Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for March, 2008

Beyond the Pale

Mar 27

Posted by Marlena in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Military, Unreality | No Comments

Behold how our government takes care of the men and women who serve in the US Armed Forces.

A lengthy investigation published Thursday reveals that the Pentagon gave an inexperienced 22-year-old a $300 million contract to provide ammunition to Afghanistan. The shady deal resulted in decades old, substandard munitions being delivered to US and Afghan troops fighting on the front lines of the war on terror.

Look at this guy.

Is this somebody who should be supplying $300 million worth of ammunition to US soldiers serving on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan? What is he, a Mossad reject? Does anyone do any oversight anymore, or is this some kind of sick joke?

You know some psychopaths had a good laugh over this maroon sucking $300m of US taxpayer dollars to send eBay ammunition over to our soldiers, who are, by the way, fighting and dying in a cocked-up war that we were lied into on behalf of rich Americans and Israelis and in which over one million innocent people have been killed for nothing more than money.

Honest to God, if this doesn’t snap people out of their torpor, I don’t know what will. I hope this unravels the whole ball of string.

Unbelievable, yet true. Surely more to come tomorrow…

Chess Masters

Mar 27

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Iran, Iraq, Israel | 1 Comment

I’m telling you, the people running the world enjoy moving us around on their crazy chessboard. Regarding Iran, I have been following two trains of thought: 1) the murderous psychopaths in power want to attack Iran and will find a way to do it, and 2) the greedy psychopaths in power want to control Iran and will find a way to do it. I’m guessing they’re all murderous and greedy, but some must be more murderous and others must be more greedy. I tend to think the greedy ones will prevail in the end, but that’s just a hopeful guess. After all, the psychopaths know that they can engineer lots of innocent deaths without actually setting off nuclear weapons, fun though that might be for them. They have the age-old tools of grinding poverty along with many new ways to surreptitiously poison the earth and her inhabitants. So they can really have their cake and eat it too, whereas if they set off a nuclear conflagration they might leave some money on the table. You know?

When I wrote this post, I have to admit I thought it was pretty crazy, even for me. But it’s not looking so crazy anymore. When Ahmadinejad visited Iraq to the strains of ho hum, that was a clue. But a few days later I convinced myself the war with Iran was definitely on. Then a few more days passed, and lo and behold an oped came out singing Iran’s praises. And so on….

Do you see these two tracks? Isn’t that really strange?

Now yesterday a few things bubbled up that merit our attention:

US Moves Toward Engaging Iran

The coming few weeks are going to be critical in the standoff between the United States and Iran as the upheaval in the Middle East reaches a turning point. And all options do remain on the table, as the George W Bush administration likes to say, from military conflict to a de facto acceptance of Iran’s standing as the region’s dominant power.

One thing is clear. The time for oratorical exercises is ending. A phase of subtle, reciprocal, conceptual diplomatic actions may be beginning. An indication of this is available in the two radio interviews given by Bush last weekend and beamed into Iran, exclusively aimed at reaching out to the Iranian public on the Persian New Year Nauroz.

… Bush spoke of the evolution of the Iranian regime’s character rather than its overthrow. The criticism, if any, of Iranian government policies approached nowhere near the diatribes of the past. There was none of the boastful claims that the US would work toward isolating Iran in its region and beyond. In fact, Bush acknowledged, “There’s a chance that the US and Iran can reconcile their differences, but the [Iranian] government is going to have to make different choices. And one [such choice] is to verifiably suspend the enrichment of uranium, at which time there is a way forward.”

The secret American-Iranian security deal in Iraq, and how this connected to McCain’s visit to Israel

Ahmadinejad offered to calm the situation in Iraq, using the three days attacks-free visit to Iraq as a demonstration of what can Iran do, the second offer is to accept the long term Iraqi – American agreement.

…- To end all American – European political and logistic support for the Iranian opposition, especially Iran’s Resistance Council Organization, Pijac Kurdish organization, and other small opposition groups [Arabs, Turkmen, Azari…etc].

- Stop the secret and public American administration incitement of toppling the Iranian regime.

- End the U.S. and Europe campaign to push for the Iranian Jews immigration to Israel.

- To put an end to the campaign of the need to for pre-emptive strikes against selective and sensitive intelligence, military and nuclear Iranian sites.

