So, was he a president of peace?  Not everyone agrees.  He himself did not think much of his legacy.

Tim Weiner wrote a book in 2007 about the Central Intelligence Agency. He took for his title a comment by Dwight D. Eisenhower. On leaving the White House in 1961, Eisenhower said that he feared, because of the foreign policy mess created largely by an out of control CIA and military industrial complex, he was leaving to his successor a “legacy of ashes.”

Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes is very well written and thoroughly researched. About a third of the 700 pages are devoted to extensive end notes detailing far more, especially about the scandals that have been declassified. The entire book from one end to the other, including notes, reads as a history of incompetence, foul ups, idiocy, corruption, abuse of power, and genocidal massacres.

The book, although written by an author sympathetic to the concept of overseas aggression and evidently convinced of the need not only for an extensive intelligence service to learn about other countries, but also an extensive covert operations program independent of the military to subvert and attack other countries, is an indictment of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other espionage agencies. It is, in short, a detailed indictment for high treason of every director of central intelligence, every director of covert operations, and many specific agents and analysts.

What have these people done?

Since the founding of the CIA in 1948, the men and women who believe their role is to run the world have feathered their nests; destroyed lives; massacred children; committed or supported genocide on every continent except Antarctica; prevented the development of property regimes in space, in the deep sea beds, in Antarctica; spied upon Americans at home and abroad; and overthrown governments all over the world, including most likely our own. In pursuit of these goals, the CIA has blown the cover of hundreds of agents, sent thousands of Americans and American-trained foreigners to their deaths on missions compromised from the start, failed to engage in effective counter-espionage, knowingly over-estimated the strength of foreign regimes, and either failed utterly to correctly assess Soviet nuclear capabilities, or deliberately lied about them. In other words, it has been charlie foxtrot all the way.

Perfect Storm
Weiner gives plenty of examples of many of these various and sundry atrocities. The “perfect storm” of corruption and abuse of power was certainly in the Vietnam era. Few presidents have been more willing to lie, cheat, steal, and massacre than LBJ. Few people in the history of the world have been more corrupt, more conniving, more eager to abuse power for the sake of feeling powerful.

On page 239 Weiner writes, “The war was authorized by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, rammed through Congress after what the president and the Pentagon proclaimed was an unprovoked attack by North Vietnam on American ships in international waters on August 4. The National Security Agency, which compiled and controlled the intelligence on the attack, insisted the evidence was ironclad. Robert McNamara swore to it. … But the full truth did not come out until November 2005, in a highly detailed confession released by the National Security Agency.”

As for Lyndon Baines Johnson, he summed up what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin four years after the 1964 incident. “‘Hell,’ said the president, ‘those damn stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.’” And so he escalated a war which ended up killing over 58,000 Americans, millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, Hmong, and Cambodians, and causing untold misery throughout the region. Because, at heart, LBJ was a corrupt maniac war monger. His personal fortune was made from the sale of military gear through his involvement in various defense contractors, it seems.

“Richard Helms ran the CIA…. He had three major covert-action campaigns to fight that year. Each one had been started by President Eisenhower, then strengthened by President Kennedy, and now was central to LBJ’s quest to win the war in Southeast Asia. In Laos, the CIA fought to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In Thailand, it set out to fix the elections. In Indonesia, it provided secret support for leaders who massacred countless communists (p. 252).” No doubt the lessons learned by the CIA in subverting the government and election process in Thailand proved useful in other countries, including our own.

The massacres in Indonesia involved at least hundreds of thousands of people, and were by no means limited to communists. Nor were they the only massacres—the government of Guatemala massacred hundreds of thousands, also with the full support and enthusiastic encouragement of the CIA. Pinochet in Chile would do much the same with support from Nixon and Kissinger—so much support that Kissinger is an internationally wanted criminal suspect.

Corruption
“Laos started out as an intelligence war. Under accords signed by the superpowers and their allies, all foreign fighters were supposed to leave the country (Ibid.).” But, of course, the CIA fought a war there, anyway. “Station chiefs and their officers had orders to fight a war in secret, defying diplomatic niceties and the military facts on the ground (p. 253).” These “diplomatic niceties” meant repudiating a treaty to which the USA was party, something many Native American Indian nations had direct experience with in the 19th Century. And, of course, there was plenty of opium in Laos to smuggle back to the USA.

