Sunday, June 03, 2007



German police clash with anti-G8 demonstrators
Published by Hossam el-Hamalawy, 2 June, 2007
Arabawy

From Al-Jazeera…

Clashes have left at least 150 police officers injured after thousands of people marched through the northern German port city of Rostock on Saturday to protest against the forthcoming Group of Eight meeting of industrialised powers.

The summit will be hosted by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in Heiligendamm, 25km west of Rostock.

Some covered their heads and faces with black hoods, sunglasses and scarves, while others chanted protest slogans through megaphones, blowing whistles and waving flags.

Groups of protesters attacked police cars with rocks, bottles and paint bombs, authorities said.

They said a hotel where a US delegation is supposed to stay during the G8 summit was also attacked.

Rocks and broken beer bottles lay on the ground in front of a bank building where protesters smashed half a dozen windows.

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'High Priests of Globalization' in Istanbul

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Meet the Bilderbergers -- Our Invisible Government

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Saturday, June 02, 2007


Disclosure Project May 9th 2001 National Press Club Conference



Campaign for Disclosure Witnesses Panel ~ National Press Club Washington, DC

Originally Broadcast Live on Wednesday, May 9, 2001

On Wednesday, May 9th, 2001 over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies.

The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena, according to Dr. Steven M. Greer, director of the Disclosure Project which hosted the event.

National Press Club Conference Video

The Greatest Secret in Modern History

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First Minister, the SNP's Alex Salmond
Britain's hard-line Dictators Exposed

Intrepid whistle-blower and the UK's ex-Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, today makes a searing indictment of Tony Blair's arrogance, ill manners and anti-democratic nature.

In 'Blair is no Democrat', Craig Murray illustrates how Blair's contemptuous refusal to congratulate Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party (SNP) on its historic victory in becoming the (albeit minority) government of Scotland hides more than a tyrant.

Many, including myself, believe the SNP victory would have been much greater if Blair and his cronies in the Scottish Office hadn't sabotaged the recent election by ignoring the several warnings they were given by producing a complicated ballot paper. As a result of this (very likely deliberate) de facto rigging of the election as well as several other electoral improprieties, including missing postal votes, well over 142,000 of the electorate in a small country of under 5 million were effectively disenfranchised.

Having first tried to frighten the Scottish electorate into not supporting the SNP, Blair's reaction since has been to maintain not only a cold silence but to avoid his own duties of governance by not inviting Scotland's new First Minister, Salmond, for a meeting.

"This," writes Craig Murray, "shows a profound contempt, not just for the SNP, but for Scotland and the Scottish Parliament. More than this, it shows a profound contempt for democracy. Blair is only in favour of it when it gives the "right" result - ie the one he wants. That has been evident in Iran and Palestine. It is now evident in Scotland."

"Blair and Brown are also showing just how unpleasant New Labour in Scotland have become. They still refuse to acknowledge that they lost Scotland after fifty years of dominance. Blair and Brown's failure to congratulate Alex Salmond on his victory is a denial of all the politenesses and decencies that are necessary to the smooth running of a democracy, and which are understood by democratic politicians everywhere. They are showing both their nastiness and their pettiness."

Nasty and petty they certainly are. Corrupt, venal and, we may add, a party responsible for a collective war crime for which their leader stubbornly refuses to accept responsibility.

And if the bad-tempered defensiveness of their media spokespeople is anything to go by, Blair's Nu Labor is a party desperately frightened that the hard lesson in Scotland may well augur something far worse for them in the future.

It may well do. And if it does they will have no one to blame but themselves.

Far from being socialists, the Labour Party was built upon the foundations of reformism, ie. a hopelessly optimistic belief that it was possible to reform capitalism into a more benevolent creature. From the time of Roosevelt's New Deal through to Keynes and the concept of Welfare State capitalism it looked like the reformists could be right.

But all that was brutally ended with the Friedmanites and the monetarists who, under Thatcher and Reagan, began the wholesale dismantling of public ownership, the systematic destruction of public services and the handing-over of national assets at knock-down prices to private market forces.

The ruthless, cold war mentality of the Reagan-Thatcher Axis and the huge surge of military spending it hid became not only an essential part of the ideology of the Atlanticists in all Britain's political parties but embedded itself in the very culture of Anglo-American societies.

