This month a brilliant artist at The Wall Street Journal has broken new ground in the flourishing investigative journalism market by going where cameras could not. You can click here to see these images in their original context, alongside a breathtaking column by Laura Saunders. Witness the pain of these Americans’ faces, as the fruits of their brow sweat are ripped away by the useless, degenerate masses and their fanatical, usurper ringleader.
‘Retired couple’ – Tim Foley, WSJ
First in Tim Foley’s slideshow of unbridled pain is a retired couple, who is just breaking even as socialist fascists have taken over their country. Social Security income is capped at roughly $40,000 annually for each of them — presuming each of them made only a meager $120,000 per annum since the age of 18 — and so in order to get by on $180,000 with their deductions in investment income in tow, their aging bodies will have to scrap together $23,000 this year. And what incentive do they have to even do that in the Nancy Pelosi/Barack Hussein Obama II economy? In the crossed arms of the man — whom we will call “Carlton” — and “Carlton’s” world-weary stare, we see a bold entrepreneur degraded into being a simple welfare slave on the Democrat retirement plantation. He has just told his partner in Christ they will face the belt-tightening prospect of having to switch from Perrier to the utter swill San Pellegrino. We can see from his lean that the heat of South Carolina’s merciless golf courses have caused spinal degeneration. His wife has a raised eyebrow, characteristic of these stark sketches of the toil and misery of 21st century America. We can sense she knows that “Carlton’s” days to be numbered. And without his brave, beating heart, the Social Security Administration will be cutting off a hefty $40,000 a year.
‘Married couple, four children’ – Tim Foley, WSJ
Mr. Foley’s next portrait of insurmountable anguish shows a nuclear family taxed nearly $22,000 more in 2013 by a society thankless for the parents’ willingness to put up with each other after 40. Clinging like a Ritalin addiction to the father’s body are two of the children, the one in front of him cowering into his shoulder, staring upwards at a towering, dream-crushing IRS. At $650,000 a year, these surely above-average children face a dark future, one in which they may have to take on some degree of debt for every single one of them to attend Kenyon, Amherst, or some other liberal arts institution that may by and large be bought into. The married, upstanding professional “businessess” faces forward more than her righteous husband to symbolize how liberals have electorally plotted to divide his Godly household. She like “Carlton’s” wife raises a single eyebrow. But the pre-menopausal woman’s eyebrow raises as if to say: “Should I really have to pay this much more this year to stave off my de facto execution for having to carry an ectopic pregnancy?”
‘Single person’ – Tim Foley, WSJ
‘Single person’ features yet another pearl-clad responsibility-ite, her face tilted slightly to her left in cynicism, her hair diligently parted, her arms crossed in indignation. As yet unbruised by years of toil and her holy, as yet unfulfilled, duty of childbirth, one eyebrow is not raised more than another, as with the retired woman and married mother. She still possesses the idealism of youth, and so is surprised to see our newly totalitarian government demanding so much of her, three years out of Wharton. She has purchased fine pearls to attract a suitable mate. She uses a watch, despite its being old-fashioned; checking her smartphone’s email app every five minutes to look out for any possible, more lucrative opportunities from one of her firm’s ruthlessly job-creating competitors. But now that she will be paying so much more on her taxes in 2013, what’s the point? she says to herself. Any more income will just mean moving into a higher tax bracket. And this is the way that in the New World Order’s America, a job creator is effectively murdered in public by a raging lynch mob. The mob, she understands well, is just jealous of the superior productivity genes that the American Enterprise Institute’s own Charles Murray has proven with science her to have.
‘Single parent, two children’ – Tim Foley, WSJ
The most heartbreaking of Mr. Foley’s portraits is that of the ‘Single parent,’ a subject with whom The Wall Street Journal’s editorials have famously long sympathized. The subscriber can immediately derive additional sympathy because her children look sufficiently alike to allay any suspicion that she might be single by a decadent choice. In the foreground, we see that she must console her child about her peasant family’s additional 2013 tax liability of just over $3,000. She places a loving hand over his shoulder, as she has probably just told him that — upon hearing the results of the treasonous fiscal-cliff congressional package — they will not be able to purchase for him a Hanson Robotics “Zeno.” The boy has his mother’s job-creator genes, but he knows with this year’s inability to afford that multithousand-dollar toy, his hopes of becoming an undergraduate in MIT’s robotics labs may very well be crushed. As with any of the parents or married people in this sketch essay, in his signature Foley-ian style, the woman’s eyebrow is raised at a new, decadent culture so willing to punish any American unworthy of the very gutter. This final, masterful sketch is the single greatest representation of economic repression since (original, lesser) Depression documentarian Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” below.
In the Shadows of Tim Foley: ‘Migrant Mother’ – Dorothea Lange
Acting Attorney General Neal Katyal, who this week outlined the administration’s shift from state-based health care exchanges to “chilling out”
WASHINGTON — Friday morning Acting Attorney General Neal Katyal announced that the Obama administration would be backpedaling from its take on the commerce clause to forward the “holy, righteous cause” of recreational cannabis legalization. Bolstered by praise from Colorado and Washington state Democratic leaders, and directives from the highest echelons of the Obama administration, Mr. Katyal announced in a press conference that the results of the landmark case Gonzales vs. Raich were “not cool” and were keeping millions of Americans from “chilling out” and “lighting up, man.”
Reached by phone in his Fairfax office at George Mason University Law School, Professor Michael Greve said the new anti-commandeering stance would prove exciting to Libertarian Party devotees at the Mercatur Institute and millions of drug-addled American liberals, most of whom are dependent on federal largesse for their barest subsistence.
