Homeland Security Funded Exercise Portrayed Homeschoolers as Terrorists
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 11, 2013Taken on its own, the KOMO 4 News report below out of Seattle paints a stark and frightening picture of police battling “angry parents” in a simulated shooting at a school. The practice of police training to take on everything from homeschoolers to patriots and constitutionalists – “rightwing extremists” in government parlance – is anything but a rarity. Such exercises are now a prominent feature of the expanding police state.
In 2002, Alex Jones covered school shooting police exercises targeting homeschoolers, a topic included in his film, Police State Trilogy. Since that time, the effort to malign homeschooling parents as extremists and terrorists has only increased.
Police State Exercises Now Part of Public Education Landscape
In 2004, cops in Muskegon, Michigan conducted a “mock attack” on a school bus as part of a terrorism response exercise. The terrorists portrayed in the exercise were not fanatical Muslims or even phantom rightwing extremists – they were said to be fanatical homeschoolers.
According to the Muskegon Chronicle, the exercise was a simulated “attack by a fictitious radical group called Wackos Against Schools and Education who believe everyone should be homeschooled,”Homeschool World reported in September, 2004.
The simulated attack was funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
Prison Planet.com reported:
The mock attack was funded by a Homeland Security grant and required the participation of students to act bloody and injured, also involving hospitals, morgues and mannequins painted up to look like dead children, as parents were ordered to dash to emergency rooms frantic in the belief that their child had perished.
The Muskegon Area Intermediate School District later had to apologize for characterizing homeschoolers as terrorists after hundreds of complaints poured in.
Stereotypes consistently propped-up by the media demonize homeschoolers as hicks, retards and extremists, despite the fact the local and national spelling bees are routinely won by homeschooled children.
The ceaseless attack on homeschooling is an attempt to neutralize any alternatives parents have to placing their children in the state run re-education gulags known as the “public school system.”
“Michigan is the epicenter of the agenda to mould all schools into youth internment centers, indoctrinating all children to accept the presence of surveillance cameras, biometric scanning to access buildings and buy food, ID tracking cards and men in uniforms pointing guns at them as normal,” Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jone wrote on November 6, 2008. “Allied to this is the openly stated agenda not to educate but to dumb down students and brainwash them with bizarre humanist rhetoric about the evils of the family, all in preparation for their smooth acquiescence into enslaved adulthood as a downtrodden worker bee under the control matrix of the elite.”
But it is not simply homeschoolers who are portrayed as terrorists in government school exercises.
In 2011, Pottawatamie County, Iowa, and Homeland Security conducted an exercise simulating a school shooting. The shooter was portrayed as a “white teen boy, whose family is involved in anti-illegal immigration rallies” and supports the Second Amendment. The father of the shooter was portrayed as a member of an “underground white supremacist group,” according to an email sent to Infowars.com.
School children are now routinely subjected to unannounced exercises. In a Michigan school in 2006,militarized cops took students “from the classroom into the halls, patted down by officers and asked what they had in their pockets.” The Associated Press reported that some of the children “were so scared, they just about wet their pants.”
“In the years since 9/11 and the Columbine school shootings, there has been a concerted effort to make school emergency drills much more ‘realistic’ and much more intense,” writes Michael Snyder. “Unfortunately, the fact that many of these drills are deeply traumatizing many children does not seem to bother too many people. Do we really need to have ‘active shooter’ drills where men point guns at our kids and fire blanks at them?”
Snyder documents numerous instances where school officials, in coordination with local militarized police often operating with Department of Homeland Security grants, have relocated children during mock terror drills and active shooter scenarios. Schools also routinely engage in lockdown drills, an activity that naturally acclimates young minds to accept an ever-encroaching police state.
“Schools have become hi-tech prisons,” Steve Watson wrote in 2007. “Children all across America and the UK are being conditioned to accept that they are not free and that they must submit to draconian laws and measures for their own safety… Everyday we post reports from mainstream news sources documenting this disturbing trend.”
