Cutting off H2O to the NSA

According to OffNow.org , there are THREE steps that can be taken on a state level to make life difficult for the NSA.



1. 4th Amendment Protection Act. Our signature model legislation, the 4th Amendment Protection Act, would ban a state from taking actions which provide "material support" or assistance to warrantless federal spying programs. This includes provisioning of resources, and banning the state from using data obtained without warrant in state court.
States should pass this legislation whether they have a physical NSA facility or not, banning the warrantless data in court will have an immediate effect. And, since the NSA rarely publicizes its plans in advance, it's essential to ensure that their ability to expand with more data center facilities around the country is restricted before they get off the ground. (learn more here)



2. Electronic Data Privacy Act. For those states where legislators are not yet willing or able to get the full 4th Amendment Protection Act passed, the Electronic Data Privacy Act is a powerful first step. By banning the use of warrantless data in court, this state legislation can thwart some of the practical effects of federal spying programs. (learn more here)



3. Freedom From Location Surveillance Act. A narrow, but important first step against the growing surveillance state, the Freedom From Location Surveillance Act bans state and local law enforcement from obtaining the location information of a person's electronic device without a warrant.

The NSA is tracking the physical location of people through their cellphones. In late 2013, the Washington Post reported that NSA is "gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world." This includes location data on "tens of millions" of Americans each year -- without a warrant.

Reset The Net

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



Fight for our Future has launched a "Reset The Net Campaign" for June 5th, 2014.

The problem, as outlined at Reset the Net, is:

"The NSA is exploiting weak links in Internet security to spy on the entire world, twisting the Internet we love into something it was never meant to be: a panopticon." It defines a solution as "We can't stop targeted hacking, but we *can* stop mass surveillance, by building proven security into the everyday Internet." 

Finally, the plan is to "First, get hundreds of sites & apps to add proven security (like SSL). Then on June 5, we'll run a splash screen *everywhere* to spread NSA-resistant privacy tools."

Shahid Buttar and Kevin Zeese examine the plan is this clip from Acronym TV (full episode here).

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer at PopularResistance.org.

The Illegitimacy of the U.S. Government

Originally Posted at PopularResistance.org



In this episode clip (watch the full show here) Shahid Buttar outlines why he thinks the biggest enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic enemy. Also, Kevin Zeese makes the point that the U.S. government is illegitimate.

“Every member of congress swears an oath of office to protect the constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic,” explains Buttar “and the principle enemy to the U.S. Constitution is a domestic one with three letters. The only debate in my mind is whether it is the NSA or the FBI.”

Kevin Zeese adds: “It’s a harsh reality for the country to face. The corporate main stream media’s job is not to give us the truth but to give us the myth that we are the greatest democracy on earth, when in fact I think the democratic legitimacy of this country is disappearing. We just had Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer make that point in his dissent to the (Supreme Court) McCutcheon decision."

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Kevin Zeese is an attorney and political activist who works on peace, economic justice, criminal law reform and reviving American democracy. He co Directs It’s Our Economy, serves on the steering committees of the Chelsea Manning Support Network, and is an organizer atPopularResistance.org.

Dennis Trainor, Jr. is a writer, filmmaker, producer, and activist. His documentary on the Occupy movement, American Autumn: an Occudoc, garnered critical praise from The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and more.  He also wrote and directed Legalize Democracy, a documentary short about the Movement To Amend the Constitution.

Dropping Knowledge Like a Clumsy Librarian {#NSA edition}

Originally posted at PopularReistance.org



note This clip is an excerpt. Watch the full show here.

Shahid Buttar, the Executive Director of The Bill of Rights Defense Committee drops knowledge on the NSA in his new House track The NSA vs. the USAwhile appearing on a recent episode of Acronym TV.

A sample verse:

Some people think Edward Snowden is a Traitor /
They forget everything that happened later /
Congress LIED TO by EXECUTIVE OFFICIALS /
We’re talking about CORRUPTION in the Capitol FO SHIZZLE /
Democracies FIZZLE when their people are watched /
That’s why the NSA’s got to be STOPPED

Shahid Buttar is the Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a 2003 graduate of Stanford Law School, and has appeared in media outlets including the Intercept, the Guardian, the Washington Post, CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazeera and the Baltimore Sun. He spoke about NSA spying at Johns Hopkins recently to a packed audience organized by the Hopkins human rights working group and the New Political Society.

