Daily Mail:

A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State - against the wishes of their relatives.

The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer's or other mental incapacity.

The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.

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Guys, we're not removing your right to protest. We're just removing your right to protest when it matters.

Via CBC:

A proposed B.C. law would allow municipal officials to enter homes to seize unauthorized and possibly anti-Olympic signs on short notice, civil libertarians say.

Violators could be fined up to $10,000 a day and jailed up to six months, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Friday.

The proposed law was introduced Thursday as a bill to amend the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act.

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Look out Paula! Looks like you've got some competition. Although, I confess to being curious: which of you will be better hunting down embarrassing blog comments posted by your boss' political enemies? Shutting down bloggers focused upon issues the rest of the media ignores? Cause that's really what all this mostly unConstitutional and anti-democratic domestic spying monitoring is all about.

I'm sure you all recall the early days of the NSA Hoovering up all domestic data warrantless wiretapping scandal, when they referred to it as the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and assured us that they were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Naturally, this turned out to be a lie enhanced duplicity technique, because it turns out they were spying on all of us everyday American citizens. Nobody was off the target list, and we were all potential Al-Qaeda operatives.

Now, there's a big hubbub about some sketchy CIA assassination ring, apparently answering to Cheney himself. Nobody's willing to talk about the nitty-gritty details, but it's enough to have even Nancy "off the table" Pelosi spooked or pissed off enough to start publicly discussing how fucked-up it was, whatever "it" was.

The public justification for this shadowy, super-classified, apparently reprehensible death squad?

They were only targeting Al-Qaeda operatives.

Yeah, okay, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. Does anyone seriously doubt that what we'll eventually learn is that they formed a group to assassinate American citizens in the National Interest? Consider this, via TPM:

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization...

As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

Hmm, I wonder...

Yesterday morning witnessed the first terrorist attack against an American on American soil of a new administration. During the last Democratic administration, we saw a rising number of terrorist attacks unleashed by the American right against their fellow citizens Indeed, almost twice as many Americans were killed by right wing American terrorists as were killed by foreign terrorists.

So, let's tote the numbers up. I've assembled the list of American deaths from foreign terrorism from the State Department's Global Patterns in Terrorism released yearly.

1993:

Six Americans dead in the WTC attack. Those were the only American deaths from terrorism that year.

To all those Americans who wish they had the benefits or protection of Canadian citizenship, well, the value of the above has dropped like a stone in recent history, and none so obviously as with the current absurd Abousfian Abdelrazik episode. The poor man has a family in Canada, is a Canadian citizen by refugee asylum, and has been stuck in a Kafkaesque multiyear nightmare starting with imprisonment and torture by the Sudanese government, and ending with his residence at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum, which will not offer him a passport to return to Canada.

The War on Terror, of course.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is under the Department of Homeland Security, announced that they'd be using a $10.5 million Predator drone, yes, those predator drones, to survey the Michigan-Ontario border, yesterday:

In a further crackdown on the northern border, federal authorities are planning to use a drone-like, unmanned aircraft to police the United States-Canada boundary between Michigan and Ontario.

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I do recall, lo, that here among us there were people who hoped that Canada would arrest George Bush or something. Well, not only did they not do that, but they've just prohibited another George from speaking in Toronto: maverick British MP George Galloway.

More specifically, Alykhan Velshi, an aide to the execrable minister Jason Kenney, quoth trollishly:

Might want to see it, if you haven't already. Avedon:.

"Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh describes 'executive assassination ring' [...] After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen." I couldn't help wondering if Hersh is going to be allowed to live to finish his book.

The story says they reported directly to Cheney's office during the Bush years.

I hope that everyone realizes that the Pentagonian Establishment is very much in the midst, and not at the start of, trying to push back at Obama's promise to close Gitmo, and the left's push for this thing to close since we've known of its existence.

This is why it is so incredibly important that the left push him harder than ever before and constantly to close this house of horrors down, as well as all of the others we know and don't know about, because he's being pushed very forcefully (more forcefully, in fact) from the right to "stay the course" on Gitmo.

My original plan was to write three posts about white supremacy problem, but the more I look into it, the less inclined I am to publish the remaining two-thirds of the original essay I wrote.

I am sure most people who are reading this are aware by now that under the right circumstances, skinheads would make ideal brownshirts, and the KKK would be in a position to proselytize among destitute people by providing necessities and social services the way armed political groups have done in other countries for years. So I see no need to devote entire posts to observations such as those.

I need to focus on the most pressing aspect of this problem first, and then zoom out and take a wider view.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been showing an increase in the number of these groups for a quite a while. They are not confined to the Old Confederacy. SPLC hate group map. Current SPLC Intelligence report. 2008 summary. You can subscribe to the report and search their archives. I recommend.

The two groups that concern me the most are the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups, though they are not the only ones. It looks to me like they are stepping up their recruiting efforts, and read a while back in a trustworthy source that the military has a problem with white supremacists joining up, volunteering for combat units, and then returning to civilian life with those skills. A sort of “train the trainer” from hell. If you just scanned the The Timothy McVeigh Finishing School the first time around, you might want to give it a close read. It’s an important piece of this puzzle.