Homeschooling: Part of Domestic Terror Construct
The demonization of Americans who are opposed to interning their children in public reeducation facilities predates the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the attacks of September 11, 2001.
According to Time Magazine, the rhetoric that supposedly contributed to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City came from “well known-elements of far-right thought: tax protesters,Christian homeschoolers, conspiracy theorists… and self-reliant types” in opposition to the federal government.
Lew Finch, the superintendent of schools in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, went further and directly placed the blame for the bombing on homeschoolers. “There is a dedicated, very well organized, very well financed movement in America that is very anti-public schools, very anti-government,” he told the Des Moines Register on May 4, 1995. “The ultimate example of that sentiment is the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.”
“We will continue to see armed men terrorize our children, aim guns at their head and indoctrinate them to accept living under tyranny unless parents and teacher organizations band together to file huge lawsuits against those responsible and we vehemently denounce the insidious Sovietization of the public school system,” Watson and Jones noted.
Homeschool parents and organizations, as well, would be wise to combat insidious government propaganda that likens them to terrorists. Left unopposed, this massive brainwashing effort will convert an entire generation into believing that homeschooling is not only evil and socially harmful, but it breeds terrorists.
The goal is to completely eradicate parent directed education and the threat it poses to public indoctrination mills that train children to passively participate in their own destruction while simulatenously worshipping government.
Former IRS Head: “I Can’t Recite the Constitution, Sir”
Prison Planet.com
May 23, 2013“You went to law school. Did you study the Constitution?”
“I believe I took Constitutional law, but I’m not prepared to take an exam at this time,” Shulman said with a chuckle. “Meaning I’ll answer any of your question but I can’t promise that I’m an expert.”
Related posts:
- Only 28% Of High School Students Are Familiar With The Constitution
- Texas High-school Student Punished for Refusing to Recite Mexican Pledge
- TX Students Made To Recite Mexican Pledge Of Allegiance
- Matthews Rips Palin: Somebody Needs To ‘Give Her A Copy Of The Constitution To Read’
- In pushing Obama health care, Nancy Pelosi dismisses authority of US Constitution
China Bans 7 Topics in University Classrooms
In an effort to curb Western influence, China’s leaders have reportedly banned the discussion of seven subjects in university classrooms, including press freedom, universal values, and the historical mistakes of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese professors and political analysts said a recent directive from Beijing to universities indicated an awareness among the country’s leaders that the government is losing its ideological grip over students and younger faculty members.
» via The Chronicle of Higher Education (Subscription may be required for some content)
Infowars: The U.S. Government Is Monitoring All Phone Calls, All Emails And All Internet Activity
Michael Snyder
American Dream
May 7, 2013Big Brother is watching everything that you do on the Internet and listening to everything that you say on your phone. Every single day in America, the U.S. government intercepts and stores nearly 2 billion emails, phone calls and other forms of electronic communication. Former NSA employees have come forward and have described exactly what is taking place, and this surveillance activity has been reported on by prominent news organizations such as the Washington Post, Fox News and CNN, but nobody really seems to get too upset about it.
Either most Americans are not aware of what is really going on or they have just accepted it as part of modern life. But where will this end? Do we really want to live in a dystopian “Big Brother society” where the government literally reads every single thing that we write and listens to every single thing that we say? Is that what the future of America is going to look like? If so, what do you think our founding fathers would have said about that?
Many Americans may not realize this, but nothing that you do on your cell phone or on the Internet will ever be private again. According to the Washington Post, the NSA intercepts and stores an astounding amount of information every single day…
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.
But even the Washington Post may not have been aware of the full scope of the surveillance. In fact,National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney claims that the NSA has collected “20 trillion transactions” involving U.S. citizens…
In fact, I would suggest that they’ve assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens with other U.S. citizens.
