What Happened at Wounded Knee?

With all the excitement about Barack Obama, it's time to hear from one of the elders we can rely on for a unique and well thought out point of view. Leonard Peltier discusses the necessity for a new inquiry into what happened in 1973 at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. I don’t think that’s too much to ask a president of the people, do you? Happy Birthday, Leonard, and may you be free soon!

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change

By LEONARD PELTIER

I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of the United States and the world. Your election as president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in the United States.

Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change. Our young people, black and Native alike, suffer from police brutality and racial profiling, underfunded schools, and discrimination in employment and housing. I sincerely hope your campaign will inspire some hope among our youth to struggle for a better future. I am, however, concerned that your recent statement on the Sean Bell verdict, in which the New York police officers who fired 50 shots at a young man on the eve of his wedding were acquitted of criminal charges, displays a rather myopic view of the law. Until the law is harnessed to protect the victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimize an inhuman institution.

As I can testify from experience, the legal institutions of this nation are far from racial and political neutrality. When judges align with the repressive actions and policies of the executive branch, injustice is rationalized and cloaked in judicial platitudes. As you may know, I have now served more than three decades of my life as a political prisoner of the federal government for a crime I did not commit. I have served more time than the maximum sentence under the guidelines under which I was sentenced, yet my parole is continually denied (on the rare occasions when I am afforded a hearing) because I refuse to falsely confess. Amnesty International, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, my Guatemalan sister Rigoberta Menchu, and many of your friends and supporters have recognized me as a political prisoner and called for my immediate release. Millions of people around the world view me as a symbol of injustice against the indigenous peoples of this land, and I have no doubt that I will go down in history as one of a long line of victims of U.S. government repression, along with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Square martyrs, Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and others targeted by for their political beliefs. But neither I nor my people can afford to wait for history to rectify the crimes of the past.

As a member of the American Indian Movement, I came to the Pine Ridge Oglala reservation to defend the traditional people there from human rights violations carried out by tribal police and goon squads backed by the FBI and the highest offices of the federal government. Our symbolic occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 inspired Indians across the Americas to struggle for their freedom and treaty rights, but it was also met by a fierce federal siege and a wave of violent repression on Pine Ridge. In 1974, AIM leader Russell Means campaigned for tribal chairman while being tried by the federal government for his role at Wounded Knee. Although Means was barred from the reservation by decree of the U.S.-client regime of Richard Wilson, he won the popular vote, only to be denied office by extensive vote fraud and control of the electoral mechanisms. Wilson’s goons proceeded to shoot up pro-Means villages such as Wanblee and terrorize traditional supporters throughout the reservation, killing at least 60 people between 1973 and 1975.

It is long past time for a congressional investigation to examine the degree of federal complicity in the violent counterinsurgency that followed the occupation of Wounded Knee. The tragic shootout that led to the deaths of two FBI agents and one Native man also led not only to my false conviction, but also the termination of the Church Committee, which was investigating abuses by federal intelligence and law enforcement agents, before it could hold hearings on FBI infiltration of AIM. Despite decades of attempts by my attorneys to obtain government documents related to my case, the FBI continues to withhold thousands of documents that might tend to exonerate me or reveal compromising evidence of judicial collusion with the prosecution.

I truly believe the truth will set me free, but it will also signify a symbolic break from America’s undeclared war on indigenous peoples. I hope and pray that you possess the courage and integrity to seek out the truth and the wisdom to recognize the inherent right of all peoples to self-determination, as acknowledged by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. While your statements on federal Indian policy sound promising, your vision of “one America” has an ominous ring for Native peoples struggling to define their own national visions. If freed from colonial constraints and external intervention, indigenous nations might well serve as functioning models of the freedom and democracy to which the United States aspires.

Yours in the struggle.

Until freedom is won,

Leonard Peltier
# 89637-132
U.S.P. Lewisburg,
P.O. Box 1000,
Lewisburg, PA USA 17837

Special Note:

Please Help Support the LPDOC for Leonard's Freedom

As Leonard Peltier marks his 64th birthday on Sept. 12, the LPDOC is redoubling its efforts to win his freedom. We are planning an ambitious organizing drive in our new Fargo office to persuade North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, to investigate the federal government's role in the violent counterinsurgency on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1973-1976, the FBI's withholding of thousands of pages of documents related to the AIM activist, and the unfair federal trial in Fargo which led to Leonard's conviction in 1977.

Leonard is suffering from partial blindness, diabetes, a heart condition, high blood pressure, and prostate problems. He needs your help.

We need your help too, if we are to do the work that needs to be done to obtain justice for one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the world. At the moment, we are barely keeping up with our rent and phone bills, our two full-time staff members are working without pay, and we badly need a new photocopier. Due to the damaging actions of a former LPDC employee, who removed valuable office equipment and contributor records, we are rebuilding our committee virtually from scratch. We have found an experienced volunteer editor for our Spirit of Crazy Horse newspaper, but in order to resume publication, we will need your support.

If you are able to contribute $20 or more for this campaign, you will receive a free subscription to the newsletter to keep abreast on developments in Peltier's campaign and in Indian Country generally. Please contribute as generously as you are able, and also take the time to write and/or call Sen. Dorgan With your help, we can win Leonard's freedom from the same city in which it was taken away. Even if you are unable to contribute at this time, please send us your name and address to help us rebuild our list of supporters at the state and national level.