“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” said Mr. Greve, “established a conditional pre-emption regime in which the federal government told the states, ‘establish an exchange or we will do it for you.’” Following 18 more conservative states having in essence told the government to come in and establish exchanges, Mr. Greve said, “these states have told the federal government to take responsibility for the inevitable failure of these health care regimes.”
Mr. Katyal said in a press conference Friday morning, “As long as Congress refuses to act to deschedule cannabis from the same tier as heroin — come on, heroin, people — the administration must act.” The administration’s tight, 180-degree turn came on the heel of several online townterviews, during which poll respondents consistently begged the administration to cease the notoriously racist drug war. In his weekly address today, a visibly intoxicated President Barack Obama spoke to his office webcam in a cloud of smoke, admitting, “Millions of toothless Southern and Midwestern Americans, who will never vote for me, anyway, versus a good time for the peace-loving denizens of Colorado and Washington state? That’s an easy choice for me, bra.”
Following an on-screen hit from a gravity bong haphazardly constructed from a Chicago Bears novelty cup, which the 51-year-old U.S. president described as “vicious,” he said, “I realize the insane hypocrisy of my having smoked marijuana for recreation before overseeing a federal regime that incarcerates millions of Americans — particularly African-Americans — in such record numbers. Something had to be done, and I have directed the Department of Justice to just scrap this health care reform thing.”
Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement saying he now concedes that “all of these Republican attorneys general, they’re right, man. Just as we can’t force these conservative states to establish exchanges, we also can’t use the commerce clause to force this horrible drug war down the throats of Colorado and Washington citizens. The voters have spoken. Let freedom reign.”
House Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), speaking to Politico, said that the legislative slowdown that faced descheduling cannabis was fueled by an ambiguity around the level of taxation that the illicit industrial psychoactive crop should receive. “If we had chosen to tax it too high, we would fuel black market activity. If we had voted to tax it too low, we just wouldn’t be taking our deficit seriously, and that would be unpatriotic.”
Internet Chronicle legal analysts have long predicted that the landmark Gonzales case would prove problematic for the Obama administration’s main objective — even if that objective were only background or covert — of legalizing the sticky-icky. In the wake of this decision, Iran and Russia are expected to overtake within weeks the United States in terms of arbitrary and/or politically motivated incarceration.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — This afternoon federal agents killed Alex Jones and 52 Genesis Communications Network associates, each with two gunshot wounds to the back of the head. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, now investigating the incident, describes these wounds as “self-inflicted.” Before the standoff reached its bloody conclusion, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney clarified at the daily briefing that Mr. Jones faced charges of pedophilia, illicit gun alteration and roughly two decades of back income taxes. Photographers captured ATF agents placing the bodies of the 52 employees into plastic coffins. The compound collapsed in place after suffering damage from armored Caterpillar bulldozers specially deployed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Thursday morning undercover Waco Child Protective Service agents showed up at the door of the GCN compound and asked to speak to Mr. Jones. They presented themselves as wandering members of the milita movement, sympathetic following what Mr. Jones had termed his “explosive” appearance on “Piers Morgan Tonight.” When surrogates showed Mr. Jones to the door, they presented him with a Remington 870 shotgun. CPS asked if Mr. Jones could help them shorten the barrel below 22 inches. Mr. Jones, standing in his doorway, they say, happily agreed, took the American-made 12-gauge shotgun into a back lot and shortened it. When child protective services asked to take Mr. Jones’s children, the radio host disclosed that he was a sovereign citizen tax protester, having avoided the income tax due to its “unconstitutionality” since 1913.
Mr. Jones was 38 and is survived by millions of followers, having hosted the 10th most popular radio show in the United States. Mr. Jones was most famous for his December 31, 1999 broadcast, during which he was the only media source to break a taboo on reporting on the Russian missile attack that occurred that evening. During Y2K numerous power plants imploded due to computer error, and the North American Aerospace Defense Command failed to intercept Russian missiles, which killed millions of Americans in secret.
The radio host attracted international attention, including from the British royal family, after having made statements referring to his owning more than 50 “guns” and those “firearms” having increased in value two, three or four times. “It was at that point,” said FBI consultant Kenneth Lanning, previously responsible for helping cover up the Boystown fiasco with Larry King, “that we felt comfortable assuming that firearms referred to child spouses, and so we moved in.”
Friday morning ATF bulldozers, shipped to Houston 12 years ago from the West Bank, made their way slowly toward the South Wall of the Genesis Communications Network Compound. Upon mowing down solar panels and finally the outer wall of the compound, the six bulldozers reached a sudden halt. Their path, said one of the drivers, was impeded by cache of bullion six feet high just inside the inner wall. Representatives of the Dallas FBI Bureau, speaking by phone, said they feared the worst. “We were worried that the Prison Planet crew might be able to hold out for years on end.” Regardless, soon after having breached the flaming outer wall, the building collapsed.
A defector from the followers, whom Mr. Jones refers to as “listeners,” former Infowars.com contributor Mark Dice, informed authorities that GCN’s contract with eFoodsDirect would mean that freedom-loving audiovisual technicians and website contributors might be able to hold out for up to seven decades.
Citing the deaths of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut last month, Bilderberg President and ATF chief David Rockefeller said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.”
At a Friday morning press conference in Washington, FBI Director David Mueller described subsequent events. He said Israeli Armored D9s, “teddy bears,” caused the walls of the compound to collapse. Mr. Mueller said, “Once the ‘doobis’ breached the outer wall, the mosquito-netting-like structure of the compound was compromised, causing the building to collapse, first starting with the penthouse, and then the children’s bedrooms.” Producer Aaron Dykes escaped, but his son, whom authorities believe to actually be Mr. Jones’s, was found in the remains of the compound.