Naturally, this process was all along promoted enthusiastically by capital's media whores who themselves have become increasingly embedded as the propagandists for the USUK's new imperialism. Using euphemisms like 'neo-liberalism' the media has and will continue to play an active part in promoting the ruthless economics of the much harsher, totalitarian version of corporate capitalism we face today.

The more Blair and his abortion of a Nu Labor promote this ugly dystopia the more out-of-step they become with their people. In spurning them, Scotland rejected an entire agenda of betrayal and warmongering.

"It should not be forgotten that key to the SNP's victory was their profound opposition to the War in Iraq and to Trident nuclear missiles, and their replacement. The SNP showed what happens when a genuine choice on these issues is given to voters. That is a huge threat to the conservative establishment in the UK, and explains Blair's arrogant hostility."

The hostility towards the SNP's victory from both Labour and the so-called Liberal Democrats underscores the deep commitment of the leaders of these two Atlanticist parties, as well as the Tories, to not only obediently toe Washington's line but to actively promote its belligerent, unipolar imperialism.

In treating Scotland so contemptuously they are exposed as the cold, hard-line establishment, enemies of democracy they really are.

This Story is now at OpEdNews.com


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Friday, June 01, 2007

Peatbog Faeries ~ Live at Rainforest World Music Festival, Sarawak 2006

Possibly the hippest, most happening Celtic trance dance band on Earth. Captured in concert at the 2006 Rainforest World Music Festival in Sarawak by Antares http://magickriver.blogspot.com/

Visit the Faeries @ http://www.peatbogfaeries.com/



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AT&T forwards all Internet traffic into NSA
From Spam Daily News, April 07, 2006

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF's filing them under seal -- a well-established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence.

While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is "presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case."

"The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

"More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now," said Bankston.

EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public."

The public deserves to know about AT&T's illegal program," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "In an abundance of caution, we are providing AT&T with an opportunity to explain itself before this material goes on the public docket, but we believe that justice will ultimately require full disclosure."

The NSA program came to light in December, when the New York Times reported that the President had authorized the agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications inside the United States without the authorization of any court."

Mark Klein is a true American hero," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "He has bravely come forward with information critical for proving AT&T's involvement with the government's invasive surveillance program."

In the lawsuit, EFF is representing the class of all AT&T residential customers nationwide. Working with EFF in the lawsuit are the law firms Traber & Voorhees, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP and the Law Office of Richard R. Wiebe.

RELATED:Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT&TAT&T sued over NSA eavesdropping SOURCE: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

EFF's Class-Action Lawsuit Against AT&T for Collaboration with Illegal Domestic Spying Program
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive, illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications. On July 20, 2006, a federal judge denied the government's and AT&T's motions to dismiss the case, allowing the lawsuit to go forward.

The EFF lawsuit arose from news reports in December 2005, which first revealed that the NSA has been intercepting Americans' phone calls and Internet communications without any court oversight and in violation of the privacy safeguards established by Congress and the U.S. Constitution. This surveillance program, purportedly authorized by the President at least as early as 2001, apparently intercepts and analyzes the phone and Internet communications of millions of ordinary Americans.

But the government did not act—and is not acting—alone. EFF's lawsuit alleges that AT&T has given the NSA unchecked backdoor access to its communications network and its record databases. On behalf of a nationwide class of AT&T customers, EFF is suing to stop this illegal conduct and hold AT&T responsible for violating the law and the fundamental freedoms of the American public.

AT&T moved to dismiss the case, basically arguing that it should be immune from suit because "whatever we did, the government told us to." The U.S. government also moved to dismiss the case, arguing that allowing the case to go on would necessarily reveal "state secrets" that would harm national security. But in July, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker issued a decision denying both motions.

As Judge Walker wrote when dismissing AT&T's immunity claims, "AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal." Judge Walker also flatly rejected the government's secrecy argument: "The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security."

The case is now on appeal before the 9th Circuit.

Picture Above:

Headquarters for the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, approximately ten miles northeast of Washington, DC. Despite having been described as the world's largest single employer of Ph.D. mathematicians, the owner of the single largest group of supercomputers, the second largest electricity consumer in the entire state of Maryland. the owner of a chip fabrication plant with production of dedicated semiconductors, and having a budget ($7.5 billion) much larger than that of the CIA, it has had a remarkably low profile until recent years. For a long time its existence was not even acknowledged by the US government. It was often said, half-jokingly, that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency" or "Never Say Anything" (source: Wikipedia.org)

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