Criminal GW Bush's Idea of 'Sedition'

From The New York Times
Editorial Laura Berg’s Letter
April 27, 2008

The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.

Ms. Berg identified herself as a V.A. nurse when, soon after Katrina’s horrors, she sent her impassioned letter to The Alibi, a paper in Albuquerque. “I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” she wrote. “We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she received an official warning in which a Veterans Affairs investigator intoned that her letter “potentially represents sedition.”

It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to “act forcefully” in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech. The Department of Veterans Affairs retreated then finally apologized to the shaken Ms. Berg.

Even then, she noted, one superior told her it was preferred that she not identify herself as a V.A. nurse in any future letter writing. “And so I am saying I am a V.A. nurse,” Ms. Berg soon boomed out in a radio broadcast. “And some of my fire in writing this about Katrina and Iraq is from my experience as a V.A. nurse.” Thus declared Ms. Berg, well chosen to receive the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.

GW Bush White House 'Micromanaged' Crime

The GW Bush Administration 'micromanaged' criminal torture.

Perhaps they also so micromanaged unlawful surveillance of dissidents to subvert the 1st amendment?

Top Bush aides oversaw torture sessions 11 Apr 2008

According to an ABC report, top Bush aides, including Condi Rice, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement. Discussions on torture were so detailed, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group, The torture advisory group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney ABC's sources said.

GW Bush- the U.S.'s '1st Catholic President

Pentagon To Promote Subverting the 1st Amendment Against Independent Blog[ger]s

http://prorev.com/2008/04/pentagon-study-suggests-illegal.html

(excerpt)

|||| There are certain to be cases where some blog, outside the control of the U.S. government, promotes a message that is antithetical to U.S. interests, or actively supports the informational, recruiting and logistical activities of our enemies. The initial reaction may be to take down the site, but this is problematic in that doing so does not guarantee that the site will remain down. As has been the case with many such sites, the offending site will likely move to a different host server, often in a third country. Moreover, such action will likely produce even more interest in the site and its contents. Also, taking down a site that is known to pass enemy EEIs (essential elements of information) and that gives us their key messages denies us a valuable information source. This is not to say that once the information passed becomes redundant or is superseded by a better source that the site should be taken down. At that point the enemy blog might be used covertly as a vehicle for friendly information operations. Hacking the site and subtly changing the messages and data-merely a few words or phrases-may be sufficient to begin destroying the blogger's credibility with the audience. Better yet, if the blogger happens to be passing enemy communications and logistics data, the information content could be corrupted. If the messages are subtly tweaked and the data corrupted in the right way, the enemy may reason that the blogger in question has betrayed them and either take down the site (and the blogger) themselves, or by threatening such action, give the U.S. an opportunity to offer the individual amnesty in exchange for information. ||||

Criminal GW Bush Adminstration Destruction of Evidence

Behavior Suggestive of Cover- Ups from the Criminal President Who Ordered Illegal Wiretapping of Political Dissidents

ttp://www.examiner.com/a-1293960~White_House__Computer_Hard_Drives_Tossed.html

(excerpt)

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

"When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.

It has been the goal of a White House Office of Administration "refresh program" to replace one-third of its workstations every year in the Executive Office of the President, according to the declaration.

Some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives, the declaration added.

In proposing an e-mail recovery plan Tuesday, Facciola expressed concern that a large volume of electronic messages may be missing from White House computer servers, as two private groups that are suing the White House allege.

Facciola proposed the drastic approach of going to individual workstations of White House computer users after the White House disclosed in January that it recycled its computer backup tapes before October 2003. Recycling - taping over existing data - raises the possibility that any missing e-mails may not be recoverable.

At a House committee hearing last month, a computer expert who previously worked at the White House called the e-mail system "primitive" and said it was set up in a way that created a high risk that data would be lost from White House servers where it was being archived.

Under pressure to provide details about its computer system, the White House told the congressional committee that it never completed work that began in 2003 on a planned records management and e-mail archiving system. The White House canceled the project in late 2006 and says it is still working on a new version.

It was on August 5, 2006 that I suffered a criminal assault on my body and property by the criminal apostate/ criminal mercantilistic commonwealth of Virginia. This happened with the assistance of the criminal apostate U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency under the umbrella of the criminal apostate U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which plausibly illegally wiretapped my Verizon cell phone upon a time line suggestive of 1st Amendment subversion of revenge for my blog about the dirty deal to abort the Washington, D.C. South Capitol Frederick Douglass Mall.