“Patriotism for profit became a $50 billion a year business …a sum about the size of the American intelligence budget itself. … A CIA officer could file his retirement papers, turn in his blue identification badge, go to work for a much better salary at a military contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Booz Allen Hamilton, then return to the CIA the next day, wearing a green badge. After September 2001, the outsourcing went out of control. Green-badge bosses started openly recruiting in the CIA’s cafeteria (p. 512).” Shameless.

The corruption and drug sales were illustrated repeatedly in the hearings of the Church committee during the 1970s, and the Iran Contra investigation during the 1980s. No one in the government cares about corruption and abuse of power, they just want to dip their beaks in the same trough. Ugly.

Destroyed lives
On page 265, Weiner reports, “A quarter of a million American soldiers were at war when Richard Helms took control of the CIA [in 1966]….Bob Gates, the future director of central intelligence and secretary of defense…entered a forbidding seven-story concrete slab topped with antennas. … The CIA made Gates a 90 day wonder….From there the CIA analyst caught a chilling glimpse of the course of the war in Vietnam: The United States was running out of pilots….’We knew then,’ Gates remembered, ‘that we could not win the war.’”

Now, how sleazy is that? The Vietnam war cost the lives of 220,357 South Vietnamese, 1,176,000 North Vietnamese, 58,159 US soldiers, 4,960 South Korea soldiers, 1,446 PRC soldiers, 1,351 Thai soldiers, 520 Australian soldiers, 37 New Zealand soldiers—altogether 1,463,277 military lives lost, plus some 2,094,000 wounded soldiers (many of whose lives would never be the same due to their injuries), plus 5.3 million civilians killed in South Vietnam, Cambodia, North Vietnam, and Laos. So, on the close order of 8.9 million lives utterly destroyed or unimaginably altered. And these jackasses in the CIA knew in 1966 that the war could not be won. Most of those lives would have been saved, had the government of the United States simply admitted that it could not escalate the war to victory. Where was the intelligence service?

Screwing up, that’s where.

Massacred children
Weiner documents numerous instances where the CIA directly funded and directly ordered the massacre of civilians. By some estimates, half a million civilians in Indonesia in the 1950s, nearly a quarter million in Guatemala, tens of thousands in Cuba, thousands in Chile, five million plus in Southeast Asia, by some estimates half a million children in Iraq during the sanctions under Clinton, as many as 600,000 civilians during the Iraq war. The CIA loves to massacre children, considering it one of their main purposes. Every CIA agent must be responsible for murdering children in order to be considered for promotion.

“For the next three weeks, he and his fellow CIA pilots hit military and civilian targets in the villages and harbors of northeastern Indonesia….Hundreds of civilians died [in April 1958], the American embassy reported (p. 151).” And that’s just one incident.

Genocide committed
On page 458 Weiner documents, “In Guatemala, 200,000 civilians had died during forty years of struggle following the agency’s 1954 coup against an elected president. Between 90 and 96 percent of those deaths came at the hands of the Guatemalan military. In 1994, the CIA’s officers in Guatemala still went to great lengths to conceal the nature of their close relations to the military and to suppress reports that Guatemalan officers on its [the CIA's] payroll were murderers, torturers, and thieves.” The only reason we happen to know some of these details is because much of the secret information on Guatemala was declassified, in part when a CIA director tried to fire a few of the scum bags responsible for the genocide in that country.

Genocide supported
In 1970, according to Weiner (pp 304-309) the CIA was involved in faulty intelligence which resulted in the carpet bombing by B-52s of six suspected communist camps that were in fact peaceful villages in Cambodia. At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger began planning to overthrow the elected government of Chile and put in place a mass murderer who was responsible for at least 3,200 civilian deaths, many by gruesome torture and the jailing and torture of tens of thousands more in what became known as the Caravan of Death.

