Senate Removes Drone Strike Disclosure From Intelligence Bill

From BenSwann.com:

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By: Annabelle Bamforth Apr 29, 2014 

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Washington-  The United States Senate has removed a vital section of a major intelligence bill that would have compelled the Obama administration to publicly disclose the number of people killed or injured by US drone strikes.

The removal of Section 312 from the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014 was partially due to opposition from director of national intelligence James Clapper, who wrote in a letter to the Senate that such disclosures would “require context and be drafted carefully so as to protect against the disclosure of intelligence sources and methods or other classified information.” Clapper also wrote that “the Executive Branch is currently exploring ways in which it can provide the American people more information about the United States’ use of force outside areas of active hostilities.”

Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was the originator of the drone disclosure provision but also agreed to remove it. Feinstein, a supporter of drone strikes, said in 2013 that the number of civilians killed by drones has been in the “single digits”.  That estimate has been challenged by many, including U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson, who told NBC News that civilian casualty numbers are in the hundreds.

The section of the intelligence bill that has been removed would have offered more transparency that Obama has promised in his campaign and throughout his presidency. Critics of the removal of the drone strike disclosure consider this action discouraging. “How many people have to die for Congress to take even a small step toward transparency?” asked Zeke Johnson, Amnesty International’s human rights program director. “It’s stunning that after all these years we still don’t know how many people the Obama administration has killed with drones.”

Amnesty International USA director Steven W. Hawkins said that “a basic report on the number of people killed shouldn’t be too much to ask.”

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Snowden Reveals First Ever Public Disclosure Of Secret Black Budget Programs

From collective-evolution.com:

August 31, 2013 by Arjun Walia. 118 Comments.

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Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor has leaked the very first documentation that proves the existence of clandestine black budget operations (1)(programs that are extremely classified dealing with technology, information and more.) Did we really need this leak in order to believe that black budget programs operate in secrecy? No, many people will tell you that the existence of black budget programs was obvious and that we didn’t need any official documentation to prove it, but this still helps. The United States has a history of government agencies existing in secret for years. The National Security Agency (NSA) was founded in 1952, its existence was hidden until the mid 1960′s. Even more secretive is the National Reconnaissance Office, which was founded in 1960 but remained completely secret for 30 years.

We are talking about Special Access Programs (SAP). From these we have unacknowledged and waived SAPs. These programs do not exist publicly, but they do indeed exist. They are better known as ‘deep black programs.’ A 1997 US Senate report described them as “so sensitive that they are exempt from standard reporting requirements to the Congress.” (0)(8)

The Washington Post revealed that the “black-budget” documents report  a staggering 52.6 billion dollars that was set aside for operations in the fiscal year 2013. Although it’s great to have this type of documentation in the public domain proving the existence of  these black budget programs, the numbers seem to be off according to some statements made by some very prominent people who have been involved in the defense sector for years. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that these programs are not using billions of dollars, but trillions of dollars that are unaccounted for. Here is a statement given by Canada’s former Minister of National Defence, Paul Hellyer in 2008:

It is ironic that the U.S. would begin a devastating war, allegedly in search of weapons of mass destruction when the most worrisome developments in this field are occurring in your own backyard.  It is ironic that the U.S. should be fighting monstrously expensive wars  allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on projects which both congress and the commander in chief no nothing about(2)

We are talking about large amounts of unaccounted-for money going into programs we know nothing about. There have been several congressional inquiries that have noted billions, and even trillions of dollars that have gone missing from the federal reserve system. On July 16, 2001, in front of the house appropriations committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated:

The financial systems of the department of defence are so snarled up that we can’t account for some $2.6 trillion in transactions that exist, if that’s believable (3)

We don’t really hear about black budget programs, or about people who have actually looked into them.  However, the topic was discussed in 2010 by Washington Post journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin. Their investigation lasted approximately two years and concluded that America’s classified world has:

Become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employes, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work (4)

Another person was aviation journalist Bill Sweetman. Within the Pentagon, he estimated that approximately 150 special access programs existed that weren’t even acknowledged. These programs are not known about by the highest members of government and the highest ranking officials in the military. He determined that most of these programs were dominated by private contractors (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, etc.) and that he had no idea as to how these programs were funded(5)(8).