Please send your donation to:

LPDOC
PO Box 7488
Fargo, ND 58106
701-235-2206

Thank You,
Betty Ann Peltier-Solano,
Executive Director
Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee

http://www.counterpunch.org/peltier08282008.html
http://indigenist.blogspot.com/

Exceptionalism, Here, There, Everywhere

The town is called Torregavetta. Torre is an ivory tower, and gavetta means to rise from the ranks. Can it be possible to rise so high above fellow human beings that your senses become immune to their suffering? How can anyone be so assured of their place in this world that they cannot identify with the vision of death before them? Is it really possible to "enjoy" the rest of the afternoon with two bodies a few feet away? What do you think you would you do?

The picture that shames Italy

By Peter Popham in Rome
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 It's another balmy weekend on the beach in Naples. By the rocks, a couple soak up the southern Italian sun. A few metres away, their feet poking from under beach towels that cover their faces and bodies, lie two drowned Roma children. [my bold] The girls, Cristina, aged 16, and Violetta, 14, were buried last night as the fallout from the circumstances of their death reverberated throughout Italy.
It is an image that has crystallised the mounting disquiet in the country over the treatment of Roma, coming after camps have been burnt and the government has embarked on a bid to fingerprint every member of the minority. Two young Roma sisters had drowned at Torregaveta beach after taking a dip in treacherous waters. Their corpses were recovered from the sea – then left on the beach for hours while holidaymakers continued to sunbathe and picnic around them.
They had come to the beach on the outskirts of Naples on Saturday with another sister, Diana, nine, and a 16-year-old cousin, Manuela, to make a little money selling coloured magnets and other trinkets to sunbathers. But it was fiercely hot all day and, about 2pm, the girls surrendered to the temptation of a cooling dip – even though they apparently did not know how to swim.
"The sea was rough on Saturday," said Enzo Esposito, the national treasurer of Opera Nomadi, Italy's biggest Roma organisation. "Christina and Violetta went farther out than the other two, and a big wave came out of nowhere and dashed them on to the rocks. For a few moments, they disappeared; Manuela, who was in shallow water with Diana, came to the shore, helped out by people on the beach, and ran to try and get help."
Other reports said that lifeguards from nearby private beaches also tried to help, without success. "When Manuela and Diana came back," Esposito went on, "the bodies of her cousins had reappeared, and they were already dead."
It was the sort of tragedy that could happen on any beach. But what happened next has stunned Italy. The bodies of the two girls were laid on the sand; their sister and cousin were taken away by the police to identify and contact the parents. Some pious soul donated a couple of towels to preserve the most basic decencies. Then beach life resumed.
The indifference was taken as shocking proof that many Italians no longer have human feelings for the Roma, even though the communities have lived side by side for generations.
[...] The attitudes of ordinary Italians towards the Roma, never warm, have been chilling for years, aggravated by sensational news coverage of crimes allegedly committed by Gypsies, and a widespread confusion of Roma with ordinary, non-Roma Romanians, who continue to arrive. The Berlusconi government has launched a high-profile campaign against the community, spearheaded by the programme announced by the Interior Minister, Roberto Marroni, to fingerprint the entire Roma population. The move has been condemned inside Italy and beyond as a return to the racial registers introduced by the Fascist regime in the 1930s. The fingerprinting of Roma in Naples began on 19 June. [my bold]
[...] In a speech yesterday, Mr Maroni proposed, "for humanitarian reasons", granting Italian citizenship to all Roma children in Italy abandoned by their parents.
The Italians and the Roma
Roma have been living in Italy for seven centuries [my bold] and the country is home to about 150,000, who live mainly in squalid conditions in one of around 700 encampments on the outskirts of major cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples. They amount to less than 0.3 per cent of the population, one of the lowest proportions in Europe. But their poverty and resistance to integration have made them far more conspicuous than other communities. And the influx of thousands more migrants from Romania in the past year has confirmed the view of many Italians that the Gypsies and their eyesore camps are the source of all their problems. The ethnic group is often blamed for petty theft and burglaries. According to a recent newspaper survey, more that two thirds of Italians want Gypsies expelled, whether they hold Italian passports or not. [How many centuries does a community have to live in a place before they "belong?"]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-picture-that-shames-italy-873743.html

BushCo's Insolence Reaches New Heights!

This is even better than the "lost" emails! The little boys just can't get their act together, and fully intend to bully the world into accepting their incompetence. I hope the end is near!

Knee-Jerk Redaction?
Posted by Rachel Myers, ACLU
May 28th, 2008, at 12:27 pm

After CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly admitted that the CIA has, in fact, waterboarded detainees, the agency could no longer cling to its last excuses for covering up the use of the very word “waterboarding” in CIA records. As a result, yesterday we obtained several heavily redacted documents in response to an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the ACLU and other organizations seeking documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.
While the documents do, in fact, reveal the word “waterboarding” or some variation, they leave pretty much everything else to the imagination. The pages that haven’t been completely withheld (many of them contain the words “Denied in Full” instead of any actual content) have the clandestine blacked-out look that’s become a sort of trademark of this administration. This is my favorite:

One of the documents is a heavily redacted version of a report (PDF) by the CIA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) on its review of the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. The report includes information about an as-yet-undisclosed Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion from August 2002. Interestingly, this opinion appears to be the same OLC memo authorizing specific interrogations methods for use by the CIA that is being withheld by the CIA as a classified document in the ACLU’s FOIA litigation — but the OIG report refers to this document as “unclassified.”
The CIA continues to withhold many more documents that should not be secret. The incomplete response to the ACLU’s demand for records reflects a complete disregard for the right of the American public to know when and how often the government has employed illegal interrogation methods.
http://blog.aclu.org/2008/05/28/knee-jerk-redaction/

Chips Ahoy on Labor Day!

