Monday, March 30, 2009
www.wearechange.org

This is Luke Rudkowski here, just got home from the most inhuman place in NYC, Manhattan central bookings. The stories that I have from that place and about everything that has happened while shooting for my new film "Truth to Power" is insane and surreal.

I will try to buy another camera tomorrow in between my class's in order to give a live video broadcast this Monday March 30th, 10PM Eastern Time on wearechange.org.

I have to buy another camera because the prosecution is keeping all 3 WeAreChange cameras and footage of the incident as criminal evidence. From conversations between wearechange and the mayors office before the incident, to the police department seizing footage of the arrest, you will hear it all on the live broadcast 10Pm Eastern here on WeAreChange. The full story of this incident is yet to be heard.

Special shouts out to Manny and Anthony for being in their with me, these men showed tremendous amounts of courage in the face of intimidation and threats by police intelligence as they filmed the events and were arrested.

I am going to make this a huge issue, all donations will go to the legal defense of wearechange and a counter suit. Anything we can get is greatly appreciated, especially if people can send us used cameras or are able to donate their legal services, the court case is going to be in 2 months.

You can try to stop me, but you cant stop the idea of CHANGE! This is not over by any means.

http://www.infowars.com/luke-rudowski-arrested.../

Alex Jones’ emergency broadcast on the arrest of Luke Rudowski

WeAreChange founder and activist Luke Rudowski was arrested at the Hilton Hotel on Manhattan today for attempting to question New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg about his refusal to pay for the health care of 9/11 first responders. Rudowski had Infowars press credentials and a video camera when he was singled out by Bloomberg’s security in the lobby of the hotel located at West 53rd Street and Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue).

	Luke Rudowski.

According to a post on the WeAreChange blog Rudowski and other members of WeAreChange were confronted and asked questions by hotel security and Bloomberg’s security detail. Rudowski was apparently singled out and forcibly detained at the hotel and subsequently handed over to the New York Police, who arrested him on a charge of trespassing. Rudowski was also charged with impersonating a member of the press.

Infowars is a bona fide press organization. Alex Jones operates numerous news websites in addition to hosting a nationally syndicated talk radio show that is currently rated as the most listened to talk show over the internet. Jones’ Infowars and Prison Planet have broken numerous stories, including one covering the MIAC controversy that was picked up by the Associated Press and mentioned by Fox News host Glenn Beck and radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Luke Rudowski has worked as an Infowars journalist for several years and his journalism is featured in Alex Jones film Truth Rising: 9/11 Chronicles, released in 2008.

As of this writing, Rudowski is being held at the 18th Precinct at 306 West 54th Street on Manhattan. An officer Fagan answered calls in regard to Rudowski’s arrest. Infowars staff report Fagan abruptly hung up the telephone when inquiries about Rudowski were made.

The 18th precinct phone number is: 212-760-8300. A NYC information page on the internet lists the following number for the precinct: 212-767-8400.

Alex Jones and Infowars are requesting calls be made to the police asking about Luke Rudowski’s whereabouts and the trumped up charges against him. The New York Police and Mayor Bloomberg need to be made aware of the fact there is a First Amendment in this country and it is an egregious violation of that amendment when members of the press are unduly arrested and charged.

Please remember to be polite when contacting the police and other New York City officials.

Do the Secret Bush Memos Amount to Treason? Top Constitutional Scholar Says Yes

By Naomi Wolf, AlterNet. Posted March 25, 2009.

Legal expert Michael Ratner calls the legal arguments made in the infamous Yoo memos, "Fuhrer's law."

In early March, more shocking details emerged about George W. Bush legal counsel John Yoo's memos outlining the destruction of the republic.

The memos lay the legal groundwork for the president to send the military to wage war against U.S. citizens; take them from their homes to Navy brigs without trial and keep them forever; close down the First Amendment; and invade whatever country he chooses without regard to any treaty or objection by Congress.

It was as if Milton's Satan had a law degree and was establishing within the borders of the United States the architecture of hell.

I thought this was -- and is -- certainly one of the biggest stories of our lifetime, making the petty burglary of Watergate -- which scandalized the nation -- seem like playground antics. It is newsworthy too with the groundswell of support for prosecutions of Bush/Cheney crimes and recent actions such as Canadian attorneys mobilizing to arrest Bush if he visits their country.

