Congressional hearings on Islam: Rise of the Fourth Reich

Congress will begin hearings Thursday on the threat of radicalization of Muslims, despite protests and questions of Islamophobia. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) who is the the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has stated that the goal of the hearings is "to establish and show the American people that there is a real threat of al-Qaida recruiting and of homegrown terrorists being self-radicalized within the Muslim community."

So in other words, it's stated purpose is propaganda. King has already made up his mind and now seeks evidence to support his biased position after the fact, and a pulpit from which to spread his message to the American people. In one breath he says that his only target is al-Qaeda, but in the next he talks about how the Muslim community is not doing enough to deter extremism in their midst.

But let's stop right there for a moment. Al-Qaeda. While the government and the media still use the term to instill fear in the hearts of Americans each day, it has been well established that there is no such thing as al-Qaeda. There is no monolithic terrorist network, there is no organization taking orders from Osama bin-Laden or any successors.



Okay, so there really is no al-Qaeda. But is there a threat from radicals and fundamentalists on American soil among American-Muslims? King brings up 9/11, of course. So ten years after the fact, Congress suddenly now finds the need to have these hearings on the threat of Muslim radicals in our midst? Let's not forget that the alleged 9/11 hijackers were not Americans. Not even Afhganis of Iraqis for that matter. They were mostly Saudi Arabians. That is of course, if you take the government's word for it.



Okay, so maybe there are still questions about 9/11, but we know there are religious radicals. The question then is, are religious fundamentalism really a threat here in America, domestically? Well, we know that the Oklahoma City bombing was done to avenge the deaths of radical Christians. That bombing was entirely domestic. Everyone involved were American citizens. So why did we never see Congressional hearings about Christian fundamentalists? Or, for that matter, radical elements within the U.S. Military? After all, Timothy McVeigh was a decorated war hero.



See our related article: Border War: The Blind Eye of America

In the wake of 9/11, such domestic threats are overshadowed by the fear of Muslim extremists, the sort who are alleged to have carried out the most spectacular act of terrorism the world has ever known. So how many extremist are there in the world? What are the chances of something like that actually happening again ? What is the real threat? One in five people on the planet are Muslim, yet the world is not ablaze with daily horrific acts of terrorism in the name of Islam. The reason for this is that the fraction of Muslim fundamentalists which exist could be likened to what the Ku Klux Klan or the Westboro Baptist Church is to Christianity.

Now among that faction of radical Islam, we actually have to look a little deeper too. How many Muslims are really so committed to their rhetoric, that they are willing to die for it? How many would act, and not just spew hate speech? A much smaller percentage again, to be sure. Just like the KKK and their ilk, they talk a good line, but when was the last time you heard of a Klansman even going to prison for his beliefs, much less dieing for them? But let's go ahead and assume that some of these Muslim radicals are a little more committed than their Christian counterparts Out of what is estimated to be a few thousand truly hardcore radicals around the globe, from more than a billion Muslims, how many would actually be able to carry out an attack on American soil? Especially one anywhere near the scale and complexity of 9/11. How many radicals would actually have the will, the commitment, the capability, the skills, the connections, and the resources to carry out such an attack? When you think about it that way, it's pretty hard to imagine how a ragtag group of hard-drinking strip-club visiting cocaine snorting supposedly strict adherents of fundamentalist Islam were able to even carry out 9/11 in the first place.

Of course, that doesn't mean the Muslim terrorists didn't actually carry out the 9/11 attacks. That can be debated elsewhere. It also doesn't mean that it would be impossible for Islamic radicals to carry out a terror attack, on any scale, here on American soil, however unlikely that prospect might be. But is that enough to have Congressional hearings singling out Muslims as a threat or as harboring a threat against the American people?

According to the official story, Muslim radicals are responsible for 2,998 American deaths, in one, single, coordinated attack on American soil. Last year, 5,890 people were murdered by a black person. This means that in 2009 you were almost twice as likely to be murdered by a black person, than you were to be killed by a radical Muslim in the year the attacks actually happened. Now compound those odds over a ten year period, since 2001, in which no more attacks have happened, and you can see that blacks are are a far greater threat to Americans than any Muslim.

Oh, did you find that offensive? Good. Because these hearings are just as offensive, with even less merit.

Some have called these hearings a return to McCarthyism. No folks, it is far worse than that. This is the face of Fascism, on the order of what happened in Germany in the few short years before the Holocaust. This isn't about political ideals. This is about the United States Congress making an open attack on a religion, with strong racial and ethnic overtones.

The only question then is, why? Feel free to contact us if you really don't know at this point, but let's finish off with this. There is no real threat from Muslims. No more so than any other group of people, far less in fact. You are twice as likely to be crushed under a vending machine than you are to be killed by a terrorist. Your odds of being killed in a 9/11 style terror attack are about 8 million to one. You have a better chance of being struck by lightning... four times.

Tea Party or Brownshirts?

Alaska Dispatch editor and founder Tony Hopfinger was arrested Sunday as he posed questions to U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller. Following a town hall meeting at Central Middle School in Anchorage, Hopfinger pressed the Sarah Palin endorsed candidate if he had ever been reprimanded for politicking and other irregularities while working at the Fairbanks North Star Borough in 2008. Bodyguards told him to stop asking questions, or leave the public school building. The henchman refused to identify themselves, but threatened to arrest Hopfinger for trespassing, then acted, putting the journalist against the wall in an armbar and then slapped on a set of handcuffs, stating that he was now under arrest.

During his detainment, other reporters began filming and posing questions to Hopfinger, at which point the security detail also threatened to arrest them and pressed them down the hallway away from the detainee. After about 30 minutes, Hopfinger was finally released when Anchorage police arrived and refused to take him into custody.

In the wake of the arrest, Joe Miller told Fox and CNN on Monday that he had been required to bring his own private security detail for his town hall meeting at Central Middle School. The school district said that they made no such requirement however, that a hallway monitor and parking lot monitor were all that was expected. The Miller event failed to meet their contractual obligation to make an “expectation speech” at the beginning of the event, reminding people to be respectful, to park properly, and to remain only in permitted areas.

It is left to Anchorage Municipal Prosecutor Al Patterson to decide whether to charge Hopfinger with trespassing and assault alleged by the security team now identified as Dropzone Security Services. The basis of the assault charge stems from the fact that the Anchorage Dispatch editor shoved one of the guards. He counters that it was a defensive move to counter the encroachment upon his freedom of movement by the guards, which is a violation of his civil rights and can lead to liability under false imprisonment or even kidnapping if he was not breaking any laws by being there. But were the guards legally justified in making such a detainment, blocking his freedom of movement, based on a charge of trespass? Perhaps.

What many folks don't realize, is that private security actually have more authority than a police officer in some respects. Whereas a police officer must establish probable cause to make an arrest, a security contractor has no such obligation and can dictate conduct arbitrarily and at his own discretion as a contract agent of another person or the place being guarded. Something to think about there folks. Another unseen but potent facet of the corporate sponsored police-state that has been built up around us. Private security have more power than your local public servant peace officer. So long as they are operating within the confines of their contractual agreement.

In other words, yes, security guards can in fact kick you out of a public school that has been rented out for private use, and arrest you for trespassing if you refuse to leave. More on that in a moment though. This is hardly the sort of thing that a U.S. Senate hopeful should be endorsing anyway, legal or not. Refusing to answer a reporter's questions certainly leads one to conclude that the candidate might be trying to hide something that the public should know. Even if it were simply frivolous badgering by a reporter, having that reporter arrested hardly seems to be the sort of conduct we should expect from a Senate hopeful at a political event which the public had been invited to, even if it was paid for with private campaign funds. This was not some private fund-raising dinner in a hotel where a heckler came in and started upsetting tables. This was a public “town hall” meeting at a public school. Having a reporter arrested for asking questions hardly seems to be an expression of freedom and openness by a man hoping to represent Alaska in the United States Senate. And so much for the lip-service given to Constitutional liberty by right-wing politicians. Once again we see that there is an asterisk next to freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, that reads, “in designated areas, by permit only” where contract law supersedes the Constitution.

