New Article: Will the REAL "Dr. Grant Gartrel(l)" please stand up? - 'Aussie Bloke' exposed

New Part II: Who is Behind the 'Aussie Bloke' Hoax? Some Additional Discoveries...

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Picture of the Day

Lightning - 22 May 2004
©2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

Space waste 'burnt before impact'

By Miranda Korzy
June 17, 2004

A CHUNK of space debris claimed by a witness to be the size of a house probably burnt up over the NSW south coast before it could hit the ground, astronomers said today.

A motorist on the Hume Highway told police he saw a burning object "the size of a house" streaking towards an an escarpment at Bulli about 9pm (AEST) yesterday, exploding in a bright flash.

Australian National University astronomer Vince Ford today said it sounded like a sizeable chunk of rock breaking up in the atmosphere.

If something of that size had hit the earth, it would have made a sonic boom and registered on seismological graphs, said Dr Ford, who is based at the Mt Stromlo Observatory in Canberra.

He said the object was likely to have been less than a metre in diameter and that no fragments nor a crater would be found.

"It really does sound like a fireball to me," Dr Ford said.

Supporting that view was Sydney Observatory astronomer and curator Nick Lomb.

A fireball was "the glowing gas that surrounds a piece of rock as it travels from space through the earth's atmosphere," Dr Lomb said.

The driver said the object was glowing silver in colour and exploded with a bright flash on impact.

It came down east of the Hume Highway, possibly on an escarpment near the top of a hill at Bulli, police were told.

Workers at the Sydney Airport Tower also said they saw a burning object in the sky about 9pm (AEST), police said.

However, no other reports were received by police and extensive patrols failed to find any space debris.

Wollongong University astronomer Glen Moore said people who saw meteors often had trouble determining their true size because of a lack of reference points in space.

"So I'd say the likely thing is it was much further to the west than they thought it was, beyond the escarpment," he said.

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Meteorite sighted in NSW

June 17, 2004, 7.11am

A METEORITE reportedly the size of a house fell on the NSW south coast overnight, exploding in a bright flash, police said today.

A driver on the Hume Highway shortly after 9pm (AEST) near Menangle reported an object the size of a house falling from the sky.

The object fell east of the Hume Highway, possibly in an escarpment near the top of a hill at Bulli, police were told.

The meteorite was described as glowing silver in colour and similar to an artillery shell when it exploded with a bright flash on impact.

Workers at the Sydney Airport Tower said they saw a meteorite about 9pm, police said.

No other reports were received by police and extensive police patrols of the area did not turn up the space debris.

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Police investigate meteorite reports

Police are investigating reports of a meteorite falling between Menangle and Bulli, north of Wollongong in southern New South Wales, overnight.

Police say a motorist travelling south on the Hume Highway near Menangle saw an object fall from the sky shortly after 9:00pm AEST.

They say the object fell to the east of the highway and possibly on an escarpment near the top of a hill at Bulli.

The object has been described as glowing silver in colour and similar to an artillery shell exploding with a bright flash on impact.

The Sydney Airport tower also confirmed the meteorite.

Police patrols of the area could not locate the object.

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Sweeping stun guns to target crowds

16 June 04
New Scientist Print Edition

Weapons that can incapacitate crowds of people by sweeping a lightning-like beam of electricity across them are being readied for sale to military and police forces in the US and Europe.

At present, commercial stun guns target one person at a time, and work only at close quarters. The new breed of non-lethal weapons can be used on many people at once and operate over far greater distances.

But human rights groups are appalled by the fact that no independent safety tests have been carried out, and by their potential for indiscriminate use.

The weapons are designed to address the perceived shortcomings of the Taser, the electric-shock gun already used by 4000 police departments in the US and undergoing trials with some police forces in the UK.

It hits the victim with two darts that trail current-carrying wires, which limit its range to a maximum of seven metres (see graphic). As a single shot, short-range weapon, the Taser is of little use in crowd control. And Tasers have no effect on vehicles.

Ionised gas

These limitations are beginning to be overcome. Engineers working for the US Department of Defense's research division, DARPA, and defence companies in Europe have been working out how to create an electrically conductive path between a gun and a target without using wires.

A weapon under development by Rheinmetall, based in Dorf, Germany, creates a conducting channel by using a small explosive charge to squirt a stream of tiny conductive fibres through the air at the victim (New Scientist print edition, 24 May 2003).

Meanwhile, Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems (XADS), based in Anderson, Indiana, will be one of the first companies to market another type of wireless weapon. Instead of using fibres, the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

"We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep," claims XADS president Peter Bitar.

Solid-state lasers

The gun has been designed for the US Marine Corps to use for crowd control and security purposes and is due out in 2005. It is based on early, unwieldy technology and has a range of only three metres, but an operator can debilitate multiple targets by sweeping it across them for "as long as there is an input power source," says Bitar.

XADS is also planning a more advanced weapon which it hopes will have a range of 100 metres or more. Instead of firing ionised gas, it will probably use a powerful laser to ionise the air itself. The idea has been around for decades, says LaVerne Schlie, a laser expert at the US Air Force Research Lab in Kirtland, New Mexico. It has only become practical with advances in high-power solid-state lasers.