The memos are a confession. The memos could not be clearer: This was the legal groundwork of an attempted coup. I expected massive front page headlines from the revelation that these memos exited. Almost nothing. I was shocked.

As a non-lawyer, was I completely off base in my reading of what this meant, I wondered? Was I hallucinating?

Astonished, I sought a reality check -- and a formal legal read -- from one of the nation's top constitutional scholars (and most steadfast patriots), Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been at the forefront of defending the detainees and our own liberties.

Here is our conversation:

Naomi Wolf: Michael, can you explain to a layperson what the Yoo memos actually mean?'

Michael Ratner: What they mean is that your book looks moderate in respect to those issues now. This -- what is in the memos -- is law by fiat.

I call it "Fuhrer's law." What those memos lay out means the end of the system of checks and balances in this country. It means the end of the system in which the courts, legislature and executive each had a function and they could check each other.

What the memos set out is a system in which the president's word is law, and Yoo is very clear about that: the president's word is not only law according to these memos, but no law or constitutional right or treaty can restrict the president's authority.

What Yoo says is that the president's authority as commander in chief in the so-called war on terror is not bound by any law passed by Congress, any treaty, or the protections of free speech, due process and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The First, Fourth and Fifth amendments -- gone.

What this actually means is that the president can order the military to operate in the U.S. and to operate without constitutional restrictions. They -- the military --  can pick you or me up in the U.S. for any reason and without any legal process. They would not have any restrictions on entering your house to search it, or to seize you. They can put you into a brig without any due process or going to court. (That's the Fourth and Fifth amendments.)

The military can disregard the Posse Comitatus law, which restricts the military from acting as police in the the United States. And the president can, in the name of wartime restrictions, limit free speech. There it is in black and white: we are looking at one-person rule without any checks and balances -- a lawless state. Law by fiat.

Who has suspended the law this way in the past? It is like a Caesar's law in Rome; a Mussolini's law in Italy; a Fuhrer's law in Germany; a Stalin's law in the Soviet Union. It is right down the line. It is enforcing the will of the dictator through the military.

NW: The mainstream media have virtually ignored these revelations, though it seems to me this is the biggest news since Pearl Harbor.

MR: I think that's right. We had a glimmering of the blueprint for some of this -- when they picked up Jose Padilla, the military went to a prison and snatched an American citizen as if they had a perfect right to do so.

Now we can see that these memos laid the legal groundwork for such actions. We knew the military could do this to an individual. We did not know the plan was to eliminate First Amendment constitutional rights for the entire population.

NW: If Bush only wanted these powers in order to prosecute a war on terror, why does he need to suspend the First Amendment? Isn't that the smoking gun of a larger intention toward the general population?

MR: Part of this plan was actually implemented: for instance, they tried to keep people like Padilla from getting to a magistrate. They engaged in the wiretapping, because according to these memos there was no Fourth Amendment.

They had to be planning some kind of a takeover of the United States to be saying they could simply abolish the First Amendment if the president believed it was necessary in the name of national security. It lays the groundwork for what could have been a massive military takeover of the United States.

Here they crept right up and actually implemented part of the plan, with Padilla, with the warrantless wiretapping. Yet they are saying in the White House and in Congress that it is looking backward to investigate the authors of these memos and those who instructed Yoo and others to write them.

But investigation and prosecutions are really looking forward -- to say we need the deterrence of prosecution so this does not happen again.

NW: What about the deployment of three brigades in the U.S.? How should we read that?'

MR: With terrorism as less of a concern to many, but now with the economy in tatters there is a lot more militant activism in U.S. -- the New School and NYU student takeovers, protests around the country and strikes are just the beginning. I think governments are now concerned over people's activism, and people's anger at their economic situation. I don't think those brigades can be detached from the idea that there might well be a huge amount of direct-action protest in the U.S.

There could have also been a closer election that could have been stolen easily and then a huge protest. Those troops would have been used to enforce the will of the cabal stealing the election.

NW: As a layperson, I don't fully understand what powers the memos actually manifest. Are they theoretical or not just theoretical? What power did the memos actually give Bush?

MR: They were probably, in fact almost for sure, written in cahoots with the administration -- [Karl] Rove, [Dick] Cheney -- to give them legal backing for what they planned or wanted to carry out.