But had Mr. Hopfinger actually been trespassing in a designated area, privately secured under contractual agreement? The fact that the guards did not identify themselves and were not in uniform is one important point. If they failed to express by what authority the arrest was being made, the arrest may be invalid leaving them open to lawsuit for false imprisonment, even if they did in fact carry such authority. But did they even really have such authority there in the hallway of the school? No, in fact they did not. The event contract states that the district leased the stage, the cafeteria, and the parking lot, not the hallway in which the arrest took place. Therefore, those security agents had no more authority to arrest him there than if he were standing on a public street corner yelling through a bullhorn. They cannot charge that he was trespassing in an area in which they had no contractual authority over, any more than they could walk into a public school and arrest anyone they want on any other day.

Another sticking point is that Dropzone Security was practicing security without a business license. That's correct, Joe Miller hired a rogue, unlicensed security firm for his event. Depending on the laws of the state, this may in fact be a crime, and Dropzone is also in violation of the law. The IRS might also be interested look into the fact that this company has been operating a for-profit venture without a license for almost a year now. And hopefully Mr. Miller's accounts are in order as well, as to how he was actually paying this fly-by-night outfit. Regardless, the fact that Dropzone security no longer exists in the eyes of the law invalidates all authority of Dropzone security personnel and their contractual agreements. Now if each individual was contracted to Joe Miller directly, then we would have to look at their individual security licenses, and their personal contract agreement with him. That would also mean, that they were acting as private bodyguards, and not as event security staff, which also mean that they had no authority to make an arrest based in trespassing.

A little sidebar here for a moment. The authority of a security guard emanates from what some may call a citizen's arrest, or a private person's arrest as it is called in Alaska. This means that anyone can arrest anyone else if they witness that person commit a crime. If you contract to perform this task on behalf of another person or organization, this is called practicing security, and requires a license issued by the state. So contracting without a license is illegal, but you still have a right as a citizen to make an arrest when you witness a crime. So then, could these security guards have still made the arrest then, even if the contract with their employer was invalid? No, because as we said, the event lease only covered the stage, cafeteria, and parking lot, therefore the crime of trespass did not in fact occur. At that point, only an authorized representative of the school district could have validated such a charge.

Now back to the identity of the security guards. Each individual failed to identify themselves, to properly display or to provide on demand their Alaska state license to practice security, to identify the company they were working for, or to otherwise state by what authority the arrest was being made. As if that weren't bad enough, as it turns out, two of the guards that assisted in the arrest and tried to prevent reporters from filming the detention, are active duty soldiers of the United States Army, 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade at Fort Richardson. That's correct, the United States Army has now become directly involved in bullying and detaining reporters in public for political reasons. It should be noted however, that public information officer Maj. Bill Coppernoll has stated the soldiers did not have permission from their current command to work for Dropzone. That point of course could further complicate the validity of the arrest, and strengthen the case for a counter-suit of false imprisonment if Hopfinger should he decide to prosecute.

In short, the press is being bullied, detained, and accused of committing criminal activity by members of the U.S. Army on behalf of a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, after daring to ask questions about that candidate's improper use of public resources for partisan political activity. Brilliant.

DoD DIRECTIVE 1344.10

SUBJECT: Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty


b. A member on AD shall not:

(1) Use his or her official authority or influence for interfering with an election; affecting the course or outcome of an election; soliciting votes for a particular candidate or issue; or requiring or soliciting political contributions from others.

...

(3) Participate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions.

Having active-duty military forces participate in partisan politics is un-democratic to say the least. Soldiers tieing up journalists on behalf of political candidates is so far over the line that it really calls into question just exactly what sort of country have we become. And what sort of candidate for the Senate would come out to emphatically support what happened? The true nature of of the Tea Party is revealed to be more authoritarian and fascist in practice than the “small government, pro-constitution” soundbites they offer up to the media. Yes, this is Joe Miller, Tea Party favorite. He refuses to speak to the press outside of carefully staged engagements, and uses the United States Army to threaten and imprison journalists in public should they dare to ask questions outside of his campaign format.



Alaska Dispatch editor detained at Miller event


Miller bodyguards at forum included active-duty soldiers


Breaking news from “Sarah Palin's Alaska”

CIA Psyop: Cordoba Initiative

“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.” ~Adolf Hitler

Wise words, from an evil man. How easily the masses are manipulated through emotion, that they will ignore all reason, not only allowing their most cherished values to be pushed aside, but demanding that they be swept away, so as to assuage their own anger and sadness. No case in recent history exemplifies that more than the fervor over the Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan. In a frenzy the people chant, “No mosque at Ground Zero!” Well folks, there are no plans for a mosque at Ground Zero. There are plans for a cultural center two blocks away from Ground Zero. Would there be such outrage if there were plans to build a Young Men's Christian Association (Y.M.C.A.) two blocks away from the site where a Christian fundamentalist blew up a Federal building, in Oklahoma City? Certainly not. But in this case, Americans are suddenly not only willing to allow, but are demanding that the government step in and trample the most very basic values of what it means to be an American in the first place. Have we made such great strides against racism and bigotry in this country, only to revert back to a “no n@ggers in this neighborhood” mentality?

The project for this cultural center was was begun in 2004. Their objective, to restore the old Burlington Coat Factory building and to upgrade the premises so that it is more suitable housing for a cultural center rather than the mosque that has already been operating there since the project's inception. Any city might be grateful for such a project restoring a dilapidated old building to improve a blighted property right smack dab in the middle of the busiest part of town. New York City may in fact be grateful for such development, but it is a national, even an international issue now. Suddenly after more than six years, and just in time for midterm elections with a Democrat as President and a Democrat controlled Congress, this smear campaign is launched into the headlines and used as a rallying cry by Republicans and their more rabble-rousing counterparts in the Tea Party movement.

But this isn't just about Republicans and Democrats. It never is anymore. As we have pointed out here before at the MSMReview, it is never as simple as Left vs. Right, and both parties are little more than two faces of a self-serving monolith giving the appearance of choice to the humble and near-sighted masses. By hobbling the Democrats in this election, it will become all the more easy to justifiably maintain the status-quo and to marginalize the chances of any real productive business from being done at all in Washington for another two years, as each side blames the other for the stalemate in any proposed initiative. At the same time it gives the power to the Democrat President to prosecute war in the middle-east as aggressively as his Republican predecessor, who's policies he has done nothing to reverse despite his posturing and promises before the last election. Anti-Muslim sentiment has been restored to its zenith, and is more deep-rooted now than ever before. Meanwhile, through the tactical application of propaganda, Conservatives have been made utter fools of, exposing their bigotry to anyone who is bothering to look at the situation with reason rather than emotion, having completely undermined the most revered tenets of Conservative philosophy for which they have always stood. How easily undone the traditional defenders of Constitutional liberty.

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

~Former Republican Presidential candidate, Congressman Dr. Ron Paul

Ron Paul's complete statement


By whom indeed. There is no political gain here for either Democrat or Republican. They both lose, as do the American people. So who really is behind all of this?

The Cordoba Initiative is the non-profit group leading the project to build the cultural center since it was founded in 2004 by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Several media outlets have tried to make the weakest of links between Rauf and any number of extremist organizations, and even Iran. What you don't see being played on a loop over your television set is that Imam Rauf has worked for the FBI as a counter-terrorism consultant. And what you don't see blazoned across the headlines of your newspaper is the fact that he also worked as a spokesperson for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, Karen Hughes, during the Bush administration, as she headed up propaganda efforts in the Muslim world. Bush's favorite Imam traveled side-by-side with Hughes, attended the 2006 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar, and went to Morocco in 2007. So while some have tried to paint it that he has been traveling to the middle-east to collect funding from terrorists for the building project, it appears that he has actually been on diplomatic missions for the United States.

