It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Transportation Security Administration
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security responsible for security in all modes of transportation in the U.S.
The TSA was created as part of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act passed by the U.S. Congress, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001.
Originally organized in the U.S. Department of Transportation, the TSA was moved to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 25, 2003.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Security Theater
"Security theater" is a term that describes security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.
The term was coined by computer security specialist and writer Bruce Schneier for his book Beyond Fear, but has gained currency in security circles, particularly for describing airport security measures.
It is also used by some experts such as Edward Felten to describe the airport security repercussions due to the September 11 attacks.
Security theater gains importance both by satisfying and exploiting the gap between perceived risk and actual risk.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Psychodrama
Psychodrama is a method of psychotherapy in which clients are encouraged to continue and complete their actions through dramatization, role playing and dramatic self-presentation.
Both verbal and non-verbal communications are utilized.
A number of scenes are enacted, depicting, for example memories of specific happenings in the past, unfinished situations, inner dramas, fantasies, dreams, preparations for future risk-taking situations, or unrehearsed expressions of mental states in the here and now.
These scenes either approximate real-life situations or are externalizations of inner mental processes.
If required, other roles may be taken by group members or by inanimate objects.
It is mostly used as a group work method, in which each person in the group can become a therapeutic agent for each other in the group.
Developed by Jacob L. Moreno, psychodrama has strong elements of theater, often conducted on a stage where props can be used.
The audience is fully involved with the dramatic action.
Audience involvement is either through personal interest in the concerns of the leading actor, called the protagonist; or through playing some roles of the drama which helps the protagonist; or taking the form of some of the other elements of the drama, which can give voice to the rest of our wild universe; or through active engagement as an audience member.
Psychodrama's core function is the raising of spontaneity in an adequate and functional manner.
It is through the raising of spontaneity that a system, whether an internal human system or an organizational system, can begin to become creative, life filled and develop new solutions to old and tired problems or adequate solutions to new situations and concerns.
A psychodrama is best conducted and produced by a person trained in the method or learning the method called a psychodrama director.
Psychodrama training institutes exist in many countries around the world.
Quote from : Wikipedia : List of World Trade Center Tenants
This is a list of the major tenants of the New York World Trade Center at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Three World Trade center was a hotel owned by Marriott.
One World Trade Center included the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Marsh USA, Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, and Windows on the World.
Two World Trade Center included Verizon, the New York Stock Exchange, Morgan Stanley, and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, and Aon Corporation.
Four World Trade Center included Deutsche Bank and the New York Board of Trade.
Five World Trade Center included Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley.
Six World Trade Center included the United States Department of Commerce and the United States Department of Labor.
Seven World Trade Center included Salomon Smith Barney, the Securities & Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Secret Service.
Booklist : Amazon Review :
The publisher has ordered a print run of 100,000 copies, indicating that they expect high demand for this contentious expose.
The author asserts that a collusion existed between IBM Corporation and the government of the Third Reich, wherein IBM supplied the technology enabling Nazi authorities to systematize their persecution of European Jews.
Expect much discussion in the press and on the street about this very controversial book.
Brad Hooper
Copyright ©
American Library Association.
All rights reserved
Quote from : Wikipedia : Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Order on 1 April 1979.
The primary purpose of FEMA is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities.
The governor of the state in which the disaster occurs must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the president that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster.
FEMA also provides these services for territories of the United States, such as Puerto Rico.
The only exception is when an emergency and/or disaster occurs on federal property or to a federal asset, for example, the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, or the Space Shuttle Columbia in the 2003 return-flight disaster.
While on-the-ground support of disaster recovery efforts is a major part of FEMA's charter, the agency provides state and local governments with experts in specialized fields and funding for rebuilding efforts and relief funds for infrastructure, in conjunction with the Small Business Administration.
FEMA also assists individuals and businesses with low interest loans.
In addition to this, FEMA provides funds for training of response personnel throughout the United States and its territories as part of the agency's preparedness effort.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military.
DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major effect on the world, including computer networking, as well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.
Its original name was simply Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), but it was renamed to "DARPA" (for Defense) in March 1972, then renamed "ARPA" again in February 1993, and then renamed "DARPA" again in March 1996.
DARPA was established during 1958 (as ARPA) in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik during 1957, with the mission of keeping U.S. military technology more sophisticated than that of the nation's potential enemies. From DARPA's own introduction,
DARPA’s original mission, established in 1958, was to prevent technological surprise like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space.
The mission statement has evolved over time.
Today, DARPA’s mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the US, but also to create technological surprise for its enemies.