What I assume happened here is people like Cheney or his aides go to the Office of Legal Counsel and say, "We are going to need legal backing, to give a face of legality to what we are doing and what we are planning." When the president then signs a piece of paper that says, "OK, military, go get Jose Padilla," these memos give that order a veneer of legality.

If you are familiar with the history of dictators, coups and fascism (as I know you are), they (the planners) prefer a veneer of legality. Hitler killed 6 million Jews with a veneer of legality -- getting his dictatorial powers through the Reichstag and the courts.

These memos gave the Bush administration's [lawless] practices the veneer of legality.

NW: So are you saying that these memos actually created a police state that we did not know about?

MR: If you look at police state as various strands of lawlessness, we knew about some of this lawlessness even before this latest set of memos.

But the memos revealed how massive the takeover of our democracy was to be -- that this wasn't just going to be a few individuals here or there who suffered the arrows of a police state.

These memos lay the groundwork for a massive military takeover of the United States in cahoots with the president. And if that's not a coup d'etat then, nothing is.

NW: Can I ask something? I keep thinking about the notion of treason. In America now, people tend to read the definition of treason in the Constitution as if they are thinking of a Tokyo Rose or an American citizen acting as an agent for an enemy state -- very much a World War II experience of the traitor to one's country.

But I've been reading a lot of 16th and 17th century history, and it seems to me that the founders were thinking more along the lines of English treason of that era -- small groups of Englishmen, usually nobility, who formed cabals and conspired with one another to buy or recruit militias to overthrow the crown or Parliament.

The notion that a group might conspire in secret to overthrow the government is not a wild, marginal concept, it is a substantial part of European, and especially British, Renaissance and Reformation-era history and would have been very much alive in the minds of the Enlightenment-era founders. (I just visited the Tower of London where this was so frequent a charge against groups of English subjects that there is a designated Traitor's Gate.)

So clearly you don't have to act on behalf of another state to commit treason. The Constitution defines it as levying war against the United States or giving aid and comfort to its enemies. It says nothing about the enemy having to be another state.

When the Constitution was drafted, the phrase "United States" barely referred to a singular country; it referred to a new federation of many united states. They imagined militias rising up against various states; it was not necessarily nation against nation.

Surely, when we have evidence Bush prepared the way to allow the military to imprison or shoot civilians in the various states and created law to put his own troops over the authority of the governors and the national guard of the various states, and when the military were sent to terrorize protesters in St. Paul, [Minn.], Bush was levying war in this sense against the united states?

Hasn't Bush actually levied war against Minnesota? And if our leaders and military are sworn to protect and defend the Constitution, and there is clear evidence now that Bush and his cabal intended to do away with it, are they not our enemies and giving aid and comfort to our enemies? Again, "enemy" does not seem to me to be defined in the Constitution as another sovereign state.

MR: You are right. Treason need not involve another state. Aaron Burr was tried for treason. I do think that a plan to control the military, use it in the United States contrary to law and the Constitution and employ it to levy a war or takeover that eliminates the democratic institutions of the country constitutes treason, even if done under the president of the United States.

The authority given by these memos that could be used to raid every congressional office, raid and search every home, detain tens of thousands, would certainly fit a definition of treason.

This would be the president making war against the institutions of the United States.

On 20th March 2009, singer/songwriter Aimee Allen appeared in studio on the Alex Jones Show.

She reveals the shocking news that she was viciously bashed and almost killed by Mexican gang members just days after her previous prisonplanet interview in 2008, during which she revealed sensitive information about CIA attempts to suppress her MTV hit song "Revolution".

She discusses her new album, A Little Happiness, the NWO and the issues of the day with Alex and responds to some phone calls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmMAs_tTsUw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTTq53PMZ3s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaKZ6p34f54
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcAdd1pT0ZE

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11962421?nclick_check=1

By Matt Krupnick

Bay Area News Group
03/20/2009 06:09:25 PM PDT

A UC Berkeley law professor who provided the Bush administration with a memo justifying torture for terrorists may face academic punishment for his off-campus work.

UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling with that decision as a federal investigation into John Yoo's legal advice to the Bush administration apparently winds down.