GZ Imam Helped FBI
Karen Hughes Opposes Cordoba House

Imam Rauf is not the only character in this story though. Another quite interesting person comes into play, far away from the media glare, offering up nearly a hundred-thousand dollars in seed money for the project between 2006-2008. The money reported to be their entire operating budget at that time came by way of the Deak Family Foundation, headed by one R. Leslie Deak, 52, a native of Scarsdale NY, who has served on the board of advisors for the Cordoba Initiative since its inception. His resume reports that he has “in-depth personal and business experiences in the Middle East.” He was born a Christian, converted to become an Orthodox Jew when he married, but then later divorced and again converted his religion, this time to Islam, when he married Moshira Soliman, with whom he shares a home in Rye NY. At least part of the year anyway, as he spends six months of the year in Egypt.

Resume on Linked In

Looking into Deak's background we see that he graduated from college with a bachelor's degree in international economics, but apparently didn't need to go much further in his education after going to work for his father, Nicholas Deak. The elder Deak had been an intelligence commander for the OSS, the predecessor of CIA, during WWII. He went on to found Deak & Co.which, along with subsidiaries, became one of the top gold and currency dealers in the world, controlling 20% of all retail gold sales in the U.S. and was the leading seller of the South African Krugerrand. Leslie Deak became Executive Vice-President of the the company. In 1978 the firm was convicted in Federal court and fined, for failing to report millions of dollars in large currency transactions with two Philippine businessmen. Then, in October 1984 the firm came under fire in a report by the President's Commission on Organized Crime alleging that their firm had been involved in a money laundering operation with Colombian drug cartels who had reportedly been bringing bags of cash, amounting to millions of dollars, right into the firm's NY offices. By December the firm had filed for chapter 11 reorganization in bankruptcy court. In November the following year, a deranged homeless woman walked into their offices, shot and killed the receptionist, and then murdered the company's founder, Leslie Deak's father Nicholas.

After the bankruptcy, the Deak empire was broken up and sold in pieces but continued to operate. One company that traces it's roots back to the original corporation is Goldline International Inc. Goldline sponsors Conservative talking-head Glenn Beck among others. The company is now under investigation by a U.S. Congressional committee as well as local authorities in California, and is the target of a class-action lawsuit for trying to dump debased product onto gullible customers. The 300-employee company is projected to have revenues in excess of $1 billion for 2010/11. Glenn Beck is aired on FOX News, which is a subsidiary of News Corp., who's second largest shareholder is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who also happens to be funding Imam Rauf's projects. As comically pointed out by humor-newsman Jon Stewart, the right-wing media company railing against the Cordoba Initiative, are actually the ones “funding terrorism” as they like to put it. The right wing media is railing against an initiative that they themselves are funding by proxy.

HUFFPO article with Jon Stewart video included
Wikipedia - Goldline International
Goldline.com

Now let's take a look at another item on Mr. Deak's resume, to see if we can see any other interesting coincidences. In the same time period that he gave nearly a hundred-grand to the Cordoba Initiative, he gave about as much to the National Defense University Foundation. The NDU is a network of research centers and strategy/war colleges, including the National War College, all under the direction of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Deak's own resume makes it clear that he is a much more active part of operational national security than simply a donor to defense education. His resume describes his affiliation with the NDU under this entry:

Director
National Defense University Foundation
(Non-Profit; Fund-Raising industry)
2003 — Present (7 years )
Raising funds to support unfunded initiatives at National Defense University, the preeminent strategic educational facility of the United States.

Selected by Secretary of Defense to Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. Participate in briefings with base commanders and Joint Chiefs on issues, operations and strategic objectives.

Deak sits on the board of directors chaired by one Mark Treanor. Mr. Treanor was Senior Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Wachovia Corporation between 1998 through the collapse in 2008, and a major consolidator of campaign donations for the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008. Coincidentally enough, Wachovia also had their hands in some serious drug-money laundering, like the Deak family had been accused of years earlier. Now owned by Wells Fargo, Wachovia recently paid a $160 million settlement to end a criminal probe of money laundering for drug cartels through Mexican exchange houses admitting “serious and systemic” violations of the Bank Secrecy Act failing to monitor $420 Billion in transactions. At face value, we might suspect that there might be some common bond of profiteering through illigal drugs, but it may be even more complex than that. It is well known by many that CIA has long been involved in the trug trade. So perhaps these businessmen have been operating fronts for that ubiquitous spy agency.

But is there any clue that Leslie Deak has any contact with anyone in the CIA? Even if he were in any way involved in business dealing with someone from the CIA, surely it wouldn't be a matter of public knowledge. Right? Well as a matter of fact, Deak's own resume once again gives us a clue. He lists himself as a business development consultant for Patriot Defense Group, LLC.

Who we are and what we do...

Patriot Defense Group, LLC. provides defense, security, and logistical services in support of corporate and government clients. We provide professional services, training, and logistics to those who defend America, her allies, and Fortune 100 companies in the defense, energy, financial, and media sectors. Our company is organized into two functional divisions to provide these specialized services.

Our defense and government services division focuses exclusively on the needs of the U.S. military and law enforcement communities as well as the requirements of friendly foreign governments. We focus our capabilities and resources to provide specialized training, curriculum development and logistics.
Our corporate services division, PDG Risk Management, provides business intelligence and specialized security services to corporate clients and high net-worth family enterprises. These services rely upon a unique composite team of operations officers drawn from the ranks of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. Our specialized security services are proactive and focus on protecting our clients' resources.

Management Team

Patriot Defense Group, LLC is a company with a wealth of experience. Our principal officers and contract cadre have served in contingency and other operational roles in every major conflict since the Vietnam War. You will not find a more qualified group of dedicated professionals to meet your organization’s needs.

PDG’s CEO and founder was an infantry platoon leader in Desert Storm; had two separate commands of a U.S Army, Special Forces Operational Detachment – Alpha (A-team); and served for nine years as a foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State in the Middle East supporting American foreign policy and economic initiatives.

The managing director of PDG's defense and government services was a CIA Operations Officer with extensive experience ranging from hostile environments in Asia and Southwest Asia to counterterrorism operations throughout the Middle East.

PDG Risk Management is led by a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Secret Service who worked on the personal security details of former Presidents Bush and Clinton. He went on to serve as the Director of Security for Shaw Engineering in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

http://www.patriotdefensegroup.com/index.php

Note that they do not name their managers. They do however name their strategic advisors. Alexander Cappello, finance and banking guru. The military man, General Doug Brown (U.S. Army, Ret.), who commanded the the entirety of US special operations forces, leading the War on Terror, until his retirement in 2007. The spook, James L. Pavitt, former Deputy Director for Operations at CIA, who controlled half of CIA's budget and a third of their deployed personnel. And then there is Leslie Deak, the “business development consultant” who will match this outfit with clients and financing.

Seems that Mr. Deak must have quite a few very powerful friends, throughout the world, in both private industry, as well as in military, government, and intelligence circles to do a job like that well. If one had a project they wanted to carry out, that might very well have global implications, is seems that he just might be the man who talk to, who could put together the financing, as well as bring together all the people that would need to meet in order to carry out an operation to a successful conclusion.