In exchange for:

- Intelligence cooperation in Iraq and the region, while Washington gives Iran a space to maneuver internationally, easing the international pressure and the embargo, as a result, Tehran to postpone uranium enrichment operations for a period of two years, with the approval of Iran’s nuclear programme by the inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

- Full cooperation between Tehran and Washington in all areas, and Iran to ensure the submission of several laws in Washington’s favour by the Shiite coalition blocs and Iraqi Kurdistan Alliance, including oil and gas law, the provinces a law, as opposed to because the American President George Bush to use his powers delegated by the military gives him the right to selective attacks on Iranian sites sensitive, to ensure the security of the American forces and the Iraqi people.

This “Iran - American” deal raised concerns in Israel therefore they invited McCain, the Republican candidate to visit Tel Aviv and asked him to visit Baghdad to be informed about what has been achieved talking with the Iranians, promised him that if the mission is successful, then he will get the support of Tel Aviv and the Zionist lobby in America presidential election.

With the banks and financial system hemorrhaging, perhaps the most pressing need right now (for those in power) is to stabilize their financial pic line. The latest finCEN move could simply be designed to make sure Iran is seated firmly at the negotiating table until the above deal goes through. Eh?

It’s hard for me to think like a psychopath, but I’m giving it a whirl.

We will make them pay for their insolence

Mar 26

Posted by Marlena in Economy, Injustice, Iran, Israel | 1 Comment

A few months back I read this article over at Global Research: Behind the Drums of War with Iran: Nuclear Weapons or Compound Interest by Ellen Brown. My apologies for the long excerpts, but this article really explains a lot of what’s happening right now.

If you’re really busy, the shorter is: We must bomb Iran because those smart bastards outwitted our diabolical debt trap.

What bankers call the “miracle” of compound interest is called “usury” under Islamic law and is considered a crime…Modern Islamic thinkers are not averse to a profitable return on investment if it takes the form of “profit-sharing,” with investors taking some risk and sharing in business losses; but the usurer gets his interest no matter what. In fact he does better when the borrower fails. The borrower who cannot afford to pay off his loans sinks deeper and deeper into debt, as interest compounds annually to the lender. In The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2006), Ann Pettifor gives this modernized definition of “usury”:

Usury is the practice of exalting money values over human and environmental values; of creating money at no cost and lending at rates of interest intended not to foster and maintain humanity or the ecosystem, but to

a) accumulate reserves of unearned income; b) extract wealth from the productive sector in a manner that is parasitic; c) extract wealth from those who lack wealth (the asset-less); and d) make a claim on the future.

It is this debt scheme, with its lethal weapon of interest compounded annually, that has allowed a small clique of financiers to dominate the business of the world. In Tragedy and Hope, Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, wrote from personal knowledge of this group, which he called “the international bankers.” He said their aim was “nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” a system “to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements.” The key to the bankers’ success was that they would control and manipulate the money systems of the world while letting them appear to be controlled by governments….The first step in the process of prying resources loose from local economies was to induce national leaders to open up their capital and currency markets. In 1971, President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard, making it the world’s “reserve currency” without the tether of gold. Dollars could then be created and lent to whatever extent lenders could find borrowers for them. In 1974, OPEC was induced to enter into an agreement to trade its oil only in U.S. dollars, and the price of oil then suddenly quadrupled. Countries that did not have the dollars they needed to buy oil had to borrow them. The IMF then imposed its “conditionalities,” including the privatization of state-owned oil industries and banks. In the ensuing decades, this and other predatory lending schemes brought most of the world under the heel of the international bankers.

But guess which country has stayed out from under the international bankers’ heels? Iran!

Iran was among the few nations to have escaped this global privatization scheme. Iran had its own oil. It managed to avoid the trap of letting its currency be devalued by speculators by imposing foreign exchange restrictions and price controls on its national currency (the rial), something it could afford to do because it had adequate foreign exchange reserves from its oil sales. Iran’s state-owned oil industry has allowed its economy to perform well, despite economic sanctions and rumors to the contrary. A “reformist” movement toward increased privatization ended in 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency. Ahmadinejad is a “populist” who has promised to redistribute Iranian oil wealth more expansively and has committed the government to funding public-sector projects and charitable investments.

