New Obama Birth Certificate is a Forgery

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 28, 2011

Our investigation of the purported Obama birth certificate released by Hawaiian authorities today reveals the document is a shoddily contrived hoax. Infowars.com computer specialists dismissed the document as a fraud soon after examining it.

Check out the document released by WhiteHouse.gov for yourself.

Upon first inspection, the document appears to be a photocopy taken from state records and printed on official green paper. However, when the government released PDF is taken into the image editing program Adobe Illustrator, we discover a number of separate elements that reveal the document is not a single scan on paper, as one might surmise. Elements are placed in layers or editing boxes over the scan and green textured paper, which is to say the least unusual.

When sections of the document are enlarged significantly, we discover glaring inconsistencies. For instance, it appears the date stamped on the document has been altered. Moreover, the document contains text, numbers, and lines with suspicious white borders indicating these items were pasted from the original scan and dropped over a background image of green paper.

VIDEO: Alex Jones gives proof that Obama’s purported birth certificate is fraud.

Let’s assume the state of Hawaii scanned the original document and placed it on the green textured background. This does not explain the broken out or separate elements. There is no logical reason for this to be done unless the government planned to modify the document and make it appear to be something other than it is.

There are two elements of interest, as shown in the image to the above – both entries for the date accepted by the local registry. This appears to have been modified in an image editing program.

The media was quick to dispel the fact the document was modified. “Our analysis of the latest controversy: The original birth certificate was probably in a ‘negative’ form, and someone at the White House took it upon themselves to doctor it up so the form can be readable,” writesJoe Brooks for Wireupdate.

Nathan Goulding, writing for the National Review, tells us anybody can open the White House released PDF in Illustrator and it will break out into layers. “I’ve confirmed that scanning an image, converting it to a PDF, optimizing that PDF, and then opening it up in Illustrator, does in fact create layers similar to what is seen in the birth certificate PDF. You can try it yourself at home,” he writes.

Indeed, but this does not answer the question why in the Obama birth certificate PDF the layers or elements contain dates – which appear to be modified – and the signature of the state registrar. If the document was acquired from state records in whole, why was it necessary to add elements? Goulding and Brooks do not address this issue.

These layers are also revealed by the White House issued PDF’s hex file in freeware hex editor. Within its code are listed 8 image masks, which if changed from value “true” to “false” turn off and on to reveal the layers as demonstrated in the video and in Illustrator. Whether these represent compression artifacts or other digitizing processes, or whether these masks represent deliberate manipulation remains to be conclusively shown.

<< /Length 17 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 123 /Height 228 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >> << /Length 13 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 199 /Height 778 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 19 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 47 /Height 216 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 15 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 42 /Height 274 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 10 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 1454 /Height 1819
/ImageMask true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 25 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 132 /Height 142 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 23 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 243 /Height 217 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

<< /Length 21 0 R /Type /XObject /Subtype /Image /Width 34 /Height 70 /ImageMask
true /BitsPerComponent 1 /Filter /FlateDecode >>

As Market-Ticker.org points out, it may prove to be significant that two of the boxes appear over both of the “date accepted” boxes, as well as the “Mother’s occupation box.” Was there a need to tamper with the dates on the document or other areas? The recent stamp date and issuing signature of the state registrar also contain an edited layer.

Questions have also been raised about the number at the top of the document issued by the Department of Health, number 61 10641, as one part of the number is in a separate layer when viewed in Illustrator, as demonstrated in the video above. This may prove to be significant. A long form birth certificate obtained by the Honolulu Star in 2009 from a female born one day after Obama and whose form was accepted three days after Obama’s document contains a Dept. of Health number that is lower, 61 10637. There are other subtle differences, such as the use of “Aug.” for the date rather than “August,” and the use of “Honolulu, Oahu” rather than “Honolulu, Hawaii” (seen also in the 1962 certificate below) which may or may not be significant.

More to the point, this certificate and others, like the one posted below it, have visible seals. No issuing seal can be seen on the document released today by Obama.
Negative of long form birth certificate for Aug. 5, 1961 birth in Honolulu, released in 1966 with seal and dated signatures.Published by Honolulu Star and World Net Daily in 2009.

Photo of physical copy of long form birth certificate for June 15, 1962 birth in Honolulu, also with visible seal.

