Woman With “Peace” Written in Icing on Cake Threatened with Arrest Outside British Parliament
August 8th, 2009Via: Guardian:
The summer holidays provide the government with plenty of good days to bury bad news. Folks head off on holiday and journos head into the silly season, making it a perfect time to quietly lift the sluice gates of the pools of political sewage. This year is no exception. The government announced its proposed changes to the laws controlling protest around parliament, commonly known as the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 or Socpa.
There is little public support and considerable antipathy towards this totemic law seen by many as a symbol of Labour’s contempt of liberty, but I am running ahead of myself, so let us recap.
The first clue as to this law’s nature is that it was introduced by David Blunkett with the specific aim of removing the peace protester Brian Haw from his vigil in Parliament Square. Blunkett went on record as saying it was a “sledgehammer to crack a nut and this is a tough nut” It is not often that a law introduced to punish one individual serves any great purpose and so it was for Socpa.
The act makes it illegal for a protest in a designated area of up to a 1km radius of parliament without seeking written authorisation from the police six days in advance. As there is no strict legal definition of what constitutes a demonstration it means that one person wearing a stop the war badge and standing by Westminster tube station could be arrested for demonstrating without authorisation. “Ah,” you may cry, “this is merely legalistic supposition.” Not so, a friend of mine was threatened with arrest for having a picnic in Parliament Square, her offence was the pink icing on her cake which spelt the word “peace”. This was the same law that saw Maya Evans and Milan Rai arrested and convicted for reading the names of the British and Iraqi war dead by the Cenotaph.
The law enables the police to place conditions on a demonstration in the area, restricting how many people attend the demonstration, where it can be held, how long it can be held for and “the number and size of banners used”.
Three Mass Shooters Used Same Online Gun Store
August 8th, 2009The Reddit heads have uncovered a lot of George Sodini materials, in case anyone is interested in looking into this case further.
I didn’t spend too much time on it, but one thing I noticed (besides the madness) was his resume (mirror). He lists a BS in Computer Science in 1992. He was 48 at the time of the shooting. He would have been 31 when he got that degree. Did anyone catch what kind of work he did up until that point?
Via: AP:
An online weapons dealer who sold a gun or accessories to three mass killers, including a man who opened fire at a Pittsburgh-area health club this week, said Friday that any of the shooters could have just as easily found what they wanted at a Wal-Mart or another store.
Eric Thompson, whose company TGSCOM Inc. last year sold an empty Glock 9 mm magazine and magazine loading apparatus to George Sodini, the man who shot up a Collier Township, Pa., health club on Tuesday, said the sale was legal and his company did nothing wrong.
Research Credit: MM
Blackwater Mercenaries Had Child Prostitutes on Base in Iraq
August 8th, 2009Video Backup: RawStory
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds Subpoenaed, Set to ‘Break’ Gag Order Unless DoJ Intercedes
August 7th, 2009Via: Brad Blog:
Unless the Dept. of Justice re-invokes their twice-invoked “state secrets privilege” claim in order to once again gag former FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, her attorneys have notified the department by hand-delivered, sworn letter of declaration [PDF] this week, that she intends to give a deposition, open to the media [Updated: see bottom of article for details], in response to a subpoena this Saturday in Washington D.C..
Edmonds has confirmed her intentions to answer any questions asked of her during the sworn proceedings, fully and publicly, during conversations with The BRAD BLOG this week. She notes that her agreement with her former employer, the FBI — who fired her illegally after she filed whistleblower allegations about corruption and foreign infiltration in the linguistics department — includes certain non-disclosure requirements. However, those requirements do not preclude her answering to a legally issued court subpoena.
Research Credit: ottilie
California Won’t Accept Its Own IOUs
August 7th, 2009Via: Courthouse News:
Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes. The vendors’ federal class action claims the state is trying to balance its budget on their backs.
Lead plaintiff Nancy Baird filled her contract with California to provide embroidered polo shirts to a youth camp run by the National Guard, but never was paid the $27,000 she was owed. She says California “paid” her with an IOU that two banks refused to accept – yet she had to pay California sales tax on the so-called “sale” of the uniforms.
The class consists mostly of small business owners, many of whom rely on income from government contracts to keep afloat. They say California has used them as “suckers” as it looks for a way to bankroll its operations while avoiding its own financial obligations.