As bulldozers approached initially, federal marshals demanded that Mr. Jones exit the building. After he did so, he ignored their calls that he continue walking toward waiting SUVs, instead re-entering his doorway. Returning from the doorway, facing away from authorities, he brandished what appeared to them be an M-16, but what was actually a Bushmaster he purchased at Wamart in early December. Officials say it was then, walking backwards, that Waco sheriff’s deputies opened fire. All of their bullets missed, but Mr. Jones, deputies said in sworn statements, placed the Bushmaster to the back of his head and pulled the trigger twice.
The fire spread faster due to hundreds of kilograms of uncured cannabis, which Mr. Jones’ one surviving child claimed no one was imbibing as a psychoactive but rather that Mr. Jones was encouraging his children to eat raw for anti-carcinogenic properties.
Hi, I’m a kangaroo and I’ve been hanging out at the Bradley Manning trial since day one. Maybe you noticed me standing between Lind and the ever-contorting face of Staff Sergeant George. Anyway, I hear that a lot of you out there — yes, I’m talking about you, Uncle Jimbo, Barack Hussein Obama, Patrick Leahy — a lot of you are bent on executing this guy, or throwing away the key. Let me do a little fishing around in my pouch up front because I’ve got something hiding in here for you all. Let me see, where is that… Keys? No. BlackBerry? Oh God no — oh, wait, here it is. It’s my middle claw! There we go.
Bradley Manning wants to run for office when he gets out, and as far as I’m concerned he should be the president the day he turns 35, or lower that oppressive age limit. This guy is Captain America, Sergeant Savage and white Jesus all rolled into one. He won’t be spending at least the next decade behind bars because our society is “just” or cares about national security or anything like that. He’ll be spending time behind bars because our government and the people it protects are cowards and liars. Cheats and thieves. Even Coombs, as he waxes Mark Antony-ously about how Manning’s jailers acted “honorably,” said in the same breath during his first public speech that they also acted “criminally.” Criminally honorable. Like terrorists. They’re criminals, get it, punishing a prisoner of conscience with balls. Lots of balls. Brad Roberts of Crash Test Dummies has three testicles. They couldn’t quite believe it. I’ve ducked down under the defense table a couple of times and I can assure you that Bradley Manning has four balls. Possibly seven. And they’re all leaking.
“Morsi anal fucked Manning over a fat bong of hashish.” ~ FanFic
It’s mind-boggling to think that Bradley Manning has received the bizarre scrutiny he is under from the public, heck, even from the folks down at Firedoglake going on endlessly about how the private has broken the law. As if laws were inherently just (remember black vagrancy laws, bans on actually owning a telephone?) or mean anything in the scope of the hyper-real street and courtroom justice Bradley Manning’s actions have seen visited upon some of the most charismatic sociopaths on the face of God’s green earth. R.I.P. Andrew Breitbart. Especially with the benefit of hindsight, Bradley Manning’s actions are worthy of scrutiny only in a meaningless, deontological sense that giving up all this information is bad for its own sake, as opposed to the myriad benefits that the world has seen as a consequence of the leaks. Leaks about North African decadence probably helped cause one of the world’s richest ever individuals, daresay eccentrics, to be murdered by an angry mob after having been stabbed in the anus, in a bad way. If Egyptian Islamists have their way, Morsi will be able to exercise his own degree of tyrannical, socially regressive power over the people of his country. He’s so regressive, even the men will have to wear hijabs. But still, hey, taking down Mubarak is something. Morsi is still the better “other guy,” and that’s how most people vote, anyway: against someone, not for anyone.
Oh, and all of you typical right-wing yee-haw evangelical militant types, even Benjamin Netanyahu is telling you to put down the strictnine and snakes long enough to notice that the Manning revelations actually show how the Saudis were chomping at the bit to get the United States into one of those famous Asian land wars. If you’re against Bradley Manning that’s like being in favor of four more Holocausts; or a contiguous, separate Palestinian state — which are the same thing, anyway.
Despite all of this gobbledygook about how Manning’s “motives and intentions” are being “stricken from the trial,” let’s face it: If he were some gungho Taliban supporter, Ashden Fein wouldn’t just be flashing Manning’s old Kuwaiti noose handiwork in the twink’s face to show us how ready he was to end it all; Fein would be yanking off that superstarched blazer and twisting it up like a towel in a locker room to make his own version in Manning’s face.
Is anyone really happy that, had Bradley Manning not done what he did, we would still be looking at an America where Hillary Clinton could violate serious international laws and call for the ability to monitor the private financial transactions and correspondences of ambassadors? Are we so cynical that we see our way to collective security through dishonesty? Is anyone upset about knowing that John McCain was selling C-130s to Moammar al-Gadhafi? Think that’s something we should have known before everyone started calling for a no-fly zone? If you’re in the military or in public service, how could you possibly be such a coward, such an utter sheep, such an utter tool as to not read the leaked cables? You do know the Taliban has them already, right? You do know that’s just your bosses trying to cover up how they’re screwing you over, right?