Mark Fiore on Drone Warfare

A message to all police officers by Mike Ruppert

A Message to All Police Officers From Occupy Wall Street from CollapseNet.com on Vimeo.

Netroots Nation: Marcy Wheeler

FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler and CATO institute's Julian Sanchez speaking at the Netroots Nation panel, "What the Government Wants to Know About You."

So This Is America...

I just learned through friend, former colleague, and current head of New Hampshire Peace Action, Will Hopkins, that 71 year old former CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern was arrested and brutalized for wearing a Veterans For Peace t-shirt at a speech by Hillary Clinton.

The irony is, of course, that her speech is on the subject of oppressive governments who beat and shoot protesters.

Now, you're probably thinking, "well shit, he must have been screaming and yelling like a Code Pink lady to get hauled out, right?"

No.

By the account over on JusticeOnline.org he did nothing but wear a t-shirt.

So this is America:



Said Will Hopkins, "[I] just watched the video of two cops roughing up Ray McGovern at a Hilary Clinton event. Made me ill. [I] don't even want to admit that the administration I helped get elected is so callous and brutal. It's Ray McGovern, he's 71 and devoted his whole life to this country. A more honest and true patriot there has never been, and for standing and turning his back quietly on the brutality of our nation, he was beaten and thrown in jail."


According to JusticeOnline.org's report, he was then roughed up by police. The guy is 71 years old for fuck's sake. Is it really nessecary to rough up an old man? According to McGovern's attorneys he was left bruised and bleeding in his jail cell.



So this is America.


In order to export Democracy and Freedom overseas, does that require us to disassemble it here at home first?

---

UPDATE:

A more full account of the events from VotersForPeace.org is here:
http://votersforpeace.us/press/index.php?itemid=4666

Daniel Ellsberg: The attacks they are making against Wikileaks were made against me.

ORIGINAL SOURCE HERE
It was down earlier today, so I'm mirroring it on my own blog. -- PP

[Below is a news release put out by the Institute for Public Accuracy, co-signed by Daniel Ellsberg]

Ex-Intelligence Officers, Others See Plusses in WikiLeaks Disclosures

WASHINGTON – December 7 – The following statement was released today, signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson; all are associated with Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in. The people listed below this release would be pleased to shed light on these exciting new developments.

How far down the U.S. has slid can be seen, ironically enough, in a recent commentary in Pravda (that’s right, Russia’s Pravda): “What WikiLeaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic … After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts can be paralyzing, especially when … government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. …”

So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. … the American people should be outraged that their government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

Odd, isn’t it, that it takes a Pravda commentator to drive home the point that the Obama administration is on the wrong side of history. Most of our own media are demanding that WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange be hunted down — with some of the more bloodthirsty politicians calling for his murder. The corporate-and-government dominated media are apprehensive over the challenge that WikiLeaks presents. Perhaps deep down they know, as Dickens put it, “There is nothing so strong … as the simple truth.”

As part of their attempt to blacken WikiLeaks and Assange, pundit commentary over the weekend has tried to portray Assange’s exposure of classified materials as very different from — and far less laudable than — what Daniel Ellsberg did in releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra “Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad.” He continues: “That’s just a cover for people who don’t want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”

Motivation? WikiLeaks’ reported source, Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, having watched Iraqi police abuses, and having read of similar and worse incidents in official messages, reportedly concluded, “I was actively involved in something that I was completely against.” Rather than simply go with the flow, Manning wrote: “I want people to see the truth … because without information you cannot make informed decisions as a public,” adding that he hoped to provoke worldwide discussion, debates, and reform.

There is nothing to suggest that WikiLeaks/Assange’s motives were any different. Granted, mothers are not the most impartial observers. Yet, given what we have seen of Assange’s behavior, there was the ring of truth in Assange’s mother’s recent remarks in an interview with an Australian newspaper. She put it this way: “Living by what you believe in and standing up for something is a good thing. … He sees what he is doing as a good thing in the world, fighting baddies, if you like.”

