Milkhouse Mouse

War crimes and crimes against humanity by any other name.... But, hey, who's to worry when given the option of watching the appropriately-named American Idol distraction appearing on Fox TV?

Though reported in November 2005, the two brief BBC news clips below to pertinent to the majority of Americans who never see mainstream media accounts about such atrocities committed with their money and in their name.

1. "US used phosphorous in Iraq"(88 seconds)

2. ...and civilians were killed, according to "US 'uses incendiary arms' in Iraq" (107 seconds)

Related: In March 2007, Milkhouse Mouse reported that Italian TV documented (25 minutes in clip #2) the US military's use of horrific laser weaponry on Iraqis during the 2003 battle for Baghdad international airport.

For those disheartened by today's fascist news report, patient readers will find a "cute" PG-13 YouTube.com joke twist at the very end. --ed.

Today's entry must go into that "Just-when-you-think-you've-heard it all" category....

Earlier this year, then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer penned a widely-circulated incendiary WaPo op-ed piece on another White House felony that preceded just by hours his very public outing for soliciting call girl services.

Titled "Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime," Spitzer on 8 February noted

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive "teaser" rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York's, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye....

If that isn't enough to sicken you, Sptizer further reported all legal attempts by the states' attorney general to hold the White House accountable

did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices.

In fine American post-9/11 journalistic fashion, no mainstream media report linked the coincidental timing of Stizer's allegation of abetting White House mortgage criminality to his very public outing later that day. (My local paper, now serving a community reeling from the mortgage scandal, refused to publish my letter pointing out that connection.)

So as the housing market for native born Americans floats belly-up under a desert noon day sun, House Democrat Barney Frank a week ago earmarked millions of US tax dollars for a "radical" DC nonprofit that advocates Mexican repatriation of the American Southwest to counsel illegal aliens about owning a home in the US.

According to Judicial Watch's 6 May blog entry:

An extremist Mexican “La Raza” group that annually gets millions of U.S. federal grant dollars will receive even more taxpayer money in the next few years thanks to a Massachusetts congressman’s multi million-dollar earmark to counsel Hispanics about housing.

The National Council of La Raza already got $1.3 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development this year to conduct “comprehensive housing counseling’’ for Hispanics, whether they are in the country legally or not. Now the radical group that advocates the return of the American Southwest to Mexico, will get an additional $15 million thanks to an earmark inserted by Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank in a housing bill.

Frank, the House Financial Services Chairman, is giving the National Council of La Raza $5 million this year and $10 million in each of the next two years. The new law (FHA Housing Stabilization and Homeownership Retention Act of 2008) includes $100 million for mortgage counseling to be administered by non-profit groups like the National Council of La Raza, which has raked in millions of taxpayer dollars over the year. In fiscal 2006 alone, the group got $15.2 million in federal grants.

Americans should be outraged that their tax dollars are going to a group that, not only advocates open borders but organized many of the country’s disruptive pro illegal immigration marches a year ago. Although the National Council of La Raza describes itself as the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, it actually caters to the radical Chicano movement that says California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas belong to Aztlan.

The takeover plan is referred to as the "reconquista" of the Western U.S. and it features ethnic cleansing of Americans, Europeans, Africans and Asians once the area is taken back and converted to Aztlan. While this may all sound a bit crazy, this organization is quite powerful and its leaders regularly attend congressional hearings regarding immigration.

The group uses its U.S. tax dollars to fund projects like a Southern California elementary school with a curriculum that specializes in bashing America and promoting the Chicano movement. The school's founder and principal, a Calexico-educated activist named Marcos Aguilar, opposes racial integration and says Mexicans in the U.S. don't want to go to white schools or drink from white water fountains.

So Commander-in-Ventriloquist Dick Cheney (not to be confused with his wooden Boy George puppet) waited three years before adding insult to grievous public injury by retaliating for New Orleans homeowner and physician Ben Marble's* anatomically impossible advice.



*You instead may prefer this slightly longer diagnosis by Dr. Marble, a man who operates with his own YouTube account.

A growing number of Americans share her conclusions regarding the country's most horrific terrorist attack in history: "The events of 9/11 have never been properly investigated. It's about time they were."

Tale of Building 7's collapse suggests official complicity, persistent obstruction

May. 3, 2008 12:00 AM
Regarding "Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid" (Editorial, April 24):

After three government investigations and more than six years, we still don't have answers on 9/11.