Does anyone remember the anguish of the years of the Iraq War when day after day citizens would awake to hear about more dead bodies coming back from Iraq, but the military, two presidents and everyone in the media summarily spitting in our collective faces by telling us the criminally insane lie that there was no available count ready of the dead Iraqis? They weren’t hiding that from you out of some concern for national security or your freedoms they were supposedly defending. They were hiding what Bradley Manning eventually revealed all along because they want you to think that some humans don’t matter, because they think you’re too busy squeezing them out to Kardashian, and because they don’t want you to call your congressman and tell him to get out of Iraq or else he’s complicit in mass murder. Oh, or that you’ll vote for the other candidate out of spite, even if he or she is in favor of the same thing. The homicidal maniacs at the highest echelons of western power all too eager to expand those land wars in Asia I was talking about in the name of women’s suffrage, rare-earth element acquisition, drug eradication, oil, whatever, they want Bradley Manning to get his what-for to distract you from the fact — the F-A-C-T — they want to keep body counts from you to make them rich. That’s it! Aren’t you mad? No? What the blue fuck is wrong with you? This was mass murder, and all of the beigist nihilists at The New York Times and PBS want you to think that Bradley Manning did this because he was upset about “don’t ask, don’t tell.” How can you possibly rob Manning’s acts of supreme righteousness of that dignity by saying that had he just felt like he was sexually attracted to the “right person,” he would have felt a grand sense of blind tribal loyalty to make him betray basic ethical fairness, Hillel’s axiom?
The Occupy movement — a natural happening after a bunch of middle-class Americans saw a similarity between their plight and that of a bunch of Cairo secular hipster intelligentsia — choked off the rent-seeking financial services, insurance and real estate markets by causing record numbers of Americans to move their assets out of the major I banks and into credit unions. Had those long-haired menaces not taken to the streets surely Wells Fargo and Bank of America would be charging $2 a month for free checking. Can people not see what a huge hassle that would have been?
This was the global change-up and shake up everyone wanted! Everyone hates Congress! The Afghanistan war is increasingly unpopular still! This was real democracy! Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
Pro-Manning Protesters Outside of Fort Meade Tuesday
WASHINGTON – Retired Colonel Dan Choike, the former commander of Marine Corps Base Quantico, at which Private Bradley Manning was held, took the stand Tuesday and shed more light on the public relations and mental health concerns surrounding the incarceration of the Army intelligence analyst whose “Cablegate” document provisions to WikiLeaks sparked a global conflagration, culminating in the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement. Senior Quantico Marine officers anticipated ongoing complaints about the private’s treatment, and disregarded repeated advice from base forensic psychiatrists that the private did not need to be on suicide watch. Outright disagreement continued regarding the facts of an incident in which Private Manning alleges he was forced to stand naked. Col. Choike claims that he was offered a suicide smock and a blanket but refused those coverings.
Defense attorney David Coombs asked Col. Choike if he “knew” that Private Manning was asked to “put the blanket [covering him] back” when ordered to stand up. First the colonel replied simply, “no,” before adding to the attorney, “You’re talking hypotheticals.” As this exchange proceeded the private watched with wider, more interested eyes than usual, biting his lips.
Black-and-white factual disagreement also exists as to whether Private Manning was allowed only 20 minutes, as opposed to a full hour, of “sunshine call,” time outside in shackles.
The commander consistently ignored the advice of two psychiatrists, and Captain William Hoctor and Colonel Rick Malone — Capt. Hoctor’s advice particularly because one of his patients had recently killed himself while in the brig only a couple of weeks into his detention.
Presented exhibits included a “standard confinement pillow;” a “suicide mattress;” a green “suicide smock,” a cousin to the straitjacket; and two nooses — one a peach-colored makeshift bedsheet noose, the other constructed from sandbag ties. While defense counsel were quick to chime in that Private Manning had used neither noose, later this week Private Manning would testify to having made the bedsheet noose during his initial detention in Kuwait, a time during which American politicians and media personalities were roundly calling for the prisoner’s execution. Col. Choike cited factors that encouraged him to disregard psychiatrists’ advice that Manning not any longer be required to be put on suicide watch, a condition that would necessitate his wearing a chafing, restrictive smock the private claims gave him rub burns. Col. Choike, now a civilian employed at Stafford, Virginia’s Technology Associates, said the “seriousness” of Private Manning’s charges, “strained family relationships” and “erratic behavior” contributed to the continuing suicide watch. The “erratic behavior,” testified Col Choike, included “playing peek-a-boo,” “erratic dancing” and licking the bars of his cell.
Incredibly defense counsel claimed that the bar-licking might have been due to sleepwalking caused by anti-anxiety agents given to Private Manning. Neither side offered any details on the specific prescription medications given to Private Manning, but Capt. Hoctor said that Private Manning’s medication could cause sleepwalking and allegedly the bar-licking.
Col. Choike said that, instead of Capt. Hoctor and Col. Malone, he deferred to the chain of command and specifically the judgment of a dentist in charge of the Quantico medical clinic.
Both sides agree that Private Manning communicated to a guard that if he really wanted to hurt himself he could do with his waistband or his flip-flops. Col. Choike said that that guard took the statement so seriously that he relayed the concern to Barnes. In Mr. Coombs’ questioning of Col. Choike, he said that Private Manning was merely commenting on the absurdity of his being on suicide watch, a status that denied him more comfortable bedding and underwear to sleep in at night. Col. Choike said that subordinates did not make him aware that Private Manning was smiling when he made the observation, as Mr. Coombs implied.
Upon being questioned by David Coombs, Col. Choike disavowed the tone of a Dr. Seuss-ian poem in an email by Marine Corps legal counsel Christopher Greer to Col. Choike:
“I can wear them in a box. I can wear them with a fox. I can wear them in the day. I can wear them so I say. But I can’t wear them at night. My comments gave the staff a fright.”
Brig Commander Col. Robert Oltman would respond to Lt. Col. Greer’s email by himself referencing “Green Eggs & Ham,” signing his name “Sam I am.” On Wednesday, when he took the stand, Col. Oltman said that it would have been irresponsible not to take what Manning’s “flip-flop” line as being serious. “You don’t joke about suicide,” Col. Oltman testified, according to Bradley Manning Support Group writer Nathan Fuller.