And NSA whistleblowers have also told us that the agency “has the capability to do individualized searches, similar to Google, for particular electronic communications in real time through such criteria as target addresses, locations, countries and phone numbers, as well as watch-listed names, keywords, and phrases in email.”
So the NSA must have tremendous data storage needs. That must be why they are building such a mammoth data storage center out in Utah. According to Fox News, it will have the capability of storing 5 zettabytes of data…
The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. (Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5′s– that stretches past the moon.
Are you outraged by all of this?
You should be.
The U.S. government is spying on the American people and yet they continue to publicly deny that they are actually doing it.
Last week, this government spying program was once again confirmed by another insider. What former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente told Erin Burnett of CNN is absolutely astounding…
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
Yes, “all of that stuff” is most definitely being “captured” and it is time for the Obama administration to be honest with the American people about what is actually going on.
Meanwhile, the recent bombing in Boston has many of our politicians calling for even tighter surveillance.
For example, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that our interpretation of the U.S. Constitution will “have to change” to deal with the new threats that we are facing. More “smart cameras” are going up in New York, and Bloomberg says that we are “never going to know where all of our cameras are”. The following is from a recent RT article…
New York City police officials intend to expand the already extensive use of surveillance cameras throughout town. The plan, unveiled Thursday, comes as part of a drive for increased security around the US following the Boston Marathon attack.
New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the plan during a press conference with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which the two announced that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers were planning to attack New York next. The pair said they hope to discourage criminals by using so-called “smart cameras” that will aggregate data from 911 alerts, arrest records, mapped crime patterns, surveillance cameras and radiation detectors, among other tools, according to The Verge.
“You’re never going to know where all of our cameras are,” Bloomberg told reporters gathered outside City Hall. “And that’s one of the ways you deter people; they just don’t know whether the person sitting next to you is somebody sitting there or a detective watching.”
Will you feel safer if the government is watching you 100% of the time?
Do you want them to see what you are doing 100% of the time?
You might want to think about that, because that is where all of this is headed.
In fact, the truth is that spy cameras are not just going up all over New York City. Most Americans may not realize this, but a network of spy cameras is now going up all over the nation. The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles…
“You are being watched. The government has a secret system – a machine – that spies on you every hour of every day.” That is how each episode of “Person of Interest” on CBS begins. Most Americans that have watched the show just assume that such a surveillance network is completely fictional and that the government would never watch us like that. Sadly, most Americans are wrong. Shocking new details have emerged this week which prove that a creepy nationwide network of spy cameras is being rolled out across the United States. Reportedly, these new spy cameras are “more accurate than modern facial recognition technology”, and every few seconds they send back data from cities and major landmarks all over the United States to a centralized processing center where it is analyzed. The authorities believe that the world has become such a dangerous place that the only way to keep us all safe is to watch what everyone does all the time. But the truth is that instead of “saving America”, all of these repressive surveillance technologies are slowly killing our liberties and our freedoms. America is being transformed into an Orwellian prison camp right in front of our eyes, and very few people are even objecting to it.
For many more examples of how the emerging Big Brother surveillance grid is tightening all around us, please see my previous article entitled “19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid“.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama is telling us to reject those that are warning us about government tyranny. The following is what he told the graduating class of The Ohio State University on May 5th, 2013…
Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.
So what do you think?
Should we just ignore all of the violations of our privacy that are happening?
Should we just ignore what the U.S. Constitution says about privacy and let the government monitor us however it wants to?
Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…
History repeats itself.
idk why, but nixon’s mannerisms and face sorta remind me of romney…
Little bit of history for ya. Nothing’s changed, by the way. lol if you thought it had.
Infowars: Maryland to Become 19th State to Legalize Medical Marijuana
Andrew Nappi
banoosh.com
May 7, 2013Maryland became the 19th State to legalize marijuana for medical use Thursday when Governor Martin O’Malley signed the “Medical Marijuana – Academic Medical Centers – Natalie M. LaPrade Medical Marijuana Commission” act into law.