Why, for example, did Building 7 collapse? It wasn't hit by a plane, as the towers were. The 9/11 Commission Report completely ignores Building 7. The Federal Emergency Management Agency report discounts fire as a cause and concludes that the reasons for the collapse of Building 7 are unknown and require further research. But when FEMA issued this report, it already cleared the site and disposed of the dust and steel (evidence from a crime scene), thus possibly committing a felony and complicating any "further research."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, which evaluated the collapse of the towers, has yet to issue its report on Building 7. "We've had trouble getting a handle on Building 7," said the acting director of their Building and Fire Research Lab.

Yet a number of private-sector engineers, architects, and demolition experts have not had that problem. They think Building 7 came down by controlled demolition. The building collapsed suddenly, straight down, at nearly free-fall speed. People heard the explosions, and saw the squibs and the characteristic billowing clouds of pulverized concrete so unique to demolitions. There is no reason to think that Building 7 came down for any other reason than explosive demolition.

And speaking of pulverized concrete, fire does not pulverize concrete. Even the collapse of one floor upon another wouldn't pulverize concrete the way the Twin Towers disintegrated.

Think back to that day: Those towers didn't just fall down. If they had, we would have had huge chunks of concrete breaking apart and falling into a massive pile of rubble. The buildings likely would have toppled erratically sideways and left a much larger pile of debris.

But that's not what we witnessed. The towers didn't collapse - they disintegrated.

We watched them explode into dust, not knowing exactly what we were seeing. Very little intact concrete was found in the rubble. The sheer energy required to pulverize that much concrete into dust can only come from an explosive process.

Reputable scientists, engineers, architects and firemen with no political angle dispute the 9/11 Commission report and say that the evidence indicates the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down due to controlled-demolition explosions. Tests corroborate the presence of thermite, an explosive used in building demolitions, at the site of the Twin Towers and Building 7.

Thermite also explains the pools of molten steel in the basement, which no one has been able to otherwise explain and which the National Institute of Standards and Technology simply denies. Why is the government refusing to even consider demolition as a possibility? What are they afraid of?

Time magazine reported in September 2006 that 36 percent of Americans believe the government was complicit in 9/11. A Zogby poll reported that 51 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate 9/11 further.

Even the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission are upset with the commission report. They have accused the CIA and the military of "obstructing" the investigation. Former Commissioner Max Cleland resigned, stating that the Commission was "compromised." Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has criticized the report for its inaccuracies and unanswered questions.

The events of 9/11 have never been properly investigated. It's about time they were.

The writer, a Republican from Mesa, represents District 18 in the Arizona Senate.

I couldn't agree more, Senator--a personal view consigning both Johnson and I to the Main Core database of eight million Americans to be subjected for closer scrutiny in the event of a "national emergency":

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core... In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a "national emergency."

“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted.”--Recent InfraGard meeting attendee

In The Progressive's exclusive March 2008 cover story, Matthew Rothschild, the magazine's editor who eschews government "conspiracy theories," reported the civic concerns of an overwrought American businessman- turned-whistle blower who had heard of a disturbing secret government plan for "when--not if--martial law is declared" in the U.S.

The information emerged during the man's attendance at a regular meeting of InfraGard, a law enforcement-private business alliance chartered in 1996 now comprised of 23,000 business representatives and coordinated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security.

According to Rothschild story "The FBI Deputizes Business" first reported online 7 February:

One business owner...tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be....This business owner says he attended a small InfraGard meeting where agents of the FBI and Homeland Security discussed in astonishing detail what InfraGard members may be called upon to do.

The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.

But that’s not all.

“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.

I was able to confirm that the meeting took place where he said it had, and that the FBI and Homeland Security did make presentations there. One InfraGard member who attended that meeting denies that the subject of lethal force came up. But the whistleblower is 100 percent certain of it. “I have nothing to gain by telling you this, and everything to lose,” he adds. “I’m so nervous about this, and I’m not someone who gets nervous.”

Read all of Rothschild's startling story on The Progressive website, which also is archived here.

Then on 10 April the Mid-South news daily Memphis Commercial Appeal told readers of an impending weekend's "crime" and "terror" sweep, codenamed "Operation Sudden Impact, in which 50 law enforcement agencies effectively blurred all distinction between the two. Not surprisingly, no regional media account mentioned InfraGard, though the paper's account cited the Department of Homeland Security's concerns for business distribution infrastructure in an adjoining six-county area of the terror/crime sweep in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

"This is the first time a regional effort of this magnitude has ever been conducted," said Shelby County [Greater Memphis area] Sheriff Mark H. Luttrell Jr. said in a prepared statement. "We'll use this weekend's initiative as a starting point to begin a routine of sharing crime information among the various agencies."