More bureaucracy! More control over citizens' movements! More lack of freedom! Hooray!

Enhanced DMV license available after Labor Day
BY JAMES T. MADORE mailto:james.madore@newsday.com?subject=Newsday.com%20Article 9:52 PM EDT, May 27, 2008
ALBANY - After Labor Day, vacationers on cruise ships to the Caribbean and motorists to Canada will be able to apply for a new driver's license that meets tougher federal identification requirements to re-enter the United States, beginning in June 2009.
Officials said Tuesday that New York would be only the second state in the country, after Washington, to roll out an Enhanced Driver License that doubles as a passport book but costs $20 less. The new license can be obtained only by residents with proof of U.S. citizenship, and it isn't valid for entry to the country by airplane.
Applicants must visit a state Department of Motor Vehicles office with the required proof of identity, such a birth certificate and passport, among others. The process shouldn't take any longer than for the current driver's license, said officials, who also noted obtaining the enhanced license was voluntary
The enhanced license was first raised last fall by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer as part of a larger plan to offer regular driver's licenses to illegal immigrants in an attempt to reduce traffic accidents and better track residents. The illegal-immigrant component sparked a firestorm, forcing Spitzer to drop it in November. But officials said Tuesday that plans for the enhanced license moved forward with talks between state and federal agencies.
The enhanced license "represents a major step forward that will help the upstate economy [near the Canadian border] and offer a convenience for all New Yorkers who travel in North America," said Gov. David A. Paterson.
U.S. homeland security czar Michael Chertoff hopes other states will follow New York and Washington in advance of a new border inspection regime set to go into effect on June 1, 2009. Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, residents will have to show a passport or other valid identification, such as the enhanced license, to enter the United States from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean or Bermuda via land or sea.
The new license, costing $80, will resemble the current license except it will include an American flag on the front and have a radio-frequency identification chip allowing border guards to access necessary information. The fee for renewing a driver's license would remain $50.
State Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport), a member of his body's Homeland Security Committee, questioned the wisdom of establishing "a two-tiered licensing system" and whether the DMV could administer the program. He cited the agency's issuing of 23,000 driver's licenses to foreign visitors here legally on a temporary basis -- and refusal to rescind them after Spitzer withdrew his license plan.
Assemb. Patricia Eddington (D-Medford), a member of her body's government operations committee, said, "I don't understand why we would need an enhanced driver's license if we have a passport. What purpose does it serve?"
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/state/ny-stdriv0528,0,2206392.story
Here’s an informative discussion of RFID and a call to allow consumers the ability to disable them from our clothes, blowdryers, whatever:
RFID Chips Are Here

Scott Granneman, 2003-06-26
RFID chips are being embedded in everything from jeans to paper money, and your privacy is at stake.
[...] Several major manufacturers and retailers expect RFID tags to aid in managing the supply chain, from manufacturing to shipping to stocking store shelves, including Gillette (which purchased 500 million RFID tags for its razors), Home Depot, The Gap, Proctor & Gamble, Prada, Target, Tesco (a United Kingdom chain), and Wal-Mart. Especially Wal-Mart.
The retail giant, the largest employer in America, is working with Gillette to create "smart shelves" that can alert managers and stockboys to replenish the supply of razors. More significantly, Wal-Mart intends for its top 100 suppliers to fully support RFID for inventory tracking by 2005. Wal-Mart would love to be able to point an RFID reader at any of the 1 billion sealed boxes of widgets it receives every year and instantly know exactly how many widgets it has. No unpacking, no unnecessary handling, no barcode scanners required.
[...] Right now, you can buy a hammer, a pair of jeans, or a razor blade with anonymity. With RFID tags, that may be a thing of the past. Some manufacturers are planning to tag just the packaging, but others will also tag their products. There is no law requiring a label indicating that an RFID chip is in a product. Once you buy your RFID-tagged jeans at The Gap with RFID-tagged money, walk out of the store wearing RFID-tagged shoes, and get into your car with its RFID-tagged tires, you could be tracked anywhere you travel. Bar codes are usually scanned at the store, but not after purchase. But RFID transponders are, in many cases, forever part of the product, and designed to respond when they receive a signal. Imagine everything you own is "numbered, identified, catalogued, and tracked." Anonymity and privacy? Gone in a hailstorm of invisible communication, betrayed by your very property.
But let's not stop there. Others are talking about placing RFID tags into all sensitive or important documents: "it will be practical to put them not only in paper money, but in drivers' licenses, passports, stock certificates, manuscripts, university diplomas, medical degrees and licenses, birth certificates, and any other sort of document you can think of where authenticity is paramount." In other words, those documents you're required to have, that you can't live without, will be forever tagged.
Consider the human body as well. Applied Digital Solutions has designed an RFID tag - called the VeriChip - for people. Only 11 mm long, it is designed to go under the skin, where it can be read from four feet away. They sell it as a great way to keep track of children, Alzheimer's patients in danger of wandering, and anyone else with a medical disability, but it gives me the creeps. The possibilities are scary. In May, delegates to the Chinese Communist Party Congress were required to wear an RFID-equipped badge at all times so their movements could be tracked and recorded. Is there any doubt that, in a few years, those badges will be replaced by VeriChip-like devices?
Surveillance is getting easier, cheaper, smaller, and ubiquitous. Sure, it's possible to destroy an RFID tag. You can crush it, puncture it, or microwave it (but be careful of fires!). You can't drown it, however, and you can't demagnetize it. And washing RFID-tagged clothes won't remove the chips, since they're specifically designed to withstand years of wearing, washing, and drying. You could remove the chip from your jeans, but you'd have to find it first.
That's why Congress should require that consumers be notified about products with embedded RFID tags. We should know when we're being tagged. We should also be able to disable the chips in our own property. If it's the property of the company we work for, that's a different matter. But if it's ours, we should be able to control whether tracking is enabled.
Security professionals need to realize that RFID tags are dumb devices. They listen, and they respond. Currently, they don't care who sends the signal. Anything your companies' transceiver can detect, the bad guy's transceiver can detect. So don't be lulled into a false sense of security.
With RFID about to arrive in full force, don't be lulled at all. Major changes are coming, and not all of them will be positive. The law of unintended consequences is about to encounter surveillance devices smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/169