Islamic scholars have been seeking to devise a global banking system that would serve as an alternative to the usury-based scheme now in control internationally, and Iran has led the way in devising that model. Iran is characterized as a democratic Islamic republic, which enforces Islamic principles not only morally but legally and politically. The 1979 revolution overthrowing the American-backed Shah of Iran ended 2,500 years of monarchical rule. All domestic Iranian banks were then nationalized, and the government called for the establishment of an Islamic banking system that would replace interest payments with profit-sharing. Its state-owned central bank issues the national currency, with the “seigniorage” (the difference between the cost of producing money and its face value) accruing to the government rather than to private banks. The Iranian government is among the few to have very little foreign debt. It uses its state-owned banks to make loans and credits available to industrial and agricultural projects. The most unique feature of the banking system, however, is that it follows the Islamic proscription against usury. That means loans are made interest-free. At least, that is true in principle. To make their system work with the prevailing scheme, Islamic economists have had to come up with some creative definitions of “interest.” Assuming Iran can develop a workable alternative model, however, it might well threaten the usury-based banking system that now dominates international finance and trade. If governments were to start doing what banks do now - advancing “credit” created out of nothing with accounting entries - they could sidestep the hefty interest that is the principal cost of most government programs today. Estimates are that eliminating interest charges could cut the cost of infrastructure, sustainable energy development and other government programs in half. Third World economies might then escape the grip of the global bankers, bringing a 300-year global banking empire crashing down.

Oopsie. Can’t have that.

That could explain the big guns trained on Iran. The intent may not be to thwart the development of nuclear weapons so much as to pluck a budding economic alternative out by its roots before it has a chance to spread. Dominoes that won’t fall into the debt trap must be pushed. Like in the brutal attacks in Lebanon in July 2006, the military targets in Iran are liable to be economic ones - ports, bridges, roads, airports, refiners.The threat posed by Iran’s economic model will be obliterated by blasting it back into the Stone Age.

Fast forward to March 20, 2008. This is how the US government gets the ball rolling - they cut Iran off from the international financial community.

A unit within the US Treasury Department, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which issued a March 20 advisory to the world’s financial institutions under the title: “Guidance to Financial Institutions on the Continuing Money Laundering Threat Involving Illicit Iranian Activity.”

…As of March 20, however, the US, speaking through FinCEN, is now telling all banks around the world “to take into account the risk arising from the deficiencies in Iran’s AML/CFT [anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism] regime, as well as all applicable U.S. and international sanctions programs, with regard to any possible transactions” with – and this is important – not just the above three banks but every remaining state-owned, private and special government bank in Iran. In other words, FinCEN charges, all of Iran’s banks – including the central bank (also on FinCEN’s list) – represent a risk to the international financial system, no exceptions. Confirmation is possible by comparing FinCEN’s list of risky Iranian banks with the listing of Iranian banks provided by Iran’s central bank.

The “deficiencies in Iran’s AML/CFT” is important because it provides the rationale FinCEN will now use to deliver the ultimate death blow to Iran’s ability to participate in the international banking system.

…So what does all this bureaucratic financial rigmarole mean?

What it really means is that the US, again through FinCEN, has declared two acts of war: one against Iran’s banks and one against any financial institution anywhere in the world that tries to do business with an Iranian bank.

And that simply means that the Iranians will be reduced to abject poverty, and they will die. Back to Ellen Brown:

But there is hope. The developing nations should not think that they are powerless in the face of their oppressors. Their best weapon now is the very scale of the debt crisis itself. A coordinated and simultaneous large scale default on international debt obligations could quite easily damage the Western monetary system, and the West knows it. There might be a war of course, or the threat of it, accompanied perhaps by lectures on financial morality from Washington, but would it matter when there is so little left to lose? In due course, every oppressed people comes to know that it is better to die with dignity than to live in slavery. Lenders everywhere should remember that lesson well.

I’m telling you, even Americans will figure this out some day, perhaps pretty soon. I’m no financial wizard, that’s for sure, but I’m smart enough to know that everything in this world comes back to money. And if you really want to know what’s going on, just figure out who owns all the banks and where their loyalties lie (wink wink). You, too, can have one of those aha mind-blowing moments that lasts for the rest of your life.

