by Eric Margolis

The release over the Internet of 92,000 US military field reports from Afghanistan by WikiLeaks has sent official Washington into an uproar. The leak story dominates the talk of this town and has pushed chatter about the steady weakening of the Obama presidency into the background.

The reports reveal the ugly underbelly of a war merchandised to the public as a noble mission to liberate oppressed women and clean up a nest of terrorists. They have embarrassed and outraged the hell out of Washington and its NATO allies. Comparisons to the famed Pentagon Papers of the Vietnam War era that undermined public support for that misbegotten conflict are inevitable.

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http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis198.html

I requested an email interview with the Boston U.S. census office. Here is their response:

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From: boston.pdsp@census.gov
Subject: Re: letter submitted to the New Hampshire Free Press
To: "Russell Kanning"
Date: Thursday, June 24, 2010, 11:45 AM

Please, feel free to send us questions.
We will be glad to work with you to inform your readers.

Thank you

Alexandra
-----

Here are the reader questions I sent to her:

What is the percentage of non-compliance?

Under what authority is the Census authorized to collect information beyond the number of residence per household?

Is it true that Census data was used to locate Japanese-Americans to round them up for internment camps. Was Arab-Americans information provided to Homeland Security?

Can you guaranty that census data will not end up on wikileaks?

Are census workers allowed to ignore "No Trespassing" signs?

original letter from Boston office:

by John W. Whitehead

For all intents and purposes, democratic government is breaking down, and we are approaching a crisis point in American society as greater numbers of those on the left and right are beginning to recognize. They see a government that is not only malfunctioning; it is also a government that is spinning out of control. And a government out of control is one that won’t listen.

In such an environment, when government is resolutely deaf and blind to the will of the people, what is to be done? In the words of journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, "dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots." The question is: how does one go about raising hell and forcing politicians to listen?

article:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead13.1.html

Dear Editor:

Please consider including the attached letter in your publication. It is important that communities learn about a variety of field activities that the U.S. Census Bureau is conducting and will continue to conduct throughout the decade.
Sincerely,
Alexandra Barker
"Alexandra Barker" boston.pdsp@census.gov

June 11, 2010
What You Should Expect from the Census Bureau

The 2010 Census will continue through the summer visiting households across the country to collect their information. However, not everyone knows that Census Bureau representatives visit or call a sample of households to collect information for a variety of important surveys administered throughout the decade. In an effort to avoid confusion, I would like to clarify these operations.

It is said that government workers now make, on average, 30% more than private sector workers. Put that fantasy aside. It far underestimates the real figures. By my calculations, government workers make more than twice as much. Government workers are America's fastest-growing millionaires.

Doubt it? Then ask yourself: What is the net present value of an $80,000 annual pension payout with additional full health benefits? Working backward, the total NPV would depend on expected returns of a basket of safe investments--blue chip stocks, dividends and U.S. Treasury bonds.

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http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2010/06/the-millionaire-cop-next-do...

Day after day, bankers have been paraded before Congressional committees regarding their role in the financial crisis which brought the financial system to the edge of the abyss on September 18,2008. Every one has claimed that they were not responsible in any way for the disaster. They blame once in a lifetime circumstances that no one could have anticipated. It was a perfect storm and they had no way of knowing. These Harvard MBA Wall Street geniuses, who collected compensation in excess of $100 million each before the collapse, had no idea what was going on within their own firms. Ignorance and stupidity is no excuse for losing a trillion dollars. The truth is that the CEO’s of all the Wall Street banks encouraged a casino culture of greed and gambling. The generation of fees became the sole driving incentive for every firm. It started with collateralizing subprime mortgages into packages of mortgage backed securities.

On April 15 thousands of people across the United States will be refusing to pay some of their federal income tax as a protest to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many will join local actions around the country to protest high Pentagon spending while social programs suffer.

"When the invasion of Iraq began, I stopped paying federal income tax and started working for my values instead of against them," says David Gross from California.

In New York City, Lily Dalke says, "A lot of people are against having our troops [in Iraq an Afghanistan] or continuing the occupation but there's not a sense of what you can do about it." For her, refusing to pay made sense.

Avatar for {name}
Human Rights
Covering up American War Crimes, From Baghdad to New York
by Charles Glass on March 22, 2010

WarCrimes1

BBC correspondent John Simpson reported on March 4 that the number of defects in newborn babies in the Iraqi town of Fallujah had risen dramatically since the American assault there at the end of 2004. Some people in the town blame the abnormalities in their children on whatever chemicals the US Marines may have used in their conquest of the Sunni Muslim redoubt. Dr. Samira al-Ani, a paediatrician at Fallujah’s General Hospital, told Simpson that two or three children were born each day with serious cardiac problems. Before the first American attack on Fallujah in two years earlier, she noticed similar ailments in one baby every two months. “I have nothing documented,” she admitted, “but I can tell you that year by year the number [is] increasing.”

For the same reason that my children will pay for yours: because the government has offered them a deal: it will pay for our retirement.

The problem is, Social Security goes bust this year. If you don't believe me, click here.

The government has promised to pay for my retirement and yours. How? Congress has stuck a gun in the collective bellies of all of America's workers and has said, "You owe the IRS the money to fund millions of oldsters. Your turn will come. Trust us." What if our children ever decide that Congress's promises are not reliable? What if they decide that their children – our grandchildren – will decide to stiff them? Will they pull the Medicare/Social Security plug?

Let's think this through. If your children were to sit down with my children and talk through this problem, is it possible that they would come up with this conclusion? "If we take over the funding of our parents' retirement, will you take over the funding of yours?"

On March 4th, 2010, Senator John McCain [R-AZ], Senator Joseph Lieberman [I-CT] and eight other co-sponsors introduced Senate Bill 3081, the “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010.” At the time of this writing, the text was not available on GovTrack, but it is available here. This atrocious piece of legislation if passed would allow the military to detain and interrogate U.S. citizens indefinitely and without benefit of trial simply based on suspicious activity! Of course, the USA PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act are already in place, and allow for egregious behavior by government against the citizenry, but this legislation takes it a step further.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/barnett/barnett19.1.html