Given the generally high rate of guilty verdicts in military trials, and his own offers to make a conditional plea “by substitution,” Private Manning’s defense strategy over the next three months hinges on calls for sympathy based, respectively, on the length of his pre-trial incarceration (over 900 days), and the severity of his treatment during that time. Private Manning will try to cut deals in which each day of his upcoming will count for multiple days, depending on how much defense counsel can impress upon Judge Denise Lind the degree of unpleasantness in at least 23-hour-a-day lockdowns in a 6-foot-by-8-foot cell. Private Manning has called for a dismissal of his case due to a claim that his right to a speedy trial was ignored.
David Coombs and prosecutor Major Ashden Fein are locked in a chicken-and-egg argument on the relationship between precautions allegedly intended to prevent Private Manning’s suicide, and those measures’ ironic, potential debilitating effects on Private Manning’s state of mind. The private’s treatment faced such scrutiny that it was enough to elicit criticism from a State Department spokesman and a U.N. special rapporteur on torture. Throughout his hours of questioning Tuesday’s witness Mr. Coombs tried to highlight for the judge and the press in attendance a contrast in the levels of attention Col. Choike and his superiors paid to public relations management of Private Manning’s incarceration, as opposed to the prisoner’s actual treatment.
Observers to the first day of the trial included Maryland Green Party Senate candidate and attorney Kevin Zeese and Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who briefed multiple presidents on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As the trial was on recess, waiting in the observers trailer next to the courtroom, Mr. McGovern communicated his confidence that there was a net social benefit to Private Manning’s leaking of secret-classified documents. Near and dear to Mr. McGovern’s heart is fragmentary order (FRAGO) 242, revealed via the Iraq War logs, which Mr. McGovern said was the brain-child of now resigned CIA director David Petraeus, who then served as the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
Field reports, made available through Private Manning’s infractions, reveal a tolerance of detainee abuse by occupying U.S. authorities, in light of FRAGO 242, named in one May 16, 2005 instance as: “Provided the initial report [of abuse] confirms US forces were not involved in the detainee abuse, no further investigation will be conducted unless directed by [higher headquarters].”
A November 29, 2005 press conference provides an exchange in contradiction with this fragmentary order, during which then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chair General Peter Pace exhibited differing perspectives on the blind eye UPI’s Pam Hess said the U.S. military was turning to prisoner abuse by Iraqi security forces, who Secretary Rumsfeld opined were doing a “darn good job.”
General Pace said, “It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don’t see if happening but you’re told about it is exactly what happened a couple weeks ago. There’s a report from an Iraqi to [General Karl Horst] that there is possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it. So they did exactly what they should have done.
Secretary Rumsfeld said, “But I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it. It’s to report it.”
To this General Pace offered contradiction, “If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.”
Ray McGovern published a blog post Wednesday that details his own take on Private Manning’s treatment, which takes much inspiration from The Guardian’s reporting on the revelations Private Manning brought to the eyes of the world. Secretary Rumsfeld did publicly urge the Iraqi government to investigate grisly examples of prisoner abuse, while insisting on deferring to Iraq’s own investigative mechanisms, citing the occupied nation’s “sovereignty.”
From The Guardian:
A man who was detained by Iraqi soldiers in an underground bunker reported that he had been subjected to the notoriously painful strappado position: with his hands tied behind his back, he was suspended from the ceiling by his wrists. The soldiers had then whipped him with plastic piping and used electric drills on him. The log records that the man was treated by US medics; the paperwork was sent through the necessary channels; but yet again, no investigation was required.
The court has ruled that Private Manning’s own motives or the effects of his leaks, as The Internet Chronicle has previously reported while attending a pre-trial session, are to have no effect on the outcome on his sentence or charges. As evinced by the private two consective nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, his motives have elicited widespread laud.
As The Internet Chronicle reported last April, David Coombs’ pre-trial arguments suggested the possibility that Private Manning may have exercised personal discretion in his choice of particular documents to hand off to WikiLeaks, leaving open the possibility that the private may have removed information to protect U.S. assets, techniques, tactics and procedures. However, as was reported, “the defense’s suggestions that Private Manning, Mr. Fein argued, had performed self-redactions to mitigate damage were not material; the defendant, he said, lacked the direct knowledge as well as the original classification authority (OCA) to properly make such an assessment [of what to leak].”
In conversation with Kevin Zeese in the parking lot of the Fort Meade base theater, long-time source Mr. Zeese contended that, had any harm come to a U.S. serviceman or servicewoman, as a result of Private Manning’s leaks, political pressure would have been too seductive to avoid placing this additional heat on the private, despite the State Department’s standard line, dating back to December 2010, that it does not comment on leaked classified information.
“If the government could show the documents Manning released caused direct harm they would jump at the opportunity,” said Mr. Zeese. “I would be surprised if they didn’t.”
“The beauty of art is that it can be interpreted many ways by many different people.”
WASHINGTON – Andrew Auernheimer, an American gray hat hacker better known as “weev,” tells The Internet Chronicle that his indictment in a New Jersey District Court over a June 2010 AT&T data breach is at its root an important free speech issue. Speaking to Chronicle.su’s Gray Phone, Mr. Auernheimer, a 27-year-old associate of Goatse Security, claims he made certain AT&T was aware of the breach in time to patch it, he never sought financial gain from what was in effect the the extraction of 114,000 iPad users’ email addresses, and that he never personally possessed more customer data than enough to communicate that the breach was bona fide. While prosecutors imply Mr. Auernheimer’s actions and statements may constitute computer fraud and foreknowledge of possible insider trading, he and his fellow Goatse Security associates saw themselves as merely tarnishing a company’s reputation due to its own reckless mishandling of customer data.
