Massive Checkpoint Operation in Tennessee Violated Posse Comitatus, Fourth Amendment

On April 3, Infowars reported on the decision of the Tennessee Governor’s office to call off an illegal seat belt checkpoint operation that was scheduled to be conducted by the Whiteville police with DHS and military participation on April 4.

Earlier today on the Alex Jones Show, Tennessee Representative Johhny Shaw admitted he was unaware of the planned operation. He also said Governor Phil Bredesen did not know the DHS and military planned to collaborate with local police in Shaw’s district in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Alex talks with Tennessee Representative Johhny Shaw

Shaw’s admission state government was unaware of the scheduled checkpoint is more evidence the feds are contacting local police agencies directly without going through the state or informing them of operations that are in violation of the law.

	Arnold Air Force Base Police Officer Jason Layne and Astrid check a truck for explosives. Photo by Daimon Duggar.

It appears this is not the case in regard to another illegal operation. Last month, DHS, federal and state agencies, the Air Force, and local law enforcement worked together to violate the law in Tennessee.

On March 31, 2009, the Marion County News reported on a truck checkpoint set-up by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, Homeland Security, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the Tennessee Department of Health, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the Tennessee Department of Revenue, the Marion County Sheriff’s Department, the Monteagle Police Department, the Tennessee National Guard, the Arnold Air Force Base Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, the Department of Commerce and Insurance and the FBI.

“Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers led explosive and drug sniffing dogs around the bases of trucks while National Guardsmen circled overseas containers with explosive and radiation detecting hand held devices in a scene reminiscent of ‘24’. Dozens of law enforcement vehicles, lights flashing, lined the brake inspection station, as trucks, both private and commercial, queued in the far right lane of 24 for what seemed like miles,” reports a Marion County News reporter.

According to a Tennessee Department of Safety press release, the object if the Homeland Security type checkpoints is to stop, evaluate and inspect as many commercial vehicles as possible, focusing in commercial vehicles, rental trucks and cargo tanks. Furthermore, these checkpoints will be held randomly throughout the year.

“The object (of the checkpoint) is to look at as many trucks as possible. I want to find something,” Sergeant John Harmon told law enforcement officials during the pre-checkpoint briefing. “I want to prevent something from happening.”

Harmon didn’t discover anything one might find in an episode of 24. However, over a span of ten hours, cops issued dozens of tickets on 285 eastbound for everything from safety defects to DUI.

Posse Comitatus was violated during the massive operation held on March 24 due to the fact the Arnold Air Force Base Police participated.

As noted above, DHS and the military intend to participate in additional sweeps — not simply in violation of Posse Comitatus but also the Fourth Amendment — randomly throughout the year. Tennessee residents need to contact local and state officials and demand the Constitution and Posse Comitatus be respected.

Understanding The "Global Financial Crises "

An Argentine opinion on the Global Financial Crisis, describing the whole Global Financial System as one vast Ponzi Scheme. Like a pyramid, it has four sides and is a predictable model. The four sides are: (1) Artificially control the supply of public State-issued Currency, (2) Artificially impose Banking Money as the primary source of funding in the economy, (3) Promote doing everything by Debt and (4) Erect complex channels that allow privatizing profits when the Model is in expansion mode and socialize losses when the model goes into contraction mode.

St. Louis City Leader Says Police Ineffective, Tells Residents to Get Armed

ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis city leader frustrated with the police response to rising crime called Tuesday on residents to arm themselves to protect their lives and property.

Alderman Charles Quincy Troupe said police are ineffective, outnumbered or don't care about the increase in crime in his north St. Louis ward. St. Louis has had 157 homicides in 2008, 33 more than last year at this time.

"The community has to be ready to defend itself, because it's clear the economy is going to get worse, and criminals are getting more bold," Troupe, 72, said Tuesday.

Troupe said that when he and residents approached a district police commander last year, they were told "there was nothing he could do to protect us and the community ... that he didn't have the manpower."

Police did not immediately return requests for comment. Chief Dan Isom told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he understands Troupe's frustration but doesn't support citizens arming themselves.

Carrying guns, he said, is not a "recipe for a less violent community."

Agent Provocateur Riots Commence in London at G20

It looks like the agents provocateurs — otherwise known as anarchists — are having their way in London as the G20 commences. From a blog covering the protests posted at the Guardian:

The “hardcore” protesters have broken through police lines and have made their way to an unboarded HSBC branch on Queen Victoria Street, says Guardian reporter Paul Lewis. An anarchist flag has been raised on an office block opposite the branch, he adds. The Press Association reported a fight on the same street between two men — one wearing a suit — which was broken up by police.

Smashing up banks and beating up guys in suits will do nothing to stop the bankers from looting the wealth of billions of people and engineering the collapse of the world economy in order to usher in their world “super-currency” and world government.

As the photo here shows, the “anarchists” are grist for the corporate media. One lone “anarchist” takes out a bank window while dozens of cameras whirl and click to catch the action.

