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FBI team headed for Saudi blast site
The
FBI is dispatching a small team of explosives experts to help
investigate the terror bombings in Saudi Arabia, the bureau said
Tuesday. At least 10 Americans are among the nearly 30 believed
killed. Four explosions ripped through several locations in the
Saudi capital, Riyadh, including a large compound housing Western
civilians, mostly employed in the oil industry. Officials feared
the death toll could climb as searchers work their way through the
rubble.
In a
speech Tuesday, President George W. Bush pledged, "The United
States will find these killers and they will find the meaning of
American justice."
Terrorists struck just before U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell was due to arrive in the Saudi capital on a tour of the
Middle East.
The
State Department had issued a warning earlier this month, saying
terrorists were targeting U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia and
cautioning Americans not to travel there.
The
FBI said in Washington that by late Tuesday morning there had been
no credible claims of responsibility for the blasts.
A
bureau spokesman said it was too soon to speculate whether the
attacks had been carried out by al-Qaida, the terror group believed
responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United
States.
Comment: Al-Qaida is under the bed! Shrub is
getting out the six-guns again. That moment of military play-acting
on the aircraft carrier last week got his chemicals all stirred up.
This man needs a moment of self-observation to calm down that
emotional centre. Oh yeah, that's right. Psychopaths don't have
emotional centres. That's why he can make jokes about capital
punishment and wear his sick smile when he talks about bombing
Iraqi civilians.
"It was an
interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House,
May 1, 2002]
At approximately 8:48 a.m. on the morning of
September 11, 2001, the first pictures of the burning World Trade
Center were broadcast on live television. The news anchors,
reporters, and viewers had little idea what had happened in lower
Manhattan, but there were some people who did know. By that time,
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command
Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and
Canada's Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes
had been hijacked. They knew that one plane had been flown
deliberately into the World Trade Center's North Tower; a second
plane was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan; and
a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying
back toward Washington, DC.
So why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes after it was
clear the United States was under terrorist attack - did President
Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders and begin a
20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the answer to that
question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it.
Comment:
We have just discovered this site. It looks
like it has some very thorough timelines on the 9/11 events. We
would be happy to receive some readers' comments on this material.
You can send your comments to us
here.
Bush Delays 9/11 Report, Graham
Says
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bob Graham accused the
Bush administration Thursday of stonewalling on the public release
of a congressional report on the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
"The
only reason that delay has occurred is because the administration
does not want our report to be available to the American people,"
said Graham, Florida's senior senator and former chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
After months of investigation and a series of congressional
hearings last year, the House and Senate intelligence panels
wrapped up their report Dec. 20 and released a summary. The full
classified report is still under review at the FBI and CIA, which
are trying to determine whether any disclosure of information might
pose a risk to national security and should remain
secret.
Comment: Bob Graham concerned about the
truth. Yeah, right. This was the guy meeting with the Pakistani
intelligence officer the morning of September 11. Talk about
posturing! But they have to maintain the façade that someone,
somewhere cares because too many people are asking
questions....because
something wicked this
way comes.
WHAT DID HAPPEN TO FLIGHT 93?
The unmarked military-style jet swooped down at
high speed through the valley, twice circled the smouldering black
scar where Flight 93 had careered into the ground just seconds
earlier and then hurtled off over the horizon.
At least six eyewitnesses saw the mysterious
aircraft on the morning of September 11 last year. But the US
authorities deny it ever existed.
...What was the white jet doing there and why won't
they admit to its presence? Why did other witnesses see smoke and
flames trailing from Flight 93 as it fell from the sky, indicating
a possible explosion aboard?
Or - and this is proving to be the most
uncomfortable question of all - in the moments before the airliner
piled into the black, spongey earth at 575mph did an American
fighter pilot have to do the unthinkable and shoot down a US civil
airliner?
Comment: Unthinkable? For whom? Certainly
not Bush and Co. But they have more serious crimes they are
covering up. After all, they organized it all.
9/11 Allowed to Happen
Oct 1995: The oil company Unocal signs a contract for
"the perfect pipeline" through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Henry
Kissinger, a Unocal consultant, calls it a triumph of hope.
[Washington Post, 10/5/98]
Comment: Check out this timeline with a good set of links. Suspend
your emotional thinking for a moment and consider the above
carefully. Check the links, everything detailed above actually
happened, so do you consider yourself a logical, rational human
being? If so, there can only be one conclusion: the US government
knew about and most likely orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. It's time
to grow up and deal with it.
Explosion in
Chechnya kills 40, injures 100
Two suicide bombers drove their truck loaded with
explosives into a government compound in northern Chechnya on
Monday, killing at least 40 people... The explosion left an
enormous crater and severely damaged an administrative building and
the headquarters of the Federal Security Service in the town of
Znamenskoye.
Reports say at least 100 people were wounded in the
attack.
The blast also damaged four other government
buildings and about eight residential houses.
Chechnya's pro-Russian administrator, Akhmad
Kadyrov, said the bomb blast again shows that Russian and Chechen
security services are unable to prevent attacks by separatist
fighters.
Comment:
While Russia took the "high road" against the
US at the UN, it is obvious this posturing was part of a
well-orchestrated pièce de théâtre for the
public. They use the same means to justify their supression of
"terrorists" in Chechnya.
The USA deceived
the world on Iraq
In its rush for making a case for war against Iraq,
the US made several claims, most important of which were related to
Iraq owning and developing weapons of mass destruction, nuclear,
biological and chemical. Also links to terrorism were
made.
The links to terrorism were
affirmed and denied by the US officials at the same time, with the
CIA and even the US vice President making statements that there are
no links by Iraq to terrorism, and then saying there are. But not
an important enough point for our subject.
But Iraqi possessing
weapons of mass destruction was all the hype. The threats that Iraq
posed by this ownership, or developments of such weapons, or
"potential" development -- whatever that means, were the reason the
world and the US public was being rallied and some coerced into
joining the efforts for war.
…The US government
deceived its citizens and the world, and it further used deception
to breach international law, and moral law, with total disregard
and recklessness.
Comment:
Yes, the only question is, where are they
going with all of this? What is their ultimate goal?...Without
doubt,
something wicked this
way comes.
Reason for War?
"Global Show of U.S. Power and Democracy"
To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush
administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass
destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White
House had another reason for war Ñ a global show of American
power and democracy.
Officials inside government and advisers outside
told ABCNEWS the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's
weapons to gain the legal justification for war from the United
Nations and to stress the danger at home to Americans.
"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was
just a matter of emphasis."
Comment: Hmmm, sounds
like a psychopath's definition of telling the
truth.
Officials now say they may not find hundreds of
tons of mustard and nerve agents and maybe not thousands of liters
of anthrax and other toxins. But U.S. forces will find some, they
say. On Thursday, President Bush raised the possibility for the
first time that any such Iraqi weapons were destroyed before or
during the war.
If weapons of mass destruction were not the primary
reason for war, what was? Here's the answer officials and advisers
gave ABCNEWS.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks changed everything,
including the Bush administration's thinking about the Middle East
and not just Saddam Hussein.
Comment: Rather
convenient, don't you think?
Senior officials decided that unless action was
taken, the Middle East would continue to be a breeding ground for
terrorists. Officials feared that young Arabs, angry about their
lives and without hope, would always looking for someone to hate
and that someone would always be Israel and the United
States.