Congress and the president claim the constitutional authority to prohibit weed. The Supreme Court concurs. But sharing an opinion on something doesn’t necessarily make it a fact. You can claim you are a unicorn, but you’re not. Clearly, the Constitution delegates no power of marijuana regulation to the feds. And the so-called war on drugs rests on the same legal authority as all of the other modern-day undeclared wars.
None.
So, more and more states continue to do exactly what they should do when the federal government tries exercise power it does not legitimately possess.
Ignore it.
With Maryland’s new law, 19 states have done just that, legalizing medical marijuana. That wave continues to build, with even more state legislatures considering medicinal marijuana legislation in the 2013 session, and more likely to follow suit.
Better known by its shorter numerical designation, HB 1101, and introduced by Delgate Dan Morhaim, the new law allows academic medical research centers to create and implement programs to dispense marijuana to sick patients.
Under HB 1101 marijuana will only be provided through academic medical centers, more commonly known as teaching hospitals. Critics of the bill argue with hospitals having a choice to dispense or not dispense, some will opt to not participate. The new law also allows the governor to suspend the program if state employees fall under jeopardy of prosecution by the federal government.
The current start date for implementation is 2016, another sore point with the bill’s critics.
Despite the bill’s inability to grant every constituency’s wish, list it is viewed overall as a necessary step forward. The federal government forbids any marijuana use, even under a restrictive program like the one Maryland will implement. Tenth Amendment Center communications director Mike Maharrey said any resistance to the unconstitutional federal policy undermines the federal government’s position.
“Obviously, this bill doesn’t allow patients the free access to marijuana for treatment of medical conditions that we would like to see. But it is a step forward. Each state that refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the federal prohibition in any way makes it that much more difficult for the federal government to enforce its unconstitutional policy,” he said. “As for the governor’s power to suspend the program, I just don’t see it happening. He would look pretty foolish all of a sudden telling patients successfully treating pain or other conditions with cannabis, ‘Sorry, you’re out of luck now. D.C. called and said we have to return you to your state of suffering.’ That wouldn’t go over well. I see expansion of the policy down the road as the more likely scenario.”
Hospitals will be required to specify the medical conditions treated with marijuana and establish criteria under which patients would be admitted to the program. Concessions to privacy are also part of the bill, as participating hospitals will be required to provide the state department of health with data on both patients and caregivers. This data will also be required to be available to law enforcement. Licensed growers will be able to sell only to participating centers.
Dan Morhaim, the bill’s sponsor, serves as a board-certified physician, logging over 30 years experience as an emergency room physician and internist. In a February 21,2012 editorial, the Baltimore Sun endorsed Morhaim’s plan saying, “With medical marijuana legal for medical use, someone has to grow it, someone has to distribute it and someone has to supervise the system. We think the Morhaim-endorsed plan, which will license growers and distributors under the supervision of medical professionals, is the most practical approach.”
“I’ve long said Maryland should replace the dealer-patient relationship with the doctor-patient relationship,” Morhaim said. “This law gives us a chance to do that.”
Morhaim’s credentials as an academic, who is on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and on the faculty at the University of Maryland Medical School gave added weight and credibility to the bill.
In support of HB 1101, HB0180, the ”Medical Marijuana – Caregiver – Affirmative Defense” sponsored by Delegate Cheryl D. Glenn in the House and Jamie Raskin in the Senate will become law on June 1,2013. In summary, this bill establishes an affirmative defense against prosecution for the possession of marijuana or the possession of specified drug paraphernalia that the marijuana or drug paraphernalia was intended for medical use by an individual with a specified debilitating medical condition for whom the defendant is a specified caregiver; etc.”
A similar law for medical marijuana users is already in effect.
Former FBI Agent Confirms the Surveillance State Is Real
Greenwald wants to make sure we understand the full meaning of Clemente’s comments. “ ‘[N]o digital communication is secure,’ ” Greenwald repeats, “by which [Clemente] means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications—meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like—are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact.