Much more on the amazing hypocrisy and injustice of the financial world here and here.

How Dare They

Mar 26

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Iran, Israel, Military, Nuclear Weapons | No Comments

The other day I posted a clip of George Galloway manhandling a radio caller who thought attacking Iran is a good idea. If you haven’t listened to it, you’re missing a real treat and a 7-minute education.

Galloway reminds the caller that Iran will respond if attacked. Iran is not some rinky-dink backward little country without resources. It might retaliate against London even, or other European cities. How would we like them apples? We are talking about setting off WW III here, and any people who blithely consider that an attack on Iran will be just another fun little military adventure for our boys needs to remove their heads from their asses.

The groundwork has been laid for things to escalate very quickly. This February 2006 article by Michel Chossudovsky explains how the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons has been purposefully blurred, as has the chain-of-command decision making process to use the weapons. Essentially, for purposes of military planning nuclear weapons have been declared ’safe for civilians’. You can imagine how redefining the weapons and loosening the traditional restraints against using them will facilitate the rapid escalation of conflict. Mass death will follow. As I wrote a few months back:

And look, they cleverly built in a delegation system whereby other people downstream can make “regrettable decisions”, and our leaders can shake their heads sadly after the “mistakes were made” and assure us that “people will be held accountable”.

Make no mistake. People in the US government and the Israeli government know that many, many people will die if they strike Iran, and they won’t all be Iranians. Israeli officials know that their own population could be decimated. Studies have been commissioned to work these scenarios out. The US government knows that our men and women in the service will die (Dick Cheney thanks them for volunteering). War games have been played to predict the losses. They all know that nuclear fallout will drift around the globe maiming and killing all manner of living things and polluting the earth. Don’t kid yourself. These people are contemplating utter disaster and ruin worldwide.

Now read this:

With U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Israel this week talking about Iran, the big question was whether President Bush would be willing to use military force in the waning days of his presidency to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The answer from most Israeli intelligence analysts: not likely. … Israel also figures that the chances of the Bush administration ordering a pre-emptive military strike against Iran are virtually zero. The only such scenario the Israelis envision is if the Democratic presidential candidates appear to be far ahead of their Republican rival and Bush senses a “now or never” strike option. Even in these circumstances, the Israelis say, an American strike is highly unlikely. Still, the Israelis are hoping that the hard-line Cheney will push the envelope — a role he reportedly played vis-a-vis the U.S. invasion of Iraq. One official said Cheney is seen as “a significant player” who could influence “serious issues that cannot wait.”

Sick. Go back to the Galloway video. Iran hasn’t started a war in 300 years, and there’s no hard evidence that Iran is doing any of the things that Israel and the neocons accuse it of doing. So does this really rise to the level of starting WW III? Really? Are you sure, because there’s no turning back once the missile leaves the ship or the plane. Millions of people will die, the earth will be even more horrifically polluted than it is now, and we will all be plunged into unimaginable horrors, so are you sure this is what you want?

In a rational world people would rise up with one voice and say, “How dare you! How dare you even think about destroying the world you sick bastards!” And then we would lock up all the psychopaths until they died, and we would live in peace.

What’s a Goy to do?

Mar 25

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Israel, Politics | No Comments

Obama comes under pressure from the Republican Jewish Coalition to fire one of his advisers, Gen. Merrill ‘Tony’ McPeak.

“By choosing to have a military advisor and national campaign co-chairman like General McPeak, serious questions and doubts are once again being raised about Senator Obama’s positions and judgment on Middle East issues,” said RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks.

In a 2003 interview with the Oregonian, Gen. McPeak resorted to old stereotypes and unfortunate language by blaming the lack of progress with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on the undue political influence of American Jewry. The problem, said McPeak is “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote — vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.”

“Rather than putting the blame where it belongs — on the Palestinian leadership and their continued reliance on terror, General McPeak finds it more convenient to blame American Jewry and their perceived influence,” said Brooks. “This is the same dangerous and disturbing canard being promoted by the likes of Jimmy Carter and authors Mearsheimer and Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby.”

In other words, the man knows what’s up and has the nerve to say it. He speaks the truth, and goodness knows we can’t have that.

