Bonus March on Washington, DC: 1932

Scenes from the 1933 film, Heroes for Sale:



1963 article describing the marchers' flirtation with fascism:

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1963/4/1963_4_18.shtml

General Smedley Butler, who supported the marchers demands and opposed fascism:

http://chancelucky.blogspot.com/2006/12/war-is-racket-smedley-butler-book.html

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=883

The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer:

http://www.chris-floyd.com/plot/

John Conyers - cowardly or complicit?

http://peacecandidates.com/news/john_conyers_illustrates_why_he_must_be_removed_congress

Wounded Knee - December 29, 1890

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/31/0022/7971/40/428127

Power to the People, Give Peace a Chance

Mike Gravel, Democratic candidate for President.



http://www.gravel2008.us/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gravel

Nico Haupt questions NIST's Sunder

In June 2005, Nico Haupt asked eight questions to NIST's Dr. S. Shyam Sunder:

http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/thom001/13858/eFrame.jsp

He begins his questions at the point indicated in the screenshot below:



Sunder's answer to Haupt's questions about the building "collapses" is that they are "beyond our statutory mandate." Bullshit.

More US Hispanics drawn to Islam

I didn't know this and think it is interesting. That's all.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0928/p03s02-ussc.html

The population of Hispanic Muslims has increased 30 percent to some 200,000 since 1999, estimates Ali Khan, national director of the American Muslim Council in Chicago. Many attribute the trend to a growing interest in Islam since the 2001 terrorist attacks and also to a collision between two burgeoning minority groups. They note that Muslims ruled Spain centuries ago, leaving an imprint on Spanish food, music, and language.

"Many Hispanics ... who are becoming Muslim, would say they are embracing their heritage, a heritage that was denied to them in a sense," says Ihsan Bagby, professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.

Surviving America's Depression Epidemic, by Bruce Levine

http://www.brucelevine.net/

Seymour Hersh on planted 9/11 "evidence"

"Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, 'Whatever trail was left was left deliberately -- for the F.B.I. to chase'".

Seymour M. Hersh, Annals of National Security, "What Went Wrong," The New Yorker, October 8, 2001

Seymour Hersh is the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

Why would evidence be planted? Obviously, to create a false impression that someone else committed the crime.

Bibliography of conspiracy theory theory

Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theory and 9/11

A comprehensive bibliography of the leading mainstream and dissident literature
Compiled by John A. McCurdy

www.globalresearch.ca 11 October 2004

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MCC410A.html

Many interesting links -- here's one, a good response to the ZMag crowd:

9/11 "Conspiracies" and the Defactualisation of Analysis: How Ideologues on the Left and Right Theorise Vacuously to Support Baseless Supposition, by Nafeez Ahmed

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq37.html

Another good one that addresses the "structure is everything" arguments of the ZMag crowd:

The Ontological Status of Conspiracy Theory, by Hakim Bey

http://www.hermetic.com/bey/conspire.html

As Carl Oglesby points out, sophisticated conspiracy theory posits no single, all-powerful, over-riding cabal in charge of "History". That would indeed be a form of stupid paranoia, whether of the Left or the Right. Conspiracies rise and fall, spring up and decay, migrate from one group to another, compete, collude, collide, implode, explode, fail, succeed, erase, forge, forget, vanish. Conspiracies are symptoms of the great "blind forces" (and hence useful as metaphors if nothing else), but they also feed back into those forces and sometimes even affect or effect or infect them. Conspiracies, in effect, are not THE way history is made, but are rather parts of the vast complex of myriads of ways in which our multiple stories are constructed. Conspiracy Theory cannot explain everything but it can explain something. If it has no ontological status, nevertheless it does have its epistemological uses.

Torture: magic force multiplier

"Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaida has been penetrated by American intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organisation and sophistication."

From: 'There isn't a target in Afghanistan worth a $1m missile'

Mohamed Heikal, the Arab world's foremost political commentator, talks to Stephen Moss

Guardian, October 10, 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4273924,00.html

But Mr. Heikal does not realize that torture, even in the future, has the amazing ability to increases the powers of terrorists.