So just to re-cap now. While the media shine the spotlight on Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, trying to paint him as a terrorist, he has actually done extensive work for our government in counter-terrorism and pro-American propaganda in the middle-east. Meanwhile, a key partner in the development of the “Ground Zero Mosque” has gone completely un-noticed. R. Leslie Deak, key investor and board-member of the Cordoba Initiative was born the son of a man who held a command position in the OSS, predecessor of the CIA. Leslie Deak got a basic education in international finance and helped his father command a large portion of the world's gold and currency supply, until his father was murdered and the company broken up, amid well-founded allegations of money laundering for Columbian drug lords. One portion of the company, which still publicly claims its roots back to the heyday of the Deak empire, funds the Conservative propaganda machine and is now under investigation for scamming their customers selling fake gold. Deak himself goes on to sit on the board of directors for a foundation which funds the premiere research and educational facilities that determine national defense strategy and who write the book on fighting the War on Terror. Chairman of the Board for that foundation was a key officer and top lawyer for Wachovia, while they were laundering billions of dollars for international drug cartels. Deak is also recruited to develop the business of a private group of clandestine operatives for hire to both corporate clients and foreign states.

Are we really to believe that Leslie Deak's invlovement in the Cordoba Initiative is purely philanthropic? Or that he wanted to get in on the ground floor of an investment opportunity in some rinky-tink little Muslim cultural center that no one would have paid any attention to at all had it not been for it's proximity to the site of the nation's worst tragedy since Pearl Harbor? (Not to mention the biggest conspiracy since the assassination of JFK.) Perhaps instead we should at least consider some other possibilities here. That perhaps this has been planned for quite some time to be a political trump card of sorts in the upcoming national election that will determine the control of the Congress of the United States. An ace in the hole for the Republicans perhaps? Or maybe, just maybe, something even bigger than that. A CIA psychological operation that will accomplish a number of objectives.

First, it will guarantee continued support for American imperialism in the middle-east. Second, it will thoroughly undermine the the power of our national political leadership to do anything more than act as administrators of the status-quo, as babysitters of the citizenry, while more secretive and nefarious groups carry out their agendas. And third, it will bring in a wealth of data as they gauge public reaction.

How easy would it be to mount an all-out assault on what little remains of the Constitution? How malleable are the minds of the people in the face of a perceived threat? How willing are the people to condemn an entire section of society? Like Hitler did to Jews as a people, to Slavs. To political, religious and racial groups, all based on propaganda. These are the things that they have learned from the mosque-project. They see better now who the extremists are right here at home. Those that are willing to do violence in support of their agenda, and those who are paying enough attention to see through it and who will hinder their progress. You see, articles like this, this is the threat to the enemies of freedom. Places like the MSMReview, and people who speak of like mind will be identified as sources of information that cannot be propagandized or brainwashed, who cannot be dealt a blow of amnesia to history through shock and awe. The enemies of freedom are not bearded religious man living in caves and mud huts. Oppression and tyranny are much closer to home. The words of liberty and truth, that is the threat to their power, this is what will hinder their goals, and hopefully one day be their undoing.

Whether or not the Cordoba Initiative ultimately succeeds in its publicly stated goal is irrelevant. The fight is all that ever mattered. Will reason triumph over emotion one day, for the masses, or is it destined to remain the exclusive purview of elitists and despots?

Protecting State Secrets: Obama Builds on Bush Doctrine

While the average Joe Six-Pack is preoccupied with political cannon-fodder broadcast over and over again through our televisions, the real damage being done by the Obama administration is being largely ignored. The news is little more than media distraction over the falsehood that Obama is a Muslim from Africa, while the pundits babble on and on about his support of a construction project blocks away from Ground Zero in Manhattan, but no one seems to be at all concerned about the Obama administration's hypocritical support of government abuses begun under the Bush administration. Abuses that Obama himself appeared to have grave concerns about in his run for Presidential office. The sham of the two-party system persists, as does the myth that we have any choice at the voting booth any more. That much is clear to those who dig a little deeper than fifteen-second soundbites while Obama carries on the work of his predecessor to completely invalidate the basic tenets of Constitutional governance.

In the first weeks that Obama began to get settled in, his Justice Department sought to dismiss a lawsuit by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, in which it was alleged that the charity's lawyers and board members rights to due-process and freedom of speech were violated by officials at the White House, the National Security Agency, the Treasury Department and the FBI. No evidence was put forth to substantiate the government's claim that the Oregon-based charity might be funding terrorism. Nevertheless, an eavesdropping operation against the philanthropic organization had been carried out without a warrant or the approval of any judge. In Obama's campaign to “change Washington” he had criticized the Bush administration of too-often invoking the privilege of state-secrets to resist lawsuits and to ignore public disclosure rules. In this case, the Justice Department did just that, once again invoking the privilege of state-secrets, claiming that the lawsuit could not be allowed to go forward on the grounds that the disclosure of information would be a threat to national security. When U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker resisted the claim by the Justice Department, they ratcheted up the pressure, and threatened to seize documents in the court's custody. Hardly a shining example of the open-government voters had demanded. Perhaps this was an isolated example though? After all, to be sure, there are some legitimate state-secrets that must be protected from time to time, and maybe this charity was not so squeaky clean themselves. We will probably never know.

What we do know though, is that this is not an isolated example at all actually. We can look to the dismissal of Jewel vs. NSA in January of this year, 2010. This case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was filed on behalf of AT&T customers opposed to the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of America's phone calls and emails. In this case, the fact that this practice was not at all isolated was the very basis of the dismissal! A page from the EFF website tells us...

...U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker held that the privacy harm to millions of Americans from the illegal spying dragnet was not a "particularized injury" but instead a "generalized grievance" because almost everyone in the United States has a phone and Internet service.

"The alarming upshot of the court's decision is that so long as the government spies on all Americans, the courts have no power to review or halt such mass surveillance even when it is flatly illegal and unconstitutional," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/01/21

Of all the values espoused in the founding documents of this nation, perhaps none could be said to be more central to our national identity than the system of check-and-balances which keeps any one branch of government, among the three, from usurping unjust power, and toppling our nation into a despotic totalitarian order. It is indeed a value which rests at the very core of our entire structure of government from which all other Constitutional liberty is prescribed and ensured. No one branch of government has the right to operate autonomously without the oversight from another. Alarmingly, under the Bush administration, and now reinforced by the Obama administration, that entire system from which all others are based, has been thoroughly undermined in the interest of secrecy and unfounded claims of national security implications. Not only are judges being left out of their role in issuing warrants, even secret warrants on the basis of some evidence, to allow the government to spy on it's citizens, but now the courts are washing their hands of any involvement when it comes to litigation over clear, aggressive, well-documented violations of Constitutional liberty as a result. These rulings have essentially rendered our court system impotent, and relegated judges to nothing more than glorified traffic-wardens collecting revenue for the state. A rubber-stamp court system suddenly all-too reminiscent of Nazi Germany's People's Court. A paper-shuffling administration, subordinate to that of the Executive, rather than a genuine order of justice honorably maintaining our most precious values as a nation of free and self-determined people.

Louis Fisher, a Constitutional law expert from the Library of Congress wrote in an email to the Washington Post:

"1. The administration defends the state secrets privilege on the ground that it would jeopardize national security if classified documents were made available to the public. No one argues for public disclosure of sensitive materials. The issue is whether federal judges should have access to those documents to be read in their chambers.

"2. If an administration is at liberty to invoke the state secrets privilege to prevent litigation from moving forward, thus eliminating independent judicial review, could not the administration use the privilege to conceal violations of statutes, treaties, and the Constitution? What check would exist for illegal actions by the executive branch?"