Comment: And
destroying young Arab's lives, leaving their cities with no
infrastructure, ruining their economy and job prospect, blowing
their children's arms off, and leaving them to starve in a pool, of
filthy, feted water is just the thing to open their hearts to
America and democracy.
Europeans thought the solution was to get a peace
agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But American
officials felt a Middle East peace agreement would only be part of
the solution.
The Bush administration felt that a new start was
needed in the Middle East and that Iraq was the place to show that
it is democracy -- not terrorism -- that offers
hope.[...]
Comment: Who are the real
terrorists?
British minister
quits over lack of UN role in Iraq
A British cabinet minister known for her outspoken
opposition to Britain's participation in the war on Iraq has
resigned.
Clare Short stepped down Monday after accusing
Prime Minister Tony Blair of failing to ensure a prominent role for
the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq.
Short's resignation was no surprise. The
international development minister was one of Blair's chief
critics.
She condemned his handling of the lead-up to the
war, calling it "deeply reckless."
U.S. diplomat
takes over for Garner in Iraq
Paul Bremer, the new U.S. administrator for Iraq
and boss to retired general Jay Garner, has arrived in
Baghdad.
Bremer is a longtime U.S. State Department official
who will head what is being described as the new civilian
administration.
Garner was to have led the administration, intended
to take over Iraq's reconstruction and political rehabilitation
after the war that overthrew Saddam Hussein.
But Garner's time as interim leader of Iraq saw
infighting between the American military and State
Department.
Bremer appears to be a compromise. He has three
decades of diplomatic experience with the State Department, and is
close to U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld.
Bremer arrives following a shake-up in the senior
ranks of U.S. officials in Iraq. Barbara Bodine, the U.S.-appointed
administrator for central Iraq, was recalled to Washington over the
weekend.
The U.S. reconstruction team seems to have had
little impact on rebuilding in Iraq. Basic services such as water
and electricity are intermittent, and Iraqis complain there's no
security.
Comment:
Yes, folks, the next chapter of Democracy
on the March, bringing Coke and McDonald's to the world's poor
and downtrodden. Manic shuffling to give the impression that this
is about liberating the Iraq oil fie.... oops, the Iraqi people.
Would you like that Big Mac with depleted
uranium?
HOW MANY CIVILIANS WERE KILLED BY CLUSTER
BOMBS?
The Pentagon says 1: Iraq Body Count says at least
200.
It is understandable that the US government should
wish to play down the damage done to Iraqi civilians by cluster
bombs, for those who use them in civilian areas open themselves to
charges of war crimes.
Iraq Inc: A joint
venture built on broken promises
America and Britain declared themselves yesterday to be the
"occupying powers" in Iraq and produced a blueprint for the
administration of the country that confined the United Nations to a
co-ordinating role.
Although George Bush declared in Belfast last month that the UN
would have "a vital role" in Iraq, there was great disappointment
yesterday after the organisation was denied an operational
role.
Britain acknowledged in a draft UN Security Council resolution
that, with the United States, it intended to run Iraq for at least
a year as a conquering power. Both countries urged the Council to
agree to an instant lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq and
accept that, as "occupying powers", they would have near-total
control of the country's oil revenues for 12 months and maybe much
longer...
Whatever the fate of the UN resolution, Washington has already
started a secretive carve-up of the Iraq reconstruction pie in
which all the slices thus far have gone to US companies –
many of them with close connections to the Bush
administration.
The
impression that Iraq is becoming a carpetbaggers' free-for-all was
reinforced at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Centre in
Atlanta this week when lawyers, consultants and business people
streamed in, all hoping for a piece of the action. They heard a
presentation by the US Agency for International Development
(USAid), which is handing out contracts worth $1.5bn (£0.9bn)
to rebuild the healthcare system. The USAid contracts total about
$70m. If America fulfils its sweeping promise to rebuild Iraq's
entire infrastructure, the total may reach several hundred billion
dollars. The contracts will be paid for from Iraqi oil revenues,
controlled by America and Britain and audited by an international
firm of accountants.
...Sir Brian Urquhart, a veteran British diplomat and former UN
under-secretary general, said: "Surely it would be better for
everyone to push this through rather than reopen all the quarrels
and instead do something to help the poor people of Iraq. I can't
believe that they won't do that."
...Separately, the text envisions taking away UN control of
Iraq's oil sales. This also runs directly counter to the view of
several of the nations opposed to war, who have argued for keeping
a UN hand on the Iraqi oil industry. Last night, the Russian envoy
to the UN, Sergei Lavrov, said he had "lots of questions" on the
text. Washington is asking that the UN oil-for-food programme,
which currently takes in all oil revenues and distributes them for
the purchase of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies, be
wound up within four months. Control of oil revenues would pass to
the "Iraqi Assistance Fund" to be held by the Central Bank of Iraq,
managed by US and UK officials. An advisory board with the UN
co-ordinator and envoys from other international financial
institutions would oversee the disbursement of the revenues, and
make recommendations.
The
immediate reaction to the plans in Baghdad was negative. "This is
very, very bad. We are in the same situation as we were with
Saddam," said Bassen al-Khoja, 31. "[They] stole the oil money from
the people and we got nothing and now the Americans and British are
doing exactly the same. We are not going to see any benefit from
it."
Similar disgust was expressed by Fareed Ismail al-Qaisi, 42,
who is unemployed. "The United Nations should control the oil
money, not the Americans," he said.
This
is the first time that Washington and London have formally
acknowledged that they consider themselves "occupying powers" in
Iraq. It is a status governed by the Geneva Conventions that also
lays out strict responsibilities and obligations for those powers
under international law.
In
Brussels, Poul Nielson, the European Union commissioner for
development, voiced dismay at the text. He said Washington was "on
its way to becoming a member of Opec", adding: "They appropriate
the oil. The unwillingness to give the UN a legal, well-defined
role also speaks a language that is quite clear."
Comment:
Why are we not surprised. So it was never
about the oil.... Of course, we know that it is not ONLY about the
oil, it is also about setting up the conditions in the Middle East
to annihilate all the Semitic peoples, the age-old dream of the
puppet masters. By stirring up the area, pitting people against
people, the Bush Reich will consider its presence "justified" and
will continue to expand its domination and pressure until it
finally explodes.
Rights group:
hatred of Jews at highest level since WWII
Anti-Semitism is rising at a rate unseen since the end of World
War Two, fuelled in part by an explosion of hate sites on the
Internet, Jewish leaders told an international conference on
intolerance Monday.
From
just one Web site in 1985, there were now more than 4,000 promoting
terrorism, hate and historical revisionism, according to a report
released at the conference held at the Paris headquarters of
UNESCO, the UN scientific and cultural body.
The
three-day conference, which plans to combat anti-Semitism through
"education for tolerance", is attended by religious leaders and
experts, as well as political representatives including Minister
for Diaspora Affairs Natan Sharansky; U.S. congressman Robert
Beauprez, Republican of Colorado; and France's Interior Minister
Nicolas Sarkozy.
Also
scheduled to attend are the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello and former NATO commander in
Europe General Wesley Clark.
"Not
since the end of World War Two has the world seen such a
proliferation of anti-Semitism," Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center which preserves the memory of the
Holocaust, said in a conference address.