The actual extractor of iPad users’ email addresses, Daniel Spitler, 26, who may face as many as 10 years in prison, has already plead guilty to having gained unauthorized access to computers and identity theft. Mr. Spitler’s sentencing is forthcoming. Mr. Auernheimer served as a media liaison for the group, and only possessed iPad device signatures and email addresses related to media, such as Thomson Reuters and News Corporation.
Citing ’90s law enforcement debacles, such as the civilian deaths at Waco and the deaths in the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Mr. Auernheimer issued his appraisal of the honesty of federal law enforcement: “These are lying, perjurous, murderous thugs.”
He added, “If they will murder people, and no consequences of it will come for them, do you think they won’t manufacture evidence or coax false testimony? Give me break.”
“I’ve never shorted a stock, I’ve not solicited a third party to short a stock. And there’s nothing that I do that’s any different than what the financial press does. I’m issuing my opinion on AT&T’s — the information that they’ve made publicly accessible and giving my opinion of their infrastructure, as a result and of course Apple’s products.” He added, “There’s nothing illegal about this. This is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, and also there is a system in violation here in that they have denied my right to due process by allowing AT&T to arbitrarily after the fact of access determine what is and isn’t not an authorized without the use of Congress to determine what is or is not an illegal act.”
A New Jersey district court informational document reads, “[D]efendent SPITLER, [Mr. Auernheimer], and other Goatse Security members discussed who in the press had disclosed the data breach to At&T, since, contrary to the Gawker Article, neither defendant SPITLER, nor anyone from Goatse Security had.” The document goes on to catalog an exchange between Mr. Auernheimer and colleague “Nstyr” in which they intimate they have not informed AT&T tech support by telephone.
“I don’t fucking care [about calling AT&T directly.] [I] hope they sue me,” wrote Mr. Auernheimer, in private correspondence confiscated by federal investigators. Asked by The Internet Chronicle’s Gray Phone why he didn’t go to AT&T first, he was concerned about greater liability by even talking to the telecommunications giant.
“Many people that have direct dialogue with companies in this sort of situation are accused of extortion, and I specifically wanted to avoid being accused falsely of extortion,” he says. Mr. Auernheimer contacted at least one third party — whom he declined to name but AT&T identified as a “business customer” — and says he was certain the patch would be forthcoming before leaking the data to Gawker could cause any harm. The third party’s identity, he says, makes it “inherently obvious” that he or she would make AT&T knowledgeable.
AT&T, he says, doesn’t “need to be informed by me. They need to be informed by somebody.”
An associate named “Pynchon” wrote to Mr. Auernheimer, “[H]ey, just an idea [ -- ] delay this outing for a couple days[,] tomorrow short some [AT&T] stock[,] then out them on [T]uesday[,] then fill your short and profit[.]
With this quote posed to him by Chronicle.su, Mr. Auernheimer said, “I don’t believe that anybody had an interest in shorting a stock,” adding, “And I certainly did not solicit them, too, and I’ve received no kickbacks for doing so. And I don’t believe anybody did, or otherwise I’d be charged with a securities-related crime, which I of course am not.”
Mr. Auernheimer said he doesn’t recall writing a reply to “Pynchon’s” stock-shorting idea with the reply: “[I]f you want to do it[,] go nuts.” However for Mr. Auernheimer and ultimately Mr. Spitler, the only entity to have extracted and held all the data, prosecutors are sure to make much of the transcript’s mentioning of any of their associates’ even jesting about or humoring such a securities violation. To be sure Goatse Security has a long history of conducting operations simply for reputational gain or their laughter at others’ expense — known as “lulz.”
Mr. Spitler’s indictment falsely claims that AT&T is headquartered in New Jersey. Mr. Auernheimer characterized this as perjury motivated by venue shopping, intended to maximize chances at prosecution. AT&T is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
In their analysis of chat logs federal prosecutors independently construed the sad-face emoticon “D8″ as the sexual metaphor “balls deep,” or as they put it, “to be deeply involved in an activity or to perform an activity to the greatest extent possible.” This revelation is not only humorous but shows, when taken in the context of Mr. Auernheimer’s relayed concern about civil, not criminal, liability for the data breach, Mr. Spitler was actually expressing fear.
8:30 p.m. EDT – Georgian Attorney General Sam Olens is saying that the individual mandate tells you “what to think.” I’m not sure what to make of that.
8:35 p.m. EDT – Senator John Thune (R-SD) says that when playing basketball President Barack Obama is easy to predict because he “always goes to his left.”
8:54 p.m. EDT – Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is telling PBS that Mitt Romney supports offering military aid to the Free Syrian Army, seeming to simply that the United States is not currently. Sen. McCain touts that French President Hollande — “a socialist,” he makes a point of saying — supports a no-fly zone about the Mediterranean country.
9:14 p.m. EDT – Steve Cohen, as Media Matters is most prominently pointing out, has received more than “$2 million in government contracts, including nearly $220,000 in stimulus funds, and claims a ‘long and proud history of supplying heavy-duty American Made equipment to government agencies and the US military.”
9:19 p.m. EDT – In the face of PBS Host Gwen Ifill pressing the senator on the unpopularity of keeping taxes lower on the top 1 percent and 2 percent — and the inevitability of Democrats being determined to hang that policy “around the neck” of the Republicans, Senator Ron Johnson says that Democrats have not adequately challenged Republicans, as they have not presented their own budget.
9:27 p.m. EDT – Republican delegate Becky Davis (MO) says that female voters are “feeling [economic woes of late] in the grocery store,” seemingly emphasizing women loving cooking.