Infowars will continue to analyze this issue as more information comes in. It is significant that the Obama Administration was pressured into responding to this controversy, whatever the final analysis of this document. However, the administration still needs to release his other records which have been sealed at great expense. Is there an issue with his being naturalized in Indonesia? Why are his college records at Columbia and Occidental sealed, and what do they contain? Did Obama travel to Pakistan on a foreign passport? These questions and many others have not been properly answered.

http://www.infowars.com/new-obama-birth-certificate-is-a-forgery/

Obama Birth Certificate “Raises As Many Questions As It Answers”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
April 27, 2011

Despite some political commentators insisting that the White House release of what it claims to be Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate represents the end of the “crazy birther fringe” movement, those who most fiercely pushed doubts surrounding the president’s eligibility are not convinced.

While presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump welcomed the release of the document, he was quick to cast suspicion as to why it took so long and if the certificate was even genuine.

Trump said it was “amazing” that the document surfaced “all of a sudden” after he had begun asking questions about the controversy, adding that the certificate should be analyzed to determine its authenticity.

Indeed, the Smoking Gun website has already compiled a list of inconsistencies found in the document, including asking, “If the original document was in a bound volume (as reflected by the curvature of the left hand side of the certificate), how can the green patterned backgroundof the document’s safety paper be so seamless?”

Meanwhile, World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah, who has been at the forefront of the birther movement, heavily promoting Jerome Corsi’s investigations into the matter along with his new book, Where’s The Birth Certificate?, reacted to the news by saying the birth certificate “raises as many questions as it answers”.

At the center of the storm is the argument about whether the fact that Obama’s father was born in Kenya, which is confirmed on the document released by the White House today, makes Obama ineligible to become president because he is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States.

“Some of the cases challenging Obama have explained that he was a dual citizen through his father at his birth, and they contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born citizens,” reports WND, meaning that the document released by the White House today could even lead toproving Obama’s ineligibility.

“The news media and the political establishment were quick to rush to judgment regarding Obama’s eligibility in 2008, without any basis. It would be a big mistake for everyone to jump to a conclusion now based on the release of this document, which raises as many questions as it answers,” Farah said today.

Some political commentators have hastily insisted that the release of the document means, “The “birther” movement is now dead as a political force,” a rush to judgment given the fact that the White House’s direct involvement now means the entire controversy will only continue to generate attention.

Since the American people have been habitually lied to about everything under the sun, with trust in government at an all time low, a PDF file put out directly by the Obama administration itself isn’t going to make the furore die down at all, and will only lead to claims that the document is a carefully crafted fake.

Obama’s long form birth certificate –http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

Correspondence with the Hawaii State Department of Health can be seen here (PDF).

http://www.infowars.com/obama-birth-certificate-raises-as-many-questions-as-it-answers/

Something to Think About

From Larry – And The Truth Be Told!

Everyone concentrates on the problems we’re having in Our Country lately:

Illegal immigration, hurricane recovery, alligators attacking people in Florida …..
Not me — I concentrate on solutions for the problems — it’s a win-win situation.
* Dig a moat the length of the Mexican border.
* Send the dirt to New Orleans to raise the level of the levees.
* Put the Florida alligators in the moat along the Mexican border.

Any other problems you would like for me to solve today?

Think about these:

1. Cows
2. The Constitution
3. The Ten Commandments

Cows:

Is it just I, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Canada almost three years ago, right to thestall where she slept in the state of Washington? And, they tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow.

THE CONSTITUTION:
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq …why don’t we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and we’re not using it anymore.

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS:
The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments posted in a courthouse is this — you cannot post ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ , ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery’ and ‘Thou Shall Not Lie’ in a building full of lawyers, judges and politicians; it creates a hostile work environment.

April 21: The Divine Wind on Conspiracy Cafe

9/11 premonition in TV mini series Noble House. PAR CON image key to WTC demise? PAR CON means Plasma Arc Conversion a means of electro thermal incineration. It can melt steel like butter. Remember the Knowing Code? Conspiracy Cafe went to the limit on the first revelation. The sequence of numbers was a phone number to a town where the DOE has a high level research lab specializing in magnetic resonance and sub surface flow and radiation. Hmmm. US government takes down HAARP website. Oops! OKC's McVeigh connected to Moussaoui in ABC documentary you're forbidden to see. The two faces of Saddam and the death of the photographer in Libya. Conspiracy Theory trailer not so far out today. Image of the WTC and the 'flash' encoded. The debt bomb is set to explode. Warning from China's elites. US dollar tanking slow but sure. The 'friends' of BP club dead and missing. UN says earth has human rights. Your i phone is tracking you. FBI pays Lockheed Martin to spy on you too. Pole shift beginning. Al Qaeda gets air support in Libya in the enemy shift. Dangerous gas extraction puts poisons in the water. The divine wind from Fukushima is not the only conspiracy for Conspiracy Cafe.

