By Christopher Ross Harrison, 2011-03-25

Where the debate over privacy rights is concerned, there exists a perpetual danger of being drawn into one of two extreme camps: One that would dismantle all security entirely, leaving us open to those very real threats that exist at home and abroad, and the other that would submerge our basic rights and freedoms beneath an Orwellian surveillance state, all in the name of our collective safety. Of course; freedom isn’t free, it just seems that way because we have been blessed to live in an oversaturated freedom market. On the other hand, although the price of freedom is still eternal vigilance, it seems there are those who would impose an artificial price hike; having us pay eternal vigilance, plus groping and manhandling fees, plus a whopping one hundred and fifty percent interest. These folks don’t necessarily hate freedom, they’d just prefer that you visit it in a museum under a glass cover.

If this sounds like a paranoid fantasy, let us reflect upon the following evidence for the recent and undue ascension of Big Brother in our Western Democracies.

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Seth Perry - October 2, 2011

This past spring, in a course I called “American Scriptures,” my students and I listened to excerpts of a recording of L. Ron Hubbard lecturing on a boat in 1968. I had obtained the recording—which the Church of Scientology, the religious organization Hubbard founded, considers not for public circulation—from WikiLeaks, along with a transcript. I photocopied the relevant portions of the transcript and handed them out in class as aids to listening. The transcripts helped enable discussion of particular passages and allowed students to follow Scientology’s famously idiosyncratic lingo—”squirreling,” “ARC break,” “F/N.”

We did something similar with media productions of various other American religious movements, but what inevitably set Scientology’s apart was that as I handed out the transcripts, I told the students that I would have to ask for them back at the end of class. I explained that I did not want to be accused of having reproduced Scientology materials for circulation, thereby risking a lawsuit. My students, with some mirth, thought I was being a little dramatic, and maybe they were right—but I took the transcripts back all the same.

This classroom moment exemplifies the tensions inherent in studying and teaching Scientology. Hubbard’s teachings contain fascinating religious content that demands serious study—by those interested in religion writ large, and by those, like me, who study its American iterations. The organization that Hubbard created, however, frustrates that study.

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Scott Sexton - September 25, 2011

When first proposed, they seemed like such simple and relatively inexpensive things to do for the survivors of North Carolina’s heinous eugenic-sterilization program.

Build a traveling exhibit detailing its history. Erect a monument to the survivors. Incorporate it into the teaching of state history in public school curriculum. And put up a highway marker in a prominent place.

The state of North Carolina actively pushed sterilization on some 7,600 of its poorest and weakest residents. Local boards slipped into God’s shoes, making recommendations on who was fit to reproduce and who wasn’t.

As the years passed — North Carolina carried on with its eugenics into the 1970s, long after most states recoiled in horror from theirs — the program increasingly targeted poor black women and girls, hundreds of whom are still living.

How hard could it be to do a few small things to honor survivors? Judging by recent events, the answer, sadly, is too hard.

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William N. Grigg - October 3, 2011

The links connecting Anwar al-Awlaki to anti-American terrorism were entirely suppositious, forged through unsubstantiated official assertion. He was, at most, a clerical propagandist who never exercised command authority. For that matter, no evidence has been presented that he ever had an operational role in a military force of any kind.

Awlaki — an American-born cleric who was once courted by the Pentagon — was accused of expressing support for armed attacks against U.S. military personnel and government interests. It is not terrorism to employ lethal violence against an invading and occupying army, nor is it a crime to express support for armed self-defense — including armed interposition against the aggressive designs of the U.S. government.

The administration asserted – without providing evidence – that Awlaki had an “operational” role in planning terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens. If evidence supporting that charge existed, the administration had the unconditional constitutional duty to indict Awlaki and put him on trial.

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Skilluminati - Sep 25, 2011

“Deception is a state of mind–and the mind of the state.” - James Jesus Angleton

As the CIA’s own website has the cunning arrogance to tell me: “…observers of the intelligence scene find James Angleton endlessly fascinating.” Too true. Personally, though, what interests me the most is that with a small mountain of information available, none of it is believable. The man himself simply isn’t there.

Vanished in a turn of phrase. Angleton is all fiction, these days. From Hollywood bastardization to the weird channeled communications with Michael Ledeen, ARTIFICE remains an inscrutable wall of impeccable forgeries. Largely, this is thanks to the CIA’s enviable position as the primary author of it’s own history.

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On Company Business I: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

On Company Business II: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

On Company Business III: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

(via Limited Hangout)

Glenn Greenwald - Sep 30, 2011

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.  When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.

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Mecklenburg’s impoverished had few, if any, rights in the ’50s and ’60s as he oversaw one of the most aggressive efforts to sterilize certain populations

Ann Doss Helms and Tommy Tomlinson - Sep. 26, 2011

Compassionate. Visionary. A champion of women and the poor.