9:32 p.m. EDT – Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is attacking President Obama’s vacation time. CBS News has reported that, at least a year in, Obama had taken a third of the vacation time than the last Republican president, 20 months in.
9:41 p.m. EDT – Fox News Channel Host Mike Huckabee says that convention attendees might be asking themselves how former rivals can unite to support one of them. The two, says Mr. Huckabee, “have Barack Obama to thank,” fully embracing the notion that the enemy of one’s enemy is one’s friend.
I get the sense that Huckabee didn’t listen to the previous speaker who referenced Obama claiming that if deficit controls didn’t work, that he would himself be looking at a “one-term proposition.” Otherwise he would have gone slightly off of the teleprompter, instead of saying, “Do you remember when” the president made that statement.
9:51 p.m. EDT – Mr. Huckabee says that Obama is an evangelical Christian. However the United Church of Christ, President Obama’s denomination, is not a member of the National Association of Evangelicals.
10:12 p.m. EDT – By saying that “hard decisions” prevented a follow-up attack to 9/11, is Condoleezza Rice implying that the Iraq War, who cause is now doubted by most House Republicans, was that hard decision?
10:14 p.m. EDT – A defining quality of this convention is how rarely the speakers mention Barack Obama by name.
10:16 p.m. EDT – Regarding the ongoing “we built it” private-sector theme, Arizona Governor Susana Martinez says, “[my parents] built it,” meaning their livelihoods, even though her father was a government employee, as a Marine and later a sheriff.
Gov. Martinez says that, despite Democrats controlling her state’s legislature, she talks about her state turning a state budget deficit into a surplus, saying “we,” presumably meaning her administration, “did it without raising taxes.” But did they do it, or did the private sector?
10:32 p.m. EDT – It’s interesting that Vice Presidential Nominee Paul Ryan references the Obama administration’s failure to oversee the reopening of a GM plant, in front of which, he says, Obama engaged in grandstanding about its reopening. However, Mr. Romney was an advocate of bailing out Detroit in his own right.
10:52 p.m. EDT – Rep. Ryan referencing Jack Kemp, his mentor, could evoke similar discomfort as to when then Governor Schwarzenegger talked about his admiration for Richard Nixon’s speech-giving.
INTERNET — Thursday, Anonymous, the idea, was arrested by the U.S. Government. Tired of butthurt countercultural types touting such a smug slogan, Anonymous imagery was symbolically “imprisoned” at Guantanamo Bay. “We just wanted to show those kids that, yes, we can arrest an idea. We’ve arrested every single one of those snide kids and we’re waiting on evidence so we can make a move on the rest,” said Guantanamo Torture Artist President Obama.
Barrett Brown didn’t have time to comment, as he was busy rewriting his book to reflect how wrong he was about Sabu. When offered advice from Chronicle.SU strategists on countering persona management with increased use of reverse Turing Tests, Brown flew into an uncontrollable rage. “Why should I listen to YOU? You’re just some freak who was completely right when I was woefully wrong about Sabu.” Brown’s indictment for grievous lapses in journalistic ethics remains hilarious, and his continued hijacking of Anonymous for huge personal profits has paid off with his new fake title of “Ex-Anonymous Spokesperson Security Expert.” Brown has been featured by clueless networks like Bloomberg and Russia Today because of his facile relationship with so-called Anonymous ‘Snitch’ leadership.
Kids, the hate’s only beginning! Hold on Tight, because if you think Barrett Brown’s been a silly-nilly wait till you hear about Assange!
Assange has gone completely insane with power! The mission of WikiLeaks has drifted from revealing government ‘cover ups’ of accidental killings of journalists to ratting out internal gossip at Stratfor, a ‘fellow’ publisher! If that’s not enough, they’re responsible for at least one hoax planting lies (!) on a New York Times columnist who would never say such things.
AND ANONYMOUS HAS FINALLY, INEXTRICABLY, BLOWN THEIR COVER!
As we all know, Anonymous is a longstanding phenomenon of angry kids who gang up out of nowhere to DDoS web sites that piss them off for some reason. This has been going on long before the term ‘Anonymous’ gave such a group a crystallized identity. Now that the ‘Internet’ and ‘Social Media’ are big things, they’re able to generate huge headlines by leeching of of Internet-related media events and leveraging the ‘cool,’ threatening imagery. Used to be they’d have to take down Yahoo or something to get any attention, but that was back when Yahoo meant something. Kids these days, I’m tellin’ ya…
BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH CHRIST ASSANGE?
So now this contrived mantra, “DDoS is something like a sit-in during the Civil Rights movement,” has been put to the fucking test. The sacred WikiLeaks has come under DDoS attack from an opposing camp, AntiLeaks, which considers WikiLeaks a new form of terrorism. The argument, which is consistent with Assange’s own theories, is that these major leaks are not intended to reveal specific crimes but rather to inhibit communications networks and undermine, specifically, America’s imperialism. There’s nails, strings, and planks of wood. You probably couldn’t understand Assange’s transcendently enlightened Theory of Conspiracy without decades of self-absorption.
What did Anonymous say to this act of ‘free speech?’WE WILL DESTROY YOU, ANTILEAKS!
PLEASE CONCLUDE SO MY SIMPLE MIND CAN SYNTHESIZE ALL THIS NONSENSE!