FEMA, Continuity of Government and 8 Million Americans on Main Core

How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public?

So ends The Last Roundup, Christopher Ketcham's report on massive domestic surveillance, and it is the very question to ask your candidate. Did you know that FEMA was originally devised to provide survival of the federal government, not the people, after a nuclear strike? That’s just one interesting fact among many important items you need to know. I skipped over Mr. Ketcham’s synopsis of the Card/Gonzales Ghoul Trip to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed, presuming most readers know about this infamous night. There’s so much information here it was hard to carve out the essentials, but I hope you will read the entire article. Remember: Just because paranoia is in the mind of the beholder, they probably are out to get us!
The Last Roundup
Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham
[...] Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it's no surprise that the president's passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it's a road map for martial law.
[...] According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a "national emergency." Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a "natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency," while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like "riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order." According to one news report, even "national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad" could be a trigger.
[...] Interestingly, plans drawn up during the Reagan administration suggest this parallel government would be ruling under authority given by law to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, home of the same hapless bunch that recently proved themselves unable to distribute water to desperate hurricane victims. The agency's incompetence in tackling natural disasters is less surprising when one considers that, since its inception in the 1970s, much of its focus has been on planning for the survival of the federal government in the wake of a decapitating nuclear strike.
Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary. From the comfortable perspective of peaceful times, such behavior by the government may seem far-fetched. But it was not so very long ago that FDR ordered 120,000 Japanese Americans—everyone from infants to the elderly—be held in detention camps for the duration of World War II. This is widely regarded as a shameful moment in U.S. history, a lesson learned. But a long trail of federal documents indicates that the possibility of large-scale detention has never quite been abandoned by federal authorities. Around the time of the 1968 race riots, for instance, a paper drawn up at the U.S. Army War College detailed plans for rounding up millions of "militants" and "American negroes," who were to be held at "assembly centers or relocation camps." In the late 1980s, the Austin American-Statesman and other publications reported the existence of 10 detention camp sites on military facilities nationwide, where hundreds of thousands of people could be held in the event of domestic political upheaval. More such facilities were commissioned in 2006, when Kellogg Brown & Root—then a subsidiary of Halliburton—was handed a $385 million contract to establish "temporary detention and processing capabilities" for the Department of Homeland Security. The contract is short on details, stating only that the facilities would be used for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs." Just what those "new programs" might be is not specified.
[...] Another well-informed source—a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community—says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets' behavior and tracks their circle of associations with "social network analysis" and artificial intelligence modeling tools.
"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says. "Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets." An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that "it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time."
[...] The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.
Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; "commercial databases"; and unidentified "private sector entities." Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.
[Following are several paragraphs discussing Oliver North's surveillance program REX 84, "for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government to FEMA and military commanders, as well as Texas congressman Jack Brooks’ unsuccessful attempt to find out what North was up to during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings.]
[...] In July 2007 and again last August, Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought access to the "classified annexes" of the Bush administration's Continuity of Government program. DeFazio's interest was prompted by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. DeFazio found this unnerving.
But he and other leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, were denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes. To this day, their calls for disclosure have been ignored by the White House. In a press release issued last August, DeFazio went public with his concerns that the NSPD-51 Continuity of Government plans are "extra-constitutional or unconstitutional." Around the same time, he told the Oregonian: "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."
More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."
[...] Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.) [...]
http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2008/05/government_surveillance_homeland_security_main_core_01-print.php

NJ Fear Mongers Promote Vigilantes

The drumbeats will get louder as the economy sinks and people look to outsiders as the source of their problems. Guns get more powerful and cops get fatter.

C'mon, people, now,
Turn on each other
Everybody get together
Try to lynch one another, right now!