Four Stories This Week Prove that the War On Terror Is a Farce

Executive Summary: Two members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 'dis America's hyper-aggressive imperialism ... Newly-leaked documents show that innocent people were thrown into Gitmo because they wore Casio watches or were Al Jazeera reporters … Al Qaeda assassin worked for MI6 … And – yes – the Iraq war was for oil.

Four stories from the last week confirm what many have been saying for years: the war on terror is a farce.

Military Brass Say Imperial Wars of Aggression are Hurting America

I've said for years that the war on terror is weakening America.

I've pointed out that experts say that the Iraq war has increased the threat of terrorism. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

As I noted last year:

The very hawkish and pro-war Rand Corporation - released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida".

The report confirms that the war on terror is actually weakening national security. As a press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative". And Newsweek has now admitted that the war on terror is wholly unnecessary.

***

As American reporter Gareth Porter writes in Asia Times:

Three weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.

Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...

***

General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya [yes, Libya], Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].

***

When this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."

***

The Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy" their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)...

Rumsfeld's paper was given to the White House only two weeks after Bush had approved a US military operation in Afghanistan directed against bin Laden and the Taliban regime. Despite that decision, Rumsfeld's proposal called explicitly for postponing indefinitely US airstrikes and the use of ground forces in support of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in order to try to catch bin Laden.

Instead, the Rumsfeld paper argued that the US should target states that had supported anti-Israel forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

***

A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".

And our top military and intelligence leaders - as well as Nobel prize winning economists - say that war is destroying our economy. The amount we're spending is insane. For example, I've previously noted that the rational for a large-scale war in Afghanistan doesn't make sense:

The U.S. admits there are only a small handful of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. As ABC notes:

U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.

With 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at an estimated yearly cost of $30 billion, it means that for every one al Qaeda fighter, the U.S. will commit 1,000 troops and $300 million a year...

This week, two senior members of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff - Captain Wayne Porter of the U.S. Navy and Colonel Mark Mykleby of the Marine Corps - agreed that America is on the wrong track. As Fareed Zakaria summarized their report yesterday:

That the United States has embraced an entirely wrong set of priorities, particularly with regard to its federal budget. We have overreacted to Islamic extremism. We have pursued military solutions instead of political ones.

***

We are underinvesting in the real sources of national power - our youth, our infrastructure and our economy. The United States sees the world through the lens of threats, while failing to understand that influence, competitiveness and innovation are the key to advancing American interests in the modern world... Above all we must invest in our children. Only by educating them properly will we ensure our ability to compete in the future.

***

It's likely that the essay had some official sanction, which means that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or perhaps even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had seen it and did not stop its publication.

***

Washington needs to make sure that the United States does not fall into the imperial trap of every other superpower in history, spending greater and greater time and money and energy stabilizing disorderly parts of the world on the periphery, while at the core its own industrial and economic might is waning.

We have to recognize that fixing America's fiscal problems - paring back the budget busters like entitlements and also defense spending - making the economy competitive, dealing with immigration and outlining a serious plan for energy use are the best strategies to stay a superpower, not going around killing a few tribal leaders in the remote valleys and hills of Afghanistan.

Iraq: A War for ... Oil?

As I've repeatedly noted, Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.

Former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraqlong before 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before9/11. (The government apparently planned the Afghanistan war before 9/11 as well. See this and this).

The Independent confirmed last week:

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

***

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

***

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil ...

The Independent also notes that one of the main movers and shakers for the Iraq oil shenanigans has been mucky around in Libya as well:

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters ...

Imprisoning Innocents at Gitmo

As I noted in 2009:

One of the main excuses used to justify torture is that the people being tortured were bloodthirsty terrorists, who would do far worse to us if we didn't stop them.

Is that true?

Judge for yourself:

• The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that many of those being held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush administration officials knew that they were innocent. Moreover, he said:

  "This philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.

  Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasantsfor the most part and mostly Muslim to boot."