So let’s see what Obama does. I predict he will cave to this pressure. I have some advice for him from the lips of one George W. Bush. Obama, just tell the RJC, “Who cares what you think?”

Update: Just to recap…A Republican Jewish group demands that Obama, one of the Democratic candidates for president (and not even nominated yet!), fire an adviser because said adviser once said that American Jewish groups have ‘undue political influence’. The irony is apparently lost on them over at Newsmax.

Problematic

Mar 25

Posted by Marlena in Iraq, Media, Military | No Comments

The Winter Soldier hearings have come and gone and the videos percolate through the blogosphere. As they must, since the corporate media dutifully ignored the entire phenomenon.

Why is that? Do soldiers telling the truth about Iraq pose a problem? Why yes, yes they do. Americans must not find out how some of our soldiers behave when the embedded journalists aren’t around. They’d fall right onto the fainting couch. For the forces unleashed in 2003 by Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzalez have whipped through Iraq many times now, reverberating through each hollowed out human being forced by circumstances to survive there for a time.

Officially 4,000 soldiers have died, never to tell their stories. Many others survive as shadows of their former selves. But of those who come back more or less whole, a few seem really quite angry. Some of those angry soldiers spoke at the Winter Soldier hearings.

The so-called Winter Soldier gathering organised by Iraq Veterans Against the War was designed to demonstrate that well-publicised incidents of U.S. brutality, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha, are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples,” as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the organisers said, of “an increasingly bloody occupation”.

“We have the power to bring the troops home, when they throw down their weapons and refuse to fight,” said Phil Aliff, a recently discharged combat veteran, who helped start the first active duty chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War at Fort Drum in upstate New York.

These soldiers took to organizing themselves because they object to being used for corrupt purposes. Dick Cheney’s assertion that “they volunteered” notwithstanding, a few of them intend to use their civil rights.

When you’re in the military, you are a citizen soldier,” Rappenhagen said. “You still retain your rights as a citizen and you’re able to use those rights.”

To critics of his activities, Rappenhagen said: “It’ll be a shame if the actual use of your first amendment right [to freedom of speech] becomes unpatriotic.”

But this attitude causes nothing but problems for those intent on Supporting the Troops. How can you support the troops if the troops tell you they’ve been allowed and even encouraged to commit war crimes? That won’t do. Americans can only comfortably support the troops when they believe that all soldiers are clean-cut boyscout types who say Yes Sir and No Ma’am and help old ladies with their groceries and exhibit the best military values of duty, honor and sacrifice at all times, even under the tremendous duress of war. We are a proud people who like to hold our views in comfort.

Winter Soldier testimony makes Americans uncomfortable - the cardinal sin. Cognitive dissonance reduces support for the war and generates inconvenient political turbulence. Therefore, no Winter Soldiers testimony shall be allowed on network TV.

And so it came to pass.

These increasing calls for GI resistance came amid an almost complete media blackout from the large U.S. news organisations.

Though the gathering was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and was held in Silver Spring, Maryland less than 10 miles from the White House, the personal testimonies of hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans garnered only a small article in the metro section of the Washington Post. The New York Times¸ CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS ignored it completely.

Five years into the war, the country appears to be back where it started in terms of media coverage. A study by the Pew Research Centre last week revealed only 28 percent of respondents correctly said about 4,000 U.S. citizens have died in the war. Most thought the number was closer to 2,000 or 3,000.

According to the same survey, overall media coverage of the war dropped from an average of 15 percent of stories in July 2007 to just 3 percent in February 2008.

The corporate media puts forth a valiant effort to hide the truth, but it won’t work. Too many people have burned with curiosity and interest about too many things, and now the answers they found lay strewn all over the internet in blogs, videos and alternative news sites. Some of the soldiers came back able to think and articulate what they saw, what they did and what it means.

Problematic? Only if you’re still very comfortable.

Yes. Obviously.

Mar 24

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Unreality | No Comments

Bush dancing March 8, 2008“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously.” - Dick Cheney answering Martha Raddatz’s question about what affect 4,000 dead American soldiers has on the country.

Yes, I keep posting this picture because I find it so illustrative. He’s doing a lighthearted little jig. Obviously, he’s suffering under some tremendous personal burden.