Dwight Eisenhower, former 5 star U.S. general (highest possible rank) and President of the United States also warned us about  secrecy and the acquisition of unwarranted influence within the “department of defence” with his farewell speech:

In the council of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential disaster of the rise of mis placed power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes(6)

He warns us about the influence of the military industrial complex, and the influence and power it’s capable of. After Eisenhower the next and only other president that blew the whistle on secrecy beyond the government was president John F. Kennedy in one of his most famous speeches, he is also referring to the military industrial complex:

The very word secrecy is repugnant, in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence. On Infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumour is printed, no secret is revealed (7)

The amount that the US sets aside for sensitive operations each year is not allowed to be published for eyes outside of the intelligence community. We are in an age where the US is having a difficult time keeping sensitive information under wraps, and although there is an abundance of blatant information for the world to wake up to, that which is still kept under tight wraps has also become more transparent. Many phenomena previously labelled as merely a “conspiracy theory” are now surfacing as true and verifiable day after day.

Could some of these black budget programs be dealing with UFOs? There is a large amount of evidence to suggest that they do, and possibly even extraterrestrials. Documents from the NSA prove that UFOs and extraterrestrials are of high interest to the agency(9)(10). In fact I would like to mention that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to suggest that these black budget programs deal with matters beyond our world. Garry McKinnon has also shed light on this fact, as have thousands of previously classified documents and statements from high level government and military personnel. The world within our own world must be quite fascinating, the fact that we are living in the time of transparency must mean that the truth cannot stay hidden forever.

Worlds Within Worlds 

Excerpt from the book “A.D. After Disclosure” written by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel (8).

Richard Dolan’s Thoughts on the “Breakaway Civilization”

By now, the classified world has moved far beyond the reach of the public world, and far beyond in its power and capabilities. Consider the story of a former NSA scientist who spoke with the authors. According to this individual, the NSA was operating computers during the mid-1960s with a processing clock-speed of roughly 650 megahertz(MHZ). To put that in perspective, it took 35 years for personal computers in the consumer market to reach that speed. Indeed, in 1965 there were no personal computers at all. Immediately, the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission in 1971 comes to mind, with its reliance on slide-rulers by mission specialist to guide the damaged NASA spacecraft back to Earth. When presented with this image, the NSA scientist shrugged and stated that secret computational capabilities were too important to share with NASA. So in, in computing, the National Security Agency was an amazing 35 years ahead of the rest of the world. This leads one to wonder what its computational powers are today.

Another example was the U.S. air strike against Libya in 1986. The raid employed f-111 fighter aircraft. Left out of the mission, however, was the F-117A Nighthawk, better known as the stealth fighter. It had been operational since 1983, but was still classified in 1986. In a form of logic both perverse and rational, the F-117A was so radically advanced that keeping it secret was more important than using it for this military mission.

Given the mixture of a treasure chest of government money, and private connections, the likelihood exists that six decades later there is a clandestine group that possesses:

• Technology that is vastly superior to that of the “mainstream” world.
• The ability to explore areas of our world and surroundings presently unavailable to the rest of us.
• Scientific and cosmological understandings that give them greater insights into the nature of our world
• A significant “built off the grid” infrastructure, partially underground, that affords them a high degree of secrecy and independence of action

This might well qualify them as a separate civilization – one that has broken away from our own, in effect, a breakaway civilization. Still interacting with our own, its members probably move back and forth between the official reality of what we are supposed to believe, and the other reality which encompasses new truths and challenges.

 Sources:

(0)http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CDOC-105sdoc2/content-detail.html

(1)http://rt.com/usa/snowden-leak-black-budget-176/

(2) Speech From Paul Hellyer

(3)http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=408

(4)http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america

(5) Sweetman, Bill. “In Search of the Pentagon’s Billion Dollar Hidden Budgets: How the US Keeps Its R&D Spending Under Wraps.” Janes International Defence Reporter, Janurary  5, 2000

(6) Eisenhower’s farewell speech

(7) JFK Speech

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/black-budget-summary-details-us-spy-networks-successes-failures-and-objectives/2013/08/29/7e57bb78-10ab-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html

(8) Dolan, M. Richard and Zabel, Bryce. A.D. After Disclosure. New Page Books. 2012

http://www.afterdisclosure.com/2011/04/breakaway.html

http://richarddolanpress.com/book-rd3-a-d-after-disclosure/

http://www.afterdisclosure.com

(9)http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/comint_part_j.pdf

(10)http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/ufo/key_to_et_messages.pdf

The Bundy Paradigm: Will You Be a Rebel, Revolutionary or a Slave?