  (see this and this). Indeed, Wilkerson signed a declaration under penalty of perjury stating that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld covered up the fact that hundreds of innocent men were sent to Guantanamo because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for the war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

• Many others also state that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as "suspected terrorists" (and see this movie)

• The commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Janis Karpinski, estimates that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent

This has been confirmed by the recent release of U.S. military files. As the Guardianreported yesterday:

The US military dossiers, obtained by the New York Times and the Guardian, reveal how ... many prisoners were flown to the Guantánamo cages and held captive for years on the flimsiest grounds, or on the basis of lurid confessions extracted by maltreatment.

The files depict a system often focused less on containing dangerous terrorists or enemy fighters, than on extracting intelligence. Among inmates who proved harmless were an 89-year-old Afghan villager, suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

Anyone who was affiliated with Pakistan's national intelligence service, or that had been held as a prisoner in a Taliban jail, or that wore a certain type of watch, was considered a terrorist:

US authorities listed the main Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), as a terrorist organisation alongside groups such as al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence.

Interrogators were told to regard links to any of these as an indication of terrorist or insurgent activity.

***

A number of British nationals and residents were held for years even though US authorities knew they were not Taliban or al-Qaida members. One Briton ... was rendered to Guantánamo simply because he had been held in a Taliban prison and was thought to have knowledge of their interrogation techniques.

***

Another 17-page file, titled "GTMO matrix of threat indicators for enemy combatants", advises interrogators to look out for signs of terrorist activity ranging from links to a number of mosques around the world, including two in London, to ownership of a particular model of Casio watch.

"The Casio was known to be given to the students at al-Qaida bombmaking training courses in Afghanistan," it states.

Others were held because they led religious services or drove cabs in certain geographic regions, or because they were Al Jazeera reporters:

One man was transferred to the facility "because he was a mullah, who led prayers at Manu mosque in Kandahar province, Afghanistan … which placed him in a position to have special knowledge of the Taliban".

***

Another prisoner was shipped to the base "because of his general knowledge of activities in the areas of Khowst and Kabul based as a result of his frequent travels through the region as a taxi driver".

The files also reveal that an al-Jazeera journalist was held at Guantánamo for six years, partly in order to be interrogated about the Arabic news network.

His dossier states that one of the reasons was "to provide information on … the al-Jazeera news network's training programme, telecommunications equipment, and newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo and Afghanistan, including the network's acquisition of a video of UBL [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with UBL".

Al Qaeda Assassin and ... Green Beret?

The Guardian points out today that U.S. military reports indicate that an Al Qaeda assassin worked for the Britain's MI6 intelligence agency.

You decide whether this connotes hanky panky or incompetence by Western intelligence services.

As I've previously noted, a former Pakistani president alleged that another prominent Al Qaeda terrorist also worked for MI6.

I've also noted:

• The FBI had penetrated the cell which carried out the 1993 world trade center bombing, but had -- at the last minute -- canceled the plan to have its FBI infiltrator substitute fake powder for real explosives, against the infiltrator's strong wishes (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view)? See alsothis TV news report
  

• The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House(confirmed here by the Co-Chair of the Joint Inquiry and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham; and see this Newsweek article)

• One of al-Qaeda’s top trainers in terrorism and how to hijack airplanes, who was a very close associate of Bin Laden, was an American citizen who was an operative for the FBI, the CIA, and the Army, and a green beret (see this article from the San Francisco Chronicle and this article from the Globe and Mail). Indeed, while he was acting as an FBI informant, he smuggled Bin Laden in and out of Afghanistan, helped plan the attacks on US embassies in Africa, and apparently played a pivotal role in planning 9/11.

According to a 1995 Boston Globe report, his entry into the country was made possible by “clandestine CIA sponsorship.” According to West Point's Combatting Terrorism Center, the terrorist was:

Given a visa waiver under a “little known visa waiver program that allows the CIA and other security agencies to bring valuable agents into the country, bypassing the usual immigration formalities.” While perhaps “little known,” this authority was granted to the Director of National Intelligence by the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 and codified in 50 U.S.C. §403h, which states that if “the admission of a particular alien into the United States for permanent residence is in the interest of national security or essential to the furtherance of the national intelligence mission, such alien and his immediate family shall be admitted to the United States for permanent residence without regard to their inadmissibility under the immigration or any other laws and regulations….”