Further Empowering Criminal Apostate Shadow Government

From Truthseeker 24

Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Ellen Nakashima from the Washington Post at March 6, 2008 reported on a new federal government plan. This plan revolves around several thousand law enforcement agencies creating a foundation of domestic intelligence system via computer networks. As a result, it will analyze tons of information to "fight crime" and get rid of terror plots. They want to merge information into data warehouses. The government hopes that this network will be part of a fledgling Justice Department system called the National Data Exchange, or N-DEx. Even now, advanced systems exist called Coplink. Coplink is a commercial data mining system invovling about 1,600 law enforcement agencies. Coplink can find nicknames, height, wieght, color of hair, etc. of certain people in a matter of seconds. What's the purpose of this. Thomas McNamara, chief of the federal Information Sharing Environment office, said he wants regional systems to share information. This is of course the truth. This is about the integration of systems into a centralized database (i.e. Much of the advanced Big Brother are controlled and integrated into the Pentagon and its DARPA-like systems facilitating the military industrial complex). Some like Thomas may claim it doesn't infringe on our privacy, but our privacy is infringed all of the time with cameras everywhere, the Real ID Act, free speech zones, RFID chips in our vehicles and even our clothes, etc.

MSNBC Now Opposes Free Speech: 911 Truthers Belong in Concentration Camps

Fascist Morning Joe: Tase, Take 911 Truthers to Concentration Camps

http://www.infowars.com/?p=584

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 4, 2008

In response to the arrest of a 9/11 demonstrator during a Bill Clinton appearance in Corpus Christi, corporate media shill and former Republican Congress critter Joe Scarborough and his co-hosts demanded 9/11 truthers be tasered and taken to detention camps. “Where’s the taser?” Joe wants to know as MSNBC runs footage of the man’s arrest. “Tase him!” His co-host adds: “Led away in handcuffs and hopefully taken to one of those secret prisons in eastern Europe and never to be heard from again… I hope we have a special prison for 9/11 conspiracy theorists.”

In other words, the corporate behemoth MSNBC believes people who disagree with the government not only do not deserve First Amendment rights and protection, but also believe demonstrators should be kidnapped by the CIA and taken to a “special prison” to be tortured and ultimately killed, as this is the fate of many who disappear suffer. Is it possible the United States is about to become like Pinochet’s Chile? In 1973, thanks to the CIA and U.S. corporations, Chile became a brutal police state. Chileans were subjected to systematic and massive violations of their most basic human rights. Official figures indicate that nearly 3,000 people were executed, disappeared or lost their lives as a result of torture and political violence. It would seem “Morning Joe” would enthusiastically welcome the installation of a fascist state where those he disagrees with are disappeared, tortured, and murdered.

Last October, CNN host Glenn Beck called 9/11 truthers “insane” and “dangerous anarchists” in response to 9/11 truthers infiltrating the Real Time with Bill Maher show. “These truthers are exactly the kind of people who want to rock this nation’s foundation, tear us apart and plant the seeds of dissatisfaction in all of us… [this is] the kind of group a Timothy McVeigh would come from,” declared Beck, setting a precedence followed this morning by the scurrilous Joe Scarborough and his complaisant minions....

This is a part of a growing mainstream media trend. with a master design to provide the statutory justification for furthering the subversion of the 1st and 4th amendments of the U.S. constitution via targeting dissidents with placement in concentration camps- subjecting them to all sorts of opportunities to be murdered by constitutionally apostate government.

Mukasey: Free Pass to Bush Adminstration Crime

MUKASEY REFUSED TO ENFORCE CONTEMPT LAW

AP - Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers committed no crime. As promised, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she has given the Judiciary Committee authority to file a lawsuit against Bolten and Miers in federal court. . . Mukasey said Bolten and Miers were right in ignoring subpoenas to provide Congress with White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080301/D8V4C5HG5.html

G.W. Bush Continues to Express Fear of Exposure for Criminal Wiretaps of Dissidents

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/02/23/washington/23fisa.html&tntemail1=y&oref=slogin

Criminal Apostate U.S. Supreme Court Gives Free Pass to Criminal Surveillance

Supreme Court won't review Bush domestic spying case 19 Feb 2008 The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down a legal challenge to the warrantless domestic spying program President [sic] George W. Bush created after the September 11 attacks. The American Civil Liberties Union had asked the justices to hear the case after a lower court ruled the ACLU, other groups and individuals that sued the government had no legal right to do so because they could not prove [?] they had been affected by the program.

