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POPSMajor Hasan - the secret weapon! "He indicated that he would give me a call back and let me know. He contacted me on Saturday and said, I think we're going to make this work. A couple of hours later he called back and said, between the lines, I've been overruled by the White House. There will be no briefing for you this weekend, and early next week on Tuesday we'll give you a briefing.
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POPSMatt Damon in 'Green Zone', Movie With Message About Iraq War "Bourne Goes to Iraq" or Loyal Army officer finds out truth and the real enemy which changes his mission against the "powers that be". Note in the clipmark from Wiki the producer intends this to be not merely entertainment but relevant commentary: "Film shouldn't be disenfranchised from the national conversation. It is never too soon for cinema to engage with events that shape our lives. Perhaps this is like Clooney and Damon in Syriana in that respect. Allegedly based upon this book here. , which has some real interesting "reviews" worth considering.
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POPSMadeleine McCann: Online Video Appeal Video did not clip for some reason. It is at the site. Interpol - the gateway into 187 countries, Europol and national police agencies worldwide are supporting the initiative which is in seven different languages – English, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
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POPS6 Signs That the American Empire Is Coming to an Early End Funny, I've been saying this (out loud) for years. More of an interesting article: "No one seems to be saying this out loud -- yet -- but let's put it bluntly: less than a year into the 15-year span of Global Trends 2025, the days of America's unquestioned global dominance have come to an end. It may take a decade or two (or three) before historians will be able to look back and say with assurance, "That was the moment when the United States ceased to be the planet's preeminent power and was forced to behave like another major player in a world of many competing great powers." The indications of this great transition, however, are there for those who care to look."
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POPSAny Way these Firms Can be Experts in Everything? What these government contractors are expert at is: 1. Placing job sites in states and districts of Congressional Members who serve on funding committee for Defense, IT, and Homeland Security. 2. Have Political Action Committees that donate money to candidates on same committees. 3. Having paid representatives at every meeting in Congress or government agency that could affect their funding.
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POPSDick Cheney Takes It To Obama on National Security It appears that Obama’s dissenters are piling on his back. As a result, the foreign policy hawks and neocons are making a successful comeback. We all witnessed how capable and successful Cheney was when he took his case to the airwaves, TV shows, and editorials in defending the Bush administration’s legacy. It is beyond dispute that Cheney can make a convincing case and draw a sharp contrast between the Obama administration on what it takes to secure America and defends its interests. As more and more Americans see President Obama as indecisive in making his decision in Afghanistan, even as his commanders on the ground request direct action and troop increases, the more this type of onslaught will sink him further in the polls and erode what little is left of his political capital and public confidence. October 22, 2009 by Jason
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POPSScientist spying for Israel busted by the FBI
An affidavit suggests why FBI agents posed as agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to conduct the sting operation. From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say. Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and apparently did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment. The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell s
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POPSThe Dumbing of America "Deliberately dumbing down the message works well with the Republican base because, compared to average Americans, the GOP rank-and-file tend to be poorly educated and dogmatically Christian, living in a culture that is hierarchical and rules based."
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POPS Oliver North::Protecting the Image by Oliver North
Mr. Obama's presentation to the assembly Sept. 23 and his speech to the U.N. Security Council's summit on "nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament" Sept. 24 were celebrated for their "breadth and understanding" and his "appeal for dialogue in the quest for world peace." But the O-Team's careful choreography collapsed just hours later, when Iran's secret uranium enrichment facility, buried in the mountains near the holy city of Qom, was exposed. In the aftermath, it was revealed that Mr. Obama had known about the site since January. When asked why he failed to mention the Iranian malfeasance in both of his U.N. addresses, a White House spokesman said the administration didn't want "to spoil the image of success" during Mr. Obama's debut at the U.N. Of course, the problem isn't "image"; it's reality. And the reality is that the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons has continued unabated for at least a decade. U.S. intelligence confirmed that Tehran was building . . .