"I
believe that you have a new generation of professional haters who
are serving as leaders, demagogues, and they're inspiring young
people to do their bidding while they often hide," he told
journalists earlier.
Hier
cited cartoons in Western newspapers and a range of comments by
leading Arab officials as evidence of the rise in
anti-Semitism.
It
was wrong to blame poverty or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for
the upsurge, which could only be confronted by speaking out, he
said.
"There is nothing new about the oldest hatred," he said. "Some
will hide behind what Israel is doing... but those are just
excuses, that's a ruse."
Comment:
This guy is just another cog in the wheel
that is grinding towards the ultimate destruction of the Jews and
all Semitic people's in the middle east. Through his subtle
insistence that the Jews are somehow a special or chosen people and
that they are the victims of "the oldest hatred in the world", he
is perpetuating that erroneous belief and playing right into the
hands of people like Sharon and Peres who seek to keep the Jewish
population blinded by emotion and religious zealousness, and in
doing so are manuevering them to a position where when they do find
themselves embroiled in a large scale destructive conflict, there
will be few who will feel it is not justified; the setup is almost
complete it seems.
Disorder deepens
in liberated Baghdad
Fearful of going out after dark, waiting up to 10 hours to fill
their cars with gas, spreading rumors in the absence of reliable
media, watching landmark buildings set on fire and wondering who is
in charge, the residents of this capital are growing increasingly
impatient with the deepening disorder that is plaguing their lives
more than a month after US troops took over the city.
...Security in Baghdad, the top of everybody's list of
priorities, including the Americans', is deteriorating. Gunfire is
heard more often than it was two weeks ago, thieves drag drivers
from their cars in broad daylight, and looters continue to steal
whatever is left from public buildings in full view of passers
by.
...US officials say they cannot fully control the situation.
With less than 150,000 troops in Iraq, a country the size of
California, "there are some areas that we don't have totally
covered," said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of US ground
forces, last week.
Even
the presence of US soldiers in Baghdad provides civilians with
little reassurance. Though schools were meant to open last week,
many families are keeping their children at home, for fear of what
might happen to them on their way to class.
Nor
does an 11 p.m. curfew ensure nighttime peace. Thieves easily
exploit its lax enforcement in the absence of police patrols. "At
the beginning we were relieved that the looters did not attack
residential districts," says Ms. Khadimi. "But now we are afraid to
be in our houses."
Her
neighbors, she adds, professional people with no experience with
firearms, have begun in recent days to buy AK-47s in self
defense.
"Security is a problem in Baghdad, though it is much better
across the rest of Iraq," says one coalition official. "It's our
number one priority because it is the baseline for everything
else." Sixty percent of the capital's ordinary police are reporting
for work, he says, "but they don't have the same way of patrolling
a beat as we do in the West, so they have to reorganize the way
they work."
Nor
is anyone really clear what law applies in Iraq. The country is not
under martial law, General McKiernan said last week, "but we are in
transition. It is a gray area." The situation is complicated,
officials point out, by the fact that Saddam Hussein emptied Iraq's
jails before the war, allowing 100,000 common criminals onto the
streets.
For
Baghdadis with cars, a problem almost equal to security is the
shortage of gasoline. Adel Hassan al-Mutaar waited from 4:00 a.m.
on Saturday until he finally filled up at two in the afternoon at
the Al Khalissa station. "You have to line up early, there is no
choice," he says. "And to think that we are used to gas stations
open 24 hours a day."
...Most Iraqis have not gone back to their jobs, since the
ministries and companies that employed them until the war have not
yet restarted their operations.
That
has left millions of citizens with no income and no secure source
of food, in the absence of the ration system that prevailed under
the UN administered "oil for food program" before the
war.
So
far, no UN food trucks have arrived in Baghdad, and food aid
officials say the ration reserves that Iraqis had built up are
likely to run out within a matter of weeks.
If
the city streets are now clear of roadblocks and burned-out buses
and trucks, (they have been dragged onto the sidewalks for
collection), they are still piled with trash, uncollected for
weeks. In the evenings, residents burn what they can, sending
columns of acrid smoke drifting through the city, but much remains
in heaps at the curbside.
Comment:
So while the oil fields remain protected,
ordinary Iraqis are without sanitation, electricity, and gasoline.
They are stocking up on firearms to protect themselves. Well,
Americans have the firmly implanted belief that liberty and guns
are go hand in hand, I guess that the proliferation of guns in Iraq
shows that the Iraqis are indeed "freer" under the US
occupation.
Not a drop that's
safe to drink
War-ravaged Nasiriya is caught in a deadly cycle: with no
electricity to pump water, locals are breaking into the underground
pipes, allowing raw sewage to seep into the system. The danger of a
cholera outbreak is a real one. [...] Since the third day of the
war, the city's electricity supply has been out of action. The
combination of bombing raids by the coalition forces and the
counterattack by the Iraqi army destroyed Nasiriya's
infrastructure.
Without power there is nothing to pump the water. And without
running water, the locals are turning to untreated supplies which
they can't afford to boil because of the soaring price of
fuel.
The
electricity shutdown has also brought the sewage pumps to a halt,
so that much of this city of half a million people is sitting on a
bed of stale human waste. In places it has started to seep up to
ground level.
Iraqis Begin to
Leave Iraq
Three weeks after U.S. forces consolidated their hold on Iraqi
territory, many Iraqis are beginning to leave the country citing
the "lawlessness and surge in crime is intolerable."
N.H.
said he left the north of Iraq because the Kurds, U.S. allies in
the war, were harassing Arabs, Chaldeans, and Assyrians who have
lived in such cities as Mosul, Dhouk, Kirkuk and Bahzani for the
last 2,000 years.
"At
night we hear shooting in neighboring streets, women screaming that
they are being raped. We sometimes hear explosions," N.H. said by
phone from Amman.
"The
Americans are doing nothing about it," he added.
Betchel, Bin
Laden, and Bush
Last
week, while the notorious coward George W. Bush -- who walked away
from his National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, a criminal act
known as "desertion" when committed by lesser mortals -- was
basking in the man-musk of a shipload of sailors, reciting his
usual lies about al-Qaida's "alliance" with Saddam Hussein, and
weasel-wording his "victory" declaration to avoid taking full legal
responsibility for the consequences of the war of aggression he had
unleashed, Bechtel was quietly pocketing a secret, closed-bid,
open-ended Iraq contract that could give them almost $700 million
in taxpayer money before the 2004 election -- with the alluring
prospect of untold billions to follow, Mother Jones
reports.
What's more, as The New Yorker reports, this public largess
will also fill the coffers of a key Bechtel partner in Saudi Arabia
-- a well-connected global conglomerate that has also been a
long-time financial partner of both George Bush I and George Bush
II: the Bin Laden Group.
The Secretary from
Enron The Decline and Fall of Thomas White
Two
weeks ago, Secretary of Defense fired Thomas White, who was tapped
by President Bush two years ago as Secretary of the Army. Today,
White, the former vice chairman of Enron Corp., the disgraced
energy company that imploded in a wave of accounting scandals two
years ago, leaves the Pentagon for good. In the two years White
spent at the Pentagon he is credited with nothing other than taking
up space. White's dismissal barely made a sound in the media.