The dilemma is rare. At risk are the tenets of academic freedom that have long allowed college faculty members to speak their minds in the name of scholarship.

Yoo's case revolves around his advice on dealing with accused terrorists, including a notorious memo that provides legal justification for torture. Yoo, who is temporarily teaching at Orange County's Chapman University, has long attracted protests on his home campus, but some surprising allies have come to his defense.

"I think this is simply a left-wing version of McCarthyism," said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who disagrees strongly with Yoo's views on torture. "He should be judged solely on the merits of his academics."

But Berkeley administrators and faculty leaders said they would be concerned about Yoo teaching law students if he were found to have violated ethical or legal standards. Critics have called Yoo a yes-man for President George W. Bush, essentially telling him what he wanted to hear.

Yoo, who has been at Berkeley since 1993 and was tenured in 1999, did not return messages this week.

The code of conduct for UC Berkeley faculty states that criminal convictions could result in discipline, but it is less explicit about other transgressions. But some, including Berkeley law Dean Christopher Edley and a top faculty leader, have said they could punish Yoo regardless of whether he is tried and convicted in a court.

"A criminal conviction is not necessary," said Christopher Kutz, a law professor and vice chairman of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate. But discipline based on anything less is "new territory, and it's dangerous territory," Kutz said.

A Justice Department spokesman said the federal investigation into Yoo's role is ongoing. He declined to estimate when the inquiry would wrap up.

Edley, who was on President Barack Obama's transition team and who has held positions in two Democratic administrations, said he and others on campus are conflicted about how to handle Yoo. Asked whether the issue has put him in a tough spot, Edley was unequivocal: "That's an understatement."

"I think that almost everybody is concerned" about how the debate will end, he said. "All of us need to work through the tension of the principles that preserve the excellence and independence of the university versus the principles that govern society."

Even considering punishment has put Edley at odds with some colleagues and friends, including Dershowitz, his former Harvard co-worker. Edley should not have to think about the issue at all, Dershowitz said.

"It only puts a dean in a tough spot if he lacks courage," Dershowitz said. But "in the end, he'll do the right thing."

Yoo's presence has polarized academics, including many who say they're staunch supporters of academic freedom. At Chapman, hundreds have signed petitions and joined online groups criticizing Yoo's opinions.

Much of the debate over his fitness as a law professor has centered on whether he used bad faith in condoning torture. If he simply told the president what he wanted to hear, Yoo's work did not pass scholarly muster, critics said.

"The CIA asked the Bush administration for justification, and that's what John Yoo did," said Berkeley attorney Sharon Adams, a member of the National Lawyer Guild's Committee Against Torture. "He did not provide advice, he provided justification for torture."

Others have said UC Berkeley should leave Yoo be as long as he is not convicted of a crime.

"People who have outlying views are the ones for whom academic freedom is designed," said Michael A. Olivas, a University of Houston law professor and expert in higher-education law.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7954923.stm

03:02 GMT, Saturday, 21 March 2009

George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, has been banned from Canada on security grounds, the country's immigration service has confirmed.

Mr Galloway, a Respect Party MP, said the ban was "idiotic" and he would look at legal action to try to overturn it.

British media reported the decision was due to his views on Afghanistan and the presence of Canadian troops there.

The anti-war MP was expelled from the Labour Party in 2003 because of his outspoken comments on the Iraq war.

Mr Galloway said he was not prepared to accept what he described as an "inexplicable decision" and indicated he would challenge it with all means at his disposal.

"This has further vindicated the anti-war movement's contention that unjust wars abroad will end up consuming the very liberties that make us who we are," he said.

"All right-thinking Canadians, whether they agree with me or not, will oppose this outrageous decision."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NezETjHGNSM

'Mock trial'

A spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada confirmed the MP would not be allowed into the country on national security grounds.

He said the decision had been taken by border security officials "based on a number of factors" in accordance with the country's immigration act.

Mr Galloway had been due to speak at a public forum, Resisting War from Gaza to Kandahar, in Toronto on 30 March.

In 2006 he was detained "on grounds of national security" at Cairo airport after heading to Egypt to attend a "mock trial" of then PM Tony Blair and then US President George Bush.

Mr Galloway became the figurehead for the anti-war Respect party after being expelled from Labour.