From Activist Post:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”—John F. Kennedy

John W. Whitehead
Activist Post

Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government.

Few conflicts are ever black and white, and the Bundy situation, with its abundance of gray areas, is no exception. Yet the question is not whether Cliven Bundy and his supporters are domestic terrorists, as Harry Reid claims, or patriots, or something in between. Nor is it a question of whether the Nevada rancher is illegally grazing his cattle on federal land or whether that land should rightfully belong to the government. Nor is it even a question of who’s winning the showdown— the government with its arsenal of SWAT teams, firepower and assault vehicles, or Bundy’s militia supporters with their assortment of weapons—because if such altercations end in bloodshed, everyone loses.

What we’re really faced with, and what we’ll see more of before long, is a growing dissatisfaction with the government and its heavy-handed tactics by people who are tired of being used and abused and are ready to say “enough is enough.” And it won’t matter what the issue is—whether it’s a rancher standing his ground over grazing rights, a minister jailed for holding a Bible study in his own home, or a community outraged over police shootings of unarmed citizens—these are the building blocks of a political powder keg. Now all that remains is a spark, and it need not be a very big one, to set the whole powder keg aflame.

As I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, there’s a subtext to this incident that must not be ignored, and it is simply this: America is a pressure cooker with no steam valve, and things are about to blow. This is what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent.

The government has been anticipating and preparing for such an uprising for years. For example, in 2008, a U.S. Army War College report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order”—all related to dissent and protests over America’s economic and political disarray. Consequently, predicted the report, the “widespread civil violence would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

One year later, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama issued its infamous reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism.” According to these reports, an extremist is defined as anyone who subscribes to a particular political viewpoint. Rightwing extremists, for example, are broadly defined in the report as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”

Despite “no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” the DHS listed a number of scenarios that could arise as a result of so-called rightwing extremists playing on the public’s fears and discontent over various issues, including the economic downturn, real estate foreclosures and unemployment.

Equally disconcerting, the reports use the words “terrorist” and “extremist” interchangeably. In other words, voicing what the government would consider to be extremist viewpoints is tantamount to being a terrorist. Under such a definition, I could very well be considered a terrorist. So too could John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., Roger Baldwin (founder of the ACLU), Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams—all of these men protested and passionately spoke out against government practices with which they disagreed and would be prime targets under this document.

The document also took pains to describe the political views of those who would qualify as being a rightwing extremist. For example, you are labeled a rightwing extremist if you voice concerns about a myriad of issues including: policy changes under President Obama; the economic downturn and home foreclosures; the loss of U.S. jobs in manufacturing and construction sectors; and social issues such as abortion, interracial crimes and immigration. DHS also issued a red-flag warning against anyone who promotes “conspiracy theories involving declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps.”

Fast forward five years, with all that has transpired, from the Occupy Protests and the targeting of military veterans to domestic surveillance, especially of activist-oriented groups and now, most recently, the Bundy Ranch showdown, and it would seem clear that the government has not veered one iota from its original playbook. Indeed, the government’s full-blown campaign of surveillance of Americans’ internet activity, phone calls, etc., makes complete sense in hindsight.

All that we have been subjected to in recent years—living under the shadow of NSA spying; motorists strip searched and anally probed on the side of the road; innocent Americans spied upon while going about their daily business in schools and stores; homeowners having their doors kicked in by militarized SWAT teams serving routine warrants—illustrates how the government deals with people it views as potential “extremists”: with heavy-handed tactics designed to intimidate the populace into submission and discourage anyone from stepping out of line or challenging the status quo.