Newspapers ran wire copy of his departure and chalked it up to his
frequent run-ins with Rummy over disagreements in transforming the
army. But that's not an accurate portrayal nor is it the true
reason White was canned, according to a half-dozen senior Pentagon
officials interviewed between April 26 and May 7. Simply put, the
Enron scandal tainted White as soon as it became common knowledge
that he contacted dozens of his former colleagues after the company
collapsed and failed to unload the bulk of his stock after he
became Secretary of the Army. His job security became further
strained when the FBI launched an investigation of White last year
into allegations of insider trading. White's phone conversations
with his Enron buddies took place shortly after the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. and while
military personnel were being sent to break up the Taliban
government in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials said White never
disclosed to Rumsfeld that he phoned his former colleagues and that
the Bush administration only learned of it when it was reported by
the media.
U.S., Iran hold secret talks on Afghanistan and Iraq in
Geneva
With
American troops dug in for long stays in Afghanistan and Iraq, the
United States has been holding unannounced talks with Iran, a
country that shares long borders with both, officials said
Monday.
The
discussions began not long after the Afghan war started in the fall
of 2001 and initially were largely limited to developments in
Afghanistan. They have been expanded recently to include exchanges
on Iraq, with which Iran fought an eight-year war in the 1980s. The
talks have been held in Geneva, under auspices of the United
Nations.
"This is not somehow a new opening of diplomatic relations.
This is an opportunity to deal with some practical issues," State
Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
Unanswered
Questions from 9/11 draws overflow crowd
The
greatest deception ever launched. That is how Canadian broadcaster
Barrie Zwicker described the U.S.government's "official" version of
9/11 at an activist-organized event in San Francisco April
21.
A
hand-vote indicated a majority of those who packed Herbst Theatre,
which is directly across from the city's Civic Center,agreed with
him.
Zwicker called the government's story of 9/11 "The Big Lie" and
likened it to the Reichstag Fire which Adolph Hitler and the Nazis
used to launch their murderous attacks against people they deemed
undesirable. Some historians believe the Nazis, not the Dutch
Communist found guilty and executed, started the German Parliament
fire. A day after the February 27, 1933, fire, the German
government suspended civil liberties. A month later, the Parliament
granted Hitler dictatorial powers.
Zwicker said the 9/11 deception was "perpetrated by powerful
special interests to jumpstart the war on terrorism," which he
called the "toxic tip" for world domination, and was leveraged by
neo- conservatives in the U.S. government who have "hijacked U.S.
foreign policy at the behest of Big Arms and Big Oil."
...The size of the crowd stunned even the seasoned experts on
the panel. Several hundred people were turned away at the box
office for lack of space. A similar program the next night in Palo
Alto, California, attracted five to six hundred people.
Zwicker asked the audience for a show of hands about four
questions. How many believe, he asked, that elements of the U.S.
government not only knew about but also participated in 9/11? How
many believe the official narrative a guy with a white beard living
in a cave in Afghanistan . . . ? How many believe G.W. Bush knew?
How many do not know? A majority possibly 80 percent answered
affirmatively to Zwicker's first question.
Comment:
Not everyone is buying Bush Reich's
propaganda. It is quite evident that Bushy thinks we are all a
bunch of fools who will lap up whatever he serves up like good
little patriots. I can hardly stomach one more person saying, "Even
if it is true that this state of affairs is all contrived by our
resident terrorist bunch, The Bush Reich, what good does knowing
the truth do?" One can stop being a fascist tool, like Senator
Hatch as one example.
Law Provides
Needed Tools By Senator Orrin G. Hatch
The
tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 -- and the killing of more than
3,000 Americans -- are forever etched in our nation's memory. Soon
after this tragic attack, Congress in bipartisan fashion enacted
the Patriot Act, a long-overdue set of measures that provided law
enforcement and intelligence agencies with basic tools needed to
fight and win the war against terrorism.
In
1996, I proposed many of these same measures in an anti-terrorism
bill. Had these measures been in place prior to 9/11, law
enforcement agencies may well have been able to catch some or all
of the terrorists.
The
Patriot Act has not eroded any of the rights we hold dear as
Americans. I would be the first to call for corrective action, were
that the case. Yet not one of the civil liberties groups has cited
one instance of abuse of our constitutional rights, one decision by
any court that any part of the Patriot Act was unconstitutional or
one shred of evidence to contradict the fact that these tools
protect what is perhaps our most important civil liberty: the
freedom from future terrorist attacks.
Several important provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled
to sunset, or expire, on Dec. 31, 2005. When the bill originally
was passed by the Senate, I opposed the sunset, along with 95 other
senators.
Given the importance of the Patriot Act tools to our nation's
war against terrorism, why would we simply sunset these provisions
when we know full well that the terrorists will not sunset their
evil intentions? There is no logical reason for our nation to lay
down some of its most effective arms while fighting this
war.
Last
Thursday, the Senate added another important anti-terrorism
provision to the arsenal of weapons to combat terrorism. The Senate
fixed a gap in the original 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act to authorize the gathering of intelligence information relating
to "lone-wolf" terrorists -- who cannot be linked to an
international organization or state. This bipartisan proposal will
enhance the ability of the FBI and intelligence agencies to
investigate terrorists and detect their plots to prevent
devastating attacks on our country. Lawmakers were right to fix
this glaring problem.
Comment: Whoa! Now any individual who questions the rising fascist
state can be labeled a "lone wolf" and hauled off by Bush's goon
squads.
...The bottom line is clear: We should not undermine or limit
our law enforcement and intelligence agencies' efforts by imposing
requirements that go above and beyond those required by the
Constitution. That would only have the effect of protecting
terrorists and criminals while endangering the lives of innocent
Americans.
Comment:
Notice how Hatch is slipping in that we all
need to be prepared for perpetual terrorist attacks. Come on
everyone, don't you know that giving up your freedoms makes you
safe? Aren't you ready to send your sons and daughters off to a
perpetual war on terror that never seems to slow down the fear of
terrorist attacks? I ask again, who are the real
terrorists?
DJs Suspended for
Playing Dixie Chicks
Country station KKCS has suspended two disc jockeys for playing
the Dixie Chicks, violating a ban imposed after the group
criticized President Bush.
Comment:
But, hey, there's no stifling of
liberties...
Penn can sue for
loss of film role
Is
there really a Hollywood blacklist against performers who don't
support the Bush administration? The answer may lie in a Los
Angeles courtroom.
California judge has ruled that actor Sean Penn can pursue a
legal claim that he was fired from a film because of his piquant
political views and a brief visit he made to Iraq last
December.[...]
Canada Would Make
Missile Program 'Friendly'
[...] Liberal MP David
Pratt, chair of the Commons defence committee, brushed aside
questions last week from CBC Radio host Mary Lou Finlay about
concerns that the Bush administration's new missile defence program
would undermine decades of nuclear disarmament and set off a new
arms race.
That's just "Cold War
thinking", scoffed Pratt. "We have to adapt to the new strategic
environment."
Expect to hear more of this
sort of nuclear pep-talk as the debate heats up over whether Canada
should join the U.S. program, which many argue could lead to
weapons in space.
[....] While the word
"defence" is kept front and centre, the missile program fits well
into the Bush administration's plans for pre-emptive military
strikes and its larger plan spelled out last September in its
National Security Strategy for the United States of America to rule
the world through sheer military might.
[...] In other words, the
missile defence scheme could help make it possible for Washington
to aggressively strike, including with nuclear weapons, what it
considers to be rogue states.