“There is no doubt,” the agency confessed in a statement to Congress after the cold war ended, “that some CIA contacts were actively engaged in committing and covering up serious human rights abuses (p. 316).” I believe that all CIA agents and all CIA contacts are engaged in brutal abuses of individual civil and human rights, because they enjoy it. There is not a single CIA agent anywhere in the world who is a decent human being. One of these scum bags, Manuel Contreras, assassinated in 1976 the former ambassador of Allende’s government to the US, and an American aide, with a car bomb fourteen blocks from the White House. The agency and the Pinochet government “…knew and approved of that terrorist killing on American soil,” and blocked the extradition of Contreras. Kissinger is being pursued by courts in Chile, Argentina, Spain, and France by survivors of the Caravan of Death—but the scum in the USA government won’t send him to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The CIA also backed “…a Cambodian rebel army fighting Hanoi’s forces…And it placed the CIA’s allies in alignment with the butchers of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge (p. 420).” By some estimates, the Pol Pot government of the Khmer Rouge eventually massacred or starved to death as many as 3 million people. Even the CIA, which was clearly involved in supporting Pol Pot’s bid for power, admits to 100,000 killed and 1.2 million starved to death (see Wikipedia History of Cambodia).

Property regimes prevented
It has been well established that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was negotiated by Johnson’s team to eliminate the possibility of private property or national sovereignty in space. The same trick had been pulled by the team negotiating the 1957 Antarctica treaty, and was the official position for the Law of the Sea Treaty in 1982 to govern deep sea beds.

Now, you have to see LBJ as a sleazy villain of the worst sort. He knew that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was “just sailors shooting at flying fish” when he lied about it and used it to excuse a massive buildup. He knew in 1966 that the war could not be won, but sent more troops to their deaths than ever before. And he sold out the concept of a private property regime anywhere in space, so more money could be spent on the Vietnam war and his socialist programs in the USA. He was a monster, and his memory should never be rehabilitated. LBJ should be castigated and damned forever, his library burned down, and his monuments destroyed. Lyndon Baines Johnson was a mass murderer, and the CIA was one of his weapons of mass murder, a willing accomplice in the deeds.

Governments overthrown
The list of half-baked attempts is long, but the successful efforts is significantly shorter. These include the replacement of the democratically elected governments of Chile, Guatemala, Panama, and Iran, among many others.

In Panama, the CIA couldn’t find a communist party, so they invented one. They did so, ostensibly to get one of their agents into the Soviet Union, but they never were able to get a high level infiltration. Of course, where there is no real enemy, the CIA is eager to create one.

One of the obvious applications of their techniques of forging election results, using intimidation and abuse of power, and otherwise bringing about regime change against the will of the people involved, is to use these techniques to control their access to cash. I believe the CIA has used extortion and intimidation, among other techniques, to get more money in the CIA budget, especially its black operations budget. I believe the CIA has used its techniques to create a government in the USA favorable to a larger CIA budget, because, of course, the CIA is filled with scum who have no ethics. They want to fight wars for the sake of massacring children because they individually and severally like to see children maimed and killed.

Dangers to the Bill of Rights
The CIA has claimed, falsely, that it needs to be able to spy on everyone, everywhere, all the time. As a result of repeated lies by its agents and officials, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has been approved by Congress, including a vote in favor by Barack Obama while he was a Senator. Warrantless wiretaps, opening private mail, bugging phones and computers, torturing suspects in foreign prisons, disappearing dissidents, lying to Congress and the American people, raping and torturing for the sheer pleasure of it, and murdering anyone who gets in their way are typical of the CIA, both in the USA and abroad. The CIA is a den of rogues. There are no members of the CIA at any level who are not guilty of or complicit in murder, torture, rape, theft, and violations of civil rights. Every single one of these filth are traitors to the oath they swore to uphold the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Every single one of these treasonous scum have been making war on the United States while giving aid and comfort to its enemies. In a just world, they would each be tried for treason, found guilty, and punished accordingly.

Covers blown, agents to their deaths
Valerie Plame was not the first CIA agent to have her cover blown, and she very likely won’t be the last. Weiner relates numerous instances of CIA agents recruited, trained, and sent to their deaths.