It’s not just the Cliven Bundys of the world who are being dealt with in this manner. Don Miller, a 91-year-old antiques collector, recently had his Indiana home raided by the FBI, ostensibly because it might be in the nation’s best interest if the rare and valuable antiques and artifacts Miller had collected over the course of 80 years were cared for by the government. Such tactics carried out by anyone other than the government would be considered grand larceny, and yet the government gets a free pass.

In the same way, the government insists it can carry out all manner of surveillance on us—listen in on our phone calls, read our emails and text messages, track our movements, photograph our license plates, even enter our biometric information into DNA databases—but those who dare to return the favor, even a little, by filming potential police misconduct, get roughed up by the police, arrested, charged with violating various and sundry crimes.

When law enforcement officials—not just the police, but every agent of the government entrusted with enforcing laws, from the president on down—are allowed to discard the law when convenient, and the only ones having to obey the law are the citizenry and not the enforcers, then the law becomes only a tool to punish us, rather than binding and controlling the government, as it was intended.

This phenomenon is what philosopher Abraham Kaplan referred to as the law of the instrument, which essentially says that to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In the scenario that has been playing out in recent years, we the citizenry have become the nails to be hammered by the government’s henchmen, a.k.a. its guns for hire, a.k.a. its standing army, a.k.a. the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

Indeed, there can no longer be any doubt that militarized police officers, the end product of the government—federal, local and state—and law enforcement agencies having merged, have become a “standing” or permanent army, composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband. Yet these permanent armies are exactly what those who drafted the U.S. Constitution feared as tools used by despotic governments to wage war against its citizens.

That is exactly what we are witnessing today: a war against the American citizenry. Is it any wonder then that Americans are starting to resist?

More and more, Americans are tired, frustrated, anxious, and worried about the state of their country. They are afraid of an increasingly violent and oppressive federal government, and they are worried about the economic insecurity which still grips the nation. And they’re growing increasingly sick of being treated like suspects and criminals. As former law professor John Baker, who has studied the growing problem of overcriminalization, noted, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. That is not an exaggeration.”

To make matters worse, a recent scientific study by Princeton researchers confirms that the United States of America is not the democracy that is purports to be, but rather an oligarchy, in which “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy.” As PolicyMicexplains, “An oligarchy is a system where power is effectively wielded by a small number of individuals defined by their status called oligarchs. Members of the oligarchy are the rich, the well connected and the politically powerful, as well as particularly well placed individuals in institutions like banking and finance or the military… In other words, their statistics say your opinion literally does not matter.”

So if average Americans, having largely lost all of the conventional markers of influencing government, whether through elections, petition, or protest, have no way to impact their government, no way to be heard, no assurance that their concerns are truly being represented and their government is one “by the people, of the people, and for the people,” as opposed to being engineered expressly for the benefit of the wealthy elite, then where does that leave them?

To some, the choice is clear. As psychologist Erich Fromm recognized in his insightful book, On Disobedience: “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a revolutionary). He acts out of anger, disappointment, resentment, yet not in the name of a conviction or a principle.”

Unfortunately, the intrepid, revolutionary American spirit that stood up to the British, blazed paths to the western territories, and prevailed despite a civil war, multiple world wars, and various economic depressions has taken quite a beating in recent years. Nevertheless, the time is coming when each American will have to decide: will you be a slave, rebel or revolutionary?

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State andThe Change Manifesto.

Nato invasion of Libya based on a tissue of lies

From Belfast Telegraph:

Muammar Gaddafi

16 APRIL 2014

The trial of two of Muammar Gaddafi's sons opened in Tripoli on Monday and was immediately adjourned until April 27.

AL

 Joining Saif al-Islam and Saddi Gadaffi on the indictment were their father's intelligence chief, two former prime ministers and 34 other officials of the ousted regime. Charges include torture, murder and organising mass rape.

The conduct of the trial suggests that, when it comes to law and justice, things in Libya are at least as bad as under the previous regime.

The Nato assault which delivered victory over Gaddafi was, we were told, intended to usher in a civilian government based on the rule of law.

But two-and-a-half years after Gadaffi (below) was put to death by the roadside, Libya's "trial of the century" was set to take place in a barracks surrounded by tanks.

Neither of the Gaddafis was present on Monday. Saif was to give evidence by video link, because the militia group holding him in the Nafusa mountains refused to hand him over. Seven other defendants were in the hands of a different militia, based in Misrata. The whereabouts of Saddi Gadaffi were unclear.