What's a little illegal spying though? This is war right? A classic excuse used by tyrannical dictators the world over. Tell the people that it is in their own interest, in the name of their own safety, to have their own government spying on them, until the people one day wake up and realize from among the ruin, that it was their own government all along that was the enemy. Quite simply put, there is no excuse now, nor will there ever be any excuse, to crush Constitutional liberty. Those rights are our inalienable rights as human beings, they are not an arbitrary set of guidelines to apply and cancel whimsically on the tides of politics. These are things that an American President should know and know well, without being told. Especially one who just happens to be a Constitutional scholar. And anyone with common sense, scholar or no, should know that such abuses will not stop with violating our privacy. In fact, it has already turned to false and indefinite imprisonment, without any charges whatsoever, without any hearing or oversight by any courts. It has turned to torture of those innocents, at the hands of our own soldiers and agents, as well as our treacherous moves to hand over our prisoners to be tortured by foreigners in other countries.

In May of this year, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that three prisoners being held at Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan had no right to habeas corpus hearings, handing the Obama administration a resounding victory in being able to hold prisoners indefinitely without any judicial oversight. Two Yemenis and a Tunisian claimed that they were being held without cause, were not terrorists, and had in fact been captured outside of the U.S. War-zone in Afghanistan. One is reported to have been captured in the far side of Asia, in Thailand, the second in Pakistan. Details on where the third detainee was captured are not clear. Tina Foster, a lawyer for the prisoners was quoted in a New York Times article as saying that the ruling gave a free hand to the Executive to “kidnap people from other parts of the world and lock them away for the rest of their lives.” The decision means that there is no judicial oversight, no burden of proof whatsoever to substantiate claims that a person might be a terrorist. She then went on to say...

“The thing that is most disappointing for those of us who have been in the fight for this long is all of the people who used to be opposed to the idea of unlimited executive power during the Bush administration but now seem to have embraced it during this administration. We have to remember that Obama is not the last president of the United States.”

Just a few days before the tumultuous national remembrance day of 9/11 this year, a Federal appeals court ruled that former prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency could not sue over alleged torture in overseas prisons, even if they had since been released and had done nothing wrong, because such lawsuits might expose state-secrets. Like the pages right out of some bizarre Communist, One World Order pulp novel, state-secrets are now more important than revealing the facts of false-imprisonment and years of systematic physical and mental torture. A dark hour for liberty indeed. In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., by a 6-to-5 vote. Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five former prisoners, the suit alleged that the company had arranged CIA flights to transport prisoners to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. This was not even a lawsuit against the government itself, or CIA, but a private company that was complicit in the allegations. So it can hardly be said that they were “just following orders” or that they should be afforded the same immunities afforded to the government. Where does that line of reasoning end? With Boeing dumping toxic waste in public schoolyard, immune from any legality or regulation because they contract with the government and the dumping is a matter of national security? As if the kidnapping, torture, and possibly even murder of people in some cases, weren't enough reason for concern.

The plaintiffs each make various claims regarding the details of their imprisonment and torture in places like a CIA “black-site” in Afghanistan, or after they were handed off in places like Egypt and Morocco. Lead plaintiff Binyan Mohamed is a citizen of Ethiopia and a legal resident of Britain. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 where he was then reportedly turned over to CIA and flown to Morocco where he was tortured by their security services over the course of 18-months there. The torture is said to have included techniques such as using a scalpel to wound his genitals and then pouring caustic liquid on the wounds. From there he was transferred back to CIA custody and delivered to a prison in Afghanistan where he was sparsely fed, and kept in perpetual darkness with a constant blaring recording of women and children screaming 24 hours a day. He was moved again later to Guantanamo Bay Prison where he was held for another five years, before finally being freed in Britain last year, 2009.

In other testimony at various times, murder has indeed been alleged, and it is hardly a stretch to discern that murder is indeed a strong possibility under these conditions. Who would ever really know? While some allegations have indeed leaked out, they are difficult to substantiate, and it is difficult to gauge how many prisoners, guilty of nothing, may have been murdered since 9/11. We do know however, that President Obama himself has endorsed state-sponsored killing of American citizens without any judicial oversight. Not enemy combatants mind you, but in fact has arbitrarily ordered the assassination of New Mexico native Anwar al-Awlaki. No arrest order, no trial, no judicial approval or oversight, no fact-finding mission by an impartial party, just an order to kill this American citizen on sight, wherever he is found. On the battlefield or off, sleeping at home with his children, or shopping at your local supermarket. Though the Bush administration reserved the right to order such a killing, it is not believed that they ever did actually order such an action, particularly against an American citizen.

Through his family, the target has vehemently denied that allegations of the Obama administration that he is guilty of terrorism or in any way connected to al-Qaeda. He is reported to have exchanged emails with the Fort Hood gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, in which he spoke negatively of his views on soldiers at the base who take up arms against Islam. But when did it become a capital offense to be against the war, or to speak your mind on politics or religion? Are such views really to be considered so radical that they do not fall under the purview of freedom of speech, much less subject to summary execution on the orders of the President of the United States? There is not even an allegation that this man has actually participated in any specific terrorist acts, nor that he provided material or financial support to any acts of terrorism. While Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) calls al-Awlaki “terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us,” the only allegation that is really being made against him is that he is a recruiter for al-Qaeda. Unsubstantiated claims that this man is a recruiter for an imaginary organization that was originally nothing more than a legal fiction created by American courts to be able to prosecute any Muslim accused of being a terrorist under the RICO act. Such prosecutions are apparently no longer even necessary with people being locked away tortured and murdered without so much as a lawyer or a judge to review the facts.

Now some folks who read this will no doubt have trouble putting aside certain xenophobic tendencies and judge the matter objectively. Certain powers that be rely on that fervor and anti-Muslim sentiment to achieve their ends in undermining the Constitution and installing their totalitarian order. It has always been the same throughout the ages. Vilify some group of people or another in order to seize upon all that is righteous and impose their despotic order. What will you do when you suddenly find that you are now the enemy of the state? Their work is nearly done now. The camps are built, the rail cars are sitting idly by waiting, certainly figuratively, even if not literally as some claim. Seeing the utter lack of change in policy from one President to the next, who appeared to be so fully opposed to the policies of one another a few years ago, coming from opposing political parties, it has never been clearer that the Master of the White House is only there to serve an insidious agenda that is contrary to the ideals put forth by the founding fathers of this nation. Obama swept into office on the promise of change, yet there is no substantive change whatsoever. What will it take so that we hold our leaders accountable for imperial invasions and false wars, for peeling away the fundamental rights of the citizenry, for torture and murder? For allowing themselves to be undermined, allowing this Republic to be usurped by some hidden cabal of internationalists? State secrets do not protect the people, they protect those who seek to enslave and kill the people, make no mistake about it. These are the darkest hours of American liberty.

“We recognized that it was not enough to overthrow the old state, but that the new state must previously have been built up and ready to one's hand....In 1933 it was no longer a question of overthrowing a state by an act of violence; meanwhile the new state had been built up and all that remained to do was destroy the last remnants of the old state – and that took but a few hours.” ~Adolf Hitler

“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” ~Thomas Paine

If you have the time, MSMReview highly recommends the following video, Taxi to the Darkside. In yet another example of the relation corporate media has to more nefarious agendas, this movie had an extremely difficult time reaching the public eye, despite critical acclaim when it was first viewed. The clearest example is when the Discovery Channel bought the rights to the movie, only to announce that they would never air the film, due to the controversial nature of the piece. The following presentation found on Google Video is about 80 minutes long.

“Taxi to the Darkside” Wikipedia Entry

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric

Al-Awlaki's father says son is 'not Osama bin Laden'

EFF Plans Appeal of Jewel v. NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Case

Jewel v. NSA

Handling Of 'State Secrets' At Issue

Expert Consensus: Obama Mimics Bush On State Secrets

Obama’s War on Terror May Resemble Bush’s in Some Areas

Detainees Barred From Access to U.S. Courts

Court Dismisses a Case Asserting Torture by C.I.A.