That may sound a bit quixotic, but Assange and his associates appear the opposite of benighted. Still, with the Pentagon PR man Geoff Morrell and even Attorney General Eric Holder making thinly disguised threats of extrajudicial steps, Assange may be in personal danger.

The media: again, the media is key. No one has said it better than Monseñor Romero of El Salvador, who just before he was assassinated 25 years ago warned, “The corruption of the press is part of our sad reality, and it reveals the complicity of the oligarchy.” Sadly, that is also true of the media situation in America today.

The big question is not whether Americans can “handle the truth.” We believe they can. The challenge is to make the truth available to them in a straightforward way so they can draw their own conclusions — an uphill battle given the dominance of the mainstream media, most of which have mounted a hateful campaign to discredit Assange and WikiLeaks.

So far, the question of whether Americans can “handle the truth” has been an academic rather than an experience-based one, because Americans have had very little access to the truth. Now, however, with the WikiLeaks disclosures, they do. Indeed, the classified messages from the Army and the State Department released by WikiLeaks are, quite literally, “ground truth.”

How to inform American citizens? As a step in that direction, on October 23 we “Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence” (see below) presented our annual award for integrity to Julian Assange. He accepted the honor “on behalf of our sources, without which WikiLeaks’ contributions are of no significance.” In presenting the award, we noted that many around the world are deeply indebted to truth-tellers like WikiLeaks and its sources.

Here is a brief footnote: Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) is a group of former CIA colleagues and other admirers of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, who hold up his example as a model for those who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power. (For more, please see here.)

Sam did speak truth to power on Vietnam, and in honoring his memory, SAAII confers an award each year to a truth-teller exemplifying Sam Adams’ courage, persistence, and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences. Previous recipients include:

-Coleen Rowley of the FBI

-Katharine Gun of British Intelligence

-Sibel Edmonds of the FBI

-Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan

-Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army

-Frank Grevil, Maj., Danish Army Intelligence

-Larry Wilkerson, Col., US Army (ret.)

-Julian Assange, WikiLeaks

“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.”

– Luke 12:2-3

The following former awardees and other associates have signed the above statement; some are available for interviews:

DANIEL ELLSBERG

A former government analyst, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret government history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times and other newspapers in 1971. He was an admirer of Sam Adams when they were both working on Vietnam and in March 1968 disclosed to the New York Times some of Adams’ accurate analysis, helping head off reinforcement of 206,000 additional troops into South Vietnam and a widening of the war at that time to neighboring countries.

FRANK GREVIL

Grevil, a former Danish intelligence analyst, was imprisoned for giving the Danish press documents showing that Denmark’s Prime Minister (now NATO Secretary General) disregarded warnings that there was no authentic evidence of WMD in Iraq; in Copenhagen, Denmark.

KATHARINE GUN

Gun is a former British government employee who faced two years imprisonment in England for leaking a U.S. intelligence memo before the invasion of Iraq. The memo indicated that the U.S. had mounted a spying “surge” against U.N. Security Council delegations in early 2003 in an effort to win approval for an Iraq war resolution. The leaked memo — published by the British newspaper The Observer on March 2, 2003 — was big news in parts of the world, but almost ignored in the United States. The U.S. government then failed to obtain a U.N. resolution approving war, but still proceeded with the invasion.

DAVID MacMICHAEL

MacMichael is a former CIA analyst. He resigned in the 1980s when he came to the conclusion that the CIA was slanting intelligence on Central America for political reasons. He is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

RAY McGOVERN

McGovern was a CIA analyst for 27 years, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

CRAIG MURRAY

Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was fired from his job when he objected to Uzbeks being tortured to gain “intelligence” on “terrorists.” Upon receiving his Sam Adams award, Murray said, “I would rather die than let someone be tortured in an attempt to give me some increment of security.” Observers have noted that Murray was subjected to similar character assassination techniques as Julian Assange is now encountering to discredit him.