"Before, it took a laser about the size of two trucks," says Schlie. "Now we can do it with something that fits on a tabletop."

The laser pulse must be very intense, but can be brief. So the makers of the weapons plan to use a UV laser to fire a 5-joule pulse lasting just 0.4 picoseconds - equating to a momentary power of more than 10 million megawatts.

This intense pulse - which is said not to harm the eyes - ionises the air, producing long, thread-like filaments of glowing plasma that can be sustained by repeating the pulse every few milliseconds. This plasma channel is then used to deliver a shock to the victims similar to a Taser's 50,000-volt, 26-watt shock.

Instrument of torture

HSV Technologies of San Diego, California is also working on stun and vehicle-stopping shock weapons with ranges of over 100 metres. And another company, Ionatron of Tuscon, Arizona, is due to supply a prototype wireless vehicle-mounted weapon to the US Department of Defense by the end of 2004.

But the advent of wireless stun weapons has horrified human rights groups. Robin Coupland of the Red Cross says they risk becoming a new instrument of torture. And Brian Wood of Amnesty International says the long-range stun guns could "inflict pain and other suffering on innocent bystanders".

And there are safety concerns. Of the 30,000 times US police officers have fired Tasers, in 40 instances people stunned by them later died. The deaths have been attributed to factors such as overdoses of drugs and alcohol, or fighting with officers, rather than the electric shock.

In a statement, Taser International chief Rick Smith said: "In every single case the medical examiner has attributed the direct cause of death to causes other than the Taser." Amnesty is not convinced, however, and wants an independent study of the effects of all existing and emerging electric-shock weapons.

Comment: The above weapon is designed for "crowd control", and will be operational by 2005. We wonder what uses the US military might eventually find for such a weapon. More to the point, the fact that this weapon is now going "commercial" means that it has in fact been in operation for quite some time, and has probably been tested in "live" experiments. Note the reference to a "laser" and ionized gas being used as the guide for the pulse...

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Flashback: What Brought Down the WTC Towers?

By Christopher Bollyn

Was the collapse of the World Trade Center caused by a laser beam weapon? A physicist who worked on the original "deep infrared" beam weapon has reason to believe so.

Amazingly, more than five months after the greatest terror attack on America in history, the cause of the towers' structural failure has yet to be investigated and re mains unexplained, according to America's leading fire engineering experts.

As part of an on-going investigation, American Free Press has interviewed a German physicist who believes a laser beam weapon, employing infrared technology originally developed in the Soviet Union, may have caused the towers' collapse.

People are still trying to understand exactly what caused the towers to completely crumble. However, it now appears likely that the federal government will not conduct an open and comprehensive inquiry and that the most important questions may remain unanswered.

Bush Wants Inestigation Limited

Both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney personally intervened and asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to "limit the congressional investigation into the events of Sept. 11," according to CNN. Bush made the unusual request at a private meeting with congressional leaders on Jan. 29. He asked that the House and Senate intelligence committees look only into "the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur," rather than conduct a comprehensive inquiry.

Privately, Democrats questioned why the White House feared a broader investigation to determine possible culpability.

A forensic investigation into what actually caused the buildings to collapse has not been opened and probably never will because the crucial evidence, such as steel from the building, was quickly removed rather than taken to a metallurgical laboratory to be examined. Fire Engineering magazine, a 125-year old respected journal which publishes technical studies of major fires, recently criticized the investigation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as "a half-baked farce."

The journal said it "has good reason to believe that the ‘official investigation' blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce, commandeered by political forces whose primary interests . . . lie far afield of full disclosure."

There are numerous indicators that something other than fuel fires caused the towers to collapse, including: the immense clouds of dust and apparent disintegration of some 425,000 cubic yards of concrete; the short duration and low temperature of the jet fuel fires; the fact that the rubble burned for more than three months despite being constantly sprayed with water; the report from the medical examiner that many of the dead had been "vaporized" and the absence of any flight data from the planes' "black boxes."

Michael Baden, M.D., New York state's chief forensic pathologist and a top expert in the field, said most bodies should be identifiable because the fires had not reached the 3,200 degree (F), 30-minute level necessary to incinerate a body. "Recovered tissues will likely be identified," Baden said, because "bodies are not cremated—or burnt beyond the ability to be identified—in the type of fire that occurred at the World Trade Center."

A former East German physicist who was involved in the development of a infrared beam weapon in the Soviet Union told AFP that there is evidence that a directed energy weapon using "deep infrared" radiation was used to bring down the WTC.

The East German physicist told AFP, "From my experience as a physicist and research scientist with the GRU [Russia's equivalent to the CIA] I have enough experience to judge that the WTC towers have been burning too quickly, too hot, and too completely to have been caused by the kerosene [jet fuel] fires that resulted from the crashes. Furthermore, the demolished buildings nearby [the 47-story Salomon Bros. Building] are an indication that there was a plasmoid cloud involved, which probably affected the buildings nearby."

A plasmoid cloud is a heated and ionized gas that can be created and projected using far infrared thermal waves. Plasma occurs when a gas is heated so that some electrons have been separated from their atoms or molecules. Ball lightning is considered by experts to be a plasmoid phenomenon.