Even assuming that such shenanigans are due to sheer incompetence only reaffirms that the war on terror has been one of the biggest farces in history.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/04/4-stories-this-week-prove-that-war-on.html

Feds mine Facebook for info

Federal investigators in Detroit have taken the rare step of obtaining search warrants that give them access to Facebook accounts of suspected criminals.

The warrants let investigators view photographs, email addresses, cell phone numbers, lists of friends who might double as partners in crime, and see GPS locations that could help disprove alibis.

There have been a few dozen search warrants for Facebook accounts nationwide since May 2009, including three approved recently by a federal magistrate judge in Detroit, according to a Detroit News analysis of publicly available federal court records.

The trend raises privacy and evidentiary concerns in a rapidly evolving digital age and illustrates the potential law-enforcement value of social media, experts said.

Locally, Facebook accounts have been seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and FBI to investigate more than a dozen gang members and accused bank robber Anthony Wilson of Detroit.

“To be honest with you, it bothers me,” said Wilson, 25, who was indicted Tuesday on bank robbery charges after the FBI compared Facebook photos with images taken from a bank surveillance video. “Facebook could have let me know what was going on. Instead, I got my door kicked down, and all of a sudden I’m in handcuffs.”

Federal investigators defend the practice. “With technology today, we would be crazy not to look at every avenue,” said Special Agent Donald Dawkins, spokesman with the ATF in Detroit.

The FBI suspected Wilson was behind a string of bank robberies across Metro Detroit that netted more than $6,300. Special Agent Juan Herrera said an informant told the FBI about Wilson’s Facebook account. It was registered under the name “Anthony Mrshowoff Wilson.”

In several photos on Facebook, Wilson was wearing a blue baseball hat and blue hooded sweatshirt, both featuring a Polo emblem. That’s the same outfit the FBI said the suspect wore when he stole $390 from a Bank of America Branch in Grosse Pointe Woods on Nov. 26, according to federal court records.

His Facebook photos also included one in which Wilson wore a red Philadelphia Phillies baseball hat, which the FBI said Wilson donned while robbing $1,363 from a PNC Bank branch in St. Clair Shores on Dec. 21, according to court records.

On Jan. 26, U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia Morgan gave approval for the FBI to seize information from Wilson’s Facebook account. The warrant was executed within four hours.

Facebook gave the FBI Wilson’s contact information, including birth date, cell phone number, friends, incoming and outgoing messages, and photos.

Wilson was charged in a criminal complaint Feb. 7 and indicted Tuesday on five bank robbery charges. He is free on a $10,000 unsecured bond.

“I’m innocent until proven guilty,” Wilson told The Detroit News. “They’re basically going off my clothes. Ralph Lauren is a popular clothing line.”

He’s since updated his Facebook photo. Wilson swapped the blue Polo hat and blue Polo sweatshirt for white ones featuring the iconic Polo horse.

Despite the search warrants, his Facebook information page was still public Thursday.

Technology challenging

Morgan, the federal magistrate judge, also approved two search warrant requests from the ATF late last year and in February to search the accounts of at least 16 people suspected of belonging to a Detroit area gang. The affidavit justifying the search remains sealed in federal court.

Even with the access, investigators are having a hard time keeping up with high-tech crooks. In February, an FBI official testified before a House subcommittee about the difficulty accessing electronic communications on social media sites and email even with court approval.

“The FBI and other government agencies are facing a potentially widening gap between our legal authority to intercept electronic communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to actually intercept those communications,” FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni testified.

Monitoring real-time Web-based conversations is particularly difficult, she said.

The FBI uses the term “Going Dark” to label the gap between having the authority to access electronic communications and the Internet service providers’ capability to gather the information. “This gap poses a growing threat to public safety,” Caproni testified.

Concerns over privacy

Information gleaned from the Internet raises constitutional and evidentiary issues that must be considered, including privacy and the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, said Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen, who also is an evidence professor at Wayne State University. Evidence obtained from the Internet and social media sites also raises issues about whether the information can be authenticated, he said.

“The Internet is the next frontier for the development of Fourth Amendment law,” Rosen said, referring to the amendment protecting against unreasonable searches and seizures.

A Facebook spokesman said the company receives a “significant volume of third-party data requests” that are reviewed individually for “legal sufficiency.”