Agencies involved include the FBI, the U.S. Coast Guard, area police and sheriff's departments, the U.S. Marshals, the Secret Service and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

"Many major industries are located in Shelby County," said Capt. Dale Lane, commander of the Sheriff's Office Homeland Security Bureau. "Our community is considered an international distribution center and is a possible target for terrorists. 'Operation Sudden Impact' will help us prepare for that possibility."

A week following Operation Sudden Impact--after the national media blackout of the training exercise that was characterized as of "unprecedented scope"--some observers believed more was afoot that weekend in Memphis than area news sources had led the public to believe.

A Washington state peace and justice group characterized the enforcement effort as a "martial training" exercise boding ill winds for US civil liberties. According to Jim O. Madison, an online writer for United for Peace in Pierce County:

An extraordinary police operation combining local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies took place in Memphis, TN, on Sat., Apr. 12, but received no coverage in the national media. -- WREG News Channel 3 reported briefly on Mon., Apr. 14, on the unprecedented event.[1] -- Dubbed "Operation Sudden Impact," the operation was "the first time a regional effort of this magnitude has ever been conducted," Shelby County Sheriff Mark H. Luttrell Jr. told the Memphis Commercial Appeal.[2] -- "Agencies involved include the FBI, the U.S. Coast Guard, area police and sheriff's departments, the U.S. Marshals, the Secret Service, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation." -- A Memphis TV station reported that the FBI seized computers from several local businesses.[3] -- One AP report said the operation resulted in "the arrest of 71 people, including 31 fugitives,"[4] and another said "332 people were arrested, 142 of whom are were fugitives."[1] -- A piece published in the Apr. 12 Commercial Appeal said the goal of the operation was "cooperation among agencies including the FBI, the Coast Guard, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, and local police and sheriff's departments," adding: "All crime-related information will be forwarded to the State of Tennessee's Homeland Security Center in Nashville to see if there are possible ties to terrorism."[5]

In support of his claim, Madison cited "conspiracy web site" InfoWars.com, hosted by Texas TV and radio host Alex Jones; a reader "called in to the Alex Jones show yesterday [Thursday, 17 April] to alert us to the story and explain that he had gleaned the information from a his friend, a sheriff's deputy in Memphis, who had described the operation as 'training for martial law in America'."

InfoWars.com correspondent Stephen Watson further reported

that "after 9/11 the Justice Department advised the Bush administration that it was able to effectively suspend the Fourth Amendment where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned...." We have seen how new provisions will effectively nullify the U.S. Constitution, and a recent spate of executive orders, in particular PDD 51, outline preparations for the implementation of open martial law in the event of a declared national emergency." -- (Watson was referring to National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-51/Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-20, sometimes called simply "Executive Directive 51" for short, which was posted on the White House web site on May 9, 2007, without other public announcement, and which specifies the procedures for continuity of the federal government in the event of a "catastrophic emergency.")

Yet another eerie news note to Operation Sudden Impact appeared 14 April (Monday) on a Nashville, Tennessee TV station's website demonstrating enforcement agencies' blurred distinction between crime and "terrorism," thus confirming the death of the Fourth Amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures.

Federal agencies raided several Memphis businesses in a coordinated effort to find information about possible terrorism ties...[and took] computers and paperwork....

One store owner said he was told the agents were looking for stolen electronics. While some business owners feel they are being targeted, law-enforcement officers said they are just trying to track down possible terrorists before something big happens. [emphasis added]

"What we have found traditionally is that terrorists are involved in a number of lesser known type crimes," said Mark Luttrell, Shelby County sheriff.

Hey, not to worry; it's just all a bad coincidence, right? We should be able to trust the Bush White House. There's nothing going on here...right?


Related: Watch, read and hear Mathew Rothschild's 11 February Democracy Now! interview with Amy Goodman.

The May/June 2008 issue of Radar magazine features this tidbit:

The Last Roundup
For decades the federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that would override the Constitution in the event of a terrorist attack. Is it also compiling a secret enemies list of citizens who could face detention under martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham

On 5 May, Legitgov.org offers this lead-in to Ketcham's article:

The Last Round Up By Christopher Ketcham 'One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect.' According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core... In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention. Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a "national emergency."

Labels: Infragard, martial law, The Progressive