In the 1950s, agents and paramilitary forces were trained up and parachuted into places like Albania, China, and Ukraine. In many cases, double agents like Kim Philby did the dirty work. “Philby worked for Moscow out of a secure room in the Pentagon….For more than a year, before and after many a liquid lunch, Angleton gave Philby the precise coordinates for every agent the CIA parachuted into Albania. … Roughly two hundred of the CIA’s foreign agents died. Almost no one in the American government knew. It was a most secret thing. Angleton was promoted to chief of counterintelligence when it was over (p. 46).”

So, there you have it. Not very competent. Every few paragraphs of the entire book, which runs to over 677 pages including end notes and index, Weiner gives account of some massive stupidity, incompetence, dirty deed, corrupt act, massacre, torture, unconstitutional activity, or crime against humanity. Although one does want to cheer for the deaths of CIA agents, who clearly richly deserve violent ends, one cannot help but also feel sorry for some of these poor dumb Idaho farm boys recruited out of college, trained poorly, and sent to their deaths with absolutely no gain.

“All told, hundreds of the CIA’s foreign agents were sent to their deaths in Russia, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic States during the 1950s. Their fates were unrecorded; no accounts were kept and no penalty assessed for failure (p. 47).” Indeed, some of those responsible were actively promoted to high levels within the agency. Secrecy prevented their incompetence from being held against them.

Soviet nuclear and missile capabilities under-estimated
To give you a sense of how completely screwed up these guys were, they both underestimated and later overestimated Soviet nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. In September 1949, “…the CIA confidently declared that the Soviet Union would not produce an atomic weapon for at least another four years. Three days later, Truman told the world that Stalin had the bomb (p. 48).” Missed it by four years.

Soviet nuclear and missile capabilities over-estimated
“Since 1957, the CIA had sent Eisenhower terrifying reports that the Soviet buildup of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles was far faster and much greater than the American arsenal. In 1960, the agency projected a mortal threat to the United States; it told the president that the Soviets had five hundred ICBMs ready to strike by 1961. The Strategic Air Command used those estimates as the basis for a secret first-strike plan using more than three thousand nuclear warheads to destroy every city and every military outpost from Warsaw to Beijing. But Moscow did not have five hundred nuclear missiles pointed at the United States at the time. It had four (p. 158).”

Utter incompetence. The 1960 election included dramatic statements about a “missile gap” that was false. The CIA was utterly unable to properly estimate the Soviet nuclear missile capability. It either failed to make use of hundreds of millions of dollars in hardware and spy systems and U2 over-flights and even satellite surveillance data, as well as human intelligence, or it deliberately lied about the extent of the threat. Given that these dramatic and false over-estimates would continue until the end of the Cold War in 1991, I believe that incompetence can only explain so much. I think the CIA lied about the enemy in order to justify a larger budget for itself.

The dangers of secrecy and opaque government in a free society.
To secure the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, governments have been instituted among men and women. It is the function of government to defend those rights. Such governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

But what does it mean, consent? If you examine contract law, consent has the following features. It must be entered willingly, knowingly, and competently. Also, there must be an exchange of value between the parties to the agreement. If any of these features is missing, there is no valid agreement.

So, what is secrecy and opacity in a free society? It is, simply, the absence of consent. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be said to consent to it. Agreement without knowledge is not agreement at all. It is fraud.

And that is what the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and the Homeland Security department represent. They are a fraud, perpetrated on the American people, to deprive them of a government by their own consent. Without knowledge, there is no consent.

As long as the government of the USA engages in secret wars, secret contracts, corruption, intrigue, espionage, and the operation of a secret government, it cannot pretend to have the consent of the American people. A government without consent is tyranny.

Eisenhower set the USA firmly on this path toward the destruction of individual liberty, the overseas adventurism, and the final end to the dollar.  Ashes indeed, Dwight, ashes, indeed.

This post contributed by Jim Davidson who is primarily responsible for its content.

Often times as a libertarian, looking back on centuries of history with little progress, or the state of contemporary society, one can become discouraged. Struggling forward, for a new society, can seem daunting. This is one reason we need for solidarity and mutual aid amongst ourselves, not just for protection from the state, but for encouragement. And there are many forms of such encouragement, from reflecting on past successes, to music, to working on a new project. For, despite the lack of progress, change is gradual and step by step, individual. And each step forward is one step closer to our dream of a society without systemic violence.