It’s all an orchestrated sideshow to the G20 criminal confab designed to discredit legitimate protests. There is little coverage of the actual protesters as the corporate media rushes to photograph agents provocateurs smashing windows at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The Guardian comments on the fact the “anarchists” and the corporate media are working with the state in order to discredit legitimate protest:

On Twitter, Snufkin21 says Stop the War protesters booed the media present “for hyping up the G20 violence”. The huge media presence has been criticized by a number of people on Twitter who believe it’s encouraged extreme elements to “play to the gallery”.

George Monbiot offers a blog entry on the cops and their “force majeure” at the summit:

The trouble-makers are out in force again. Dressed in black, their faces partly obscured, some of them appear to be interested only in violent confrontation. It’s almost as if they are deliberately raising the temperature, pushing and pushing until a fight kicks off. But this isn’t some disorganized rabble: these people were bussed in and are plainly acting in concert. There’s another dead giveaway. They are all wearing the same slogan: Police.

The cops “have a powerful interest in exaggerating threats and, perhaps, an interest in ensuring that sometimes these threats materialize,” writes Monbiot. “This could explain what I’ve seen at one protest after another, where peaceful demonstrations turn into ugly rucks only when the police attack. The wildly disproportionate and unnecessary violence I’ve sometimes seen the police deploy could scarcely be better designed to provoke a reaction.”

This “powerful interest in exaggerating threats” serves the bankers and their minions now gathered in London. It is critical they completely discredit the opposition and have their handmaiden media tool portray the legitimate opposition as crazed and violent anarchists.

It is basically a “strategy of tension” of the sort used by the Italian Gladio operation, designed to blame murderous violence on leftists. In Italy, this strategy worked like a charm as large numbers of Italians fell for the bait and blamed socialists and communists for the violence.

The staged violence will give the British state an excuse to further limit civil liberties and arrest activists, especially now as sincere and legitimate demonstrators and activists are beginning to organize in opposition to the largest and most audacious bankster rip-off in recorded history.

The CIA Recruits Spies on the Radio

Being a spy may involve assumed identities and coded messages, but becoming a spy isn't exactly top-secret business. These days, in fact, all you have to do if you're interested in this particular career path is turn up your radio. The CIA is running ads on stations across the country for jobs in its clandestine service.

"Are you a person of curiosity and integrity?" asks one spot. "Are you ready for a world of challenge ... a world of ambiguity and adventure?"

The agency won't say how much it's spending on the ad campaign, but CIA spokesman George Little told TIME via e-mail, "We continue to seek highly qualified candidates to support the mission of America's premier intelligence agency." (See the top 10 Secret Service code names.)

The campaign is the first by the agency under its new director, Leon Panetta, who has said he would like to recruit more people with foreign-language skills as well as more minorities.

The agency is not lacking for applicants; it gets more than 100,000 rÉsumÉs a year, and the number is growing fast. Little says if current trends hold, there may be a 40% to 50% increase in applications this year over 2008.

But the sheer volume of applications masks some of the agency's recruiting problems. In a roundtable discussion with journalists last month, Panetta noted that less than 13% of his staff have foreign-language skills, and 22% are from minority communities. "I'd like to get to a point where every analyst and operations officer is trained in a foreign language," he said. Panetta also said he'd like to increase the number of minorities at the agency to 30%, "so that we resemble America." And he acknowledged the need for "better outreach for Muslims, Arabs, African Americans and Latinos." (Read "Six Ways to Fix the CIA.")

The outreach program is already underway. Earlier this month, the CIA's third highest-ranking official, Scott White, held meetings with leaders of the Arab-American and Chaldean-American communities in Detroit. "In communities with large numbers of first- and second-generation Americans, we want the message conveyed loud and clear that we welcome their interest in employment with the agency, especially given their language skills and knowledge of other cultures," says Little.

The agency is also looking to reduce its dependence on outside contractors, which increased dramatically after 9/11. "I think we have to bring those capabilities in-house," Panetta said.

The CIA holds about 2,000 recruiting events a year, many of them at colleges and universities. It also advertises, selectively, on television, in print and even on airport billboards. The outreach extends to new media as well. For the past two years, the agency has used a Facebook page as a recruitment medium. Its TV ads can also be seen on YouTube.

CIA officials say all this effort is bearing fruit. "We are on track to meet the hiring goals set forth by former President Bush in 2004, which mandated that we increase by 50% the number of CIA officers in certain job occupations, such as intelligence analysts and clandestine officers," says Little.

Leaving computers on overnight = $2.8 billion a year

Admittedly I don't think much about it at all. I leave my laptop running overnight because I know it'll take five minutes or more to get things going in the morning -- not just booting up, but launching the various apps I start the day with, downloading my overnight email, filtering out the spam, and otherwise "getting settled."

But all the power wasted while computers are sitting idle overnight adds up, and one study has finally tried to measure it. The tally: An estimated $2.8 billion wasted on excess energy costs each year in the U.S. alone.

On a CO2 basis, that's 20 million tons of carbon dioxide, about the amount produced by 4 million cars on the road.