“Instead of seeking funds through proper channels, the State has created a nightmare,” the class says. “Many of these businesses will not survive if they are required to wait until October 2009 to have these forced IOUs redeemed by the State.”
The class claims the state is violating the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. It demands that California be ordered to honor its own IOUs, plus interest. They are represented by William Audet.
Obama Regime Continues to Implement Shadow Government Plan Started Under Bush Regime
August 7th, 2009Via: New York Times:
A shift in authority has given military officials at the White House a bigger operational role in creating a backup government if the nation’s capital were “decapitated” by a terrorist attack or other calamity, according to current and former officials involved in the decision.
The move, which was made in the closing weeks of the administration of President George W. Bush, came after months of heated internal debate about the balance of power and the role of the military in a time of crisis, participants said. Officials said the Obama administration had left the plan essentially intact.
Under the revamped structure, the White House Military Office, which reports to the office of the White House chief of staff, has assumed a more central role in setting up a temporary “shadow government” in a crisis.
And the office, a 2,300-person outfit best known for flying Air Force One, has taken on added responsibilities as the lead agent in shepherding government leaders to a secure site at Mount Weather in rural Virginia, keeping classified lists of successors and maintaining computer systems, among other operational duties. Many of these types of tasks were previously handled by civilians at other agencies, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Supporters of the plan inside the Bush White House, including Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, saw the erratic response to the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as a mandate for streamlining an emergency response process they considered clunky because it involved too many agencies.
Photos: Dark Stores, Empty Malls
August 7th, 2009U.S. Deficit Climbs to 1.3 Trillion Dollars
August 7th, 2009Via: AFP:
The US budget deficit reached 1.3 trillion dollars for the current fiscal year in July, official data showed, news set to fuel opposition to US President Barack Obama’s ambitious health care and climate change proposals.
The deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal year 2009, which began October 1, reached 1.3 trillion dollars, close to 880 billion dollars greater than the deficit recorded through July 2008, said the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Outlays rose by almost 530 billion dollars, or 21 percent, and revenues fell by more than 350 billion dollars, or 17 percent, compared with the amounts recorded during the same period last year, the non-partisan CBO said.
BUSTED: FED SECRETLY MONETIZING DEBT; COLLUDING WITH DEALERS
August 7th, 2009Via: Chris Martenson:
Just last week, when the auction results were announced it was trumpeted to great fanfare that there was “more than sufficient” bid-to-cover, “strong demand” and all the rest.
And now it turns out that 47% (!) of the bonds that were taken by the primary dealers in that auction have been quietly bought by the Fed and permanently secreted to its balance sheet.
They didn’t even wait a full week! A more honest and open approach would have been for the Fed to simply buy them outright at the auction but this way, using “primary dealers” and “POMOs” and all these other extra steps the basic fact that the Fed is openly monetizing US government debt is effectively hidden from a not-too-terribly inquisitive US press and public.
The speed of the shell game is accelerating.
This immediate repurchase of newly auction bonds by the Fed tells us that demand for these bonds is not nearly as high as advertised, and that things are not quite as strong as represented.
And oh, by the way, don’t expect any stock market weakness while so many billions are being shoveled out the Fed and into the pockets of the primary dealers. They’ll have to do something with all that freshly minted cash…..
More: Zero Hedge: The Fed’s UST-POMO Pyramid Scheme Exposed
British Military Press Officer Quits, Got Tired of Lying About Iraq
August 6th, 2009Via: Independent:
Having to peddle “government lies” about the safety of soldiers in Iraq led to a Ministry of Defence press officer suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, an employment tribunal will hear.
John Salisbury-Baker will claim that he suffered “intolerable stress” through having to “defend the morally indefensible” when responding to media inquiries about the ability of army vehicles such as the “Snatch” Land Rover to protect soldiers.
Mr Salisbury-Baker, 62, says he found it impossible to support the official line on deaths and injuries after seeing the suffering of soldiers’ families. After 11 years of service at Imphal Barracks near York, he could no longer keep working and is taking legal action against the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The case takes place amid accusations over the government’s attempts to claw back compensation from two injured soldiers, as well as a rising toll of casualties from improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan.