Though there are many strategies, I promote one of living, as close as possible, to libertarian society. Within the market anarchist tradition, a man named Konkin coined a term, agorism, to define the consistent synthesis of non-aggression libertarian ethics with counter-economic action. Counter-economics is any action, including non-financial actions, which are done peacefully, yet are prohibited by the state. And it is this agorism, living a non-aggressive life off the records of the state, that I promote, as a strategy for living one’s libertarian ideals. Instead of ending the state directly, merely living under it, rerouting around it, and replacing it as it dies from its own internal inconsistencies.

With this in mind, many ask what they can do to participate in the agora. And it is this question that George Donnelly and I have sought to answer with a new unconference, the Agora I/O Unconference from March 25-27.

Due to being a web unconference, based on livestreaming technology, meaning location is not an issue for participation. And, if you’re unaware of how unconferences work, they’re decentralized, participant-driven conferences avoiding the problems of a central authority. Within such a structure, one can listen to, and financially support, those talks they deem valuable while not listening to or supporting those they deem unworthy. In this way, the individual has the control over their participation and their desires are more accurately reflected in future unconferences. And if you can’t attend a certain talk for some reason? Well, recordings are being made, in order to better supply you, the participant, with the information you desire. And while we encourage you to donate, its also free to participate! Whats a reason not to participate?

What can one learn from participating in the Agora I/O Unconference? Allow me to provide a sample of various talks, though I highly encourage you to visit the Speakers or Schedule pages to learn more.

First off, Liberty on Tour’s Pete Eyre is speaking on Effective Activism: Foundation to Impact on saturday, March 26 at 5pm est. He’ll be going over how to be a good ambassador, maintain a calm, reasonable tone, as well as various scenarios and what was beneficial and what could be improved upon. If you’re wanting to be a front-lines activist, this may be the talk for you, straight from one of the most successful activists out there.

Perhaps one is interested in a basic lesson of how to transition from ideas to actual practice? Cat Bleish is speaking on Transitioning from Agorist Theory to Practice on friday, March 25 at 3pm est. Having made the transition herself, she’ll be able to impart lessons from her own experiences. For anyone interested in getting involved in living as an agorist, this would be a key talk to attend. Cat Bleish has long been involved in working against government incursion into our lives, having strongly opposed the fusion centers, but is now working to create positive solutions around statist tyranny.

Construction is a historically counter-economic profession. Want to get involved in an industry easier to hide from the state than others? Josh Carter’s Construction with Agorist Principles on sunday, March 27 at 2pm est. Living a life as an agorist and having worked within construction, he’s the one to know how to operate a business off the books, but also how to minimize the costs, when you do have to surface temporarily. If you’re involved in construction and would rather work for yourself, this would be a vital talk to attend.

And once you’re ready to get involved, perhaps start an underground business, then Momma Ally’s Underground Business Marketing & Anti-state Security Measures at sunday, March 27 at 3pm est is the talk for you. Having operated the Last Biscuit for two years, under the noses of the Savannah, Georgia police state, she was successful in building the business from a local southern food delivery business to a city-wide underground business. Only when filming Savannah police harassing a defenseless homeless person was when the business came crumbling down. And now, recovering from that loss, plans are being made to expand nationally.

Perhaps Being the Media in Your Community, to profile abuses such as the one against that homeless man, is more your style? Well, that’s Jason Talley’s talk on sunday, March 27 at 1pm est. Interested in building a strong community, media is one part of promoting a community’s work and if your community needs a voice, this may be the talk for you.

And if you want to build an agorist community yourself? Then Marc Stevens‘ Building a Local Free Market could be the first step in that direction, on friday, March 25 at noon est. Though not entirely focused on community, I believe a local market is a key step to beginning that community, to self-sufficiently support itself from within. And if you know many people producing goods, or able to, off the books, you may be the key person to begin a local community market.

Don’t trust the fiat currency imposed by the state due to its inherently inflationary nature? There’s at least two talks regarding alternative currencies! The first is Ron Helwig’s Shire Silver and Silver Currency on saturday, March 26 at 2pm est. The second is Silver Bullet and Coin Silver, by Nick Saorsa and Drew Phillips of Freedoms Phoenix, on saturday, March 26 at 3pm est. With inflation causing the value of federal reserve notes to silver to fluctuate wildly (from under $20 to nearly $40 in a year), accepting and holding alternative currencies is a very beneficial policy in these economically uncertain times whether you’re an individual or involved in a business, community, or free market.