DARPA is independent from other more conventional military R&D and reports directly to senior Department of Defense management. DARPA has around 240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $3.2 billion budget.
These figures are "on average" since DARPA focuses on short-term (two to four-year) projects run by small, purpose-built teams.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Information Awareness Office
The Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security, by achieving Total Information Awareness (TIA).
This would be achieved by creating enormous computer databases to gather and store the personal information of everyone in the United States, including personal e-mails, facebook details, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant.
This information would then be analyzed to look for suspicious activities, connections between individuals, and "threats".
Additionally, the program included funding for biometric surveillance technologies that could identify and track individuals using surveillance cameras, and other methods.
Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003.
However, several IAO projects continued to be funded, and merely run under different names.
Quote from : Wikipedia : Information Awareness Office : History
The IAO was established after Admiral John Poindexter, former United States National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan and SAIC executive Brian Hicks approached the US Department of Defense with the idea for an information awareness program after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Poindexter and Hicks had previously worked together on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
DARPA agreed to host the program and appointed Poindexter to run it in 2002
The IAO began funding research and development of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) Program in February 2003 but renamed the program the Terrorism Information Awareness Program in May that year after an adverse media reaction to the program's implications for public surveillance.
Although TIA was only one of several IAO projects, many critics and news reports conflated TIA with other related research projects of the IAO, with the result that TIA came in popular usage to stand for an entire subset of IAO programs.
Quote from : Wikipedia : John Poindexter
John Marlan Poindexter (born August 12, 1936) is a retired American naval officer and Department of Defense official.
He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for the Reagan administration.
He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran-Contra affair, but his convictions were reversed on appeal in 1991.
More recently, he served a brief stint as the director of the DARPA Information Awareness Office for the George W. Bush administration.
Amazon Review :
The Bush years have given rise to fears of a resurgent Imperial Presidency.
Those fears are justified, but the problem cannot be solved simply by bringing a new administration to power.
In his provocative new book, The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy argues that the fault lies not in our leaders but in ourselves.
When our scholars lionize presidents who break free from constitutional restraints, when our columnists and talking heads repeatedly call upon the "commander in chief " to dream great dreams and seek the power to achieve them--when voters look to the president for salvation from all problems great and small--should we really be surprised that the presidency has burst its constitutional bonds and grown powerful enough to threaten American liberty?
The Cult of the Presidency takes a step back from the ongoing red team/blue team combat and shows that, at bottom, conservatives and liberals agree on the boundless nature of presidential responsibility.
For both camps, it is the president's job to grow the economy, teach our children well, provide seamless protection from terrorist threats, and rescue Americans from spiritual malaise.
Very few Americans seem to think it odd, says Healy, "when presidential candidates talk as if they're running for a job that's a combination of guardian angel, shaman, and supreme warlord of the earth."
Healy takes aim at that unconfined conception of presidential responsibility, identifying it as the source of much of our political woe and some of the gravest threats to our liberties.
If the public expects the president to heal everything that ails us, the president is going to demand--or seize--the power necessary to handle that responsibility.
Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America's decades-long drift from the Framers' vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws.
Restoring that vision will require a Congress and a Court willing to check executive power, but Healy emphasizes that there is no simple legislative or judicial "fix" to the problems of the presidency.
Unless Americans change what we ask of the office--no longer demanding what we should not want and cannot have--we'll get what, in a sense, we deserve.
Amazon Review :
Since 9/11, the world has become more and more aware of terrorism.
It has become a part of our daily lives.
We are constantly shown acts of terrorism on the news, reminded to fear the terrorists, and that we are fighting a war on terror.
To that end, the US Government has used its official conspiracy theory for 9/11 to substantiate the actions of war and the continued disregard for liberties-all in the name of fighting terrorism.
This theory concludes that nineteen suicidal Middle Eastern Muslim hijackers, their hearts full of hatred for American freedom and democracy, hijacked four airliners.
Reportedly, two planes were crashed into the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in rural western Pennsylvania after its passengers fought with the hijackers.
This whole "Mission Impossible" operation, able to defeat the United States' four-hundred-billion-dollar defense system, reportedly was under the total control of a zealous Muslim cleric using a computer while hiding in cave in Afghanistan.
In The Terror Conspiracy: Deception, 9/11 and the Loss of Liberty, the world's leading conspiracy theorist, Jim Marrs, unmasks the facts about 9/11 and the New World Order.
Using primarily mainstream media and government reports, Marrs offers a more realistic and better-supported conspiracy theory.