COLEEN ROWLEY

Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. She recently co-wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed titled, “WikiLeaks and 9/11: What if? Frustrated investigators might have chosen to leak information that their superiors bottled up, perhaps averting the terrorism attacks.”

LARRY WILKERSON

Wilkerson, Col., U.S. Army (ret.), former chief of staff to Secretary Colin Powell at the State Department, who criticized what he called the “Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal.” See recent interviews

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

TheRealNews interviews Ray McGovern about Wikileaks

They are the real deal

Ex-CIA analyst, and anti-war activist Ray McGovern is on Team Wikileaks!


BUY THIS SHIRT

Also, Donate to The Real News Network

FILM- The War on Democracy

If you haven't seen this film, watch it. Now.

Global Politics in 30 seconds

Thank you to Cindy Sheehan for passing this golden little nugget along.

Global Politics in 30 seconds:

CIA moonlights in corporate world

The CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side.

Full article at POLITICO.com

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eNxgZJdE

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

“If any officer requests permission for outside employment, those requests are reviewed not just for legality, but for propriety,” CIA spokesman George Little told POLITICO.

There is much about the policy that is unclear, including how many officers have availed themselves of it, how long it has been in place and what types of outside employment have been allowed. The CIA declined to provide additional details.

Generally, federal employees across the vast government work force are allowed to moonlight in the private sector, but under tight guidelines, that can vary from agency to agency, according to the federal Office of Government Ethics.

“In general, for most nonpolitical employees, they may engage in outside employment, but there are some restrictions,” said Elaine Newton, an attorney at the Office of Government Ethics. She explained that agencies throughout the federal government set their own policies on outside employment, and that they all typically require that the employment not represent a conflict of interest with the employee’s federal job and that the employee have written approval before taking on the work.

But the close ties between active-duty and retired CIA officers at one consulting company show the degree to which CIA-style intelligence gathering techniques have been employed by hedge funds and financial institutions in the global economy.

The firm is called Business Intelligence Advisors, and it is based in Boston. BIA was founded and is staffed by a number of retired CIA officers, and it specializes in the arcane field of “deception detection.” BIA’s clients have included Goldman Sachs and the enormous hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, according to spokesmen for both firms.

BIA has employed active-duty CIA officers in the past, although BIA president Cheryl Cook said that has “not been the case with BIA for some time.”

But the ties between BIA and the intelligence world run deep. The name itself was chosen as a play off CIA. And the presence of so many former CIA personnel on the payroll at BIA causes confusion as to whether the intelligence firm is actually an extension of the agency itself. As a result, BIA places a disclaimer in some of its corporate materials to clarify that it is not, in fact, controlled by Langley.

BIA’s clients can put the company on a retainer for as much as $400,000 to $800,000 a year. And in return, they receive access to a variety of services, from deception detection to other programs that feature the CIA intelligence techniques.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html#ixzz0eNxlOtw2

CIA bombs the CIA

from the BBC

SPY vs SPY vs SPY: CIA bomber was a CIA agent

The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was an al-Qaeda double agent, US media reports say.

He is said to have been a doctor from Jordan, arrested there a year ago.

He was then reportedly recruited by the Jordanians and CIA, who wrongly thought they had turned him, and given a mission to find al-Qaeda leaders.

The reports came as the top US military intelligence officer in Afghanistan issued a scathing assessment of the state of the intelligence effort there.

In a report, Maj Gen Michael Flynn said that US intelligence in Afghanistan was still "unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate and the people they are trying to protect and persuade".

The study, published by the think tank Center for a New American Security, cites one officer's remarks that the US was "clueless" due to its lack of useful intelligence about the country.

However the report's findings were rejected by Mike Hurley, a former member of the US 9/11 commission and a former CIA chief in Afghanistan.

He told the BBC: "Nowhere in the report does the group... suggest that there is not a significant role for intelligence to play in finding and fixing and finishing off enemy leaders in Afghanistan. That's precisely their job, that's what they're trying to do."

Changing sides

The attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.

The Washington Post quoted two former US government officials as saying that the alleged attacker had lured the CIA officers into a meeting with a promise of new information on al-Qaeda's top leadership.

The reports named him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old al-Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by Jordanian intelligence over a year ago.