You can bet this very scary move will NOT have a happy ending.
"Homeland Security in the Hometown"
by Lt. Joe Geleta/New Jersey Citizen Corps
Tuesday May 06, 2008, 3:09 PM
We live in a different world than we did before September 11, 2001. We are more aware of our vulnerabilities, more appreciative of our freedoms [my bold--Really? How so?] and more understanding that we are personally responsible for the safety of our families, our neighbors and our nation.
[...] In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the need for strengthening and securing our communities has become even more critical, and Neighborhood Watch groups have taken on greater significance. In addition to serving a crime prevention role, Neighborhood Watch can also be used as the basis for bringing neighborhood residents together to focus on disaster preparedness as well as terrorism awareness.
The NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH - NEW JERSEY PROGRAM provides the opportunity for citizens to partner with members of the law enforcement and emergency management communities for mutual benefit. Our Program provides training in five basic and inter-related areas:
- HOME & FAMILY SAFETY
- PERSONAL SAFETY
- TERRORISM AWARENESS
- CRIME TRENDS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
- HOW TO REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY - WHO/WHERE/WHAT/WHEN/HOW
A standardized curriculum, Instructor Guide and related materials to present the program have been created and placed on a CD disc available to all groups and municipalities upon request.
Working in partnership with the New Jersey Chiefs of Police Association and the County Sheriffs Association, over 300 Neighborhood Watch groups are active throughout the state.
Participants are provided with information emphasizing disaster preparedness, the terrorist planning cycle and identity theft, the fastest growing crime in America. Upon completion of the training, all participants receive a portfolio pad, Neighborhood Watch baseball cap, USA on Watch pen and lapel pin. [my bold--WOW, a lapel pin! Sign me up!]
It goes on & on to encourage citizens to be "more engaged," but not one word about educating citizens about guarding democracy from the corporate masters who own the government. It's propaganda designed to confuse real change with knee-jerk reactions.
Despite my misgivings, here's their web site: http://www.usaonwatch.org
Here's The New Jersey Office of Emergency Management website: http://www.ready.nj.gov
Perhaps someone out there could do creative poking around to find out who's providing the money for this new initiative for "citizenship." HA!

Fightin' Man, Melvin

Black Waxx Multimedia says:
Defy Containment ... Destroy the Illusion ... Crush the Machine!
I agree and add: Welcome back, Melvin!
"Go ahead, stick it in! That's your fightin' man!"
I know it's short notice, but if you can get to Pace College tonight, it'll be a trip!
From BLACK WAXX MULTIMEDIA: http://www.blackwaxx.com
Thousands took to the streets to protest the government sanctioned murder of Sean Bell and got little to no press. This illustrates the importance of developing an independent media structure. We are in a battle for the hearts and minds of the masses of people because America has a long history of controlling ideas through the conglomerates. But Black Waxx Multimedia has a long history of creating places and spaces for new ideas, defying containment, destroying the illusion and crushing the machine….
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Republican Governor Weighs in on Spending Transparency and REAL ID

Here's good news from the right side of the aisle: the Republican governor of South Carolina has taken steps to help citizens get information about government spending. Following that is his editorial criticizing REAL ID and the lack of debate over it, presenting in straightforward language some of the problems it will cause.
Governor Announces New Web Site To Make Spending Information Available To Citizens
Gov. Mark Sanford today announced the completion of a new state Spending Transparency Web site, aimed at providing citizens with a greater degree of information about how their tax dollars are being used.
The site was created pursuant to a Spending Transparency Executive Order issued last year by the governor, and developed in concert with Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom's office. The goal of the site, which can be found at https://ssl.sc.gov/SpendingTransparency, is to bring more accountability to where tax dollars are being spent. The site - which is freely accessible to the public - contains reports collected by the Comptroller General's Office on all agencies' funds expended and their source.
http://www.llr.state.sc.us/AboutUs/MediaCenter/index.asp?file=news/AnnualExpenditure.htm
REAL ID side effects
By Mark Sanford
April 14, 2008
If I were a betting man, I would wager most people haven't followed the debate on REAL ID. If you indeed missed it, I would ask you take the time to learn about what I consider the most troubling piece of legislation I've seen come from Washington since I have been governor.
REAL ID would surreptitiously require all 50 states to change their driver's licenses to act as de-facto national ID cards. It's outrageous, and not just because it was a backdoor way of doing something proponents in Washington have never been able to pull off in the past. I say "outrageous" because REAL ID was never really debated in Congress; because the cost of its implementation is handed down to states and individuals; and because it is an affront to Americans' privacy concerns.
[...] REAL ID disrupts this delicate balance of power in two ways. First, it turns the Founders' logic on its head by forcing states to act as agents for the federal government in creating a national ID card for federal purposes. Needing a REAL ID to board a plane or enter a federal building would also change the balance of power in something as seemingly insignificant as a visit to a member of Congress.
In short, there are many faults in this bill that could be sorted were there debate in Washington on REAL ID. I hope you'll join me in making your voice heard for truly debating this issue, and for pushing for change that would come with that debate.
Mark Sanford, a Republican, is governor of South Carolina.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080414/COMMENTARY/303687521/1012\
Thank you, Governor Sanford! Maybe you'll consider other progressive issues that will benefit the people of South Carolina, and the rest of us in the USA. You're the anti-Lieberman!