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POPSLearning of the Battle of Oxford paratroopers from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. They had to capture the city quickly; the F.B.I. had intelligence that thousands of Klansmen and segregationists from California to Georgia may have set off for Oxford, many of them armed. The first troops to reach Oxford found over 100 wounded federal marshals at the center of campus, 27 of them hit by civilian gunfire. Packs of hundreds of rioters swarmed the city, some holding war dances around burning vehicles. Snipers opened fire on the Army convoys and bricks struck the heads of American soldiers. Black G.I.'s in one convoy were ambushed by white civilians who tried to decapitate them in their open Jeeps with metal pipes.... ...The Army troops restored order to the school and the city, block by block. A girl watched a team of infantrymen under attack on the Oxford town square and, according to a reporter at the scene, wondered aloud, "When are they going to shoot back?"
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POPSShip of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors 5. Samantha Power -- Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position. Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,... was indisputably Barack Obama's closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign 6. Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments... however
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POPSCan Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? positions shifted. American and Israeli national-security players grudgingly accepted that they could tolerate Iran having some civilian nuclear-energy capacity. Ahmadinejad, Khamenei and the religious radicals wavered; then, as the model reached our present day, their power " another variable in Bueno de Mesquita’s model " sagged significantly. Amid the thousands of rows on the spreadsheet, there’s one called Forecast. It consists of a single number that represents the most likely consensus of all the players. It begins at 160 " bomb-making territory " but by next year settles at 118, where it doesn’t move much. “That’s the outcome,” Bueno de Mesquita said confidently, tapping the screen. What does 118 mean? It means that Iran won’t make a nuclear bomb. By early 2010, according to the forecast, Iran will be at the brink of developing one, but then it will stop and go no further. If this computer model is right, all the dire portents we’ve seen in recent months . . .
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POPSspanking i don't know if i believe this. i was spanked and i do not feel i lost any intelligence.
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POPSObama to Meet High-Powered Aides for Afghan Review were the top ranking civilian officials expected for a bracing session on a war some supporters fear could swamp Obama's presidency. War commander General Stanley McChrystal, who warned in a leaked report that the conflict could be lost within a year without more troops, was also due to to take part, either in person or by video link-up, the White House said. Other top military brass included were General David Petraeus who heads US central command, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair. CIA chief Leon Panetta was also due to take part, along with Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the US ambassadors to Islamabad and Kabul. Obama warned after meeting NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Tuesday that the United States could not fight the battle in Afghanistan alone, in remarks apparently aimed at European partners.
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POPSSeptember ‘Surprise’ "The United States was aware of Iran’s unfinished uranium enrichment site for several years, senior U.S. officials told CNN on Friday. U.S. officials have known about the facility since President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the officials who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the negotiations." Yes, the Bushies knew about it, too, and said nothing – but why not? After all, George W. was not exactly known as an apologist for the Iranian regime, and he was no less eager than his successor to tag Tehran as a serial deceiver. The CIA knew about it when they issued that now inconvenient National Intelligence Estimate averring that Iran had abandoned all efforts to militarize its nuclear research in 2003. Were they trying to protect the Iranians, too?
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POPSObama: Less State Secrets In the Bush Era many bad policies (torture, secret prisons, wiretappings, etc.) were covered up by being declared "state secrets." In a few court cases in the new Obama Administration, this was still the case because that was still the way the law, administrative procedure was. Now it's changed. No more easy covering up of wrongdoing by declaring it is a "secret." The new procedures certainly require more justice and more review.
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POPSEU Funding 'Orwellian' Plan to Monitor Public for "Abnormal Behaviour" Profiling whole populations instead of monitoring individual suspects is a sinister step in any society. "It's dangerous enough at national level, but on a Europe-wide scale the idea becomes positively chilling." Open Europe believes intelligence gathered by Indect and other such systems could be used by a little-known body, the EU Joint Situation Centre (SitCen), which it claims is "effectively the beginning of an EU secret service". Critics have said it could develop into "Europe's CIA".