Obama wins the right to invoke "State Secrets" to protect Bush crimes

Confirmed: Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen

At the close of a day of refelction, a word from past Presidents

There is such a wealth of information available for research that stands in stark contrast to the commonly accepted story surrounding the events of 9/11, that we here at the MSMReview elected to not try to publish one all-encompassing article to point out the wealth of inconsistencies in main-stream media coverage of the day's events nine years ago, or the subsequent failures of our government to adequately explain the truth. There is no new news today which brings us closer to the truth. Since the disastrous tragedy, much information has come to light which leaves the official explanation a clear and blatant falsehood, but rather than trying to assemble one massive review of all that information that is out there now, we chose to remain silent on this day. This is not the day for controversy or to stir up hatred, capitalizing on emotion to try to make a point. It is a somber day of remembrance. But as this day draws to a close, perhaps we can reflect on the words of past U.S. Presidents...

Border War: The Blind Eye of America

While the United States has spent almost a decade chasing down an invisible, some might even say imaginary enemy on the other side of the planet, a very real war at home has been completely ignored by our political leaders and largely left out of the mainstream media. No one seems to want to talk about the fact that the U.S. is being invaded by a very real, active, and potent enemy. Headlines like "Marijuana plants seized" downplay what is happening here at home, while headlines like "Al-Qaeda mastermind behind slaughter of U.S. troops" dominate the short attention span of the average American viewer. The truth of the matter is far more chilling than any politician or mainstream media source will ever admit.

Let us set aside many of the more common debates about illegal immigration, such as the damaging impact on the economy, on labor bargaining, the tax burden, infrastructure, etcetera. Instead let us focus on the mortal danger posed to Americans as a people, which stems from our ignore-the-border policy and the nefarious politics behind it. Advocates of illegal immigrants would have you believe that most people who cross the southern US border from Mexico are simple hard-working law-abiding folk, and that only the occasional bad apple floats across the Rio Grande or tumbles through desert tunnels. The truth is that millions of sworn gang members, gang affiliates, narco-terrorists, and bona-fide political insurgents here in the US are illegal immigrants, to say nothing of your average run-of-the-mill rapists and murderers. These gangs and criminal enterprises are far more lethal and organized than some family in Iraq or Afghanistan protecting their home from rampaging troops out gallivanting through the desert. The subversive political agenda of Aztlan is a direct threat to the sovereignty of the US and well funded by narco-dollars. While we are out chasing ghosts on the other side of the world, we have been invaded by a guerilla armies, millions strong, harboring ideology of racial supremacy known as La Raza, and bent on the destruction of America as we know it. They are not here to take part in the American dream, but to overrun it.

This is not to say that all illegals are narco-warriors and racists of course. If there weren’t genuine working class people just trying to get by and feed their kids, there would be little to pull at the heartstrings of gullible Americans or make an effective camouflage for the murderous infiltrators. But rather than become Americans, most illegals would rather send money “home” or insist that America adapt to them as if we were the uninvited guest. If someone has just broken into your house, eaten your ice cream and pissed in your couch, it is naive to suddenly expect they will observe the rules and customs of the household, regardless of whatever justification is put forth for their behavior. But rather than addressing the broken lock on the back door, our political leadership ignores it and panders to the sympathizers. There is no nobility in racist ideology, there is no noble cause to reclaim lost lands because Latinos are not in fact indigenous peoples, illegal immigrants are not persecuted refugess seeking freedom in the US, this is an invasion and wholesale looting of America by very powerful, organized and violent criminal empires.

In Mexico there is open warfare among these factions, that has claimed the lives of an estimated 28,000 people in the last four years. That is roughly double the amount of deaths in Afghanistan for the same time period. Is this the Aztlan dream? Is this the promise of La Raza? Mexicos’s intelligence agency director Guillermo Valdes stated in a meeting with his President Felipe Calderon that drug violence in Mexico “is still growing” despite the government crackdown that began in 2006. Yet the US does not see fit to intercede by aiding Mexico to better their circumstances effectively, or at the very least to protect our own population from the spillover of the narco wars through political pressure and serious border security. There is no such tidy estimate as the one above for the number of related deaths in America, but it is safe to assume that most drug and gang-related deaths in this country lead back to the cartels. Prison gangs like the Mexican Mafia, and the brutal Salvadoran street gang MS -13 who are some 70,000 strong, have been imported here but take their orders from places south of the border. Everyday more violent gangs of illegals take up residence in the US while at the same time new chapters or “sets” of more traditional street gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods spring up in newly established communities of illegal immigrants.

While the director of Mexican intelligence reports that they have seized $411 million in American currency, and 84,000 weapons since their crackdown began years ago, here in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California one drug bust alone wiped out a pot farm worth $1.7 billion. Four times the value of Mexico’s four year war on drugs. After a similar bust in the Sequoia National Park two years ago, John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy, had this to say…

"These aren't Cheech and Chong plants. People who farm now are not doing this for laughs, despite the fact Hollywood still thinks that. “

These plots are not a few scraggly plants scattered around some hippie commune, but mega farms set up in huge swaths of commandeered soil in America’s national parks by Latin-American gangs using dangerous chemicals, fully armed para-military grade security forces and explosive booby-traps, while destroying the natural habitat. Investigations have concluded that a number of major forest fires have been caused by these invaders as well, in places where firefighters had to work with armed escorts and the people of surrounding communities were forced to flee. The profits from these crops are used to finance all sorts of other criminal activity and violence in communities throughout North America. Park rangers are desperately outgunned, and the innocent family on a hiking trip is in very real danger of never being seen again if they stumble across one of these farms.

So what is the Federal government’s answer to this danger? Well in an Arizona national park the answer appears to be making it illegal for an American to be on American land, rather than securing 3500 acres that includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, where drug smuggling is so prevalent that the area was closed to civilians by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This is, quite literally, a hostile takeover of sovereign American land and an open surrender by the US government, while we chase an imaginary terrorist organization half a world away. When you look at a map of the United States now, realize that the border you see is not accurate. The Federal government, willingly and without a fight has ceded territory to Mexican drug cartels. The border has been moved, and American soil has been conquered, without so much as a peep from the White House, or a fighting stand by American troops to defend against the invaders. If we shared a border with the Taliban would we tolerate such an assault? Are these invaders not every bit, nay, even more of a threat to the safety of Americans than radical Muslim fundamentalism? Between 2001 and 2007 there were 100,000 murders in America. Now let’s make a blatantly over-conservative guess that only 25% of those murders were drug or gang related. That would still mean that drug gangs have claimed better than ten times as many lives as the attack on September 11.

These well- armed insurgents here at home are better funded than Muslim extremists, are at least twice as active in Mexico as “terrorists” are in Afghanistan, support a doctrine of racial supremacy and are openly calling for the destruction of America. Yet both our political leadership and a huge cross-section of American society turn a blind eye, or openly give sympathy to the invaders as if it were some moral obligation to humanity that we allow them to shoot us, to burn us out of our homes, to rob us of our earnings, to destroy what we have built. The terrorists are right here, not off in some far away land. Their influence reaches all the way to the top echelons of power in the United States. How else can one explain the fact that neither former President Bush, nor our current President Obama has lifted a finger to fight these invaders and to regulate legitimate immigration? Meanwhile they execute a bogus war that was built on false pretense right from the very start. Conservative politicians did nothing to protect us from these insurgents, and I certainly don’t expect liberal politicians to do any better by openly supporting the invasion while actively blocking state and local authority from protecting their sovereignty and even the physical safety of their constituents. There is no exaggeration, we are in fact being invaded by terrorist insurgents who are better armed, more organized, and have greater numbers than the so called “al-Qaeda network.” Our own national political leadership has been subverted and is in league with these foreign invaders from the south. The government of the United States of America no longer represents the American people, but instead does the bidding of hidden powers with dark agendas.