Comment:
"Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft
fom those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are
not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is
spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of its scientists, the
hopes of its children.... This is not a way of life at all, in any
true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity
hanging fom an iron cross." -- Dwight D.
Eisenhower
US drills for
terror attacks
The
exercise began with a simulated 'dirty bomb' in Seattle
In a
simulation of terror attacks, two United States cities have been
hit simultaneously, with a radiological "dirty bomb" and biological
agents - but the "attacks" are just a training exercise.
The
five-day test, which began with an explosion and fire in the
north-western city of Seattle on Monday, is designed to test US
emergency response systems.
The
full scale of the "attack" is to become apparent on Tuesday, as
"patients" begin arriving at Chicago area hospitals with flu-like
symptoms.
The
simulation, dubbed "Topoff 2", has a 200-page script containing
some surprises not announced to the public in advance. It will cost
an estimated $16m and involve 8,500 people in the United States and
Canada.
Devised by the Department of Homeland Security, the exercise
began with the Seattle explosion, to which emergency crews
responded within minutes.
Actors playing victims were rushed to hospital - but in the
scenario, a radioactive cloud is due to spread from the scene of
the explosion over the city centre.
Simultaneous attacks
The
training exercise aims to prepare local, state and federal
government agencies to deal with simultaneous terror attacks more
than a thousand miles apart.
US
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge will be based in the White
House during the exercise, which includes look-alikes playing
President George W Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
The
writers of the scenario have even invented an imaginary terrorist
organisation - called Glodo - to blame for the attacks.
The
BBC's Justin Webb says the people of both Seattle and Chicago have
had plenty of warning of all this activity, with posters and news
bulletins announcing the mock attacks for the last week so as to
avoid panic.
The
exercise is planned to finish on a positive note, with suspects
being arrested at the end of the week.
Full
scale
The
mock attacks will also see the participation of the American Red
Cross and the Canadian Government.
It
is the first large-scale counter-terrorism exercise since the 11
September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Mr
Ridge has described the event as a full-scale exercise responding
to plausible threats to the US.
"Protection against terrorism requires that organisations at
every level of government and in the private sector work together
in partnership to prepare for events and deal with their
consequences," he said in a statement.
"Topoff 2 provides the opportunity to test our preparedness,
and at the same time identify ways to improve response in the
future."
Comment:
So we are being prepared to live in a
constant state of terror, which will justify a perpetual war on
terror. I wonder who is writing the script for the next real
terrorist attack on America? And notice, Dear Reader, that the
first event is being staged in Seattle where the anti-globalisation
movement surprised the World Trade Organization. Is someone sending
a message?
Canada part of huge terror-response
drill
Canada will be part of the largest terrorism drill ever held in
the United States, a five-day event that begins Monday and includes
simulated biological and radiological attacks on Chicago and
Seattle.
...As many as 8,500 people from more than 100 U.S. agencies,
the Red Cross and the Canadian government will be involved. It's
estimated to cost about $16 million US...The drill includes two
mock events: a dirty bomb explosion in Seattle, and a biological
attack in Chicago.
Officials will stage a mock detonation of the bomb in Seattle,
which will spread radiation. Officials have hired hundreds of high
school students to portray the "victims."
In
the second attack, a fictional terrorist cell will release
"pneumonic plague" in Chicago. In a test of health-care
capabilities, people are expected to arrive at hospitals
complaining of flu-like symptoms.
More
cases are expected to be reported across the country and in British
Columbia, where a planeload of plague "victims" is expected to
land.
Government officials from Canada and the U.S. say it will test
the co-ordination and communication between the two countries, as
well as health-care capabilities.
Paul
Kennedy, Canada's senior assistant deputy solicitor general, says
the drill is important because events along the U.S. northern
border will have an "immediate and direct effect" on
Canada.
Comment:
An "immediate and direct effect" on Canada...
Can you say "A-U-S-T-R-I- A"?
Bomb sniffers
unreliable, trial told
Airport security staff in Toronto had minimal training and were
using an unreliable device to detect explosives on June 23, 1985,
the day police say a bomb was put on Air-India flight 182, B.C.
Supreme Court was told today.
Naseem Nanji, who was involved in screening baggage for
explosives, testified that she had not been instructed on what a
bomb looked like, had never seen an explosive or dynamite and would
not have known if something she saw was a bomb.
...John D'Souza, an Air-India security officer, asked staff to
use the hand held PD-4 explosive sniffer, she said.
Mr.
D'Souza gave her coworker James Post a demonstration. He lit a
match and the sniffer made a long whistling sound, she said. Mr.
D'Souza told them to look out for a long whistling sound and ignore
other noises.
...She said she heard the sniffer make short beeping sounds on
more than one occasion. She could not recall how many times the
sniffer started beeping.
The
sniffer never made a loud whistling sound, she also
said.
Comment:
From our own experiences of flying, it is
clear that the security measures put in place have nothing to do
with security and everything to do with instilling a climate of
fear. Long waits, repeated checks of bags, including the seizing of
scissors from bags that will be checked, have nothing to do with
the protection of passengers and airline
personnel.
Traffic accidents
more lethal than war: WHO
A
report from the World Health Organization says traffic accidents
cause more than four times as many deaths as war.
The
report says injuries kill about five million people worldwide every
year.
Traffic accidents are the biggest cause of death due to injury,
accounting for 1.26 million in 2000.
Suicide was the second leading cause of death by injury at
815,000 cases, followed by violence between people (520,000) and
drowning (450,000).
War
and conflict were responsible for 310,000 deaths in the same year.
Worldwide, traffic accidents were the number-two killer of children
age five-to- 14, second only to childhood diseases.
The
WHO report says twice as many males die of injuries as
females.
It
says nearly 90 per cent of deaths due to injuries take place in
poorer countries.
Comment:
The misery generated in our realm feeds our
4D-STS puppet masters. War, suicide, auto acidents, a veritable
banquet... And the importance of the automobile in American
society, where public transport has been relegated to the back
seat, and where for many years "What was good for GM is good for
America", takes on a whole new meaning.
North Korea nullifies accord to keep peninsula
nuclear-weapons free
North Korea said Monday a 1992 agreement with South Korea to
keep the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons was nullified,
citing a "sinister" U.S. agenda.
The
accord was the last remaining legal obligation under which North
Korea was banned from developing atomic arms. In January, Pyongyang
withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a global accord
to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
...North Korea has accused the United States of planning to
attack the isolated country, using the nuclear dispute as an excuse
for invasion. Washington says it wants to resolve the crisis
through dialogue, although U.S. officials have not ruled out a
military option.
"We
have realized that as long as the United States does not abandon
its hostile policy against the North, efforts to keep the Korean
peninsula nuclear free is nothing more than an illusion," KCNA
said. "We will further boost our already mighty military
power."
...North Korea demands a nonaggression treaty with the United
States. U.S. officials have ruled out such a treaty, but have
indicated they can consider some form of written guarantee if the
North scraps its nuclear programs.
N. Korea fired
laser at troops
North Korea's military fired a laser in March at two U.S. Army
helicopters patrolling the demilitarized zone separating the two
Koreas in what U.S. officials call a provocative action, The
Washington Times has learned.
Two
Apache attack helicopters were illuminated by lasers in early March
by a weapon that had the characteristics of a Chinese laser gun, an
indication that North Korea has deployed a new and potentially
lethal weapon.