The physicist told AFP that he believes that a plasmoid may have been projected onto the towers before the planes struck. "The planes may have had plasmoid in front of them. Just two or three seconds before the planes hit the towers, the plasmoids on the towers would have caused the Faraday cabin effect, like a car being hit by lightning.

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Flashback: Horrifying US Secret Weaponry Unleashed in Baghdad

Bill Dash – Far Shores August 24, 2003

A nightmarish US super weapon reportedly was employed by American ground forces during chaotic street fighting in Baghdad. The secret tank-mounted weapon was witnessed in all its frightening power by Majid al-Ghazali, a seasoned Iraqi infantryman who described the device and its gruesome effects as unlike anything he had ever encountered in his lengthy military service. The disturbing revelation is yet another piece of cinematic evidence brought back from postwar Iraq by intrepid filmmaker Patrick Dillon.

In the film, al-Ghazali, whose english is less than fluent, describes the weapon as reminiscent of a flame thrower, only immensely more powerful. It is unclear what principle the weapon is based on. Searching for a description, al-Ghazali said it appeared to be shooting concentrated lightning bolts rather than just ordinary flames. Drawing on his many years as a professional engineer, al-Ghazali speculates that radiation of some kind probably figures into the weapon's hideous capabilities. Like all men in Saddam's Iraq, al-Ghazali was compelled to serve in the Iraqi equivalent of the Army National Guard and fought in three wars over the past thirty-odd years. Via email, he told me he has seen virtually every type of conventional weapon employed in battle, and is well acquainted with their effects on people and machines, but nothing in his extensive combat experience prepared him for the shock of what he saw in Baghdad on April 12th.

On that date, al-Ghazali and his family sheltered in their house as a fierce street battle erupted in his neighborhood. In the midst of the fighting, he noticed that the Americans had called up an oddly configured tank. Then to his amazement the tank suddenly let loose a blinding stream of what seemed like fire and lightning, engulfing a large passenger bus and three automobiles. Within seconds the bus had become semi-molten, sagging "like a wet rag" as he put it. He said the bus rapidly melted under this withering blast, shrinking until it was a twisted blob about the dimensions of a VW bug. As if that were not bizarre enough, al-Ghazali explicitly describes seeing numerous human bodies shriveled to the size of newborn babies. By the time local street fighting ended that day, he estimates between 500 and 600 soldiers and civilians had been cooked alive as a result of the mysterious tank-mounted device.

In a city littered everywhere with burned-out civilian and military vehicles, US forces were abnormally scrupulous about immediately detailing bulldozers and shovel crews to the job of burying the grim wreckage. Nevertheless, telltale remnants remained as Dillon found when al-Ghazali later took him to the site. Dillon said they easily uncovered large puddles of resolidified metal and mounds of weird fibrous material that, al-Ghazali explained, were all that remained of the vehicles' tires. Dillon, who accumulated plenty of battlefield experience as a medic in Viet-Nam, and has since covered a number of wars from Somalia to Kosovo, told me that he has witnessed every kind of conventional ordnance that can be used on humans and vehicles. " I've seen a freaking smorgasbord of destruction in my life," he said, "flame-throwers, napalm, white phosphorous, thermite, you name it. I know of nothing short of an H-bomb that conceivably might cause a bus to instantly liquefy or that can flash broil a human body down to the size of an infant.

God pity humanity if that thing is a preview of what's in store for the 21st century."

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9/11 Commission's Official verdict: White House misled world over Saddam

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
17 June 2004

"The liberation of Iraq removed... an ally of al-Qa'ida" - President George Bush, 1 May 2003

"There's overwhelming evidence... of a connection between al-Qa'ida and Iraq" - Vice-President Cheney, 22 January 2004

"Within a week, or a month, Saddam could give his WMD to al-Qa'ida" - Donald Rumsfeld, 14 November 2002

"Saddam was a danger in the region where the 9/11 threat emerged" - Condoleezza Rice, 17 September 2003

The Bush administration's credibility was dealt a devastating blow yesterday when the commission investigating the attacks of 11 September said there was no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had assisted al-Qa'ida - something repeatedly suggested by the President and his senior officials and held up as a reason for the invasion of Iraq.

A report by the independent commission said while there were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa'ida operatives in the 1990s, it appeared Osama bin Laden's requests for a partnership were rebuffed. "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qa'ida co-operated on attacks against the United States," the commission said. It also discounted widespread claims that Mohamed Atta, the hijackers' ringleader, met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague.

The report forced the Bush administration on to the defensive, as it appeared to undermine one of its key justifications for the invasion of Iraq.

While Mr Bush has been forced to admit there was no specific evidence to link Saddam to 11 September, his deputy, Dick Cheney, claimed on Monday that the former Iraqi leader was "a patron of terrorism [with] long-established ties with al-Qa'ida''.

Critics of the White House say there was a deliberate policy to manipulate public opinion and create an association between Saddam and the attacks on New York and Washington. If true, such a plan has certainly been successful: a poll taken last September by the Washington Post newspaper found 69 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam was involved in the 11 September attacks.