COINTELPRO, The Millenium Edition

Alert to all forward thinking citizens who "think outside the box," (which is growing tighter every day). You might be visited (perhaps without your knowledge) by bullies pretending to be patriots. I'm forwarding advice provided by NYMAA (New York Metro Anarchist Alliance) in response to the March 6 Times Square bombing:
Responses to FBI targeting of Nonviolent Activists
Many of you know that over the last week, the FBI has been calling and visiting members of the War Resisters League, Students for a Democratic Society and Movement for a Democratic Society in and around New York City.
So far, we know of at least 10 people who have had visits and/or phone calls. These visits are ostensibly to gather information about the March 6th incident in Times Square.
The conservative group Move America Forward has tried to implicate the WRL, which may or may not have contributed to these inquiries. (see http://www.moveamericaforward.org/index.php/DailyFile/behind_the_scenes_anti_war_activists_exposed/ [or < http://tinyurl.com/3bm5as/s//3bm5as/>] -- about half way down the page).
Some members of these clearly nonviolent groups have consulted with lawyers and wanted to keep everyone informed. It is important that folks know their rights in relation to these inquiries. We activists are providing this information to help demystify FBI investigative techniques and make all concerned aware of the rights of those who are approached by agents.
Take a minute to read the Center for Constitutional Rights publication, "If an Agent Knocks: Federal Investigators and Your Rights," which you can find here:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/agent.knocks.htmlappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/agent.knocks.html
[or < http://tinyurl.com/2j7rg8/>]
According to the publication: "It is important, if agents try to question you, not to answer or make any statements, at least not until after you have consulted a lawyer. Announce your desire to consult a lawyer, and make every reasonable effort to contact one as quickly as possible."
In short, if you are contacted:
- Aside from providing your name and address, you do not have to speak to law enforcement agents, nor do you have to let them in your home or workplace without a warrant
- Experience shows that the more information you give, the more questions, visits, etc will come
- On being contacted by any law enforcement agent seeking an "interview" the safest thing to say is, "Excuse me, but I'd like to talk to my lawyer before I say anything to you" or, "I have nothing to say to you. I will talk to my lawyer and have her [or him] contact you."
- Ask for business cards and/or note the agents' names, badge numbers, and agency affiliation (FBI, NYPD, etc.)
In addition:
If you receive voicemail asking you to call the FBI, forward the information to your attorney. Do not return the call prior to discussing it with your lawyer.
Avoid talking to the press about an ongoing investigation - talking to the press is another means of opening a channel of communication with law enforcement. The press, the Internet and email are all inherently insecure.
Attorneys associated with the Mass Defense Commiittee of the New York City chapter of the National Lawyers Guild volunteered to provide consultations to people who receive calls or visits. Please contact Susan Howard, NYC Chapter Coordinator at 212-679-6018 - nlgnyc at igc.org .

DHS Blinks! (Thanks to Gov. Schweitzer)

I this this guy is terrific! How does a democrat get elected governor of "red" state Montana, and then stand up to Dept. of Homeland Security's pet project? BIGGGGGG Cahoonahs!
Montana Governor: DHS 'Blinks' on Real ID
By Ryan Singel, March 21, 2008
Montana governor Brian Schweitzer declared victory Friday after the Department of Homeland Security sent his state an extension to the Real ID act, despite his insistence Montana will never comply with a mandate he describes as a "boondoggle."
"If I were writing the headline, it would be 'DHS Blinks," Schweitzer, a Democrat, told THREAT LEVEL by phone late Friday.
Montana's attorney general sent DHS chief Michael Chertoff a letter (.pdf) Friday outlining the security features in Montana's current driver's licenses, which DHS threatened to reject as valid I.D. for boarding airplanes or entering federal buildings come May 11 unless the state promised to comply with Real ID.
DHS responded by interpreting that letter as a request for an extension (.pdf) of the Real ID deadlines until 2010, reversing its previous position that Montana ID cards would be rejected by federal agents.
"I sent them a horse and if they want to call it a zebra, that's up to them," Schweitzer said. "They can call it whatever they want, and it wasn't a love letter."
[...] "They tell us our data is safe," Schweitzer said. "You tell that to the passport people," he said, referring to news that State Department employees snooped in all three major presidential candidates' passport files.
"Do you want your government to have the ability to track where you went, how you got there and when you got home?" Schweitzer asked. "It would be naïve for someone to think this information will not be abused in the future. Virtually every decade these kinds of files have been used to violate people's privacy."
"We already have an ID system they are hoping to get to in seven years," Schweitzer said.
Adding more scorn to the heap, the outspoken governor called Real ID an empty notion and said that DHS isn't even likely to be around in seven years when the final phase of Real ID is scheduled to go into effect.
Schweitzer said he sent the letter to Chertoff "just to keep the guy happy. He seems so grumpy all the time. It doesn't mean anything."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/montana-gov-dhs.html

US Air Force: Above It All?

One of the exciting aspects of blogging breaking news comes when a topic you hit upon goes mainstream. Yesterday I was surprised to see a commercial on NBC, sandwiched between the talking heads, for the Air Force's new baby, the Cyber Command Center. Here's the link from my original blog coverage: February 14, 2008, Geek Warriers in Loose Nukes Country.
The commercial opens with an aerial view of the Pentagon as a man says something about this building being attached, oh, a billion times a day. Then after scaring the crap out of ya, they show the busy bees in the Barksdale Air Force Cyber Command HQ, toiling away for your liberty and freedom.
Here's the hype:

So, maybe I’m just nit picking, but what ever happened to the sixth nuke that left Minot, North Dakota on August 29 and just wasn’t there when they landed at Barksdale? Isn’t that newsworthy anymore? Are we so worn out that no one is able to pursue this story? I’m just saying, here they are advertising their unbelievably expensive new cyber tracking station AT THE VERY BASE WHERE THEY LOST A NUCLEAR WEAPON! Oh, I see. The dog ate it.