Great Smackdown by George Galloway

Mar 24

Posted by Marlena in Iran | 2 Comments

A confluence of factors

Mar 24

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Economy, Israel, Military | No Comments

Dick Cheney visits the Middle East, declaring his undying support for Israel among other things (like firming up the next steps). Fallon leaves his post March 31st. Meanwhile, an American nuclear submarine has joined other US ships in the Persian Gulf. American deaths in Iraq have reached the bloody milestone of 4,000. Osama bin Laden has risen from the dead (again, and pretty much in sync with Jesus!, wow good timing), and along with AQ#2 al-Zawahri calls for a war against Israel and the US. The 40-day mourning period for Imad Mughniyeh ends today, putting Lebanon on pins and needles. The US economy bravely dangles over the abyss with one sweaty palm holding onto the ladder swinging under Ben Bernanke’s confetti-dispensing helicopter. Let’s see…what else?

Well, you get the picture. It could soon be time for a false flag that will bring the world to it’s knees.

For much more pants-crapping fun, go read Winter Patriot.

Shiny happy people.

Cheney and Olmert

Bush dancing March 8, 2008

Fusion Centers

Mar 24

Posted by Marlena in Civil Rights, Surveillance | 2 Comments

Russell Tice, the (Republican, Bush supporting) NSA whistleblower who some of the right think is a paranoid, embittered loon, said this back in January 2006:

In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things.

Whatever he’s talking about there (and it sounds pretty horrifying), it’s not fusion centers. Russell Tice refers to something much worse that remains a mystery. Fusion centers, on the other hand, proudly operate in full view as part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Imagine that somewhere close to your local community there exists a secret computer center. Equipped with powerful mainframe computers and the database integrating powers of XML, this government-funded facility gathers data from thousands of sources including local, state and federal law enforcement, social welfare agencies, hospitals, banks, telephone companies, ISPs, computer search engines, private security companies, schools–essentially an endless list. With its massive computing power, this secret outpost is able to search and sift this data using vaguely defined criteria like “suspicious activity” in order to identify individuals for even closer scrutiny. Finally, this computer center dispenses the results of its analyses to local, state and federal law enforcement and to the military so that they can take action against the citizens tagged as threats.

Such a scenario is no longer the product of a paranoid, over-stimulated imagination. It is a reality called “fusion centers,” forty of which have been established throughout the United States.

Click here to see a map of which states have fusion centers. Here’s the website for the one in Massachusetts. Neat, huh? I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about (cough).

Here are some questions about Fusion Centers:

Under what authority does the Fusion Center operate (state law, local law, or federal law)?

Who is responsible for ensuring all federal, state and local laws protecting privacy and civil liberties are enforced?

What state or local sunshine laws or open meeting laws apply to activities taking place at Fusion Centers?

What information, intelligence and/or data are collected at the Fusion Center and how is it stored?

Who has access to this data at the Fusion Center? How is it protected from misuse?

What does the Fusion Center do to ensure the accuracy of the data it receives and disseminates?

Do any non-law enforcement entities participate in Fusion Center activities? If so, who?

Do any private sector entities participate in the Fusion Center activities? If so, who?

How are private sector entities selected to participate in the Fusion Center? May private sector entities not selected to participate in Fusion Centers receive the same information that is made available to those private entities that are selected? How would they get access to this information?

Do these non-law enforcement entities have access to law enforcement information or databases through their participation in the Fusion Centers? If they are co-located with law enforcement personnel what safeguards are in place to prevent unauthorized access?

Remember those card-carrying InfraGard people with their ’shoot to kill’ orders?

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law. InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

What do you want to bet some of the InfraGard people have privileges at the Fusion Centers? That’s the whole point of InfraGard - a special class of insiders with extra privileges, access, contacts, favors. If martial law ever does get declared here in the USA, you are going to see this country turned into a police state overnight. In the same way that our military has been largely supplemented with private contractors like Blackwater who operate without oversight, domestic security has also been farmed out to the private sector, also without oversight, even to the extent of giving these people “shoot to kill” permission. Unbelievable. These deputized private citizens will come out of the woodwork to take charge at the first opportunity. They will be armed with your private information and weapons, and you will be forced to do what they say.

This has all been arranged in the name of public safety. Public safety at what price? What price?

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power.” - Benjamin Franklin