This is the stuff of magic, not to be dismissed as mundane false confessions. Professor D'Amato is so boring.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/03/true-confessions-tale-of-khalid-shaikh.php

Lying Scum

If you don't impeach, you are complicit.

Constitutional scholar: "At least six identifiable crimes" possible in CIA tape affair

Constitutional scholar: 'At least six identifiable crimes' possible in CIA tape affair

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Turley_At_least_six_crimes_in_1219.html

The crimes named:

• obstruction of justice.
• obstruction of Congress.
• perjury.
• conspiracy.
• false statements.
• the crime of torturing suspects.

This scholar, Jonathan Turley, was a strong supporter of impeaching Clinton. It appears he is consistent.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/19/184716/04/622/424502

Don't forget the biggest crime, 9/11. Obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress relate not just to torture, but to the crime that was used to justify the torture.

In other news:

Fire damages Cheney offices near White House

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22325791/

Dana Perino covers her ass, as the intelligence apparatus prepares to throw Bush and Cheney under the bus:

Of course

Move on folks, nothing here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121702151.html

But former FBI officials privy to details of the case continue to dispute the CIA's account of the effectiveness of the harsh measures, making the record of Abu Zubaida's interrogation hard for outsiders to assess.

There is little dispute, according to officials from both agencies, that Abu Zubaida provided some valuable intelligence before CIA interrogators began to rough him up, including information that helped identify Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla. Footnotes in the 9/11 Commission report attribute information about a variety of al-Qaeda personnel and activities to interrogations of Abu Zubaida beginning in April 2002 and lasting through February 2004.

and

During his first month of captivity, Abu Zubaida described an al-Qaeda associate whose physical description matched that of Padilla, leading to Padilla's arrest at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago in May 2002. A former CIA officer said in an interview that Abu Zubaida's "disclosure of Padilla was accidental." The officer added that Abu Zubaida "was talking about minor things and provided a small amount of information and a description of a person, just enough to identify him because he had just visited the U.S. Embassy" in Pakistan.

Other officials, including Bush, have said that during those early weeks -- before the interrogation turned harsh -- Abu Zubaida confirmed that Mohammed's role as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

And we should believe this, why?

Evidence destruction raises presumption of guilt

Terrorism must be stopped, but the methods used by Bush and his henchman, Cheney, were based upon violence against the American people, murder of innocent Middle Eastern civilians, cover-up of the truth, lies, torture ...

Monday, December 17, 2007

By William Sumner Scott, J.D.

http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=13061

At least, destruction or "spoliation" of evidence gives rise to an inference that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the person who destroyed the evidence.

The theory of the spoliation inference is that when a party destroys evidence, it may be reasonable to infer that the party had consciousness of guilt or other motivation to avoid the evidence. Therefore, the factfinder may conclude that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence

http://library.findlaw.com/products-liability/evidence/spoliation/sanction-for-spoliation/index.html

9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick knows this, having written a book on the subject:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SJbzNaHY43QC&dq=%22destruction+of+evidence+is+a+crime%22

Thanks to George Washington for pointing this out:

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/12/911-commissioner-expert-on-destruction.html

Special expertise

The same experts were used at the Oklahoma Murrah Building and at the WTC.



http://www.911blogger.com/node/6765

http://911blogger.com/node/13043

Ghost Town

http://www.growingchicago.com/images/othercities/mypicsVI/

Naomi Wolf on the deep significance of destroying interrogation tapes

Reopen EVERYTHING. She's right, and I commend her for speaking out.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/70676/

What we are likely to see if the tapes documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri are ever recovered is that the "confessions" of the prisoners upon which the White House has built its entire case for subverting the Constitution and suspending civil liberties in this country was obtained through methods such as electrocution, beating to the point of organ failure, hanging prisoners from the wrists from a ceiling, suffocation, and threats against family members ("I am going to find your mother and I am going to fuck her" is one direct quote from a US interrogator). On the missing tapes, we would likely see responses from the prisoners that would be obvious to us as confessions to anything at all in order to end the violence. In other words, if we could witness the drama of manufacturing by torture the many violently coerced "confessions" upon which the whole house of cards of this White House and its hyped "war on terror" rests, it would likely cause us to reopen every investigation, including the most serious ones (remember, even the 9/11 committee did not receive copies of the tapes); shut down the corrupt, Stalinesque Military Commissions System; turn over prisoners, the guilty and the innocent, into a working, accountable justice system operating in accordance with American values; and direct our legal scrutiny to the torturers themselves -- right up to the office of the Vice President and the President if that is where the investigations would lead.