The Many Sides of Eliot Spitzer

First, Scott Horton's post in today's The New Republic:
Spitz Out, by Scott Horton
Was the investigation of Eliot Spitzer politically motivated?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
On Monday a friend gave me a copy of a memorandum (pdf) that Attorney General Michael Mukasey had circulated inside the Justice Department admonishing staff about how to deal with politically sensitive cases. "They must be about to bag another big-time Democrat," my friend said, jokingly. Perhaps it wasn't a joke. Within hours the wires were burning with reports that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been linked to a prostitution ring.
[...] All of this makes for excellent copy, particularly for the cable news networks and other outlets that feed off just this sort of tale of personal fall. But there may well be a story-behind-the-story. How did the case against Spitzer get launched? Was he brought down by a politically motivated investigation?
The integrity of our criminal justice system rests on the notion that we investigate crimes, not people. As Robert Jackson, probably the greatest attorney general of the last century, put it:
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.
[...] The story emerging around the fall of Eliot Spitzer suggests that the case did not start with the report of a crime. Rather it started with a decision to look into Spitzer and his financial dealings. In the course of an open-ended investigation, information about a prostitution circle surfaced. That looks abusive. An investigation like that provides no basis to acquit Spitzer. But it suggests that when his case is done, the public should be pressing some tough questions about why this investigation was launched and pushed forward.
[...] The Los Angeles Times reports that Spitzer asked that his name be taken off the money wires, which reportedly aroused suspicion. The bank submitted a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) to the IRS. The payments which totaled up to $80,000, looked suspicious, we are told, and were examined on the basis that they might be an effort to money-launder bribes. This was reported to the IRS in Hauppauge, Long Island, which in turn involved the Public Integrity Section in the Department of Justice.
[...] Spitzer is an extremely wealthy man, and his channeling of payments at the level suggested can hardly be viewed as something that raises legitimate suspicion. As money laundering goes, $40,000 to $80,000 is peanuts--not the sort of thing that would normally raise an eyebrow. Here it is not the sum involved that triggered suspicion; it is the person who made the payments.[...] Several reports about this case have suggested that it is somehow routine for prosecutors to go through the financial records of public officials to look for evidence of corruption. But in the absence of specific grounds justifying the investigation (for instance, an informant complaining about a bribe) prosecutors have no such authority. In this case, the basis for action is extraordinarily weak. Most importantly, the investigators do not appear to be looking into a crime, they appear to be investigating Spitzer in the hopes of finding something compromising.
Scott Horton teaches law at Columbia University and is a legal affairs contributor to Harper's.
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=c5005f31-237e-4f9d-bca1-891c7aa2b7b2
So, are you interested enough to continue? Using the wayback machine, let's move to to a previous post from Sander Hicks about Spitzer’s love affair with Larry Silverstein and “relationship” with 9/11:
September 11, 2007, Sander Hicks Hits a Home Run!
9/11 Spitzer Scandal Scoop!
Spitzer's Real Scandal
“Eliot Spitzer is like the good-looking bouncer in a bar, who is secretly dealing drugs,” explained forensic microbiologist Mike Copass. We were in a San Diego bar this July, down near the water in Ocean Beach. Copass had acted as a facilitator of San Diego’s 9/11 Citizen’s Grand Jury, an extra-legal group which mounted a mock trial in April.
Copass has degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and an eager glint in his eye. Despite his preppy appearance, Copass makes some pretty radical allegations: that Eliot Spitzer acted as a firewall, preventing public disclosure of his friends’ roles in the anthrax attacks that occurred shortly after 9/11, in addition to facilitating his associates’ windfall from the bloated insurance pay-outs at the World Trade Center. He even accuses Spitzer of covering up the real perpetrators of the 9/11 attack itself.
http://nymegaphone.com/node/24

REAL (Ugly) ID

Analysis: States fall into line on REAL ID
by Shaun Waterman, Washington (UPI) Feb 18, 2007
All but six states have complied with federal requirements to seek an extension of the deadline they face for implementing more secure driver licenses for U.S. citizens or legal residents only under the REAL ID Act.
[...] New Jersey filed for an extension after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff personally called Gov. Jon Corzine, according to one account.
Of the six states that have so far not filed, only Delaware was expected to ask for an extension by the May deadline, according to Brian Zimmer, president of the non-profit lobby group Coalition for a Secure Driver's License.
Zimmer said the governors of Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and South Carolina "appear to have turned their face against implementing the law" -- setting their citizens up for additional document requirements at airports and federal buildings.
[...] Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, in a statement quietly posted on her Web site last month, said her state was also keeping its options open.
"I will not allow for confusion and chaos at our busy airports," she said, calling the new federal regulations on REAL ID "ambiguous."
[...] Zimmer said citizens of the five hold-out states faced a "nightmare" in May.
"These governors have not told their citizens what will happen," he said. "They have not told them they will have to go out and get passports" or some other federal ID. "This will hit pretty hard in Oklahoma and South Carolina" he said, pointing out that those states were business centers.
The Department of Justice and the General Services Administration, which runs federal buildings, have yet to draw up regulations governing what will happen to defendants and others with a legal right to appear in court if they are unable to present other identity documents. But the Transportation Security Administration, part of Homeland Security, will not allow people to board planes unless they have other identification, said Keehner.
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Analysis_States_fall_into_line_on_REAL_ID_999.html