Just to spell it out so that there is no mistake, no confusion about the word "misled". The Dictionary definition of the word is: "to cause a person to go wrong in conduct or belief". Another way to say it is that "THEY LIED". Of course, we realise that this is a rather extreme interpretation of the actions of Bush and his handlers, but we feel it is our duty to relay this information to our readers in as succinctly as we can, so here it is again - THEY LIED. Of course we applaud the 9/11 commission and the mainstream press for sticking to the term "mislead", that is, after all, what occurred. The Bush administration did indeed "mislead" the American and world public about the fact that there was no justification to invade Iraq and murder thousands of it's citizens. But to ensure that the conclusion is conveyed to the public in as clear a way as possible, which we are sure is a concern for the 9/11 commission. we feel we should state again what the 9/11 commission's conclusion was, in words that all can understand... THEY LIED!

The job of the commission, however, was not limited to the WMD question, they were tasked with proclaiming the definitive story on the events of 9/11 and the details of what really transpired that day and who, ultimately, was to blame. The commission, of course, rose to the bait (or rather the blank check) and in its report has provided us with the opportunity to engage in some extreme mental gymnastics as we attempt to believe the utterly preposterous and unbelievable official version of events, which just happen to vindicate Bush and Co of any involvement in the attacks and which continue to ramp up the fear factor of further impending attacks...

The commission's report also revealed that the initial plan for the attack on the US - drawn up by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior al-Qa'ida operative who is now in US custody - envisioned a much broader assault, simultaneously targeting 10 different US cities on both the east and west coasts.

That expanded target list included the FBI headquarters in the plot was to have been the 10th plane - on which he which personally have flown. Rather than attacking a building, Mohammed would have killed all of the male passengers on board, before contacting media and landing at an airport where he would have released women and children. He then was to make a speech denouncing the US.

Ambitious indeed! We wonder if part of Khalid's plan was to then escape the planet aboard his rocket ship and rendezvous with his personal space station in orbit from where he would then extort billions of dollars from the world's governments by threatening them with complete annihilation by way of his space based laser pointed at the world's major capitals?

That ambitious plan was rejected by Bin Laden, who gave his approval to a scaled-back mission involving four planes and costing as little as between $4-500,000. Mohammed had wanted to use more hijackers for those planes - 25 or 26, instead of 19. It said at least 10 other al-Qa'ida operatives who were initially due to participate in the attacks had been identified. They did not take part in the mission for a variety of reasons including visa problems and suspicions by airport officials in the US.

Other reasons that these extra hijackers did not take part in the operation was the fact that, like the actual hijackers, they had absolutely no idea about how to fly a Boeing 757, since they had been rejected from a Florida flight school, the owner of which doubted if the men could learn to drive a care let alone pilot a small light aircraft. Despite this, the 9/11 commission would have us believe that the actual hijackers were still able to commander the planes on 9/11 and fly them with military skill and precision, (hint hint) into the WTC.

The report also revealed that the plot was riven by internal dissent, including over whether to target the White House or the Capitol building that were apparently not resolved prior to the attacks. Bin Laden also had to overcome opposition to attacking the US from Mullah Omar, leader of the former Taliban regime, who was under pressure from Pakistan to keep al-Qa'ida confined.

Ah yes, we can hear the conversation now: "White House, Capitol building, Capitol building White House, dern it! I just can't decide!" Successfully carrying out an extremely detailed operation such as the 9/11 attacks which required in depth knowledge of the US Federal Aviation Authority's inner workings was no problem at all to a bunch of demented crazed Arab terrorists. The real problem was to decide which building to hit, and also to try and make sure that none of the hijackers wore outfits that clashed...

The commission confirmed that al-Qa'ida, though drastically changed and decentralised since 9-11, retained regional networks that were seeking to attack the US.

Of course, they are, and Ashcroft will be only too happen to tell you all where and when. Don't worry your pretty little heads about a thing. All you have to do is provide the fear and panic and everything will be fine.

"Al-Qa'ida remains extremely interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attacks," said the report.

Yes, according to our sources al-Qaeda is so interested in conducting chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attacks against the US that they are in direct negotiation with members of the US intelligence communities and members of the Israeli lobby in Washington with a view to carrying one out very soon!

The report said the CIA estimated the network spent $30m a year before September 11 on training camps and terrorist operations. The money was also used to support the Taliban.

Finally! A truthful statement - well, half truthful. Osama and his men have indeed spent millions in the past few decades on training etc. But have you ever wondered where those millions came from?

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While Reagan Napped: Ronnie, Osama And The Chin Defense

Greg Palast June 15, 2004

There can be no more dangerous creature to have burbled out of the Reagan Frankenstein factory than his Cold War comrade, Osama bin Laden.

In November 2001, with my BBC television and Guardian newspaper colleagues, I reported that, during the Reagan presidency, a US embassy official in Saudi Arabia was, in his own words, "repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants."

Sounds icky but not too notable until you learn the identities of these "applicants." They claimed to be engineering students who, when queried as to what school they attended, answered they "could not remember." They didn't have to. The unlikely "engineers" had little helpers in the Reagan Administration.