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POPSRAF: 'That (UFOs) exist is indisputable.' more (at source): "If the reports are taken at face value then devices exist that do not use conventional reaction propulsion systems, they have a very wide range of speeds and are stealthy. I suggest we could use the technology, if it exists." The internal debate in the MoD came to a head in 1995, when documents were made public revealing that UFO reports were routinely copied to specialist "Defence Intelligence" branches. An exasperated intelligence office wrote to the UFO Desk: "I see no reason for continuing to deny that (Defence Intelligence) has an interest in UFOs.
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POPSal Qaeda's “Jafar the Pilot” Is On The Move Again There he became friends with José Padilla, who was later arrested as an “enemy combatant,” and also with Mandhai and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, who were jailed for plotting to blow up Florida power plants, a National Guard armory, and Jewish businesses. Adnan attended flight schools in Florida and Oklahoma, and within al Qaeda was dubbed Jafar al-Tayyar (“Jafar the Pilot”). How Do We Know of The Existence of Adnan? Newly declassified documents, as well as other evidence, make it clear that intelligence was gained during Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s interrogations. His confessions led to the identification of at least three al Qaeda sleeper agents who operated on U.S. soil. They are: Uzair Paracha, Adnan El Shukrijumah and Iyman Faris. A senior CIA intelligence analyst told The Daily Beast that the agency had tracked Adnan “somewhere in late spring to early summer” on several trips in the Middle East. On those travels, he used an alias"which the analyst did not . . .
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POPSWall Street's Disaster Has Spawned Our Greatest Terrorist Threat It turns out that Wall Street, rather than Islamic jihad, has produced our most dangerous terrorists. We will see accelerated plant and retail closures, inflation, an epidemic of bankruptcies, new rounds of foreclosures, bread lines, unemployment surpassing the levels of the Great Depression and, as Blair fears, social upheaval.
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POPSThe Man Who Sold the War The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.
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POPS Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda Recall that the president chose to install former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as his State Department's legal adviser. Koh is the country's leading proponent of transnationalism. He is now a major player in the administration's deliberations over international law and cooperation. Naturally, membership in the International Criminal Court, which the United States has resisted joining, is high on Koh's agenda. The ICC claims worldwide jurisdiction, even over nations that do not ratify its enabling treaty, notwithstanding that sovereign consent to jurisdiction is a bedrock principle of international law. As a result, there have always been serious concerns that the ICC could investigate and try to indict American political, military, and intelligence officials for actions taken in defense of our country. Here it's crucial to bear in mind that the United States (or at least the pre-Obama United States) has not seen eye-to-eye with Europe on significant . . .
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POPS The Fall Guy True, the president showed up at the CIA a few days later to reassure Mr. Panetta's demoralized troops. Don't "be discouraged" that you've "made mistakes," the president said, smiling, as Mr. Panetta stood grimly by. "That's how we learn." Mr. Obama vowed to be "vigorous in protecting" the organization. Later, at the White House, he announced plans to release photos showing detainee abuse"at the demand of the ACLU. Then came House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's full-frontal assault, claiming the agency had lied to her about waterboarding. This would have been an excellent time for some "vigorous" protection of the CIA, since agency documents flatly contradict the speaker. But with his domestic agenda in the hands of Congress, the White House was mum. It showed equal interest in defending Mr. Panetta against the threat of congressional investigations. This week the White House visited on the CIA director what ranking Senate Intelligence Committee member Kit Bond declared a "hat trick"
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POPSSolitary Crow On Fence Post Portending Doom, Analysts Warn
"At this point, all we can say for sure is that the sudden appearance of this grim avian prophet spells disaster for our nation's banks, its roads, its schools, its health care system, its energy resources—for our entire American way of life," Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters while examining video footage of the crow. "Would you just look at the way it's sitting there, with those glassy, black eyes and that creepy beak. Christ. Something bad is going to happen, I just know it." The president has also requested that all Americans remain inside their homes to avoid being spooked by the bird's foreboding, unearthly caws. "Look, the crow is already upon us, and we can't undo that," the president said at an emergency press conference Monday night. "As our nation faces this unprecedented challenge, it is very important that no one panic, because panicking will only increase the chances of it fidgeting with its talons or perhaps even flapping its wings. And I th