He has crafted the definitive journalistic account of these events, describing the full history behind the overt and covert causes, and exposing the likely complicity of the Bush administration in the 9/11 attacks.
Jim Marrs asks those question few have been willing to discuss since that fateful day.
His analysis goes far beyond 9/11, enabling us to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy that resulted in war in Afghanistan and Iraq, our now perpetual War on Terrorism, and the continuing loss of freedom in America.
The book also contains the explosive essay The Pentagon Attack Papers - Seven Hours in September : The Clock that Broke the Lie, by Barbara Honegger, M.S.
Barbara Honegger is Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School (1995-present), the Navy’s advanced science, technology and national security affairs university.
Honegger served as Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President and White House Policy Analyst (1981-83); was the pioneering Irangate author and whistleblower on the October Surprise.
Amazon Review :
George Orwell envisioned Big Brother as an outgrowth of a looming totalitarian state, but in this timely survey Robert O'Harrow Jr. portrays a surveillance society that's less centralized and more a joint public/private venture.
Indeed, the most frightening aspect of the Washington Post reporter's thoroughly researched and naggingly disquieting chronicle lies in the matter-of-fact nature of information hunters and gatherers and the insatiable systems they've concocted.
Here is a world where data is gathered by relatively unheralded organizations that smooth the way for commercial entities to find the good customers and avoid dicey ones.
Government of course too has an interest in the data that's been mined.
Information is power, especially when trying to find the bad guys.
The mutually compatible skills and needs shared by private and public snoopers were fusing prior to the attacks of 9/11, but the process has since gone into hyperdrive.
O'Harrow weaves together vignettes to record the development of the "security-industrial complex," taking pains to personalize his chronicle of a movement that's remained (perhaps purposefully) faceless.
Recognizing the appeal of state-of-the-art systems that can track down a murderer/rapist with heretofore unimaginable speed, the author recognizes, too, that the same devices can mistakenly destroy reputations and cast a pall over a free society.
In a post-9/11 world where homeland security often trumps personal liberty, this work is an eye-opener for those who take their privacy for granted.
Originally posted by roboe
What..
The...
Hell...
Originally posted by LadySkadi
SKL - put a lot together in this thread!
So let's see - Is security theater a realistic possibility? Yes, I think so... (brought that up myself in other threads) Is the act of seeking to implement population submission a realistic possibility? Yes, I think so... (the Govt. would like us all to do as they wish, when they wish, it would be very easy to "Lead" us then) and Is the idea of "never letting an opportunity go to waste" a realistic concept? Yes... (we've been shown time and again how those who anticipate, plan and who are ready at the right time, will capitalize on opportunity) but is it realistic to accept that all the pieces have been "pre-planned and are orchestrated with a pre-planned end-goal?" It's possible, but how probable is it that if true, would actually work out the way the plan was laid out?
Quote from : Wikipedia : Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier (born January 15, 1963, pronounced /ˈʃnaɪər/) is an American cryptographer, computer security specialist, and writer.
He is the author of several books on computer security and cryptography, and is the founder and chief technology officer of BT Counterpane, formerly Counterpane Internet Security, Inc.
He received his master's degree in computer science from the American University in Washington, DC in 1988.
Amazon Review :
A dozen carefully researched books have exposed the official story of 9/11 to be a terror fraud.
Yet the mainstream media have monolithically failed to ask elementary questions about anomalies in this story.
So-called alternative media have been little better.
Towers of Deception explains why and prescribes actions to break out the truth.
Authored by a lifelong journalist who was for thirty-five years a media critic, Towers of Deception provides twenty-six “exhibits” of evidence proving “beyond a reasonable doubt” that 9/11 was an inside job.
It then presents case histories of de facto censorship by mainstream media and examines the psychological phenomenon of denial.
“False flag” operations and psychological warfare are dealt with in detail, as is the “invisible government”—the powers pulling strings behind the scenes.
Following a profile of Dr. David Ray Griffin as an authentic prophet of the 9/11 truth movement, Towers of Deception urges people to speak truth to power and challenge all media.
Interspersed with photographs, diary entries, and inspiring profiles of those who see 9/11 truth as the Achilles’ heel of the neocon agenda, Towers of Deception includes a professional-quality DVD produced by the author:
The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw.
Originally posted by HappilyEverAfter
reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas
You still have a spot reserved is casa d bunka,
BYOG-BYOA
Amigo!
Originally posted by Granite
With all the money I'm saving by not flying, I am accumilating a massive arsenal of self defense or offense as the case may be.
This is going to be very interesting how this scenario plays out.
Great OP S&F Sir