After investigation, the career diplomat, attorney Michael Springmann, learned they were, "recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to [bring to] the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."

Uh, oh. They returned to Afghanistan all right. But terrorists are like homing pigeons -- they have a bad habit of coming home to roost. In spook-world, it's known as "blow back." The Reagan-bin Laden killer brigade, skilled in such crafts as skinning Russian prisoners alive, blew back with a sickening vengeance.

That story ran world wide at the top of the BBC nightly news -- except in the USA where it bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall. Our media was careful not to wake America from its nap, to hide the deeply disturbing truths behind Grandpa Gipper's grin.

Ronald Reagan's loss of memory was, undeniably, a great personal tragedy. But lost in this week's circus of fakery and fawning for a failed president, is the greater national tragedy: America's amnesia, an unforgivable forgetting, a great sleep of reason from which we have yet to awaken, even after September 11.

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When the truth doesn't count....

Bush political fallout limited

By Jon Leyne
BBC correspondent in Washington

Bush and Cheney continue to assert Iraq had links to al-Qaeda

This is not the first time that an authoritative source has declared there was no proven link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In fact it is almost a surprise that the latest pronouncement, by the 9/11 commission, is even news.

Back in January, the prestigious Carnegie Endowment said: "The most intensive searching over the last two years has produced no solid evidence of a co-operative relationship between Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda."

David Kay, the former chief weapons inspector, came to the same conclusion.

In January the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, announced that he had seen "no smoking gun [or] concrete evidence" of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In fact even President Bush himself, when he was asked baldly in January whether he believed there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, said "I can't make that claim."

American believers

Yet somehow the administration Mr Bush leads has convinced the vast majority of Americans that exactly the opposite is the case.

A poll conducted by the University of Maryland in April found that 57% of Americans believe Iraq was substantially supporting al-Qaeda before the 11 September 2001 attacks or was involved in the attacks themselves. And that number was hardly changed from a similar poll a year earlier.

It has been a subtle operation. Only rarely do administration officials state the case quite as baldly as the Vice President, Dick Cheney, on Monday.

Mr Cheney said Iraq had "long established ties" with al-Qaeda. As usual, he was speaking among friends, in a forum that did not allow critics to question the assertion.

It was Mr Bush who was asked about his vice-president's remarks, at a news conference the following day.

"Zarqawi. Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda," explained the President, referring to the shadowy Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

"He's the person - remember the email exchange between al-Qaeda leadership and he himself about how to disrupt the progress toward freedom? Saddam Hussein also had ties to terrorist organisations. In other words he was affiliated with terrorism," Mr Bush added.

Nowhere in that response does Mr Bush explicitly draw the link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, but the implication is clear.

"It is one of those things people want to believe," explained Andrew Kohut, of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. "You only have to hint at it to get people to jump to that conclusion."

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Rummy cackles at the idea of secret arrests.

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
June 17, 2004

WASHINGTON - At the request of CIA Director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the military to secretly hold a suspected terrorist in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said.

The suspected terrorist has been held since October without being given an identification number and without the International Committee of the Red Cross being notified, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Both conditions violate the Geneva Accords on treatment of prisoners of war.

Rumsfeld ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have the prisoner secretly detained on the day last October, when Tenet made the request, Whitman said.

"The director of central intelligence requested he not be assigned an internment serial number while the CIA worked to determnine his precise disposition," Whitman said. [...]

The prisoner will be given a number and the Red Cross will be formally notified soon, Whitman said.

"The ICRC should have been notified about the detainee earlier," Whitman said. "We should have taken steps, and we have taken the necessary steps to rectify the situation."

The Iraqi prisoner is so far the only individual Defense Department officials have acknowledged shielding from the Red Cross. Before Wednesday's admission, Pentagon spokesmen would not confirm or deny if anyone was being held in secret. [...]

Maj. David Kolarik, a spokesman for the military's Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, said all prisoners are treated "in accordance with the principles" of the Geneva Conventions "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity."

The secret prisoner in Iraq is believed to be a high-ranking member of Ansar al-Islam, a radical group which had been based in northern Iraq before the U.S. invasion last year. U.S. officials believe the man was involved in attacks on coalition troops, Whitman said. [...]

Comment: Once again, the US openly admits that it is completely disregarding the Geneva Conventions. And once again, the American people do absolutely nothing about it.

Rounding Up Everyone Who Knows More Than They Do

By RON JACOBS
June 17, 2004

One of the lessons I learned in Contemporary Power Relations 101 is that when the rulers resort to brute force to impose their will, it means that they are losing their grip. No longer will their bribes, money, and lies suffice in their ongoing project to pacify the regular folk. So, it is with apprehension that I read news reports about the US government's law enforcement plans for the summer. Under the guise of preventing terrorism, the police state apparatus organized in Washington, DC is refusing to grant permits to citizens' groups to protest at various events around the country, including the Republican National Convention in New York City. At other events, the protestors are being cordoned into parts of the city where nobody will see them or the police repression of them.