I want to be clear about what I know versus what I just think, and do my best to avoid fearmongering, so this is going to take a little work.

Here is a plain English story that I am comfortable labeling a historical account, with a little psychology thrown in toward the end for good measure. Everything in here is there either because I am sure research will confirm it, or because I live down here and knew it was going on at the time.

This paper explores nihilism in terms of the Vietnam War, a Cold War conflict against Communism, in terms of the movie Causalities of War. Nihilism is prominent in some political philosophies including Communism and the horrors of war tend to bring out nihilistic tendencies. Interestingly, this term was coined in Russia during the 1830s and 1840s and was more commonly used after the publishing of Ivan Turgenev’s book Fathers and Sons. According to the novel, first translated and published in English in 1862, this “most advanced idea” (Bolshevism) was brewing in Russia. One of the main characters, Yevgeny Bazarov, is referred to as the "first Bolshevik" for his revolutionary rejection of the old order and nihilistic beliefs.

2025: the end of US dominance --
the National Intelligence Council global trends review is out, and contrary to 2004's rosy view of 2020-- still dominated by US and with oil to burn--the new forecast sees things very differently. (pdf link to full report at bottom article)

"... the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks". ..."

Broader FBI powers now set in stone

Among the powers agents now have for an assessment:

• Conduct surveillance without an otherwise required court order

• Obtain grand jury subpoenas for personal telephone and e-mail accounts

• Recruit informants for feeding information about a group or person to the bureau

• Examine records maintained by federal, state and local government agencies, which are typically not accessible to the public, like police databases profiling past criminal suspects.

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The Sideshow

TChris asks, "Did you know this?" and then reports on something I certainly did not know - that the bailout bill creates permanent authority for the IRS to work as undercover agents running sting operations to try to tempt citizens into breaking the law, as well as involving themselves in investigations of drug case in order to bust dealers for not reporting their income, which, as TChris says, is really stupid, because dealers don't usually save any money to collect on.

It is not hard to see how that is going to come back to bite Busheviki.

For a good long while before the 30s, some people thought they could create wealth while not paying anybody, and it all came crashing down. Then they were made to pay people, for their own good. Years later, they tried to realize the dream of not paying anybody a second time around, with even cleverer not paying anybody techniques. Needless to say, it still didn't work, but they'll get to try again. And they got rich anyway.

A few days ago, I had reported on Palin's linkages to "Bible-based cult" promoter Bill Gothard...and, sadly, followup info proves that this may be far from her only links to religiously motivated abuse.

It turns out that Palin--and Wasilla A/G--are intimately connected with "Joel's Army" promoters directly responsible for not only harassment of critics, but also a little-reported and growing humanitarian crisis in sub-Saharan Africa: namely, the growth of "Joel's Army" "exorcists" and people--including young children--fleeing for their lives from a literal "God Warrior" progrom.

Palin's links to Thomas Muthee, Witchfinder General

Via Democracy Now!

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

Fascism! Smell it!

Much like the US Postal Service, neither rain nor snow nor 70% of my hometown's power infrastructure being eaten by Ike will stop me from posting the latest on Palin's connections with dominionists.

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

In the last two weeks we have seen multiple examples of what civil liberties advocates have been warning about over and over again. The infrastructure of the police state, put together behind the scenes and with secret rooms and fusion centers, was put on display in a number of different places.

No one here doubts that the Constitution is officially a piece of toilet paper, I hope. In case there are still a few bitter dead-enders on this point (heh), Glenn reminds us of just how far we've come from "free speech zones." Now, the only point I'll add is that they has been happening to little old Black grandmothers and disabled Latinas and suchlike for a looong time. But Nice, Polite People from MN? Hell no! We're all Niggers now, people! (video below) Pre-emptive Freedumb! Savor the term, you could be next, hippy!

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than "fire code violations," and early this morning, the Sheriff's department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.

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All I can say is that while I'm sorry she missed her flight, bully for her! Way to go, grrl. When Bras attack:

When Berkeley resident Nancy Kates arrived at Oakland International Airport to board JetBlue flight 472, she thought she was heading off on a routine journey to visit her mother in Boston. Instead she ended up in a standoff with Transportation Safety Administration officials over her bra.
For Kates, on Sunday, though, the security check got too invasive. A big-busted woman wearing a large underwire bra, she set off the metal detector. She was pulled aside and checked by a female TSA agent with a metal-sensitive wand.

"The woman touched my breast. I said, 'You can't do that,' " Kates said. "She said, 'We have to pat you down.' I said, 'You can't treat me as a criminal for wearing a bra.' "

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I am not worthy. Why can't I write pure Zen like this?

Martin Luther King Jr. walked down the middle of hostile streets, through crowds spewing hatred at him, howling for his blood; he faced down police bayonets and the power of the state. Now our modern-day heroes can't bear to allow a few critical words within 700 feet of their pampered selves.

He's talking about this, of course:

Protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Denver can be restricted to fenced-in areas, federal judge ruled on Wednesday, saying that security needs outweighed curbs on their rights...

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