And in such uncertain times, the state cracks down socially as well. The world witnessed the internet blackouts during the ongoing middle eastern peoples’ revolutions. Do you have a plan to communicate with comrades and loved ones? J Kent Hastings‘ How to Survive with Ham Radio When the Internet is Set to Kill, on friday, March 25 at 4pm est, provides much needed information on one useful form of communication if the internet is shut down, from communicating itself, to building a makeshift ham radio. This would be a key talk to attend, and save offline, for such an eventuality.

Of course, counter-economic action isn’t all business or survival preparation, its also fun, and there’s two talks on entertainment, yet which still have value. Sovereign Curtis‘ Ask Soviet Curtis: Uncle Joe of PorcFest and J Neil Schulman’s Why Alongside Night as a Movie is a Vital Part of Agorist Mass-Marketing Strategy. Both are on sunday, March 27 at 11am est. For those unaware, PorcFest is a freedom festival, including an agorist market 80+ vendors strong, with police kept out, and everything from open, respectful use of various substances to family-friendly activities. Basically, an experiment in statelessness. And Alongside Night is the most successful agorist novel, written by J Neil Schulman, and now being converted into a feature film. And whats the value in these talks? From Curtis, one could learn how to begin their own local freedom festival for those who can’t always travel to PorcFest. And from Schulman, one can learn the value of why a fictionalized account of agorism is a key part of agorist mass-marketing.

There are also many more speakers and topics, so be sure to check out the Speakers and Schedule pages to learn more! And, if you value their talk, please donate as a thank you for their time and knowledge

Missouri Proposition C

A Kansas City Star article can cover the details of Missouri Proposition C. Groups both for and against the law concerning the recent health care reform bill protested at the same time, yesterday at 5 in Mill Creek Park/Nichols Fountain on the Plaza. Six photos via http://blog.ericbowersphoto.com/2010/07/missouri-proposition-c/

07/29/10

This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 5:00 am. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

KANSAS CITY LOCATION – 39th and Southwest Trafficway – Noon to 2pm
COLUMBIA LOCATION – Stadium Boulevard and Worley Street – 1-3PM
ST LOUIS LOCATION- Kingshighway and Chippewa in St. Louis City 3pm
SPRINGFIELD LOCATION – TBA

All cities in the state of Missouri needs to organize and hit the streets on May 8th!! There is a possibility that these red light cameras will be banned in the state!!

For the past year, Senator Jim Lembke and Campaign for Liberty members have worked on banning Red Light Cameras. Senator Lembke’s amendment to ban red light cameras passed in the Missouri Senate this Tuesday. With a little more work, that legislation now has a good chance of passing in the Missouri House.

Red Light Cameras have been a violation of your rights and they do not provide due process. We need your help to insure that this ban becomes law and is not stripped in committee from HB2111. The bill’s fate lies in the hands of these legislators:

Please call

ü your state representative (contact info here www.house.mo.gov )

ü Senator Stouffer (sponsor of the bill) (314) 751-1507

ü Representative Dixon (committee chair) (573) 751-9809

ü Representative Faith (573) 751-1452

Encourage support of this ban.

Here are some talking points associated with the lack of due process:

Due Process: says that government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law. Due process holds the government submissive to the law of the land, protecting individual persons from the state.

The 5th amendment to the constitution says that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Because of municipality’s use of a ‘rebuttable presumption,’ or a presumption that the driver of the car is the owner of the car, and a failure of the municipality to provide evidence against the driver of the car, individuals are forced incriminate themselves or investigate, provide evidence, and incriminate another.

Forcing the owner of the car to incriminate another, in many cases a family member, can be a violation of a person’s right to spousal privilege (the right to not incriminate or testify against your spouse).

Municipalities use a presumption of guilt, not innocence, and punish our Missouri citizens based on the assumption that the individual who owned the car is the individual who ran the red light. If you are innocent you must provide proof of your innocence vs. the state providing proof of your guilt.