That’s the reputation that Wallace Kuralt built as Mecklenburg County’s welfare director from 1945 to 1972. Today, the building where Charlotte’s poor come for help bears his name - a name made even more prominent when his newscaster son, Charles Kuralt, rose to fame.

But as architect of Mecklenburg’s program of eugenic sterilization - state-ordered surgery to stop the poor and disabled from bearing children - Kuralt helped write one of the most shameful chapters of North Carolina history.

The Charlotte Observer has obtained records sealed by the state that tell the stories of 403 Mecklenburg residents ordered sterilized by the N.C. Eugenics Board at the behest of Kuralt’s welfare department.

It’s a number that dwarfs the total from any other county, in a state that ran one of the nation’s most active efforts to sterilize the mentally ill, mentally retarded and epileptic.

The records crunch people’s lives into a few terse paragraphs.

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Noah Shachtman - September 28, 2011

Perhaps the idea of spy drones already makes your nervous. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with the notion of an unblinking, robotic eye in the sky that can watch your every move. If so, you may want to click away now. Because if the Army has its way, drones won’t just be able to look at what you do. They’ll be able to recognize your face — and track you, based on how you look. If the military machines assemble enough information, they might just be able to peer into your heart.

The Pentagon has tried all sort of tricks to keep tabs on its foes as they move around: tiny transmitters, lingering scents, even “human thermal fingerprints.” The military calls the effort “Tagging, Tracking, and Locating,” or “TTL.” And, as the strategy in places like Afghanistan has shifted from rebuilding societies to taking out individual insurgents, TTL has become increasingly central to the American effort. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to it.

The current technologies have their limits, however. Transmitters can be discovered, and discarded. Scents eventually waft away. Even the tagged can get lost in a crowd.

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Laws Of Silence - September 9, 2011

Like everywhere else in Europe, the first half of the 19th century was an especially turbulent time for France: the First Republic (1792-1804) gave way to Napoleon’s Empire (1804-1814/15), in turn followed by the Bourbon Restoration (1814-1815–”The 100 Days”–1815-1830). The July Revolution of 1830 led to the so-called July Monarchy of the House of Orléans, which ruled until 1848. In 1848 the Second Republic was established and the year is considered as the end of France’s “revolutionary era” (The current state, btw, is no less than the Fifth Republic, proof that the turbulent times were far from over!)

In any event, to celebrate the newborn Second Republic, a competition was held to find a painting that could be displayed in town halls across the country. Between 1848 and 1849, Armand Cambon created the painting above as his entry (he didn’t win). La République is a symbol-heavy allegory and many of these Republican symbols are quite obviously also Masonic. But as I’ve said before, half-jokingly, what symbol isn’t?

According to the website for the museums of the Midi-Pyrenées, the woman is an allegory of the Republic, or perhaps the Law, crowned with a victory laurel, thus recalling the recent overthrow of the last French monarch Louis-Philippe. The flag crowned with the eagle and the lion immobilizing the serpent symbolize the Republic’s capacity for defense. The clasped hands, the square and the hand in benediction represent Equality and Justice; the beehive, Fraternity and Work. The tricolor rainbow is said to symbolize the glory of Republican government. (We’ve seen the hand before on Urbain Vitry’s tomb, 1863.)

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Jeff Wells - September 01, 2011

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks…. Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks. - Schopenhauer

The Thing That Couldn’t Die

Light for some time to come will have to be called darkness. - Nietzsche

They may be our Most Terrible Lizards, but they wouldn’t be called the best and the brightest by even the hindmost fart-catcher in Abaddon’s human centipede. They can turn blood into gold, playing Last Days’ alchemists in the booming catastrophe and collapse sectors, but don’t confuse the management of an habituated massacre with a meritocracy. They’re the eschaton of open jaws at the close of the food chain, but for no other reason than a cold heart doesn’t dwell upon the cruelty of its bite. We’re the 99 and they’re the One Percenters, and like the outlaw bikers who share the patch, they run the drugs and guns and kill for their club. They’re the Killer Elite, but don’t call them elite. No. Apparently, and with ironic perversity, that’s me and my numerous tribe; over-educated beyond utility at the end of the Age of Useless Things.

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By Russ Baker on Sep 22, 2011

WhoWhatWhy has found evidence linking the Saudi royal family to Saudis in South Florida who reportedly had direct contact with the 9/11 hijackers before fleeing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report connects some of the dots first laid out by investigative author Anthony Summers and Florida-based journalist Dan Christensen in articles jointly published in the Miami Herald and on the nonprofit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early September of this year, Summers and Christensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Congressional investigators or the presidential 9/11 commission, had uncovered information indicating the possibility of support for the hijackers from previously unknown confederates in the United States during 2001.

Now WhoWhatWhy reveals that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite.

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