“To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is,” Greenwald adds.
CATO | A Grand Façade: How the Grand Jury Was Captured by Government
The grand jury is perhaps the most mysterious institution in the American criminal justice system. While most people are generally familiar with the function of the police officer, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer, the judge, and the trial jury, few have any idea about what the grand jury is supposed to do and its day-to-day operation. That ignorance largely explains how some over-reaching prosecutors have been able to pervert the grand jury, whose original purpose was to check prosecutorial power, into an inquisitorial bulldozer that enhances the power of government and now runs roughshod over the constitutional rights of citizens.
Like its more famous relative, the trial jury, the grand jury consists of laypeople who are summoned to the courthouse to fulfill a civic duty. However, the work of the grand jury takes place well before any trial. The primary function of the grand jury is to inquire into the commission of crimes within its jurisdiction and then determine whether an indictment should issue against any particular person. But, in sharp contrast to the trial setting, the jurors hear only one side of the story and there is no judge overseeing the process. With no judge or opposing counsel in the room, grand jurors naturally defer to the prosecutor since he is the most knowledgeable official on the scene. Indeed, the single most important fact to appreciate about the grand jury system is that it is the prosecutor who calls the shots and dominates the entire process. The grand jurors have become little more than window dressing.
At present, Congress seems to be interested only in proposals that will further expand the powers of the grand jury. Recent “anti-terrorism” proposals, for example, have sought to remove critical limitations on the dissemination of grand jury material. Because the grand jury can easily function as a stalking horse for prosecutors to bypass the constitutional rights of individuals and organizations, it is imperative that its powers be scaled back, not unleashed.
Read the Full Policy Analysis [PDF]
Border Residents Disappointed by Fence Provision in New Immigration Reform Bill, Residents Offered $100 For Land
The so-called “Gang of Eight,” a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, released their much-awaited comprehensive immigration reform bill late Tuesday. It’s thrilling to finally see a reform bill which looks like it has some momentum come out of Congress—until you see the first section devoted to border security, which is like a kick in the gut for border communities.
Get ready for more fences, more invasive surveillance and more “boots on the ground.”
The bill appropriates $1.5 billion for the “Southern Border Fencing Strategy” to identify where fencing, including double-layer fencing, infrastructure, and technology would be deployed along the Southern border.
Here we go again. For anyone who has closely followed the building of the border fence in Texas, this is an immediate red flag. Landowners like Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez have been fighting the condemnation of their land since 2008. Much of the unfenced land left along the southern border is in Texas and it is owned by private landowners.
The proposed fencing means another round of land condemnations and costly court battles for landowners and business owners. Since 2007—when the Department of Homeland Security first started land condemnations under the 2006 Secure Fence Act in Texas—the agency has never adequately explained the decision-making process that determines where the fencing is built. And border residents say DHS seldom confers with communities before they start building.
Even worse, the immigration status of millions will hinge on the building of these border fences by the National Guard, as well as adding more drone surveillance to the border. And then finally a determination by a hyper-partisan Congress on whether the border is secure.
The bill creates a new class of immigrant called the “Registered Provisional Immigrant.” The bill says “RPIs” can travel outside of the country for up to 180 days a year and they can work. But it is a provisional status, presumably with even less rights than a Legal Permanent Resident status. According to the bill, immigrants cannot begin the process of becoming Legal Permanent Residents, (aka securing a green card) until the Homeland Security secretary submits a notice to Congress and the president that the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy is “substantially deployed and substantially operational,” and that the Secure Fence Strategy is implemented and “substantially completed.”
This could take years. Government officials have been trying to form a coherent border security strategy ever since 9/11 with little success. The past decade is littered with ideas and technologies that were once touted as the latest and greatest only to be later scrapped because they didn’t work and cost taxpayers too much. For instance, the virtual fence project was canceled in 2011 because of cost overruns and technical glitches. The radar sometimes mistook desert brush for border crossers when it was windy. And when it rained, the radar often didn’t work at all. The whole experiment cost taxpayers $1 billion.