Thank Senator Lembke, Josh Carter and Tracy Ward for leading the effort to stop this violation of Missouri citizen’s rights.

Audio from selected panels and speeches is available below, both streaming and downloadable. To save files to your hard drive, right-click on the appropriate Download link and select “Save link as…”

Introductory Remarks

Lawrence Sager (Dean, University of Texas School of Law)
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Panel 1: National security, privacy, and technology (I)

Moderator: William Banks (Syracuse)

Lisa Graves (Center for Media and Democracy)
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Benjamin Wittes (Brookings Institution)
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Nicholas Patterson (Department of Justice, National Security Division)
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Panel Question & Answer Session
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Remarks

Shane Harris (National Journal, Author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State)
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Panel 2: National security, privacy, and technology (II)

Moderator: Lisa Graves (Center for Media and Democracy)

Nathan Sales (George Mason)

Alex Joel (Civil Liberties Protection Officer, Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
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Remarks

Jameel Jaffer (ACLU)
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Panel 3: Investigations

Moderator: Robert Chesney (University of Texas)

Orin Kerr (George Washington)
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Paul Ohm (Colorado)
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Samuel Rascoff (NYU)
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Panel Question and Answer Session
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Panel 4: Technology Policy

Fred Chang (Department of Computer Science, University of Texas)
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Jim Simon (Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Government)
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Moderator & participant: Ken Flamm (LBJ School of Public Policy, University of Texas)
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Panel 5: Accountability Mechanisms

Moderator: Sandy Levinson (University of Texas)

Steve Vladeck (American University)
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John Radsan (William Mitchell)
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Jon Michaels (UCLA)
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Heidi Kitrosser (Minnesota)
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Panel Question & Answer Session
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Remarks

Kim Taipale (Executive Director, Center for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology Policy)
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Question & Answer Session:
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Panel 6: Focus on FISA

Moderator: Eric Greenwald (Chief Counsel, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)
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Ben Powell (former general counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
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Matt Anzaldi & Jonathan Gannon (Department of Justice, National Security Division)
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William Banks (Syracuse)
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Panel Question & Answer Session
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Panel 7 : Cybersecurity and network operations

Moderator: Ben Powell (former general counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

Eric Greenwald (Chief Counsel, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence)

Guillermo R. Carranza, Col, USAF (Staff Judge Advocate, 24th Air Force)

Eric Jensen (Fordham)
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Sean Kanuck (International Attorney and Senior Intelligence Analyst)
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Panel Question & Answer Session
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Roundtable discussion: The media’s role today

Introduction by Robert Chesney (University of Texas)
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Panel discussion
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Moderator: David Anderson (University of Texas)

Judge Robert D. Sack (Second Circuit Court of Appeals)

Michael Isikoff (Newsweek)

Mark Mazzetti (New York Times)

Ellen Nakashima (Washington Post)

Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Marc Ambinder (Politics Editor, The Atlantic Monthly)

For technical problems/website inquiries, contact seealso@texaslrev.com

Click here for the survey!!

1. End the Fed (book) by Ron Paul
2. For Liberty (documentary)
3. Camp FEMA (documentary)
4. Missouri Starter Activist Pack (MO Constitution, Copy of MO Sunshine Laws, Copy of MO Search and Seaizure laws, US Constitution, 2009/2010 roster
5. LOLA calendar
6. Oath Keepers Activist Pack (DVDs, slimjims, business cards)

(email catherine@libertyrestorationproject.org if you are interested in donating something!)

To RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/#/event.php?eid=229388609971

The announcement:

I am pleased to announce that the Liberty Restoration Project has partnered with Texans for Accountable Government to literally take the police state head on.

After attending the Continental Congress of 2009 John Bush, executive director of TAG, and myself realized that our movement is not aware of the intrusive and destructive relationship between DHS and our local/state law enforcement.

You see, DHS has found a back door way to both militarize and federalize every level of law enforcement, and through these “fusion centers”, all levels of law enforcement become pledged to the war on terror.

If 2009 was the year of the Federal Reserve, we intend to make sure 2010 is the year of the Fusion Center – educating every activist in our movement and exposing their fraud against the American people.