Lasers focus concentrated beams of light on a target and are
used in some guidance systems. The Chinese laser gun, however, is a
weapon that can cause eye damage at ranges up to three
miles.
The
incident was kept secret until defense officials disclosed it to
The Times.
Comment:
Funny how this doesn't make it to the news
until the South Korean President is visiting New York...and that it
comes from the Pentagon. It looks as if world events are being
carefully orchestrated by the Bush gang with a very definite agenda
in mind. Sit back and watch the show.
US Army Patents Biological Weapons Delivery System,
Violates Bioweapons Convention
The
United States Army has developed and patented a new grenade that it
says can be used to wage biowarfare. This is in violation of the
Biological Weapons Convention, which explicitly prohibits
development of bioweapons delivery devices.
…The development of biological weapons delivery devices
is absolutely prohibited - "in any circumstance" - by Article I of
the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, to which the US
is a party. There is no exemption from this prohibition, neither
for defensive purposes nor for so called non-lethal
agents.
"The
development of weapons for biological payloads produces great
uncertainty about the US commitment to the Biological Weapons
Convention." says Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project US,
"Thirty four years after the US renunciation of biological weapons,
the Pentagon is back in the bioweapons business."
"Hans Blix might have an easier time finding illegal weapons if
he were inspecting near Baltimore instead of Baghdad," says
biologist Jan van Aken from the Sunshine Project Germany, referring
to the fact that two of the inventors work at the Army's Edgewood
Arsenal north of Baltimore, Maryland.
"This grenade is another example of how the Pentagon's so
called 'non lethal' weapons programs are consistently chipping away
at restrictions on two of the most deadly kinds of arms, biological
and chemical weapons. Programs that develop so called non-lethal
chemical and biological weapons should simply be abolished," says
Hammond.
Comment:
Words escape me (almost), the hypocrisy is
staggering, only superceded by the astonishing ability of the
American public to NOT SEE what is really going on. It is right
there in front of your faces people! RIGHT THERE!
The two faces of
Rumsfeld
2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell
nuclear reactors to North Korea
2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis
of evil and a target for regime change
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of
a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear
reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the
"axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by
Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear
weapons.
Mr
Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European
engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m)
contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors.
The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001,
earning $190,000 a year. He left to join the Bush
administration.
Comment:
How much clearer do we need it? Set 'em up
and knock 'em down. This guy and the rest of the rabble in the
white house are a bunch of immoral gangsters, and clearly they have
been biding their time for many years, putting the pieces in place
to set themselves up as the rulers, and ultimately destroyers of
the planet.
US rivals turn on
each other as weapons search draws a blank
One
key argument for war was the peril from weapons of mass
destruction. Now top officials are worried by repeated failures to
find the proof - and US intelligence agencies are engaged in a
struggle to avoid the blame.
...Last week the US flew 2,000 more experts into Iraq. The Iraq
Survey Team will join 600 experts already there. Organisations in
Iraq hunting for weapons now include teams from the US and British
armies, the CIA, the FBI and the Defence Threat Reduction Agency.
Yet at more than 110 sites checked so far they have found nothing
conclusive. It has been an exercise in false alarms. Suspect white
powder at Latifiyah was only explosives. Barrels of what was
thought to be sarin and tabun nerve agents were pesticides. When a
dozen US soldiers checked a suspect site and fell ill, it was
because they had inhaled fertiliser fumes. Each setback ratchets up
the political pressure. Infighting between government departments
and intelligence agencies is becoming vicious on both sides of the
Atlantic. Having fought a war to disarm Iraq of its terrible
weapons, neither the US nor Britain can admit that Iraq never had
them in the first place. The search for weapons of mass destruction
cannot be allowed to fail.
The
search is especially vital for The Cabal. In the brave new world of
post-11 September America, this tight group of analysts deep in the
heart of the Pentagon has been the driving force behind the war in
Iraq. Numbering no more than a dozen, The Cabal is part of the
Office of Special Plans, a new intelligence agency which has taken
on the CIA and won. Where the CIA dithered over Iraq, the OSP
pressed on. Where the CIA doubted, the OSP was firm. It fought a
battle royal over Iraq and George Bush came down on its
side.
The
OSP is the brainchild of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who set
it up after the 2001 terrorist attacks. It was tasked with going
over old ground on Iraq and showing that the CIA had overlooked the
threat posed. But its rise has caused massive ructions in the
normally secretive world of intelligence gathering.
The
OSP reports directly to Paul Wolfowitz, a leading hawk in the
administration. They bypassed the CIA and the Pentagon's own
Defence Intelligence Agency when it came to whispering in the
President's ear. They argued a forceful case for war against Saddam
before his weapons programmes came to fruition. More moderate
voices in the CIA and DIA were drowned out. The result has been a
flurry of leaks to the US press. One CIA official described The
Cabal's members as 'crazed', on a 'mission from God'.
But
for the moment The Cabal and Rumsfeld's Pentagon have won and
Powell's doveish State Department has lost. Tensions between the
two are now in the open.
'Rumsfeld set up his own intelligence agency because he didn't
like the intelligence he was getting,' said Larry Korb, director of
national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 'He
doesn't like Powell's approach, a typical diplomat, too
cautious.'
Former CIA officials are caustic about the OSP. Unreliable and
politically motivated, they say it has undermined decades of work
by the CIA's trained spies and ignored the truth when it has
contradicted its world view.
'Their methods are vicious,' said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA
chief of counter-terrorism. 'The politicisation of intelligence is
pandemic, and deliberate disinformation is being promoted. They
choose the worst-case scenario on everything and so much of the
information is fallacious.' But Cannistraro is retired. His attacks
will not bother The Cabal, firmly 'in the loop' of Washington's
movers and shakers. Yet, even among them, continued failure to find
any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a growing fear. The
fallout from the war could bring them down.
The
warning was there in black and white. Citing 'intelligence'
sources, Tony Blair produced an official dossier that concluded
Iraq could fire its chemical or biological weapons within 45
minutes of an order to do so.
It
was a terrifying prospect and ramped up the pro-war argument when
the dossier was produced last September. But cold analysis after
the war tells a different story.
Iraq
was abandoned by the UN weapons inspectors, then bombed, invaded
and finally brought under US and British military control. During
that entire time the 'button' was never pressed on its weapons of
mass destruction. Now both the pro-war party and the anti-war lobby
want to know why. Can this mysterious lapse be explained or did the
weapons never exist?
They
could have been hidden. Iraq is the size of California with
mountains and deserts in abundance. Ibrahim al-Marashi, an Iraqi
expert whose work was heavily plagiarised in a now infamous Downing
Street dossier published on the eve of war, has detailed a
sophisticated concealment network set up in the 1990s and headed by
Saddam's son Qusay. At the heart of the operation was Saddam's
son-in- law and cousin, Hussein Kamil, who defected in 1995 to
Jordan, where he revealed the concealment techniques to Western
intelligence agencies.
But,
according to al-Marashit, the main cache of weapons of mass
destruction should have been found in Saddam's home city of Tikrit.
But Tikrit has fallen and as yet nothing has been found, leaving US
officials clutching at straws. Some have gone so far as to suggest
that the weapons were hidden so well that the Iraqis themselves
were unable to use them.
