SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Jim McMannis who wrote (294119)11/29/2010 1:25:23 AM
From: Broken_ClockRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
Under this premise, Ellsberg would have been designated a terrorist as well. Now that the MSM media has been neutered, these clowns want to shut down any release of truth.
+++++++
GOP Rep. asks Clinton to declare WikiLeaks a ‘foreign terrorist organization’

By Stephen C. Webster
Sunday, November 28th, 2010 -- 7:20 pm
submit to reddit Stumble This!
404Share
16diggsdigg

julianassange3 GOP Rep. asks Clinton to declare WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organizationA Republican Congressman from New York has invented a new definition for the word "terrorism" that doesn't require guns, bombs, vast underground networks of sleeper cells, a criminal conspiracy or even violence.

All that's needed to be a terrorist, according to Rep. Peter King, is a website and some inconvenient information.

That's why King sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday, demanding that whistleblower website WikiLeaks be deemed a "foreign terrorist organization" and it's founder declared a terror ringleader.

"To me they are a clear and present enemy to the United States of America," he told a CBS radio reporter on Sunday.

King said the website's release of sensitive -- but not "top secret" -- US diplomatic cables was "worse than a military attack."

Declaring the site a "terrorist" group, King suggested, would allow the US "to seize their funds and go after anyone who provides them with any help or contributions or assistance whatsoever."

He also called for site founder Julian Assange to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

That may prove difficult, however, given that WikiLeaks did not steal any of the documents it released to the media -- they was given to them by a whistleblower, allegedly a young soldier named Bradley Manning.

That sequence of events, of a whistleblower contacting a high profile news venue with explosive information that needs to be made public, happens in newsrooms all across the country every week.

Though inconvenient for officials, the revelation of information contained in any of the WikiLeaks files, much like the Pentagon Papers amid the Vietnam war, is crucial to maintaining an enlightened public -- a point the US Supreme Court made abundantly clear in New York Times Co. v. United States in 1971.

"In seeking injunctions against these newspapers and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment," Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas wrote, taking the side of the Times, which had recently published what was then considered the largest cache of secret military information in US history.

"In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy," they continued. "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."

After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Justices Black and Douglas opined that "newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."

According to Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks has done just the same.

Concurring with the court's majority, Justice Potter Stewart added: "In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government. For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the First Amendment. For without an informed and free press there cannot be an enlightened people."

“[The WikiLeaks] documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match," the Times added.

“The Attorney General and I don’t always agree on different issues, but I believe on this one, he and I strongly agree that there should be a criminal prosecution [of WikiLeaks],” Rep. King told CBS radio.

Attorney General Holder has not made any announcement regarding a criminal prosecution of the site or it's founder. The White House strongly condemned the site's actions on Sunday, calling the publication of State Dept. documents a continuation of a violation of law.

King's call for prosecution was echoed Sunday by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-GA), Clair McCaskill (D-MO) and former State Department official Liz Cheney.

Julian Assange is currently wanted for questioning by Swedish authorities who are investigating a claim of rape and molestation. Assange has maintained that the charges are baseless and part of a campaign to discredit him.



To: Jim McMannis who wrote (294119)11/29/2010 1:52:20 AM
From: Broken_ClockRead Replies (1) | Respond to of 306849
 
So let's get this straight:

Bush and Obama have their heads up the Saudis' asses. The Saudis fund Al Q. We make up our own terrorsts just to keep the sheeple a-skeered.

FBI apparently set up US teen blamed for fake car bomb

By Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, November 27th, 2010 -- 4:08 pm

Boy told undercover agents he could get a gun because he's a "rapper"; authored article containing "jihad" workout tips

FBI apparently set up US teen blamed for fake car bombAn Somali-born, American teenager was apparently set up by federal law enforcement officials who posed as radical Islamic fighters and lured the young man into a plot he believed would lead him to detonate a car bomb at an Oregon Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

The bomb, provided by FBI agents, was "inert" and did not pose a threat to public safety, according to the US Attorney's Office in Oregon.

Oddly enough, Arthur Balizan, an FBI agent in Oregon, contradicted the US Attorney's Office, suggesting that the threat posed by 19-year-old Mohamed Osman Mohamud "was very real."

Except: "[At] every turn," he explained, "we denied him the ability to actually carry out the attack."

The story rings devastatingly familiar when stacked next to the tale of Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a Jordanian man arrested in 2009, at age 19, for allegedly planning to detonate a car bomb in a Dallas skyscraper.

Each boy was led down the path to imagined violence by federal agents, with authorities ultimately providing fake bombs in both cases. Smadi and Mohamud, officials claim, expressed a desire to engage in terrorist attacks before agents began luring them in.

Federal agents noticed Mohamud in December 2009, after he allegedly communicated with a suspected terrorist in Pakistan. Months later, an undercover agent contacted Mohamud claiming to be the individual's associate, and Mohamud agreed to meet in Portland.

Agents claimed that Mohamud revealed himself to be the author of a bizarre 2009 article for the English-language "Jihad Recollections" magazine. The story made headlines for it's comical images of masked fighters helping each other exercise.

FBI apparently set up US teen blamed for fake car bomb
Source: "Jihad Recollections," April, 2009.

Other articles in the 70+ page magazine published in North Carolina included a preview of "emp technology," poetry, speeches from Osama bin Laden and a how-to guide to global jihad.

One key thing, however, was oddly lacking from the magazine's first edition: as even Fox News noted, it did not explicitly call for violence against anyone.

The magazine also featured quotes from Tennessee Republican Congressman Zach Wamp, who made headlines again last July for suggesting that his state secede from the US.

Agents also reveal in court documents that Mohamud had told them he might be able to get a gun, because he was a "rapper."

"We were unable to determine Mohamud's Jihadi emcee name, or the potency of his flow," Gawker quipped.

Court documents claim the first meeting between Mohamud and the FBI took place in July, 2010. In the months following, agents ostensibly worked him up to the point where he was willing to flip the switch on a car bomb. Agents even took Mohamud to a secluded location to blow up a bomb they placed in a backpack, allegedly as a test run.

Mohamud was arrested by FBI agents and Portland police around 5:40 pm Friday, after he attempted to remotely detonate what he believed to be an explosives-laden van. Officials claimed that early on Friday, Mohamud had recorded a video explaining why he wanted to carry out the attack.

"I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured," he said, according to law enforcement.

Mohamud is scheduled to appear in federal court on Monday.