Assange let his Jimmies get Rustled and became worse than Rupert Murdoch. Much worse. Instead of letting a broken bureaucracy do his dirty work through mismanagement, Assange has engaged directly, if the body of evidence is not all fabricated, in intensely unethical, questionable practices. Enlisting hackers, educating informants in hacking techniques, and putting on hoaxes is not behavior I can defend. It’s disgusting and sick! Shame on Assange! Shame on Brown! Shame on Topiary! Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame! *chant continues until all of Occupy has been arrested.*
BILOXI, MISS. – Livestreamers at Occupy the Bayou captured the gang rape of a wheelchair-bound child who was beaten for laughing at riot police. The autistic quadriplegic is now in intensive care at Biloxi Regional Medical Center, and no charges have been filed against the officers identified in the footage. Anonymous released the “d0x” of suspected officers, and they have been inundated with endless phone calls and pizza deliveries, weak justice for such a terrible offence.
In the footage, which is too graphic to post, the officers clearly did exactly what everyone on Twitter is saying. Behind a cloud of tear gas, the laughing retard child is kicked out of his wheelchair, beaten, tasered, stripped naked, and then raped repeatedly by a group of officers. The police then showered rubber bullets and beanbags on the livestreamers with complete indiscrimination, and Twitter rumors confirmed they confiscated and destroyed all cameras before similarly raping the rest of the Occupiers. A witness commented the child did not stop laughing and did not lose consciousness until paramedics administered sedatives.
Police Chief John Miller said to our field reporter in Biloxi that none of these wild accusations are true and then raped him repeatedly. “Rape jokes aren’t funny. It’s a real thing that happens commonly to all sorts of people, and you are empowering rapists by making these kinds of jokes,” said one naive radical feminist who was then gang-raped by the executives at Lebal Drocer, Industries. Frank Mason, faked-death shadow CEO, commented that the raping was “just no fun without a taser.”
DENVER, COLO. — Americans were excited today about reports deep within the bowels of the Romney campaign that the former Massachusetts governor is ready to go after President Obama’s use of marawana and cocaine as a teenager.
“I mean, this is a guy who admitted to cocaine use,” says a Romney adviser to Buzzfeed, “had a sweetheart deal with his house in Chicago, and was associated and worked with Rod Blagojevich to get Valerie Jarrett appointed to the Senate,” adding, “The bottom line is there’ll be counterattacks.”
President Obama has made a point of discussing his own history of using cocaine, which he refers to by its crass street name of “blow;” as well as his inhaling the vapours of the ever-popular devil weed itself. His popular autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope,” whose sales are his primary source of income — second only to “cash money” reportedly obtained selling automatic firearms to Mexican drug cartels — is a book basically about how the 44th president of the United States loved using drugs. President Obama has met desperate, repeated online pleas he legalize recreational cannabis use with guffaws and denials that he would act to liberate from a kyriarchy the American people, now arbitrarily incarcerated at rates unrivaled in the developed world.
Despite many reports, including out of Forbes magazine, that Portugal’s drug legalization policy has decimated that country’s drug abuse, Gil Kerlikowski, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has stated that legalization does not combat the ills of illicit drug use. And last month, before Congress, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Michele Leonhart, reiterated her administration’s commitment to utter hysteria and lack of focus on a public health crisis.
Before finally admitting, after much pressure, that heroin was more addictive than cannabis, Ms. Leonhart first characterized the matter of whether heroin is worse for an individual’s health than cannabis as “subjective.” This admission followed deliberately dishonest exchanges with Democratic Representative Jared Polis of Colorado:
REPRESENTATIVE JARED POLIS (D-CO): Is crack [a street name for free-based cocaine - ed] worse for a person than marijuana?
MICHELE LEONHART: I believe all illegal drugs are bad.
REP. POLIS: Is methamphetamine worse for somebody’s health than marijuana?
MS. LEONHART: I don’t think any illegal drug is good for –
REP. POLIS: Is heroin worse for someone’s health than marijuana?
MS. LEONHART: Again, all [sic] the drugs, they are illegal.
The administration’s enforcement strategies square well with the Romney campaign’s assessment of the president pro-drug attitudes, the unmistakable products of hedonistic, if-it-feels-good-do-it ’60s culture. Meanwhile the deputy director of NORML, a shady druggie front group, longs for the good old days under President George Bush when Californian sludge distributors operating under the guise of “medical clinics” “helping people in pain” could operate with relative impunity, writing this week, “Many of California’s most prominent and well-respected medical cannabis dispensaries and related facilities — including Oaksterdam University, Berkeley Patients Group, and Harborside Health Center (HHC) — flourished under the George W. Bush administration. But they’ll be lucky to survive President Barack Obama’s first term.”
Medical health professionals consulted off-the-record by The Internet Chronicle speculate that President Obama’s laser obsession with his administration’s present drug enforcement strategies is likely the result of the delusion and vigor associated, they say, “unmistakably” with cocaine psychosis.
After bragging to high school students in December of 2007 about how cool drugs are, then Senator Obama became the focus of the popular prohibitionist scrutiny. Obama’s candor with students came on the heels of the leak of an audiotape of President George W. Bush citing a responsibility to America’s youth to prevaricate about his own drug use — not to protect his own career, of course, but to shield them from the enormous influence the president of the United States has had on American teenagers since the Founding Fathers.
Years ago the Romney campaign pounced on the opportunity to praise President Bush’s bold, private confession to smoking weed. Mr. Romney said then, “He said when he was young and irresponsible, he was young and irresponsible, and he left it at that. And I think that in order to leave the best possible example for our kids, we’re probably wisest not to talk about our own indiscretions in great detail.”
Mr. Romney’s strategy is “simple yet elegant,” says Political Science Professor Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, adding, “It allows the candidate to bask in the veneer of family values while remaining duplicitous about that bottle of Coca-Cola he is rumored to have enjoyed, covertly, while on missionary work in France on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
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