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POPSLaw, Not Torture, Protects National Security
Politicians and pundits ought to understand by now, the American system of justice was always meant to apprehend and prosecute criminals, and to ensure that those who apprehend them do not violate the law in doing so. That system routinely investigates law enforcement officials who use excessive force because we recognize that the credibility and authority of the law depends on universal accountability. The author, Joe Conason, got it exactly right. According to Cheney, preserving the rule of law will expose the nation to devastating terror attacks. This is total BS. “He has repeatedly claimed that waterboarding as well as other abusive methods are all that stand between us and a repetition of 9/11 or much worse”. Absolute scare tactics that reasonable adults know is not true. Through the release of the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on the agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation,” provides little support for the former vice president’s bluster. Bring them to justic
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POPSBush critics: still evil, crazy extremists (to the so called Liberal Media) In February, 2002, he bitterly mocked Europeans for complaining about torture at Guantanamo; insisted the U.S. would never do any such thing; and said Gitmo detainees should "be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas." In 2006, he went on national television and grotesquely said we should consider a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran, and then apologized the next week only because his phraseology was "a technical violation of a long-standing protocol" for how such ideas should be expressed -- as though rules for how government officials speak bind him as a "journalist." And when George Bush got caught breaking the law by spying on Americans with no warrants, Klein immediately demanded that Democrats do nothing to oppose it and then even infamously proclaimed that he supports the spying program even though he has virtually no idea what the program does.
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POPSSuit filed over mass arrest during DNC protest. "Denver police have said they were trying to control the crowd moving from Civic Center. The officers testified in court that they had intelligence that anarchists planned to gather in the park, then move toward the 16th Street Mall to wreak havoc at delegate hotels and other businesses. The activists had posted that plan on a publicly available website."
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POPSTom Ridge: I Was Pressured To Raise Terror Alert To Help Bush Win "The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned “separate stream of intelligence” that justified the warning — but offered little tangible information to support their new story.. ThinkProgress recalls, the AP reported that “even ’some senior Republicans’ privately questioned Ridge’s timing of a terror alert that came just three days after the Democratic National Convention.” Ridge’s book, “The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again,” comes out September 1."
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POPSTerror Alerts used in 2004 to help Bush win reelection More: Dave Weigel, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that in the past, Ridge has denied manipulating security information for political reasons. In 2004, for example, he said, "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security." The Bush administration was forced to admit in the days after the 2004 alert that it was based on intelligence three or four years old. Officials then claimed there was a previously unmentioned "separate stream of intelligence" that justified the warning -- but offered little tangible information to support their new story.. Ridge's book, "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege...and How We Can Be Safe Again," comes out September 1. Ridge reveals that he considered resigning because he was urged to issue a politically-motivated security alert on the eve of Bush’s re-election:
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POPSYouTube’s Parent Google is a Corporate Member of the Council on Foreign Relations “The CFR is the American Branch of a society which originated in England, and which believes that national boundaries should be obliterated, and a one-world rule established,” the late Carroll Quigley wrote in his book, “Tragedy & Hope.” “The ultimate aim of the CFR is to create a one-world socialist system, and to make the U.S. an official part of it,” explained Dan Smoot, a former member of the FBI Headquarters staff in Washington, D.C. “The CFR is the establishment,” writes Congressmen John R. Rarick. “Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also finances and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitution Republic into a servile member of a one-world dictatorship.”
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POPSClimate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security “We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind. “Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”
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