Kathleen Campbell Walker, an El Paso immigration attorney with the law firm Cox Smith, says she was disappointed to see the fence provision in the bill. “A lot of communities—like El Paso where I live—have found the border fence to be a very offensive symbol,” says “I’m sorry to see the building of a fence used as a prerequisite for immigration reform.”
Rio Grande Valley resident Scott Nicol, chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands Team, has been a steadfast opponent of building more fence, which he sees as environmentally destructive and an ultimately ineffective security tool. “If they’re talking about basing immigrant adjustment on the completion of the wall it’s going to take years because of the condemnations that will have to take place,” says Nicol. “The walls have already been built where it’s easy to condemn properties. They can destroy nature refuges without blinking because they’re on federal lands. But what’s left now is private property and most of it is in Texas.”
Even worse, he says, is that the walls are often ineffective. They clog with debris and flood communities or they fall over in flash floods. People can scale them with relative ease. “When the Gang of Eight was visiting Nogales they watched a woman climb the fence,” says Nicol.
For those already weary from fighting the U.S. government for their land for the past five years, the specter of another round of land condemnations is frightening. “My sense is that the government is plowing ahead on a security plan and the indigenous people in this community are still in the dark,” says Dr. Margo Tamez, daughter of Eloisa Tamez, who are of members of the Lipan Apache tribe.
As we spoke Tuesday, Margo said her mother was in federal court in Brownsville, still fighting to hold onto their property in El Calaboz, a tiny border community outside of Brownsville. The U.S. government is trying to take the land underneath the 18-foot border fence it already built in the middle of her property. They are offering the family $100. “We are subjected to decisions made from far away and not consulted about the things being done to our land,” says Margo, who now works as an assistant professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia.
The comprehensive immigration reform bill is a hefty 844 pages. Many border residents are anxious to examine it in greater depth and weigh its impacts on their communities. “I’m still digesting this,” says Campbell Walker of the bill. “It’s going to be controversial and it still has a long way to go before it’s signed by the president.”
WHY LIBERALS NEED GUN CONTROL:
The Left hates guns because they empower the individual over the collective. A man with a gun does not need the protection of the State but can deal with violations of his rights by himself. The man with a gun can, if need be, do without the collective.
This chafes at liberal sensibilities, as they are absolute in their determination to make us all not just our brother’s keeper but his master. There can be no right to self-defense in a world where one does not own even himself. The State is master and it is a usurpation, an act of rebellion, to defend yourself. It is even more an act of treason to defend yourself against the State.
This is why there is such anger in the Progressive community against “bitter clingers” holding onto their guns; what right does any individual have to take the power of the State?
(via quesodemono)
Selection of Vermont Guard base for F-35 jets was based on flawed data, raising questions of political influence
The Air Force says it carefully sorted through 83 military bases around the country before deciding where to assign a coveted prize, the first Air National Guard squadron of F-35s, the next fighter jet in America’s arsenal.
In the end, it picked Vermont for the honor, home state of one of the National Guard’s most powerful political allies in Washington, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy.
But state pride in the award to the “Green Mountain Boys,’’ as the Vermont Air National Guard calls itself, has been clouded by the Air Force’s failure to fully take into account the thunderous noise the F-35s would generate in densely populated communities around its base at Burlington International Airport.
That failure and other flaws in its selection process are raising questions about whether the Air Force deliberately sought to reward a key friend in Congress with a squadron of advanced fighter jets for his state, and whether residents near the airfield might fall victim to Washington’s system of political spoils.
Projected sound levels around the airport are so high with the F-35s that local officials predict several thousand nearby homes would fall within a zone designated “incompatible for residential use,’’ negatively affecting the lives and property values of as many as 7,000 citizens.