A
more worrying possibility is that they were looted. Across Iraq -
not just in Baghdad and Basra - practically every government and
military facility was looted long before US or British troops were
able to control them. It might be that the weapons are now on the
black market. 'It means the weapons would now be proliferating,
which is exactly what the war was meant to stop,' said Garth
Whitty, a former weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s.
But
there are problems with that argument. Barrels of nerve agent are
not easy to sell. The war's critics point to a more obvious
conclusion - in the run-up to the war the Iraqis were simply
telling the truth. They had no weapons of mass
destruction.
A
massive picture of intelligence misuse has emerged. Aside from
Downing Street's plagiarised dossier, there are allegations that
Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents that the
accusation were based on were shown to be false by the
International Atomic Energy Agency, but that had not stopped
Britain and America warning of Saddam's nuclear threat. In fact,
the forgeries were obvious. One Niger Minister, whose signature was
on a document, had been out of office for a decade when the
forgeries were produced. A US envoy sent to investigate the claims
reported to the CIA in February 2002 that they were fakes. But the
OSP and the White House ignored him.
Other selective use of intelligence occurred. Much was made of
the OSP's body of Iraqi defectors, but they chose which defectors
they wanted to listen to. Kamil's terrifying description of Iraq's
capabilities in the early 1990s and its efforts to conceal its
arsenal was touted as killer proof. The fact that Kamil also told
his interrogators the weapons had later been ordered destroyed was
suppressed.
Other defectors may have had their own agendas. Kamil described
one, Dr Khidhir Hamza, as a 'professional liar' - but told US
intelligence what it wanted to hear and said Iraq was close to
building a nuclear bomb. No one now believes that. But Hamza has
now returned to Iraq as part of a Pentagon team to rebuild the
country, in charge of atomic energy. Kamil also returned to Iraq -
but when Saddam was in power. He was executed.
Perhaps the most damning evidence is the lack of intelligence
emerging from captured Iraqi officials. The list is impressive:
Huda Ammash, known as 'Mrs Anthrax'; General Hossam Amin, responsi
ble for talks with weapons inspectors; General Amir Saadi, Saddam's
science adviser; General. Rashid al-Ubaidi, an arms adviser; and
Abdul Hwaish, believed responsible for all Iraq's military
capabilities. If anyone knows about the weapons, it is these
people. They have powerful motivation to 'cut a deal' and tell what
they know.'Why is no one coughing?' said Whitty.
In a
quiet corner of Baghdad International Airport sits a truck and
trailer painted military green. Its canvas sides have been rolled
up to reveal the pipes and vats of some form of biological
fermentation machine. It was stolen in Mosul two weeks ago then
handed over to Kurdish militia when the thieves realised it was no
ordinary truck. The Kurds passed it on to the Americans.
It
is the only concrete sign that any weapons of mass destruction may
have existed. The firm which made it has said six others were
similarly kitted out. It has a strong resemblance to the 'mobile
bio-weapons labs' described by Powell to the UN, but is it the
smoking gun? Not even the most desperate Pentagon official goes
that far. No trace of biological weapons residue has been found
inside. The truck was apparently thoroughly cleaned out with bleach
before it was stolen.
Yet
many experts believe something will be found. Before the 1991 Gulf
war, Iraq did have a massive chemical and biological weapons
programme. Some is probably still lying around. If sufficient
quantities can be uncovered, perhaps it will be enough for a public
eager to feel the war was worth it. Finding nothing is
unthinkable.
Comment:
The Cabal? In the Pentagon? Could this be
related to the deep basements within the Pentagon? Deep basements
that lead to an area of mixed densities?
SELECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?
They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal—a small
cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the
Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. In the past year,
according to former and present Bush Administration officials,
their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of
direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers
and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11,
2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have
helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq.
They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and
also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or
I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the
operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon’s own
Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush’s
main source of intelligence regarding Iraq’s possible
possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al
Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And
although many people, within the Administration and outside it,
profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of
much of that intelligence is now in question.
The
director of the Special Plans operation is Abram Shulsky, a
scholarly expert in the works of the political philosopher Leo
Strauss. Shulsky has been quietly working on intelligence and
foreign-policy issues for three decades; he was on the staff of the
Senate Intelligence Com-mittee in the early nineteen-eighties and
served in the Pentagon under Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard
Perle during the Reagan Administration, after which he joined the
Rand Corporation. The Office of Special Plans is overseen by
Under-Secretary of Defense William Luti, a retired Navy captain.
Luti was an early advocate of military action against Iraq, and, as
the Administration moved toward war and policymaking power shifted
toward the civilians in the Pentagon, he took on increasingly
important responsibilities.
[...] Strauss’s idea of hidden meaning, Shulsky and
Schmitt added, “alerts one to the possibility that political
life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that
deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say
nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can
dispense with it is the exception.”
[...] In Congress, a senior legislative aide said, “Some
members are beginning to ask and to wonder, but cautiously.”
For now, he told me, “the members don’t have the
confidence to say that the Administration is off base.” He
also commented, “For many, it makes little difference. We
vanquished a bad guy and liberated the Iraqi people. Some are
astute enough to recognize that the alleged imminent W.M.D. threat
to the U.S. was a pretext. I sometimes have to pinch myself when
friends or family ask with incredulity about the lack of W.M.D.,
and remind myself that the average person has the idea that there
are mountains of the stuff over there, ready to be tripped over.
The more time elapses, the more people are going to wonder about
this, but I don’t think it will sway U.S. public opinion
much. Everyone loves to be on the winning side.”
Comment:
"The winning side"? Forget "Truth". What are
important to the Cabal are the STS values of "winning" and looking
out for number 1, values instilled into the people until they take
them as their own. But, then, in the STS world of the OP, these are
their values.
Campus ink tanks
Conservatives make their voices heard with a rising tide of
hard-hitting student newspapers
...In an eight-hour session that bore little resemblance to a
traditional journalism class, the students were taught how to start
their own conservative newspapers and opinion journals. And how to
pick fights with lefty bogeymen on the faculty and in student
government.
By
the end of the day, the student journalists were fired up for
battle — determined not only to change the tenor of
notoriously liberal campus dialogues, but also, in the long run, to
alter the basic makeup of the nation's professional news
outlets.
"What do you want professors to feel when you call them up?"
asked Owen Rounds, a former speechwriter for Rudolph
Giuliani.
"Threatened," replied Duncan Wilson, a tousle-haired
19-year-old from the University of North Carolina,
Charlotte.
Comment:
Ah, yes. The great American myth of the free
press and freedom of thought, carefully nourished through
intimidation. Make people who disagree with you feel "threatened".
Hitler himself would be proud.
Thousands of
brains were kept for research without the consent of grieving
relatives
The
widow of a mentally ill man whose brain was removed without her
consent after his suicide described her three-year battle to find
the truth yesterday as a report revealed that tens of thousands of
brains had been taken without the knowledge of relatives for
research and teaching since the 1960s.
The
Isaacs report, by Jeremy Metters, her majesty's inspector of
anatomy, found that of the 30,000 brains that remained in storage,
more than 20,000 were retained without consent.
Bryan North, a solicitor and the coroner for North Manchester,
allegedly helped to tip off the doctors when a brain was available.
They would arrange to have it collected. The mortician at the North
Manchester General Hospital was paid a £10 tip per
brain.
Is Pluto truly a
planet?