The full report is available for download here (scroll down to "PC Energy Report US 2009").

But big numbers like that become almost meaningless in an era of trillion-dollar bailouts, so to put the wasted energy in perspective, the study provides the data in terms you can better understand: If you run a company with 1,000 PCs left on overnight, you can save about $28,000 a year if they are turned off after hours. That's not chump change.

Of course, it's also a fact that your PC will function better if you restart it regularly, and nightly shutdowns can help you avoid having to suddenly reboot in the middle of the day when you'd otherwise be productive. So even though this little laptop, by my math, eats up only about a quarter's worth of power overnight, maybe it's a smart idea -- and ultimately a time-saver, too -- to shut it down after hours after all.

PETA Killed 95 Percent of Adoptable Pets in its Care During 2008

Hypocritical Animal Rights Group’s 2008 Disclosures Bring Pet Death Toll To 21,339

WASHINGTON DC – Today the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) published documents online showing that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) killed 95 percent of the adoptable pets in its care during 2008. Despite years of public outrage over its euthanasia program, the animal rights group kills an average of 5.8 pets every day at its Norfolk, VA headquarters.

According to public records from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, PETA killed 2,124 pets last year and placed only seven in adoptive homes. Since 1998, a total of 21,339 dogs and cats have died at the hands of PETA workers.

Despite having a $32 million budget, PETA does not operate an adoption shelter. PETA employees make no discernible effort to find homes for the thousands of pets they kill every year. Last year, the Center for Consumer Freedom petitioned Virginia’s State Veterinarian to reclassify PETA as a slaughterhouse.

CCF Research Director David Martosko said: “PETA hasn’t slowed down its hypocritical killing machine one bit, but it keeps browbeating the rest of society with a phony ‘animal rights’ message. What about the rights of the thousands of dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens that die in PETA’s headquarters building?”

Martosko added: “Since killing pets is A-OK with PETA, why should anyone listen to their demands about eating meat, using lab rats for medical research, or taking children to the circus?”

CCF obtained PETA’s “Animal Record” filings since 1998 from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Members of the public can see these documents at PetaKillsAnimals.com.

(Skeptical? Click here to see the documents.)

In addition to exposing PETA’s hypocritical record of killing defenseless animals, the Center for Consumer Freedom has publicized the animal rights group’s ties to violent activists, and shed light on its aggressive message-marketing to children.

The Center for Consumer Freedom is a nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers, working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices.

World's largest laser now ready for use

WASHINGTON (AP) — After more than a decade of work and $3.5 billion, engineers have completed the world's most powerful laser, capable of simulating the energy force of a hydrogen bomb and the sun itself.

The Energy Department will announce Tuesday that it has officially certified the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, clearing the way for a series of experiments over the next year. Scientists hope the experiments eventually will mimic the heat and pressure found at the center of the sun.

The facility, the size of a football field, consists of 192 separate laser beams, each traveling 1,000 feet in a one-thousandth of a second to converge simultaneously on a target the size of a pencil eraser.

While the NIF laser is expected to be used for a wide range of high-energy and high-density physics experiments, its primary purpose is to help government physicists ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons as they become older.

The laser "will be a cornerstone" of the weapons stewardship program "ensuring the continuing reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile without underground nuclear testing," Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in an interview Monday.

The NNSA, a semi-independent arm of the Energy Department, oversees nuclear weapons programs.

The NIF laser was first proposed in the early 1990s, when the project's cost was put at $700 million. Construction began in 1997. Its early years were marked by setbacks including trouble — eventually overcome — in keeping its critical optics perfectly clean.

NIF now is expected to ramp up power gradually in a series of experiments over the next year, culminating at a power level in 2010 to achieve what scientists call "fusion ignition" — enough heat and pressure to fuse hydrogen atoms in a tiny cylindrical "target" so that more energy is released than is generated by the laser beams themselves.

That is what happens when a hydrogen bomb explodes and what takes place at the center of the sun. It's also what scientists would one day like to achieve on a continuing basis to produce a clean, safe form of energy by fusing atoms instead of splitting them.

Edward Moses, director of the NIF project who has led its development since 1999, said he's ever more confident that NIF will be able to achieve fusion ignition.

"It's now operational," said Moses in a telephone interview. "The lasers are there. The targets are there and we've proven the optics. But now the proof is in the shooting. We've got to put all this together and shoot the targets. It's the first time anyone has ever done experiments at this scale."

NIF's 192 laser beams produce 60 to 70 times more energy than a 60-beam system at the University of Rochester, which is the second most powerful laser, said Moses.

In addition to helping diagnose the functioning of nuclear warheads, the NIF laser is expected to be use in astrophysics, allowing scientists to mimic conditions inside planets and new solar systems.

Moses said he sees NIF as key in the move toward developing a fusion energy source.

"What we want to show is scientific proof of the principle of fusion energy," said Moses, predicting some experiments for a short time may produce 50 to 100 times more energy than the lasers themselves generate.
On the Net:

* NIF Project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: http://www.llnl.gov/nif