Given this opposition to the exercise of our rights by the state, one can imagine the increase in my apprehension level upon receiving an email last week claiming to quote a fire chief of Sea Island, Georgia to the effect that 2,000 body bags had been delivered to the site of the G8 Summit. In addition, foreigners were being stopped, searched and deported without cause from the area. Now, I don't know about you, but if this is true, it certainly sounds to me like the state is continuing to escalate its repressive tactics. Perhaps the point behind these rumors, whether they are true or not, is to scare potential protestors away from this and other meetings of the elite by threatening them with physical harm and even death. If true, then this country is further removed from democracy than even the most radical anticapitalists claim.

Much like the efforts by federal and Chicago city authorities designed to intimidate and scare antiwar protestors away from the 1968 Democratic Convention in that city, New York officials and their federal counterparts are refusing permits to protestors of all stripes. No camping in the parks, no protesting near Madison Square Garden where the convention is being held and no demonstration in Central Park-all of these denials are designed to make every person who decides to vocalize their opposition to Bush and his policies a criminal before they even open their mouths. This is exactly what occurred in Chicago thirty-six years ago. Those who showed up got their butts kicked on national television.

Of course, the possibility exists that there is a real threat to attack one of these elitist meetings from any number of terror organizations. Perhaps that is why the feds have shipped in 2,000 body bags to Sea Island. Still, I am more inclined to believe that the use of terror threats is just one more psychological weapon from the police state apparatus designed to intimidate its critics into silence or, at the least, irrelevance. After all, if no one listens to our protest because the state has painted us into the same corner as its terrorist enemies, then how will the average television viewer consider our challenges and protests?

Yet, if we assume that these bags are for potential "collateral damage" from a terror strike, what does that say about the hold on power that these self-appointed leaders who call themselves the G8 have? In a word or two, it's tenuous, even in their minds. What that means for those who oppose them is anyone's guess, but if history is any indication, one would be wise to have an escape plan in mind. That is, an escape plan from those Manhattan streets this August when the cops and Secret Service chase you down a side street with their guns drawn and their tear gas painfully fogging your vision; and another one just in case the upcoming presidential election is interrupted by an "October surprise" that would provide an excuse to lock up all those potential terrorists on John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge's lists.

By now, the reader may think I am a raving paranoid. Of course, I'm not, but I do have moments when I wonder whether or not I should be. Such a mental state might just save me. After all, wouldn't a heightened state of paranoia prevent me from walking into a trap created by my insistence on expressing myself? Or, would it just make me too afraid to speak out? It is the latter effect that seems to have taken hold here in America. Why? Because the raving paranoids who run this country are creating the condition that they describe. In other words, they believe that their way of life-with its extravagant abuse of the earth and its people-is under threat from those who have suffered as a result of their abusive extravagance, and they are afraid. Afraid of justice and, short of that, afraid of plain old revenge.

So, like any paranoid psychopath, they are lashing out at those who they think might hurt them. As the psychosis deepens, their list of potential enemies increases, as does the violence of the paranoid's reaction. Hence, the brutal repression of protest via the policeman's club, the elevated terror alert, and the concussion bomb.

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The Bush-Kerry Conundrum

The Only Choice is the War Party

By KURT NIMMO
June 17, 2004

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a point. Democrats have "no moral right" to criticize Bush for invading Iraq. Why? Because they were gung-ho about invading Yugoslavia. Putin made the comment at the G8 neolib feast on Sea Island, Georgia.

Democrats, of course, are attacking Bush because they want John Kerry in the White House next year. Kerry says he will continue Bush's failed policy in Iraq with the notable exception that he would "internationalize" the mess and ask Europeans to help out in the murder of Iraqi freedom fighters and innocent civilians.

Turn Democrats upside down and they look like Republicans. Most of them voted for Bush's invasion. Most of them believe killing Iraqis will return the sort of results the neocons had in mind when they lied their way into the invasion. Most of them are responsible for war crimes. Most of them should be standing alongside Bush and his neocons rabble in the docket at the Hague.

How soon we forget.

Clinton attacked Yugoslavia. He ordered the bombing of civilian targets -- homes, roads, farms, factories, hospitals, bridges, churches, monasteries, columns of refugees, TV stations, office buildings -- and killed a "few thousand random civilians for good measure, and thus weakening the will of the population to resist, so that they would submit to NATO occupation," as David Ramsay Steele summarizes. By attacking Yugoslavia Clinton and the Democrats basically laid the groundwork for Bush and the neocons: For Clinton and the Democrats, it is perfectly acceptable to attack other nations -- this is not a Republican proclivity -- even if they pose no threat to the United States or anybody else. The United Nations does not need to be consulted.

Neolibs believe they possess the moral authority -- the neocon faction like to call it "moral clarity" -- to murder anybody and everybody who stands between them and oil, minerals, rainforests chock full of lumber, and "natural monopolies," that is publicly owned power grids, railroads, telecoms, schools, hospitals, and even aquifers of fresh water. On this Democrats and Republicans are in agreement.

The American people only need be lulled to sleep. Or exposed to a pantheon of spine-chilling demons. It's easy to frighten children with scary stories. Halloween can be easily rescheduled to June or December or March. Freddy Kruger Hussein or Chuckie Slobodan Milosevic are trotted out on cue. Booga booga. Arab cave dwellers with satellite phones want to kill your first born.