A Globe examination of records, and interviews with Pentagon officials directly involved with the review, show the Air Force — in selecting Vermont over competing locations — relied on inaccurate, excessively low estimates of the impact of the jet blast on the local population.
One of the Pentagon officials said in an interview that the lengthy base-selection process was deliberately “fudged’’ by military brass so that Leahy’s home state would win.
“Unfortunately Burlington was selected even before the scoring process began,” said the official, who asked that he not to be identified for fear of reprisals from his superiors. “I wish it wasn’t true, but unfortunately that is the way it is. The numbers were fudged for Burlington to come out on top. If the scoring had been done correctly Burlington would not have been rated higher.”
Leahy, in an e-mailed statement, reiterated his support for the planes but did not respond to allegations of political influence. The Air Force denied the fix was in for Vermont, even though it now says it is reassessing residential impacts and other factors using updated information — a review that could end in a reversal of its preliminary decision.
Infowars: Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government?
Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
May 5, 2013The real capabilities and behavior of the US surveillance state are almost entirely unknown to the American public because, like most things of significance done by the US government, it operates behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy. But a seemingly spontaneous admission this week by a former FBI counterterrorism agent provides a rather startling acknowledgment of just how vast and invasive these surveillance activities are.
Over the past couple days, cable news tabloid shows such as CNN’s Out Front with Erin Burnett have been excitingly focused on the possible involvement in the Boston Marathon attack of Katherine Russell, the 24-year-old American widow of the deceased suspect, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As part of their relentless stream of leaks uncritically disseminated by our Adversarial Press Corps, anonymous government officials are claiming that they are now focused on telephone calls between Russell and Tsarnaev that took place both before and after the attack to determine if she had prior knowledge of the plot or participated in any way.
On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could:
BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?
CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.
BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.
CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”
Source: FBI looking at wife’s phone call
Axed Russian Winter Olympics official 'poisoned'
A former Olympic official who fled Russia after President Vladimir Putin criticised him for delays and cost overruns before the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi claims he has been poisoned.
Akhmed Bilalov, fired as deputy head of the Russian Olympic Committee in February, said on Saturday that doctors had discovered elevated mercury levels in his blood. He is receiving treatment in Germany.
“They have found elevated levels of mercury in my body,” Bilalov told the Interfax news agency, confirming Russian press reports. “I didn’t want to announce this before, but now that the press has found out, I’m forced to confirm it.”
Bilalov was axed after Putin toured Olympic sites in the southern city of Sochi a year before the launch of the Games. Amid widespread reports of construction delays and cost overruns, the president singled out Bilalov for a public dressing down over an unfinished ski jump at Roza Khutor, the cost of which had ballooned from 1.2bn to 8bn roubles (£24.8m to £165m). Video footage of Putin ridiculing Bilalov quickly went viral.
Bilalov, a native of the republic of Dagestan, was subsequently stripped of his positions, including as head of a state-owned company building ski resorts across the Caucasus region. He fled the country shortly after.
In April, a criminal case was opened against Bilalov for allegedly misspending more than £60,000 from the state company, including for travel to London during the 2012 Olympics. Prosecutors are also investigating him for allegedly embezzling £1.7m from the company.
The former Olympic official said he believed the source of the mercury was his office in central Moscow. He told Interfax he “began to feel bad in the middle of autumn last year”, adding that he felt satisfactory after receiving treatment.
According to Gazeta.ru, an online news portal that saw a copy of Bilalov’s medical report, the former official is at a clinic in Baden-Baden. Doctors found four times the normal amount of mercury in his blood. A source close to Bilalov told Gazeta that other employees at his Moscow office were being tested. “Everyone is in shock,” the source said.
Bilalov said: “I don’t want to blame anyone or speculate on how the mercury appeared in my Moscow office. I have no idea. Upon returning to Moscow, I plan to approach law enforcement agencies so they can help sort out this situation.”