Professor D'Amato called this even before tapes were destroyed.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/03/true-confessions-tale-of-khalid-shaikh.php

(I'm assuming interrogations took place, were recorded, and all recordings were destroyed. None of this can really be assumed---what's important is that the interrogations, if they occurred, were likely tainted by torture.)

Justice of Obstruction

Justice Dept. Seeks Delay on C.I.A. Inquiry

By DAVID JOHNSTON and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 15, 2007

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department asked the House Intelligence Committee on Friday to postpone its investigation into the destruction of videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005, saying the Congressional inquiry presented “significant risks” to its own preliminary investigation into the matter.

The department is taking an even harder line with other Congressional committees looking into the matter, and is refusing to provide information about any role it might have played in the destruction of the videotapes. The recordings covered hundreds of hours of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda.

The Justice Department and the C.I.A.’s inspector general have begun a preliminary inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said the department would not comply with Congressional requests for information now because of “our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.”

cont'd here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/15/washington/15intel.html


Postpone Congressional inquiry for the "law enforcement decisions" of the Justice Department, SIX YEARS AND THREE MONTHS after 9/11? Do not forget that this is not just about the crime of torture, it's about the crime of 9/11.

http://ningens-blog.blogspot.com/2007/12/thomas-kean-on-destruction-of.html

More on Mukasey:

Mukasey to Leahy, Specter: No

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004916.php

Law prof on Mukasey's letter on torture

http://ningens-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/mukaseys-letter-not-good-enough.html

Silverstein in Mukasey's court:

http://ningens-blog.blogspot.com/2007/09/silverstein-in-mukaseys-court.html

Mukasey and Giuliani:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0744,barrett,78212,6.html

RAWA: The US and Her Fundamentalist Stooges are the Main Human Rights Violators in Afghanistan

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

RAWA communiqué on Universal Human Rights Day, Dec.10, 2007

http://www.rawa.org/events/dec10-07_e.htm

Excerpt:

The reinstatement of the Northern Alliance to power crushed the hopes of our people for freedom and prosperity into desperation and proved that for the Bush administration, defeating terrorism so that our people can be happy, have no significance at all. The US administration plays a funny anti-Taliban game and pretends that a super power is unable to defeat a small, marginalized and medieval-minded gang which is actually her own product. But our people found by experience in the past few years that the US doesn’t want to defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, because then they will have no excuse to stay in Afghanistan and work towards the realization of its economical, political and strategic interests in the region.

Response to the "self-crushing building" theory

http://www.truememes.com/mackey.html

This is an impressive website. I especially recommend the slide show "Helpful Hints for Understanding 9/11."

http://www.truememes.com/

More CrimInAlity?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/12/19210/608/933/420107

http://www.narconews.com/Issue48/article2919.html

Thomas Kean on destruction of interrogation tapes

In the second half of this BBC clip, 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean states that the Commission asked for all material related to the detainees, and that the detainees were who they got information from, the hijackers being dead.

http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/index.php?p=223

Thank you BBC for covering the real significance of the destruction of evidence related to 9/11. It's not just whether they were tortured, it's what they said.

Yes, obstruction of justice is a very big deal

So says the general counsel of the 9/11 Coverup Commission.

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/washington/06cnd-intel.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

The "Classical Gas Video"

National Applications Office: sounds so benign

30 November 2007

Domestic Spying, Inc.

By Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch

A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement.

continued here:

http://www.deepjournal.com/p/7/a/en/1125.html