Learn more about our initiative here: www.operationdefuse.com

This project will involve:
1. Visit every fusion center in the nation, interviewing staff for our new radio show Rise Up Radio (on micro broadcasts in cities all across the midwest including Stl, OKC, and Austin)
2. Coordinate simultaneous open records requests to every fusion center in the country at the same time
3. Conduct community forums in each state to educate the public and bring our law enforcement face to face with the community (humanize) – these will be live streamed
4. Provide a central location for each state to display their open records documents… a Patriot Fusion Center of our own
5. Grassroots MIAC hearings – since the MIAC oversight committee came up with a report that LRP believes is inconsistent with the will of the CITIZENS of Missouri, we will hold our own hearings in the same cities with Liberty-Loving State Rep Candidates and create our OWN recommendations for the body. Law enforcement, elected officials, activists, and all members of the Missouri Community are invited to attend

Save the Date Kansas City: December Tuesday 22nd, 2009
We will be kicking off “Operation Defuse” with our annual LRP Christmas Party to be held on Tuesday December 22nd from 6pm-8pm at http://thegustolounge.com/. Big thanks to Sergio and Steven for donating the space to us and supporting our cause!

Music provided by DJ Scotti

Come ready to hear what LRP has in store for 2010 – we will be making waves bigger than you’ve ever seen!

We are still looking for a donor to provide finger foods and a few kegs so our supporters can mingle and learn while having some fun Let me know if you are willing to sponsor us in that way!

LRP sends out a big thank you to all of our donors and supporters. 2009 was a very successful year and we see even bigger things on the horizon as we have worked hard to cultivate cross-state collaborative initiatives that are helping us all grow and learn together!

Choose Freedom!
Catherine ♥

Please spread this message far and wide.  This special is too special not to let everyone know about it.  This is a rare one week opportunity to support three organizations with one small purchase!

We’ve teamed up with Gadsden Tees and Ladies of Liberty Alliance to offer Gadsden Tees’ “Come and Take It” shirt and 2010 LOLA Calendar for the low price of $20.00

Both of these items make great gifts for any patriot in your life.

To make a purchase and help these three organizations into the new year, visit http://www.libertyrestorationproject.org/store and buy a calendar/shirt special!

stay tuned throughout the rest of the year for important information on the great things we have planned for 2010!!!!

Thank you for your time,
Kevin L. Kobe
KC Area Director,
Liberty Restoration Project
http://www.libertyrestorationproject.org

Please ask for not only their support, but their sponsorship and their publicity on this issue.

Please remember that Sam Brownback of Kansas is already a Co-Sponsor. Please thank him and request that he assist in trying to persuade the media to bring more attention to the bill.

For more info on the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act, visit http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-604

Missouri – Claire McCaskill (Email – http://mccaskill.senate.gov/contact/)

• (202) 224-6154 – Washington DC Office
• 314-367-1364 – St. Louis Office
• 816-421-1639 – Kansas City Office
• 573-651-0964 – Cape Girardeau Office
• 573-442-7130 – Columbia Office
• 417-868-8745 – Springfield Office

Missouri – Christopher Bond (Email – http://bond.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.ContactForm)

• (202) 224-5721 – Washington DC Office
• (573) 634-2488 – Jefferson City Office
• (816) 471-7141 – Kansas City Office
• (314) 725-4484 – St. Louis Office
• (573) 334-7044 – Cape Girardeau Office
• (417) 864-8258 – Springfield Office
• (573) 442-8151 – Columbia Office

Kansas – Pat Roberts (Email - http://roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=EmailPat)

• (202) 224-4774 – Washington DC Office
• (913) 451-9343 – Overland Park Office
• (785) 295-2745 – Topeka Office
• (316) 263-0416 – Wichita Office
• (620) 227-2244 – Dodge City Office

Kansas – Sam Brownback **Already a Co-Sponsor** (Email – http://brownback.senate.gov/public/contact/emailsam.cfm)

• (202) 224-6521 – Washington DC Office
• (785) 233-2503 – Topeka Office
• (913) 492-6378 – Overland Park Office
• (316) 264-8066 – Wichita Office
• (620) 231-6040 – Pittsburgh Office
• (620) 275-1124 – Garden City Office