Clinton sounded like Bush when he said, "[Hussein's] regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. Let there be no doubt, we are prepared to act."

Surely, there is no doubt. Republicans and Democrats are into mass murder and theft.

In 1998 Senate Democrats passed Resolution 71, which gave Clinton the authority to "take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end it's weapons of mass destruction programs," in other words the authority to attack the people of Iraq who were suffering under years of brutally imposed sanctions. On December 16, 1998, Clinton attacked Iraq. Prior to this he bombed Sudan and Afghanistan. Clinton and the Democrats showed Bush and the Republicans how to go about violating the Constitution and international law.

Peas in a pod. Birds of a feather.

Putin is correct -- the Democrats have no right to criticize Bush. Junior is simply doing what the Democrats did in Yugoslavia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Only difference is the president is a Republican, not a Democrat. It is this fact that really irritates Democrats. Not an illegal war on the people of Iraq.

Democrats are going after Bush because they want Kerry in the White House next year. Democrats are pissed because they lost the last time they played musical chairs. Bush rigged the game, but that does not seem to bother them a whole lot. Democrats would do the same, given half the chance. It's just that the Democrats are a few cents short in the viciousness department.

Clinton wanted us to believe he was a nice guy as he killed Serbian school children and Iraqi grandmothers. Republicans don't care what you think. God told Bush what to do. He doesn't especially care if you like him or not. It's not about popularity. It's about who can secure the planet for neolib digestion.

So, in November, you can vote for a Republican warmonger or a Democrat warmonger. Oh, you can vote for Ralph Nader on principle, or not vote at all, but the forgone conclusion is that the War Party will be in the White House -- either Republican or Democrat flavor, no difference -- for another four years. Meanwhile, the neoliberal war against Islam and the third world will continue. The Wall Street neolibs may get a new CEO, but the game plan will remain essentially unchanged. It's all about management style -- the charter remains rock solid.

We have little choice but to sit back and watch the empire crumble. It may take a year, or it may take 20, but sooner or later the empire will disintegrate -- as all empires eventually do. In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence.

If Bush gives you heartburn, you can, as Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt suggested, always change the channel. Everybody Love Raymond is a short skip, hop, and a jump away. Laugh tracks effectively narcotize the public. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Four more years -- and then the countdown to destruction.

In Rome, the people watched gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum. In America, we watch it on CNN and Fox. In Rome, the Praetorian Guard eventually decided who would rule. In America, the new Praetorian Guard -- a marriage of convenience between corporations and the Pentagon -- decide who will rule. In Rome, the throne was sold off to the highest bidder. In America, the bidders are all neoliberal rich people.

Choose your suit: Democrat or Republican cut.

Makes no difference.

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The Continued Triumph of Neoconservatism

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

It has become very fashionable to believe that the neocons are on the run, and their hold over American politics has finally come to an end. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although Iraq isn't going well, and the torture issue is proving to be a bit of an embarrassment for certain Washington elites, the power of the neocons continues pretty much unabated. They are keeping a low profile until it is clear that oil prices will stay low enough for Bush to be reelected, but their ultimate plans for the Middle East and the world remain in place, and are quietly advancing. Americans who think that some fairy godmother - either the CIA, 'patriotic' U. S. generals, or the U.S. Congress - is going to rescue them are dreaming in technicolor. All kinds of terrible legal things are supposed to be in the works for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and all the infamous neocons from Wolfowitz on down. Just who exactly will be bringing all these people to justice?

* the Republican-controlled Justice Department?;

* The Republican-controlled House of Representatives?;

* the Republican-controlled Senate?;

* the Republican-controlled court system?;

* the Republican-controlled (and completely corrupted) Supreme Court?;

* the Republican-controlled Executive Branch?;

* the Republican-contolled media?; or maybe

* the Christian Zionist cult hostage President?

This isn't your father's Republican Party, the one that might have had enough integrity and respect for the Constitution to can Nixon. These guys are loyal to only one thing: their continued hold on power. The only thing that will save the United States from the neocons and the further wars and domestic terrors that will be imposed by them is the ballot box in November. But what's going to happen there?:

* Bush's core group of knuckle-dragging knucklehead Christian Zionist crazies remains completely intact (these people actually like the fact that the United States is torturing people, especially if it involves the breach of international law);

* the Democrats have a very weak candidate;

* another 'terrorist' attack would turn Bush into a hero overnight, and make Americans rally around the President for protection;

* Rove no doubt has an 'October Surprise' up his sleeve (the capture of OBL?);

* the crooked electronic voting machines are facing a bit of a battle, but in a very close election enough of them will be in place in November for the executives at Diebold and other companies to switch enough votes to make the difference;

* incredibly, brother Jeb is still (!!!) jobbing the voting lists in Florida to systematically disenfranchise black people (is it still 1955 in Florida?), and using crooked voting machines; and

* when all else fails, Bush always has the crooked Supreme Court in his pocket.