While major media outltes are quick to support the sham called "the war on terror" reporting falsehoods and drawing all sorts of erroneous conclusions about conflict in the middle east, mainstream media sources have scant reporting on the subject matter of domestic insurgents, would certainly never call them what they are, and would not dare put the pieces together to make a factual conclusive report as we have done here. Nevertheless, here are some supporting links of information from both mainstream and alternate sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10811870

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/08/pot.eradication/

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/17/lawmaker-warns-drug-cartel-danger-public-parks-intensifying/

http://www.examiner.com/x-35821-Immigration-Reform-Examiner~y2010m6d17-Our-national-parks-have-been-surrendered-to-the-Mexican-drug-cartels-wshocking-video

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/03/01/20100301pot-farms-on-public-lands.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/03/world/main6740078.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CbsNewsTheEarlyShowPetPlanet+%28CBS+News%3A+The+Early+Show%3A+Pet+Planet%29

http://www.mayorno.com/WhoIsMecha.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajkAP_M4ZAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNvqm_qgM5U

L.A. Touts Serial Killer Arrest to Quash Civil Liberty Concerns (UPDATE)

Today the topic is DNA, with the arrest of Lonnie David Franklin Jr., charged in a string of murders dating back to 1985. Dubbed the Grim Sleeper, for a long stretch of inactivity, a profile was built of a serial killer who preyed on women in south L.A. and dispatched them using the same small caliber pistol each time. Police reportedly recovered DNA evidence from at least two victims, but never had a person to match it to. That was until Mr. Franklin's son was convicted on a weapons charge. His son's DNA was entered into a database where it was then processed by California's familial DNA search program, which then led to the identification and arrest of Mr. Franklin. Seems like a win for the good guys right? Science being used to get an evil person of the street, simple as that?

Not quite. It wouldn't be the first time that science has been wrong. Police already bungled the investigation once and arrested the wrong person based on ballistics evidence. They had termed that arrest to be a "solid case" as well. No wonder victims' families are cautiously optimistic this time around. Former governor and state Attorney General Jerry Brown has no such reservations however, boldly stating, "This arrest provides proof positive that familial DNA searches must be a part of law enforcement's crime-fighting arsenal. Although the adoption of this new state policy was unprecedented and controversial, in certain cases, it is the only way to bring a dangerous killer to justice."

So much for the presumption of innocence.

How does one go about implementing a totalitarian police state in a free country? Say it's for our own good of course. Whenever the police and prosecutors want to move the goalposts ever closer to state dictatorship over every facet of our lives, they tell us it is for our own good, for our own safety, to protect us from evil things, and then march out before us some heinous criminal who "might never have been caught if it weren't for..." whatever new law or technology they are trying to implement. They raise a rabble by selling fear and vengeance to silence those who might question yet another violation of the liberty spelled out by the nation's founding fathers. Most folks go ahead and fall right in line with the agenda. After all, no one wants to side with some brutal killer, even if it means saying goodbye to the last few essential rights we have. In this way, we not only hand over our liberty and everything it means to be an American, but we demand it!

No doubt there are many draconian dragnet fishing expeditions the police could go on that would bring up results. Like calling every citizen out of their houses and onto the street at 1 a.m. to submit to a DNA test and a retina scan perhaps. The only real question here is, where does one draw the line? Clearly, the police and prosecutors see no line to be crossed and won't be happy until everyone in America is swabbed for DNA and implanted with a microchip to monitor every movement and thought process. Maybe we should just go ahead and put everyone in prison right now, to be on the safe side. It isn't enough that we already keep more people in prison than any other country in the world. (The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's total population, but 25% of the world total prison population.) For now though, it is time to push this agenda of the presumption of guilt by association.

Maybe, just maybe they happened to be right this time, and nabbed a viscous serial killer. That is no guarantee of future results. What it does guarantee is that suspicion will be cast on many innocent people simply because they are related to someone who was once arrested. (14 states hold DNA records on people who are arrested, regardless of whether or not they are actually innocent or convicted.) Folks will be plucked from their daily lives and then dragged in for interrogation. In some instances they will be held indefinitely without a lawyer, as is becoming more customary in many cases. (In another recent case, police held two men suspected of setting booby-traps against police officers in an L.A. suburb for five days without charges. It is not known whether or not they were given access to a lawyer during that time.) They will be subject to every sort of threat and coercion that the police can muster in a closed room, free from the prying eyes of the public or a lawyer, not only to force them to confess but to submit to their own DNA testing as well. (The Supreme Court has ruled that police may now continue an interrogation, without a lawyer present, even after the "right" has been invoked and a lawyer requested.)

Perhaps some folks would be willing to subject themselves to such an ordeal, and face the idea of going to prison as an innocent person, in the name of public safety. Especially since it is only being used against the most dangerous sort of criminals, right? Wrong. In one of the first cases of its kind, police in Denver, Colorado used familial DNA to catch a person who had broken into a car to steal $1.40 in change. But the problems with this sort of evidence do not end there. Aside from the fact that DNA science itself it not as foolproof as late night dramas would have the public believing, this familiar DNA search is extremely biased against men and blacks. Because black Americans constitute a larger portion of people arrested by police, this means that the black population as a whole, regardless of any criminal activity, will be genetically profiled to a much larger degree than other races. Furthermore, females cannot be accurately identified with familial DNA profiling. as this technology is based on mapping Y chromosomes.

Aside from presumption of guilt over innocence, guilt by association, racial and sexist bias, the undermining of Constitutional values, and a whole host of other concerns that are now being overlooked with the arrest of this man said to be a prolific serial killer, there is also the concern of how this may impact family relations. What will this do to family and personal privacy in regards to adoption, children born of affairs or incest, transgendered persons, estrangement, etcetera? How will this play out when it comes to twins? All of these concerns are being brushed aside in a public outcry of support for the invasion of our own rights, disguised as justice. How many innocents will be persecuted, how many lives turned upside down, for the extremely rare instance that a deranged maniac is actually caught based on this technology?

Raising these questions though, will not be popular at all now, and the media is helping to ensure that. A CNN article pulls at the heart strings by specifying one victim over all the others, since she was only 18. The old "it's for the children" propaganda being played there with some subtlety. Southern California Public Radio had this to say...

"The familial DNA search had been criticized as an invasion of privacy but now that it’s yielded amazing results, should it [be] used without hesitation?"

How can the question even be asked before a conviction is brought? An arrest is certainly no "amazing result" at the cost of privacy and the violation of liberty. According to the National Research Council of National Academies who advises the government on scientific matters, these sort of databases should never have been created in the first place, noting "serious issues of privacy and fairness." Of course, the warnings will go unheeded as they always do, drowned out by the mass of short-sighted, historically forgetful, fearful and vengeful citizens so easily manipulated into knee-jerk reactions. Another sad day for liberty, and another victory for tyranny. All in the name of public safety.

"Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither." ~Benjamin Franklin

7/10/10 UPDATE:

Reports out today show that suspect Lonnie David Franklin Jr. was arrested at least 15 times in the past four decades, but was never sent to prison and never had a DNA sample taken in recent arrests. He was arrested for serious crimes including burglary, car theft, firearms possession and assaults, but despite recommendations of probation officers, he was still never sent to prison or had a DNA sample taken. So clearly, this familial DNA technology is not, in fact, "...the only way to bring a dangerous killer to justice," as stated by Attorney General Jerry Brown. Now the public is supposed to submit to even more infringement upon their own rights and liberty because the government can't even use the tools it already has effectively? Tell us Mister Brown, how is your incompetence, "proof-positive" as you put it, "that familial DNA searches must be a part of law enforcement's crime-fighting arsenal" when you and your office let this man go free time and time again? According to the Associate Press article on Yahoo News, one of his victims was killed in 2003 when Mr. Franklin should have been in jail for stealing a car, but was instead released early.