“We do not comment publicly on data requests, even when we disclose the request to the user. We have this policy to respect privacy and avoid the risk that even acknowledging the existence of a request could wrongly harm the reputation of an individual,” said Andrew Noyes, Facebook manager of public policy communications. “We never turn over ’content’ records in response to U.S. legal process unless that process is a search warrant reviewed by a judge. We are required to regularly push back against overbroad requests for user records, but in most cases we are able to convince the party issuing legal process to withdraw the overbroad request, but if they do not, we fight the matter in court (and have a history of success in those cases.)”

Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI declined to discuss techniques used by investigators.

It is unclear exactly how many search warrants have been executed for Facebook accounts. But requests - in Maryland , New York , North Carolina , Virginia , California , Pennsylvania , Montana and Alabama - come amid a backlash from users who complained too much of their personal information was being disclosed .

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation , a digital civil liberties organization based in San Francisco, launched a campaign recently to encourage Facebook and others to disclose when and how often law-enforcement agencies request user account information.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/article_bbd23382-6ecf-11e0-aeef-001a4bcf6878.html

U.S. Troops Died in Vain in Iraq

Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, I have unequivocally maintained several things about the deaths of U.S. troops. Every one of the 4,450 U.S. soldiers who has died so far in Iraq has died unnecessarily, senselessly, for a lie, and in vain.

This latter point struck a nerve with a reader of a recent article of mine on the Iraq war, "What If Iraq Had Weapons of Mass Destruction?," that was reprinted by LibertarianChristians.com. Although my critic didn’t "necessarily disagree" with some of my conclusions, he did "disagree on one major point":

The soldiers did not die in vain. There is now a chance for freedom in a country that did not have it, if that is in vain then we all must question our purpose here on earth. I would not insult their families or their honor by reprinting such an inflammatory statement.

Does this mean there was no "chance for freedom" in Iraq before the United States invaded? A look at what has happened to oppressive regimes in the Middle East this year should answer that question. One bullet put by an Iraqi into the head of Saddam Hussein could have given Iraq a "chance for freedom." There was always a "chance for freedom" in Iraq. And even if there wasn’t, who is to say that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of U.S. troops is a price that should have been paid to give Iraq a "chance for freedom"? Is my critic willing to sacrifice one of his children so Iraq can have a "chance for freedom"? I don’t think so.

Look at what has happened to our freedoms in this country since 9/11 and since the troops started defending our freedoms by fighting in Iraq. Our freedoms have gone down the drain. Is it worth giving up our freedoms – like the freedom to travel without being sexually molested – so that Iraqis can have a "chance for freedom"?

Although I don’t discount the brutality of Saddam Hussein’s regime, some Iraqis who used to have legs, jobs, fathers, mothers, children, freedom to worship, and freedom to not be blown up by a suicide bomber don’t think much of Iraq’s newfound "chance for freedom."

And why is it that no totalitarian country has a "chance for freedom" unless the United States intervenes militarily or otherwise?

As much as I don’t like to write it and as much as Americans don’t want to read it, U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq died in vain. This means that their deaths were ineffectual, unsuccessful, and futile. Their deaths were without real significance, value, or importance. Their deaths were without effect, to no avail, and to no purpose.

I realize that this truth might be especially painful to the thousands of Americans who have lost loved ones in Iraq. I am not insensitive to the fact that every American soldier killed in Iraq was someone’s father, husband, son, brother, uncle, nephew, grandson, and, in about a hundred cases, someone’s mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, or granddaughter. This painful truth should embolden those who have lost loved ones to never support or encourage any relative, friend, acquaintance, neighbor, coworker, business associate, or fellow church member ever joining the military.

I would like to mention three reasons why I believe U.S. soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq died in vain.

U.S. soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq died in vain because their mission in that conflict was undefined and unfinished.

When the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq hit the 1,000 milestone in September of 2004, President Bush said of the families of those killed: "My promise to them is that we will complete the mission so that their child or their husband or wife has not died in vain." Yet, back in October of 2003, in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, Bush had already announced: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." But if the United States prevailed and ceased major combat operations, then what was Bush doing talking about completing the mission?

Just what was our mission in Iraq? To remove Saddam Hussein? To defend our freedoms? To dismantle Al-Queda? To remove a threat to the United States? To liberate Iraq? To respond to an attack on the United States? To bring stability to the Middle East? To force Iraq to comply with UN resolutions? To free Muslim women from oppression? To impose democracy on Iraq? To retaliate for 9/11? To maintain the free flow of oil? To protect Israel? To destroy weapons of mass destruction?