The
planet Pluto has been shrinking at an alarming rate for some time
now. Well, not actually shrinking - rather, our awareness of how
small Pluto is has been growing. Upon its discovery, in 1930,
scientists trumpeted that Pluto was about as large as Earth. By the
1960s textbooks were listing it as having a diameter about half
that of Earth. In 1978 astronomers discovered that Pluto has a
relatively large moon, whose brightness had been mistakenly lumped
in with the planet's; when this was taken into account, Pluto was
left with a diameter about a sixth that of Earth, or less than half
that of Mercury - long considered the runt of the solar system.
Seven moons in the solar system are bigger than Pluto.
Canadian Teen Has
X-Ray Vision
He's
a pretty cool kid, confident, bright, handsome and athletic. He's
got charisma. He's also got what they call healing powers, and
X-ray vision. "It's kind of hard to put words to it," says
16-year-old Adam. "MRI-vision is probably more accurate."
[...]
"When I go into someone, I see a 3D holographic image. I start
manipulating the image in front of me. I see blockages, green dots.
Basically, I grab them out, these energies, I tear them apart and
push them outside the skin, and they die very quickly without a
host organism."
His
dad, an engineer, tells me it's not a miracle, it's science.
Science we don't yet understand, adds his mom. They believe it has
something to do with "Quantuum Holographic Theory."
Stanton Friedman:
The Truth about UFOs
After more than 45 years of study and investigations and visits
to 19 document archives, I am convinced that: a) Earth is being
visited by alien spacecraft; b) The subject of flying saucers
represent a kind of Cosmic Watergate; c) There are no good
arguments against these conclusions; d) Visits to Planet Earth and
55 years of government cover-up of crashed saucers and alien bodies
are, together, the biggest story of the past millennium.
I
take a clear-cut, unambiguous stand that some UFOs are alien
spacecraft but that some of these flying saucers are our own. I am
absolutely convinced that the United States government has been
withholding data about UFOs since at least 1947. That was the year
when at least two crashed flying saucers - alien wreckage and
bodies - were recovered in New Mexico. This does NOT mean everybody
in the government knows all about saucers and nobody has talked.
Security works on a need-to-know basis with compartmentalization of
very highly classified matters. Of course, some people have talked,
but without having any confirmatory classified documents to
release.
After arduous effort, I have received some of the 6,000 pages
of UFO-related documents that have been released - many of them
with eight words to a page and paragraph after paragraph blacked
out (until they graduated to whiteout several years later.)
However, this amount is but a small percentage of what exists in
the archives and files of various government agencies.
More
than a decade ago, a Freedom of Information request submitted to
the CIA by Citizens Against UFO Secrecy elicited the response that
the CIA had no information about UFOs. An appeal was denied, but a
federal court action forced the CIA to do a document search.
Eventually it released about 900 pages of mildly interesting items.
Clearly this was the tip of the iceberg since none were classified
above "Secret" and since there were internal references to many
other documents that were not released.
The
CIA has a history of doling out dribs and drabs in hope that the
requester will give up. Of greater importance was the release of a
list of 57 UFO documents found in the CIA files but originating
with a host of other agencies. Notable among the identified
material were 18 UFO documents originating with the National
Security Agency. But these documents could not be released by the
CIA.
A
Freedom of Information request was then made for the NSA documents,
but was denied on the grounds of national security. A subsequent
appeal was denied and federal court action followed. Finally, a
federal judge ruled that the NSA had to search its files. The
search yielded 239 UFO documents with 79 originating with other
agencies, including 23 from the CIA, which supposedly had already
done an exhaustive search. The NSA refused to release 156 of its
UFO documents.
I
then filed a Freedom of Information request for the 23 CIA
documents identified by the NSA file search. After 35 months the
CIA released just nine, which were all, believe it or not, press
abstracts of Eastern European newspaper articles about UFOs! It
refused to release its own 14 UFO documents on that
list.
I
appealed and - two years later - received tiny portions of three
documents with the rest being withheld.
The
now-famous extraterrestrial encounters and cover up at Roswell,
N.M., have long been a focus of my work. I was the original
civilian investigator of the case and co-authored "Crash at
Corona," the definitive study of the Roswell incidents, and
instigated the Unsolved Mysteries episode on television about
Roswell.
Some
attacks on the legitimacy of the Roswell crash have been made by
people who accept the notion that Earth is indeed being visited by
alien spacecraft but do not believe that Roswell represents the
crash of such a vehicle. Much as I have tried to find good reasons
for rejecting the reality of the Roswell incident, despite the
enormous quantity of verbiage that has been published, I have been
unable to do so. [...]
There is no question that the U.S. government recovered two
crashed flying saucers and crews in the New Mexico desert in early
July, 56 years ago. The government has been quite successful at
withholding the physical remnants and the real paper
trail.
Yes,
Virginia, there really is a Cosmic Watergate!
Comment:
Indeed, a Cosmic COINTELPRO. For more about
this, see Richard Dolan's fascinating look at
UFOs
and the National Security State. There are strange visits
that the military is very curious and worried about. Of course, we
know that these are not "aliens" in the sense the disinfo crowd
would like us to believe, flesh and blood creatures from Planet X.
They are denizens of another realm, the hyperdimensions known to
our ancestors and described in myth. All this bunk about "aliens"
serves to ridicule the idea of other forms of
life.
Memphre the Lake
Memphremagog Monster Spotted
Barbara Malloy, a Newport City [Vermont] resident and local
historian, said this week she saw Memphre the Lake Memphremagog
monster on May 1. Like Nessie in the Loch Ness of Scotland or Champ
in Lake Champlain, Memphre is the stuff of local legend and
history.
It's
not the first sighting of the creature that many claim to have seen
on this long international lake. Area newspapers like The Stanstead
(Quebec) Journal have recorded sightings of something big and
elusive in the lake as far back as the 1840s. On Jan. 21, 1847, an
eyewitness reported this: "I am not aware whether it is generally
known that a strange animal something of a sea serpent ... exists
in Lake Memphremagog." [...]
Memphre is believed to look somewhat like a plesiosaur, a
water-living dinosaur of the Jurassic period, brown or black in
color, with four fins or paddle-like feet, an elongated roundish
body and a long neck. It ranges from 6 to 50 feet long. Popular
drawings or artwork show his skin color as green, but that
obviously depends on the eyewitness.
The Tree that
kills Snakes
Deep
within the jungles of the Konni range, coming under the Kollam
circle of the Forest Department, something strange, but little
known to the outside world, is reported to be happening at the foot
of a particular tree. Tribals, who regularly go to the forest, say
that they and their ancestors have witnessed the strange phenomenon
of venomous snakes lying dead under this tree. Heaps of snake
skeletons could be found under the tree. According to the tribals,
any venomous snake coming into contact with the tree, even by sheer
chance, finds itself getting paralysed and dies within minutes. And
this is the mystery behind the heap of snake skeletons and carcass
there. And the tribals have christened the tree `Analivega patta'.
[...]
Even
some forest officials have confirmed the eyewitness account of
snakes lying dead under the `Analivega patta'. They have seen the
tribals use the bark of the tree as anti-snake
venom.[...]
The
tribals say they know the location of 20 such trees within this
forest area and these trees stand quite far away from one another.
This again is a calculative handiwork of the Nature. If there had
been too many `Analivega patta' trees in the forest it would result
in the extinction of venomous snakes in the forest.
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