Of course, some will use these revelations to endorse a "build more prisons, get tough on crime" agenda once again. Sure, give even more money and power to those who don't even know how to do their job. Feed the incompetence. The answer is not more jails and stiffer sentences. It's about picking and choosing the battles. Rather than keeping a bunch of people locked up for selling some marijuana, maybe the government should let them out and make room for the real criminals. Violent repeat offenders with multiple felony convictions. And in the bigger picture, maybe the leadership of this nation should get things on track economically so that folks don't become so desperate that they feel they have to resort to crime in the first place. That would certainly help to smoke out the real maniacs, if they weren't camouflaged by so many would-be regular folks being persecuted as arch-criminals just for trying to survive on mean streets.

Back to the topic of DNA specifically, there is another troubling aspect of this case. The manner in which they collected the DNA sample from the suspect. As reported by the same AP article linked above, "An undercover officer pretending to be a waiter in Los Angeles collected tableware, napkins, glasses and pizza crust at a restaurant where Franklin ate, allowing detectives to obtain a DNA match."

By what right do the police clandestinely collect DNA material from a citizen? They had no other evidence linking this man specifically to any of the killings, or even to the familial DNA sample taken from his son. They had no reason to suspect him specifically, other than a hunch. They had no way of knowing if Mr. Franklin was indeed his son's genetic father. Nor could they be certain that it wasn't any number of other people with a similar DNA profile. This reeks of typical police fishing expeditions under the guise of "you match the description" just because he happened to be a black man related to a felon.

So it seems now that the police can take anyone's DNA sample at will, so long as they have a hunch that you might be a criminal. A very dangerous precedent indeed in what was once a free country, where people had inviolable rights to privacy. How long before police are putting citizens up against the wall for a cavity search and a genital swab, just because they happened to be in a ten block radius of a crime scene? But of course, no one complains about it right now, because police got the big fish on their expedition this time, as they trampled all over the Constitution. What happens though, when they start spending more of your tax dollars hand over fist on these expeditions, coming up short more often than not, or for something as petty as $1.40 in change, leaving a trail of wrecked homes and lives behind them? If the police could just go in and secretly take Mr. Franklin's DNA at will, who is to say they won't simply start doing this to everyone at will? What is to stop crooked cops like murderous Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa from taking your DNA evidence and planting it on a murder victim? How would crooked cops like them even be caught once they have their manipulative hands on the Holy Grail of evidence? What is to stop a lab from making mistakes, or even being willfully fraudulent in their findings with your DNA in hand? There's an old adage that the founding fathers no doubt knew. "Never trust someone who doesn't trust you." They certainly trusted no government, and saw it only as a necessary evil, meant to be limited in every respect possible.

"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."

~Thomas Jefferson

Placating the People

Confidence in our leadership is at an all time low. Poverty levels have never been higher. Personal liberty and freedom have never been more suppressed than they are right now in this country. The people are pissed off. But instead of addressing the root causes of our woes, the politicians take handouts from, and do the bidding of the very powers that have been exploiting the people for years, while running this entire country right into the ground. Tax-dollar handouts for corporate welfare while the people starve to death on nutritionally void food-like products that the corporations push on us and make premium profits from. Bank bailouts while people are losing their homes to those same banks that created our fiscal woes to begin with, and again posting record profits. All the while the people fight amongst themselves over non-issues that have no impact on the wholesale raping of this nation, divided by illusory and antiquated notions of political polarity. All of the politicians have their hands in the cookie jar, scraping at the bottom, yet we have buffoons like this trying to lead us to believe that he will be the one to make a difference...

That commercial is a shameful exploitation of the people's discontent, across the political spectrum. He makes a mockery of the sacrifice of the founding fathers, while trying to placate people who are fed up, courting their votes for his own personal political gain. This isn't a damned game Mr. Rick Barber. That is not a make-believe Congressional office, and the problems of this nation are not going to be solved with costumes and toy guns. But fools like him will think that his tough talk has the ring of a legitimate call to arms, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Meanwhile, on the Left, the best they can come up with is Keith Olberman calling the commercial treason...

Barber is no revolutionary Mr. Olberman. He is a spineless dog barking loud, aspiring to be a lobbyist whore, pretending to be a revolutionary, while dressing up his campaign like a prison-bitch on the prowl for a pack of smokes. But Mr. Olberman, there was a lot more to the Revolution than the right to vote. Propping up that moron as if he were some sort of real threat to the establishment only enhances the myth, and the notion that we the people actually have any real choice anymore.

No matter who we vote for, we are voting for another tool who will do the bidding of the highest bidder, and the back-room-deal overlords who paved the way into office. We legitimize the evil being perpetrated in our names. But maybe we really should just be thankful that the Tea Party activists are a bunch of simple-minded hicks, proud of their own ignorance, and not genuine revolutionaries...

I would hate to think what sort of country this would be if they had their way. All those people fighting against healthcare reform for all the wrong reasons, calling it socialism, as if that were a dirty word. Socialist healthcare reform might have actually been the way to go. Put doctors on the government payroll and make hospitals government institutions, just like our military and police. Regulate costs, salaries, malpractice settlements, give equality to patient care, etcetera. But of course you never hear a Republican call our military socialist, or suggest spending cuts even when the Pentagon admits to losing $2.3 trillion. Not spent that much mind you, not put that money into black ops. Just "lost" more than a third of our entire national debt! (Our debt was about $5.7T at that time.) Oh, you never heard about that?

But the fact of the matter is that Obama's healthcare plan was never socialist at all. There is no real government control mandated in the healthcare reform, other than forcing you to buy private insurance. Hospital workers are not going to become government employees. We aren't going to get affordable insurance at the same rate that a neighbor pays, much less no cost healthcare like they have in Britain. That would be socialism. Instead, in true totalitarian fashion, we are being forced to participate in state-sanctioned corporatism. That's fascism folks. An amalgamation of collectivism and corporate oligarchy. When the state own the companies, that's communism. When the companies own the state, that's fascism. So here is the Right, blaming the Left for what amounts to instituting an extreme Right-wing policy. What do the Republicans do when they want to pass a blatantly fascist bill catering to their corporate handlers? Have a Democrat do it and call it Communism. Might be funny if it weren't actually true...

Obama insurance requirement taken from GOP

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Obama promised that the closing of Guantanamo prison would be one of his first acts in office. Still hasn't happened. Obama promised to end the war, instead he is using the Bush "surge strategy" in Afghanistan now, where we have almost a hundred thousand troops as the war debt goes stratospheric. Instead of repealing the draconian infringements on our liberty instituted by the Patriot Act and similar measures, the police-state is ratcheted down even tighter every time someone farts in an airport. He promised change, I don't see any change at all. Yet the simple-minded Tea-Party crowd would have you believe that he is the African chairman Mao. He is no communist, socialist, or even a proper liberal except to the extent that is caters to corporate interests. He is a fascist, the same as his predecessor. A predecessor who failed to tow the party line and do a damn thing about securing the border, where a very real war has been unfolding for more than a decade, because he was only a conservative so far as it pandered to his corporate friends and secret society brothers. The two party system is a sham, but the perfect tool to incrementally implement the point by point tenets of a fascist totalitarian state, which takes elements of both left and right to forge its totalitarian grip on power. Here we are frogs in a pot on the stove, boiling away, arguing about whether the water should be blue or red. We root for our candidates the way we would a football team, rather than on the merits of their platform and their integrity as people to follow through on their campaign promises, and then we flip the channel over to American Idol.

Placating the people is the last stop, the last job, the last bit of usefulness these politicians can squeeze out of their existence before finally becoming the rubber-stamp legislative bodies we read about in history books, and poke fun at when it is in places like North Korea. The police-state is here, and soon the last vestiges of the old republic will be swept away, to thunderous applause. History, it seems, has taught us nothing.