Supreme Court Refuses to Review Warrantless Wiretapping Case --Ruling Allows Executive Branch to Police Itself, Says ACLU (ACLU) 19 Feb 2008 The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to review a legal challenge to the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys and national nonprofit organizations who say that the unchecked surveillance program is disrupting their ability to communicate effectively with sources and clients.

Backbone, at Last

http://nestmannblog.sovereignsociety.com/2008/02/backbone-at-las.html

It's about time. The U.S. Congress finally mustered the political courage to slow down the War on Terror' stampede on civil liberties.

By failing to re-authorize the so-called "Protect America Act," Congress reinstated a deeply flawed legal framework for warrantless surveillance. Nonetheless, that framework is preferable to that developed by the Bush administration under this act, which expired on Feb. 16, 2008.

In the Protect America Act, enacted Aug. 6, 2007, Congress authorized the Bush administration to continue two electronic surveillance initiatives it authorized under a 2001 executive order:

• Warrantless wiretaps of conversations originating in, or terminating in, the United States, of individuals allegedly connected to terrorist groups; and
• With the cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies, warrantless mining of data streams to analyze transactional records of telephone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorist suspects.

Despite the "terrorist" appellation, these initiatives weren't limited to terrorist-related intelligence gathering. Any activity, terrorist-related or not, was fair game if deemed of interest to intelligence officials. Vice-President Dick Cheney, for instance, apparently used Bush's 2001 executive order to eavesdrop on members of his staff he suspected of talking to the press without advance authorization.

The Protect America Act bypassed a legal procedure set up 30 years ago to review applications for national security and intelligence-related electronic surveillance. Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a secret federal court must review any application for electronic surveillance that has a "substantial likelihood" of monitoring the communications of a U.S. resident.

But with the Protect America Act, the definition of "electronic surveillance" subject to FISA become much narrower, in effect, legalizing the Bush administration initiatives. What's more, the FISA court played a much smaller role. Rather than a court, the act gave the attorney general—a political appointee—the responsibility to authorize FISA-related surveillance requests. The court merely reviewed surveillance already under way.

The Protect America Act also directed telecommunications companies to assist the government in implementing the Bush surveillance initiatives. In addition, it protected those companies from private lawsuits for alleged violations of FISA. Dozens of such lawsuits have been filed.

Despite warnings from the Bush administration of possibly grave consequences if the Protect America Act ever expired, Congress thankfully set a time limit on this authority—February 16, 2008.

That supposedly would give legislators enough time to come up with a framework that would give back the FISA court some of its oversight. In exchange, Congress would presumably permanently legalize the Bush surveillance initiatives.

The Bush administration, however, wanted more. It also demanded that telecom companies receive retroactive legal immunity for their participation in illegal surveillance prior to enactment of the Protect America Act.

Last week, the Senate caved in to Bush, and included telecom immunity in its amendments to FISA. However, the House didn't go along. It adjourned for three weeks on Feb. 16 without renewing the Protect America Act. In the process, it delivered a rare respite to greater privacy intrusions in the never-ending War on Terror.

This certainly isn't the last word, but as it stands now, the FISA court must once again approve any new applications for electronic surveillance under the "substantial likelihood" standard.

Despite my grave misgivings about the entire procedure being shrouded in secrecy, and with near-total lack of accountability, this procedure is far preferable to placing the final decision in the hands of the attorney general. It's hard to forget that only a few months ago, the now thankfully departed Alberto Gonzales occupied this post.

What's more, even though Congress didn't cave in to the Bush administration, the world didn't end on Feb. 16. No mushroom clouds appeared over Washington, D.C., or New York City. Now that Congress has displayed a little backbone in defending civil liberties, it will hopefully have the courage to do so again.

Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann

U.S Halliburton Concentration Camps

http://www.globalre search.ca/ index.php? context=va&aid=8067

Detention camps at undisclosed locations in the US? Rule by Fear or Rule by Law? by Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg

Global Research, February 13, 2008

San Francisco Chronicle

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943 Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees. According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people? Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies, " gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order." The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike. Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51. U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it. According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it. A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month. What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens? The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law. Lewis Seiler is the president of Voice of the Environment, Inc. Dan Hamburg, a former congressman, is executive director.

Global Research Articles by Lewis Seiler

Republican Party Slits its Wrists in Defending Criminal Government 4th Amendment Violations