His specific mission was thought to be tracking down al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The CIA has declined to comment on the reports.

Jordanian intelligence believed they had brought Humam al-Balawi over to their side and sent him to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qaeda, US network NBC says.

According to Western intelligence officials quoted in the reports, Humam al-Balawi called his handlers last week to arrange a meeting at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, where he said he would relay urgent information about Zawahiri.

Once inside the base, the reports say, he blew himself up killing seven CIA employees and his handler, whom Jordanian media have named as Ali bin Zeid.

Questions were raised after the bomb was detonated in the base's gym last week about how the attacker could have managed to pass through security.

The Washington Post says he was picked up in a car outside the base and driven in without being thoroughly searched.

A US official, also a former CIA employee, told the Associated Press news agency that such people were often not required to go through full security checks, in order to help gain their trust.

"When you're trying to build a rapport and literally ask them to risk [their lives] for you, you've got a lot to do to build their trust," he said.

Where were you on 9-11-01?

I remember waking up, getting ready for English class. It was my second week of my freshman year of college. Before leaving to catch the bus to the other campus, I was checking the primussucks.com bullitan board, as was my habit at the time. There were several posts about the "airline accident" in NYC, and then suddenly, there were posts of a second plane hitting. It was probably a few minutes after 9am. My class didn't start until 10:30am.

I ran downstairs to see what was going on on the news. I sat there watching in disbeleif. I had become friends with the RD of the dorm, and I ran and got her, because I figured she ought to know.

She and I sat there watching transfixed as the towers burned. As the first tower fell, I was in total disbelief. I knew at that time that a steel structure building had never collapsed due to fire. Cookie was concerned that the buildings might burn down, and I mentioned that to her. Time was static, so I don't know how many minutes after that I was proven wrong. I imagined all the people's lives inside being extinguished in a horrible instant, and my could feel my heart, and my soul, fall to the floor with the tower. Felt completely empty.

Cookie, the RD turned to me and said, "I would hate to be president right now." I looked at her, and asked if she was kidding. I looked back at the television and said, looking into the smoke, "for at least a year after something like this, you could pass whatever laws you wanted to. If he wants to the Senate to declare war, he can declare war on whomever he wants. Nobody will question the President during a crisis like this."

Looking back, I don't know why I said that, or how I knew that's what would happen. I'm not a Machiavellian person. It was what little American history I'd studied, probably; knowing how we interned the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. Knowing how we had the Red Scare during the 1950s. During the Gulf War I was too young to understand what was going on, but I knew enough by the time Clinton was in office that I was against Clinton bombing Iraqi aspirin factories during the Monica Lewinsky scandal as a distraction. I had followed the 2000 election quite closely as a Senior in high school, watched as it was stolen, and was convinced that G.W. Bush would, like his father before him, declare war on somebody. I even have a letter I was assigned to write myself in High School by myself as a College Sophomore writing to my self as a High School Senior about what the future holds for me. It scares me a little now, but I said in that letter, half joking, "with George W Bush in office, we're sure to be at war with somebody by now, for no good reason." There was an inevitability I felt about it. Perhaps I was just jaded.

Sitting there watching as the remaining tower burned, Cookie looked back at me after my comment with tears and bit of anger in her eyes, visibly upset by what I'd said, and understandably. She said then, what I would come to agree with in the following October, when the congress passed the USAPATRIOT act. She said then, sitting next to me, "I hope you're wrong."

I wish I had been too.

***

Back on the couch, watching the images of the one tower smolder, still feeling raw as I felt the souls of every person in tower two extinguished in an instant, I didn't know what the appropriate thing to do was. Everything felt out of place and inappropriate in light of recent events. At 10:00 or so, I went and got on the bus to go to the Portland campus.

English class was still held, and I thank my professor to this day for not canceling class. His example is exactly what was actually meant when they said, "If we change our ways, the terrorists have won." For an hour and a half, we did grammar and writing style, as if nothing had happened.

I don't think Mr Phillipson realized at the time exactly what was happening or how serious it was, and he apologized the following class period for not having canceled class, but several of us thanked him.