Corporate Big Shots Gear Up for Martial Law

Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business
By Matthew Rothschild, February 7, 2008
Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does—and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

[...] “At its most basic level, InfraGard is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the private sector,” the InfraGard website states. “InfraGard chapters are geographically linked with FBI Field Office territories.”
[...] [FBI Director Robert Mueller] urged InfraGard members to contact the FBI if they “note suspicious activity or an unusual event.” And he said they could sic the FBI on “disgruntled employees who will use knowledge gained on the job against their employers.”
[...] “The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment,” says Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program. “There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”
[...] One business owner in the United States tells me that InfraGard members are being advised on how to prepare for a martial law situation—and what their role might be.
[...] “The meeting started off innocuously enough, with the speakers talking about corporate espionage,” he says. “From there, it just progressed. All of a sudden we were knee deep in what was expected of us when martial law is declared. We were expected to share all our resources, but in return we’d be given specific benefits.” These included, he says, the ability to travel in restricted areas and to get people out.But that’s not all.
“Then they said when—not if—martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted,” he says.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_rothschild0308

Their Spying Eyes are Upon US

Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007
28/12/2007
The 2007 International Privacy Ranking
Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published....
The most recent report published in 2007, available at http://www.privacyinternational.org/phr and may be purchased in book form through EPIC's website….
--The 2007 rankings show an increasing trend amongst governments to archive data on the geographic, communications and financial records of all their citizens and residents. This trend leads to the conclusion that all citizens, regardless of legal status, are under suspicion.
--The privacy trends have been fueled by the emergence of a profitable surveillance industry dominated by global IT companies and the creation of numerous international treaties that frequently operate outside judicial or democratic processes.
--Despite political shifts in the US Congress, surveillance initiatives in the US continue to expand, affecting visitors and citizens alike.
[...] --The privacy performance of older democracies in Europe is generally failing, while the performance of newer democracies is becoming generally stronger.
--In terms of statutory protections and privacy enforcement, the US is the worst ranking country in the democratic world. In terms of overall privacy protection the United States has performed very poorly, being out-ranked by both India and the Philippines and falling into the "black" category, denoting endemic surveillance.
[…] http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd%5B347%5D=x-347-559597

Get Off the Pot

Of course this research does not encourage pot for teens, but does offer a rational and reasonable explanation for problem kids who use substances to cope with their problems. The second article from the Marijuana Policy Project shows there are professional who want to cut a path out of the dark ages of prohibition.
Could Smoking Pot Be Good for Teens?
By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet. Posted November 10, 2007.…if one follows the logic used by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP, aka the Drug Czar's office), the answer would be, "In some ways, yes."The Swiss study, just published in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine was based on a survey of 5,263 students, aged 16-20. Scientists compared teens who smoked both cigarettes and marijuana, those who used only marijuana, and those who abstained from both substances. The results were surprising.
…What the Swiss study does, if policymakers would only listen, is suggest that ONDCP's obsessive focus on stamping out even occasional marijuana use is misguided. The serious public health problem isn't good students who light up an occasional joint with friends on weekends, much as we might prefer they not do so. The real problem is the population of kids, clearly identifiable in the Swiss research, using multiple substances at an early age and having all sorts of problems at school and home. These kids -- more depressed, less likely to finish school and using heavy amounts of marijuana, booze and other drugs -- exist in the United States as well as Switzerland, and they clearly need help that many aren't getting.

http://www.alternet.org/stories/67461/
American Psychiatric Association Assembly Backs Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Unanimous Vote Signals Growing Acceptance of Medical Marijuana
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a unanimous vote, the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association has approved a strongly worded statement supporting legal protection for patients using medical marijuana with their doctor's recommendation.
…"As physicians, we cannot abide our patients being subject to arrest and jail for using a physician-recommended treatment that clearly relieves suffering for many who are not helped by conventional treatments."
"This unanimous vote shows the growing acceptance of medical marijuana by organized medicine," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "Members of Congress who have opposed efforts to protect patients from federal prosecution have tried to portray medical marijuana as a fringe issue. But the APA Assembly vote, along with other recent endorsements including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, shows that it's those who want to arrest the sick and suffering who are on the fringe."
http://www.mpp.org/site/c.glKZLeMQIsG/b.1493403/apps/nl/content2.asp?content_id={CFA4CEEF-2C7F-435A-B4EB-33D005D62F1A}&notoc=1

I CAN'T TRAVEL WITHOUT A PASSPORT!

The above title is an homage to The Living Theater's Paradise Now!

Not that I obsess about privacy or anything, but things I’m hearing and reading are REALLY FREAKING ME OUT! Are Americans finally are being “encouraged” (ha!) to get passports to broaden their minds? Want to go to California from NYC, or to PA, or even NJ? You’re gonna need a passport! You don’t want to be tagged with the electronic chip embedded in the Real ID? Thev’ve got a place for you, and it won’t be luxurious;

“Chertoff said there would be repercussions for states choosing not to comply.”
Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/16/real.id/