On Sunday, prime minister Abdullah al-Thinni had resigned, complaining that the army had refused to defend his family against militia attacks. Yesteday, the Jordanian ambassador was kidnapped.

Cyrenaica province, home to about a third of Libya's population, has effectively seceded. Much of the rest of the country is under the rule of a ragbag of heavily armed groups, some with reputations for murderous racism.

If we judge the Nato intervention by its stated aims, it has been a disaster. Nowhere in the West is this admitted – any more than the phony nature of the casus belli in Iraq is acknowledged by those who procured the war.

A key moment in the Iraq conflict came in October 1990 when a young woman, Nayirah Al-Sabah, introduced as a Kuwaiti nurse, told the human rights committee of the US Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers grabbing infants in intensive care and tossing them aside to die on the floor before making off with the incubators.

Her story was repeated by President George Bush on 10 occasions in the following fortnight, was reported as fact in newspapers including theWashington Post and the Los Angeles Times, "confirmed" in briefings by US intelligence officers and by US ambassador-designate to Kuwait, Edward Gnehm jnr, and quoted by seven senators in turn in the subsequent debate on funding the war.

In fact, Ms Al-Sabah wasn't a nurse, but the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, studying in Washington. She had been coached in her evidence by public relations firm Hill and Knowlton. By the time her story fell apart, public opinion had swung around and the war was well under way.

A similar pattern can be discerned in relation to the rape charge in Libya. Three months into the Nato bombing assault, in June 2011, Gaddafi's forces were more than holding their own on the ground, while Western governments were finding it hard to whip up support for escalation.

The story then emerged that inflamed opinion across the world and in the minds of many came to symbolise the demented evil of the Gaddafi regime, of soldiers, libidos boosted by Viagra, raping children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children on the direct instructions of Gaddafi himself. Here, surely, was a regime which had to be destroyed by any means necessary.

Apparent confirmation of the story was supplied by the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Moreno Ocampo, who called journalists to his office at the Hague to announce that he had "convincing" evidence that Gaddafi had personally ordered "hundreds" of rapes by men provided with Viagra. He has not mentioned this in his recent demands for the trial of Gaddafi's sons and aides to be held under ICC auspices.

One reason for his reticence will have been that, after the Gaddafi regime was routed, allowing human rights groups to investigate, not a single victim of, or witness to, the bestial events he had advertised in 2011 could be discovered.

Rape is commonplace in war. Only a fool would dismiss suggestions that women were violated by pro-Gaddafi forces. But the organised, Viagra-fuelled mass rapes alleged by Western sources didn't happen. Or, at least, there is no evidence that they happened. Nato governments will feel able to shrug their shoulders at that, too. Again, mission already accomplished.

With these things in mind, we would do well to be wary of the pronouncements of politicians on Ukraine.

The Next Shoe Just Dropped: Court Denies Attorney-Client Privilege

From ZeroHedge:

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

In the Land of the Free, people grow up hearing a lot of things about their freedom.

You're told that you live in the freest country on the planet. You're told that other nations 'hate you' for your freedom.

And you're told that you have the most open and fair justice system in the world.

This justice system is supposedly founded on bedrock principles-- things like a defendant being presumed innocent until proven guilty. The right to due process and an impartial hearing. The right to counsel and attorney-client privilege.

Yet each of these core pillars has been systematically dismantled over the years:

1. So that it can operate with impunity outside of the law, the federal government has set up its own secret FISA courts to rubber stamp NSA surveillance.

According to data obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, of the nearly 34,000 surveillance requests made to FISA courts in the last 35-years, only ELEVEN have been rejected.

Unsurprising given that FISA courts only hear the case from the government's perspective. It is literally a one-sided argument in FISA courts. Hardly an impartial hearing, no?

2. The concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' may officially exist in courts, but administratively it was thrown out long ago.

These days there are hundreds of local, state, and federal agencies that can confiscate your assets, levy your bank account, and freeze you out of your life's savings. None of this requires a court order.

By the time a case goes to court, you have been deprived of the resources you need to defend yourself. You might technically be presumed innocent, but you have been treated and punished like a criminal from day one.