Those of us who came into class, looked around confused about what to do or feel. Then our professor came in, threw his books down on the table, and said, "so, crazy stuff going on huh? Okay, let's do grammar."

At the time it struck me as being cold and detached, but looking back, it was exactly what we needed. It was nice to leave the insanity that was going on outside and focus on "Strunk and White." That class that day was a sort of psychic haven, while people standing outside the classroom door watching the screens, talking to one another about the end of the world.

***

That night, there was a girl in my dorm whom like most kids in my building in the 2nd week of classes, I didn't know, she was on the phone that night in the hallway, calling over and over again, crying, trying to find out if a friend of hers was on one of those four flights.

The phone lines were still all completely jammed as everybody in the USA was calling their loved ones to find out if they were okay. I really wanted for her friend or relative not to have been on one of those planes. It turned out that her friend was indeed on one of those planes. She dropped out of school. I did not see her again after that.

Over the next couple days, as the list of names of those who were in the towers came in, I made a list, and printed it off, and hung it up in the hallway of my dorm outside my room. I made it a point to read every single one and imagine who they were, see in my minds eye the person attached to that name. Something inside of me broke, but for the better. The bubble of security that had come with being an American born in the 1980s, the end of the Cold War nothing but a fuzzy childhood memory, had been not popped but shattered. There was an entire world of people out there, and it mattered what our government did. We could die because people in our government were killing people somewhere else in the world. I hadn't been paying attention in much detail to what my government had been doing. It was time for me to start.

I remember watching over the next few days, as no clear case was built for Osama Bin Laden. They just started repeating that it was suspected to be him, and at some point, it shifted from being suspected to be him, to be unquestionably by him, without any supporting evidence to report confirming this. It was because of this that I became skeptical of the official storyline very early on. There just wasn't any evidence to support what they were saying, or if there was, they certainly weren't presenting it. They were just stating things as fact with no evidence. The Bush administration refused to investigate for nearly two years, despite the pleas of family members who had lost their loved ones. Documents released on the matter were few, and those that were were almost entirely redacted.

It seemed like the talking heads were just making it all up, and just expecting us to believe whatever they said because we were in a state of shock, and they were the NEWS.
I had become too cynical and skeptical to just believe whatever I was told. All I wanted was evidence. Apparently four women who had lost their husbands in the attacks felt the same way. The whole thing reminded me too much of George Orwell's "1984."



Later, on October 26th, 2001, I saw on the crawl at the bottom of the screen that the congress had passed a new "anti-terrorism" bill. I didn't understand the need. Terrorism was illegal already. They didn't need to pass a law against it. I wondered what it could possibly be about. With the help of Jefferson.gov and the New York Center for Constitutional Rights, I started reading through the USAPATRIOT act. Turns out it was something straight out of 1984. At that point, I became more skeptical of the official story. Especially as I then learned from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights that this bill had been prepared and drafted a year prior, but was introduced at the last minute, giving nobody a chance to read it.

And that's really when everything began to change. Our libraries were (and still are) subject to search at any time by federal agents, and librarians who spoke out were slapped with law suits and detaining orders, telling them that they could not speak to anybody not even a lawyer. The librarians started putting up signs saying that federal agents had NOT searched their records yet. Over time those signs disappeared, and the librarians couldn't talk about it, by law.

I checked Jefferson.gov to find out who'd voted against the USAPATRIOT act. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. They became my heroes, even though I didn't know who they were at the time.

I became urgently interested in foreign affairs, history, and policy. I asked the questions that everybody was discouraged from asking, like, "why do they hate us?" I didn't want to go to the mall or go shopping or go to Disneyland, like Bush advised. I didn't want to "soak up the sun, and tell everyone to lighten up" as Sherly Crow's song, released just barely a year after, suggested. This was serious, and the responsibility was personal.

I researched our CIA's and Military's history in the Middle East and all around the world. It became clear to me through study why the USA was hated. 9-11 was, as Ron Paul said, "blowback."



For me, 9-11 was a wake up call, an alarm going off, calling me to civic responsibility. To personal responsibility. It seemed to me that most of the country hit the snooze button.

Don't forget.

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