A study back in 2004 documented 27 rationales given for the war by the Bush administration, war hawks in Congress, and the media between 9/11 and the October 2002 congressional resolution to use force in Iraq and concluded that it was "the Bush administration, and the President himself" that "established the majority of the rationales for the war and all of those rationales that make up the most prominent reasons for war." Another 2004 study – this one prepared for Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform – concluded that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice

repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq’s threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda.

U.S. soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq died in vain because the military they were in was engaged in an unjust war and immoral war.

Labeling the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq a just war does not make it one. A just war must be defensive, be in proportion to the gravity of the situation, have obtainable objectives, be preceded by a public declaration, be declared only by legitimate authority, and only be undertaken as a last resort. By no stretch of the imagination can the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq be called a just war. In fact, the war violates every "just war principle" ever invoked to justify a war.

What is the purpose of the U.S. military? I think it is beyond dispute that the U.S. military should be engaged exclusively in defending the United States, not defending other countries, not attacking other countries, not invading other countries, and not occupying other countries. Using the military for other purposes perverts the role of the military. Any other purposes, including not only enforcing UN resolutions, nation building, establishing democracy, changing regimes, training foreign armies, opening markets, and maintaining no-fly zones, but even providing disaster relief and dispensing humanitarian aid, perverts the purpose of the military.

Even if the United States went into Iraq with the best of intentions and most purest of motives (which of course it didn’t), is it the job of the U.S. military to free the oppressed peoples of the world from their autocratic rulers and totalitarian states? Absolutely not. Not only can’t it be done, it would be a never-ending mission that would perpetually shed U.S. blood and spend U.S. treasure.

U.S. soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq died in vain because of the Islamic state they inadvertently helped set up.

Yes, an Islamic state. A socialistic Islamic state under Sharia law in place of the secular government that existed.. Did any advocate for more war and bloodshed in the Middle East ever read article 2 of the new Iraqi constitution? This article stands the beloved American principle of separation of church and state on its head:

Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a foundation source of legislation.

No law may be enacted that contradicts the established provisions of Islam.

And what about articles 30, 31, and 34? These articles establish an Iraqi Great Society that would make LBJ proud:

The State shall guarantee to the individual and the family – especially children and women – social and health security, the basic requirements for living a free and decent life, and shall secure for them suitable income and appropriate housing.

The State shall guarantee social and health security to Iraqis in cases of old age, sickness, employment disability, homelessness, orphanhood, or unemployment, shall work to protect them from ignorance, fear and poverty, and shall provide them housing and special programs of care and rehabilitation, and this shall be regulated by law.

Every citizen has the right to health care. The State shall maintain public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and health institutions.

Free education in all its stages is a right for all Iraqis.

This is the constitution created by the United States-created and funded Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), not Al-Qaeda, Islamic extremists, militants, terrorists, insurgents, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Islamofascists. The administrator of the CPA reported directly to the U.S. secretary of defense – not to Osama bin Laden, a Muslim cleric or imam, or the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Why doesn’t Congressman Peter King investigate this?

U.S. soldiers killed while fighting in Iraq died in vain. They didn’t die defending anyone’s freedoms. They didn’t die protecting the United States. They didn’t die fighting "over there" so we wouldn’t have to fight "over here." They didn’t die to keep American safe from terrorists. They didn’t die to avenge 9/11.

They may have been sincere, patriotic, and altruistic. They may have fought bravely, heroically, and passionately. They may have died sacrificially, willingly, and eagerly. But they died for the imperial presidency (Bush or Obama), the U.S. empire, the U.S. military, the U.S. military-industrial complex, the national-security state, and a belligerent, reckless, and meddling U.S. foreign policy.

It is not honorable for a U.S. soldier to die fighting some unnecessary foreign war. It is in fact a shameful thing. All Americans ought to be ashamed of their government, its foreign policy, and the way it uses its military.

Why is it that those who opposed this monstrous war from the beginning are not considered the true patriots? Is it anti-American to think that it wasn’t worth one drop of blood from one American soldier to give Iraq a "chance for freedom"? How much more pro-American could one get? Real patriots don’t want to see any more U.S. soldiers die in vain.

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from Pensacola, FL. He is the author of Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare Stateand The Revolution that Wasn't. His newest book is Rethinking the Good War. Visit his website.

http://www.lewrockwell.com