.

MYTH: The Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allows this.
REALITY: The resolution about using force in Afghanistan doesn't mention wiretaps and doesn't apply domestically, but FISA does--it requires a court order.

MYTH: The president has authority as commander in chief of the military to spy on Americans without any court oversight.
REALITY: The Supreme Court recently found the administration's claim of unlimited commander in chief powers during war to be an unacceptable effort to "condense power into a single branch of government," contrary to the Constitution's checks and balances.

Read more....MYTH: The president has authority as commander in chief of the military to spy on Americans without any court oversight.
REALITY: The Supreme Court recently found the administration's claim of unlimited commander in chief powers during war to be an unacceptable effort to "condense power into a single branch of government," contrary to the Constitution's checks and balances. Read more....
Congressional Democrats campaigned last fall as a viable ballast to the White House's industrial-strength assault on civil liberties and human rights. But to date they only have distinguished themselves by eager willingness to slather on more make-up for TV sound bytes lifted from their interminable dog-and-pony productions on Capitol Hill.

Saturday, August 4

The Progressive's Post-9/11 McCarthyism Watch

Since December 2001, Mathew Rothchild, editor of The Progressive, has compiled 21 web pages of post-9/11 attacks on American civil liberties through irregular updates to his "McCarthyism Watch."

Lest we forget, Joseph McCarthy (right), with three unimpressive years in the U.S. Senate after succeeding Wisconsin's venerable progressive Robert La Follette, "rose suddenly to national fame in 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of 'members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring' who were employed in the State Department" and other federal offices. "However, McCarthy was never able to substantiate his sensational charges."

His tactic of targeting his and the U.S. military's political opponents by alleging unsubstantiated claims was memorialized nationally as "McCarthyism," a practice supplanted in the 21st century by the Fox News Network signature slogan of "fair and balanced" to characterize routinely slanderous character assassination of political opponents palmed off on insentient viewers as objective journalism.

In the end, the hypocritical McCarthy's own demons brought him down. Besides being an alleged alcoholic, he also was scoring "his daily morphine script from Harry Anslinger, longtime head of the U.S. Federal Federal Bureau of Narcotics."

Below is page one of Rothchild's litany of modern day McCarthy-esque attacks on civil liberties.

White House Manual for Silencing Critics

July 9, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

The document does contain a warning in bold, however: "Remember—avoid physical contact with demonstrators." It also advises to make sure that whatever action is taken to drown out the demonstrators does not "cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone."

Santorum Aides, State Trooper, Settle Lawsuit with Bookstore Customers

June 27, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“It was totally unacceptable that we were led out of the bookstore like criminals just because we wanted to have a conversation with the Senator,” says the lead plaintiff.

Muslim American Detained at Border for Fifth Time, Agent Asks Him about Article at Progressive.org.

June 25, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“I was put up against the wall and thoroughly frisked—any more thoroughly and I would have asked for flowers.”

Long Island Poet Deprived of Being Named Laureate Because of his Anti-Bush Writings

June 6, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“I am disappointed because I did look forward to reaching out and telling people to enjoy poetry. I believe in poetry, I believe poetry can move people.”

Iraq Vet Faces Penalty for Protesting War

June 1, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“Those who have risked their lives to defend the rights of all Americans have a special claim to those rights when they have completed their service,” says Adam Kokesh, who served as a Marine sergeant in Fallujah.

Vet Prosecuted for Opposing Recruitment in Library

Vet Prosecuted for Opposing Recruitment in Library
May 14, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

His wife was putting up 3x5 cards on the window of the room used by the recruiters.

“Don’t fall for it! Military recruiters lie,” said one.

“It’s not honorable to fight for a lying President,” said another.

Then the police came.

Top Teacher Shown the Door After Showing “Baghdad ER”

Top Teacher Shown the Door After Showing “Baghdad ER”
May 10, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“Teachers that teach against the grain often have difficulties with school systems. What has happened to me is certainly not unusual.”

Muslim American Grilled at Border Over Religion, Letter to the Editor

Muslim American Grilled at Border Over Religion, Letter to the Editor
May 9, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“Now, not only am I being persecuted for my faith, but I’m being persecuted for a personal opinion. This is getting too Orwellian. Is this what it comes down to? Is this where I live? Is this the country I love?”

Woman with MPEACHW Plates Prevails

Woman with MPEACHW Plates Prevails
May 8, 2007 By Matthew Rothschild

“This has been literally one of the most significant experiences of my life,” she says. “It’s been absolutely humbling to see how many people were willing to go to bat for me on this issue.”



Friday, August 3

Feds Begin "Operation Pat Down" for Indianapolis Bus System

Will Transportation Security Agency searchers soon be showing up at bus stops in your home town to condition you to the new Police State via bus stop pat downs and bag searches?

I can't believe this is happening in America--in Indianapolis. But here's what an Indy Star "staff" writer reported on 2 August:
Screeners from the Transportation Security Administration checked passengers at two Downtown city bus stops this morning, looking for weapons and suspicious behavior.

David Kane, federal security director for TSA in Indianapolis, called it a "VIPR" operation.

"It's called Visual Intermodal Prevention Response. We have plainclothes inspectors, blue-gloved uniformed security officers who are checking baggage, the behavior detection officers, and federal air marshals, which are the law enforcement arm of TSA."

Security stations were set up at bus stops at Capitol Avenue and Market Street, and Ohio and Meridian streets.

Some passengers were patted down or submitted to having bags checked.

TSA said the searches were “by-permission,” meaning patrons could decline to be checked. Those who did would not be turned away, an official said, unless they otherwise appeared to be a security threat.
Line up sheeple and let the fascists pat you down--by permission only, of course.

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