His expulsion followed comments on the Iraq war which Labour chairman Ian McCartney said "incited foreign forces to rise up against British troops".

The party acted following a number of TV interviews, including one in which Mr Galloway accused Tony Blair and President Bush of acting "like wolves" in invading Iraq.

Mr Galloway said it had been a "politically motivated kangaroo court".

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Its_official_Red_Cross_report_says_0316.html

Graphic report describes inhumane tactics
John Byrne

Published: Monday March 16, 2009

US interrogators attached detainees to collars like dogs and used their leashes to slam them against walls, forced them to stand for days wearing only diapers, and tied detainees necks with towels and threw them against plywood walls, according to accounts in a secret 2007 report issued by the Red Cross to be printed in a New York magazine and leaked on Monday.

The report -- issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross and kept secret for the last two years -- is the first first-hand document to legally say the Bush Administration's harsh interrogation techniques "constituted torture." They strongly imply that CIA interrogators violated international law.

The Red Cross was the only organization to get access to high-value detainees that were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret prisons US in 2006. It contains accounts from the prisoners, who were held in different locations but offered remarkably uniform tales of abuse at the hands of US agents.

Techniques amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," the report states. Such treatment is explicitly barred by the Geneva Conventions.

The Red Cross report is perhaps the most harrowing to date in describing what appear to be routine US practices authorized by the Bush Administration. They include beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, collaring and simulated drowning.

But the report goes further: Prisoners were routinely beaten, stripped, doused with freezing water and loud music, and kept awake for days with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.

"On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room," the report quotes detainee Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying, according to a story today. He was wrapped in a plastic sheet, he said, as cold water was "poured onto my body with buckets."

"I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes," he said. "Then I would be taken for interrogation."

One captive said his neck was tied with a towel and then he was repeatedly swung into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was often slapped in the face and then placed in a coffin-like wooden box and forced to crouch with his air supply restricted.

"The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful," he told the Red Cross.

Afterward -- as if this wasn't enough -- he was waterboarded by being strapped to what looked like a hospital bed.

"A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe," he said.

"I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless," he added. "I though I was going to die."

The Washington Post said Monday that at least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the group's policy of neutrality in conflicts.

The Post said that at least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the group's policy of neutrality in conflicts.

The paper quotes an unnamed US official familiar with the report as saying that "it is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves."

The report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books.

On tonight's show we take a look at the growing "new age" truth movement, which embraces a vast collection of disparate ideas, conspiracy theories and psycho-spiritual concepts.

We explore the epistemological roots of "truth" and try to get to the bottom of the social phenomenon that is this wider truth movement.

In the first half of the show I am joined by Dan Collins, and in the second half Josh Jackson joins the discussion.

Some links relevant to tonight's show:

• Truth Movement Australia


• Project Camelot Interviews Dan Burisch


• Fighter and Bomber Contrails, 1940s


• The Alternative View (UK)

We welcome comment and debate on the theme of tonight's show.

Bring it on !

from prisonplanet.com:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/terrorists-say...html

Daniel Nasaw in Washington
March 12, 2009

FIVE men accused of planning the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York have reportedly acknowledged and boasted of their role, saying they are proud of the event that killed nearly 3000 people and calling it "a model of Islamic action".

In a document filed with the military commission trying them, the men described themselves as "terrorists to the bone" and sought to justify the attacks.

"To us, they are not accusations," the document reads. "To us they are a badge of honour, which we carry with honour. Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims."

The document, titled The Islamic Response To The Government's Nine Accusations, bears the names of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who are being held in a high-security camp at Guantanamo Bay.

It says that killing and fighting Americans is a "great legitimate duty in our religion" and that the attacks were an offering to God. A Pentagon spokesman said the men had written it. However, lawyers for two of the men said they had not discussed the document with them and could not vouch for its authenticity.

The document, which is riddled with religious rhetoric and scriptural references, describes the men as the "9/11 Shura Council" - the Arabic term for a consultative assembly. The men say the terrorist killings were a response to US support for Israel, the war in Iraq and other US actions, and were justified by their Muslim faith, "a religion of fear and terror to the enemies of God: the Jews, Christians and pagans".

It also mocks US intelligence agencies for failing to discover the plans and being unable to prevent the attacks.

Guardian News & Media