3. Attorney-Client privilege is a long-standing legal concept which ensures that communication between an attorney and his/her client is completely private.

In Upjohn vs. the United States, the Supreme Court itself upheld attorney-client privilege as necessary "to encourage full and frank communication between attorneys and their clients and thereby promote broader public interests in the observance of law. . ."

It doesn't matter what you're accused of-- theft. treason. triple homicide. With very limited exceptions, an attorney cannot be compelled to testify against a client, nor can their communications be subpoenaed for evidence.

Yet in a United States Tax Court decision announced on Wednesday, the court dismissed attorney client privilege, stating that:

"When a person puts into issue his subjective intent in deciding how to comply with the law, he may forfeit the privilege afforded attorney-client communications."

In other words, if a person works with legal counsel within the confines of the tax code to legitimately minimize the amount of taxes owed, that communication is no longer protected by attorney-client privilege.

Furthermore, the ruling states that if the individuals do not submit attorney-client documentation as required, then the court would prohibit them from introducing any evidence to demonstrate their innocence.

Unbelievable.

While it's true that attorney-client privilege has long been assailed in numerous court cases (especially with regards to tax matters), this decision sets the most dangerous precedent yet.

With this ruling, government now has carte blanche to set aside long-standing legal protections and even deny a human being even the chance to defend himself.

Naturally, you won't hear a word about this in the mainstream media.

But it certainly begs the question, what's the point of even having a trial? Or a constitution?

When every right and protection you have can be disregarded in their sole discretion, one really has to wonder how anyone can call it a 'free country' any more.

HELP U.S. Military Veteran Emily Yates, Violently Arrest for Standing in the Shade

Via Revolution News:

Veteran and activist with Iraq Veteran’s Against the War, Emily Yates was violently arrested by Federal Parks Police for standing in the wrong place, enjoying the shade tree’s during a ‘No war with Syria’ rally in Philadelphia.

Emily Yates -I used to think that as a veteran of the U.S. military, I was safe, at least while in America, from being brutally arrested with no warning, thrown into a tiny cell by myself for three days, and then charged by my own government with assaulting the very officers who had dragged me around by my wrists and ankles.

As you can see in the video, I had my back turned when multiple Park Service rangers grabbed me by my wrists, bent me over a park bench, picked me up by my arms and legs, dragged me away from a crowd, dropped me face-first on the ground then carried me to a truck, threw me in – again face-first – and dropped me off at the Philly Federal Detention Center, where I was kept for three days without any explanation. Now, believe it or not, I’m being charged with assaulting these rangers. My trial date is July 2, 2014.

Insist Emily’s case be tried in a Veterans Court! Sign and Share this Petition

My attorney has explained to the prosecutor that the violent nature of my arrest triggered PTSD from traumas I’d experienced in the military, and requested that the government’s case against me be tried in a Veterans Treatment Court, so that my experience as a combat veteran would be a serious factor when considering my reaction to being grabbed from behind without warning.

The prosecutor has refused my attorney’s request, even though his boss, Attorney General Holder, has personally been a cheerleader of Veterans Treatment Courts:

“There’s a crying need for more of these kind of efforts … It was once said that so many owe so much to so few, we owe them in the most profound of ways.”

The article goes on to report that under Attorney General Holder, official Department of Justice policy now states that veterans get ‘involved in the criminal justice system with co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues’ – they risk going to prison because of drugs and strain from their service, basically.  The Department encourages Veterans Courts as a rehabilitation model, noting they better serve ‘veterans struggling with addiction, serious mental illness’ and PTSD, problems associated with ‘higher rates of drug abuse, domestic violence and other criminality.’”

So why is it that a prosecutor in Eric Holder’s Justice Department is so blatantly disregarding his public support for veterans like me, who have already been asked to risk life and limb to support America’s wars?

It’s just one of the many things about this case that doesn’t make sense.

That’s why I’m asking you to help me keep Attorney General Holder and his entire department honest – sign my petition if you believe he should honor his commitment to try PTSD- and miltary trauma-related cases against veterans in Veterans Treatment Courts. That’s one very clear way he can “support the troops.”

Insist Emily’s case be tried in a Veterans Court! Sign and Share this Petition

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