The United States is in extreme danger, perhaps the greatest danger it has ever faced, and not only is it unrealistic to count the neocons out, it is also very dangerous. Here, from Bob Dreyfuss, are their plans for Saudi Arabia (my emphasis):

"Before the war in Iraq, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, James Akins, told me that by invading Iraq the Bush administration would accelerate the spread of Al Qaeda-style movements in Saudi Arabia, and it's happening. The country is said to be in a state of incipient civil war, and the royal family is apparently unable to stem the spread of the bin Ladenite poison. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States has called on the kingdom to conduct an all-out war against the terrorists, but it could be too little, too late. Make no mistake, however: if Saudi Arabia falls to radicals, U.S. forces will occupy that country's oil fields faster than you can say 'imperialism.' And if that happens, it will be Phase 2 of the neocons' expanded plans for the Middle East: first topple Saddam and 'flatten Iraq,' as another former ambassador to Saudi Arabia described the essence of the neocon Iraq strategy, and then move on to Saudi Arabia.

'I've stopped warning that bin Laden might take over Saudi Arabia,' Akins told me last year. 'I think that's exactly what they want.' And then American forces would move in. No U.S. government could tolerate the collapse of Saudi Arabia. Oil experts are already pointing out that sources of oil outside Saudi Arabia and Iraq are rapidly being drained, meaning that those two countries are basically the only two sources of expanded future supply. Period."

Sometime towards the end of the second Bush term I can see the United States engaged in World War III (known to future historians as the Greater Israel War) in the Middle East with Iraq-style occupations (or worse) in Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia (not to mention Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea). While people fantasize about various bad things that might happen to the neocons, Israel continues to steal land to build more illegal settlements, the Israeli-American apartheid wall continues to go up, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran are under imminent threat of attack (Dreyfuss goes on to point out in the posting I cited above that Iraq's aggressive nuclear posturing is based on the fact it knows it will soon have to defend itself), and the 'strategy of terror' continues against Americans. The neocon plans are advancing nicely, and nothing can stop them.

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NYT urges Bush to apologize over Iraq war

17-06-2004,09 :28

The prestigious New York Times urged US President George W. Bush to apologize to the American people for going to war on Iraq after an official investigation into the September 11 attacks found no evidence linking Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

"Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different," the Times editorial, entitled "The Plain Truth", said.

"Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide."

"This is not just a matter of the president's diminishing credibility, although that's disturbing enough," the daily said in the editorial published Thursday.

"The war on terror has actually suffered as the conflict in Iraq has diverted military and intelligence resources from places like Afghanistan, where there could really be al Qaeda forces, including Mr. bin Laden."

President Bush, the US daily added, is responsible for his government's actions since September11 . "That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans.

"There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/ 11world," the paper concluded.

Comment: Where were these "wise words" from the NY Times when they could have made a difference? There were many voices, millions the world over, who were saying the same thing BEFORE the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They took to the streets. They raised their voices against the cries for war. And WE WERE CORRECT!

Now that the Times has caught up to the lies of Bush and his colleagues about WMD and the lack of connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda, will they start asking questions about the coup of 9/11? Will they begin sorting through the rigged election of 2000 when Jeb got his brother elected with the help of Catherine Harris and the judges of the Supreme Court? Will they, like Kaminski, call for a military coup? Or, like Michael C. Ruppert, lay the ground for the same thing but by the CIA?

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Voice of the White House

TBRNEWS -JUNE 14, 2004

In recent past issues, we have carried comments from a reporter assigned to the White House press corps. Some of these remarks, most especially one about Bush's physical and mental problems, drew an enormous number of viewers and hundreds of inquiries, most especially from foreign press entities. The reporter advised us by email that there was rampant fury in the White House and security was becoming very tight. As a result of this, he decided to lay low for a few weeks and see how the wind was blowing. Yesterday, he sent us the following material which we are now posting. Some of it is outrageous in the extreme but to date, no one has proven him wrong. Our source was the first to expose and we were the first to make public, the accusations that the President of the United States was a man that suffered from serious psychological problems. Since our initial publication of what we call the Madness of King George, there has been increasing interest in the subject and herewith, we present additional input from both inside and outside the White House.

June 9-10, 2004 "One of my more important contacts inside the Monkey Palace here is a relatively innocent clerk-typist who is being courted by a White House security agent. In order to impress her, he has been talking. Unfortunately, someone got wind of his loose mouth and he has been reassigned elsewhere. Apparently, threats against the President's health and safety are reaching incredible proportions. He could not attend his daughter's graduations because of "heightened security concerns" and a correspondent from Italy notes that Bush had massive security while in that country.

The Vatican security people said that they had to strongly increase their measures following strident demands from the Secret Service, when Bush visited the Pope and that the latter viewed Bush as "not quite normal" and a "most unpleasant personage."

Bush apparently tried to bully the Pope who responded in public, admonishing him for his actions and insisting on US withdrawal from Iraq. As is well-known, the Pentecostal President detests Catholics, calling them, among other things, "Whores of Babylon."

The crooked Italian Prime Minister will now permit the stationing of US troops and aircraft in his country (the Turks are fighting shy of this) but asked for, and got, a bribe for doing so. Public sentiment in Italy is strongly opposed to the lunatic and dangerous Bush policies and growing. They do not want another Madrid bombing in their country and Italian papers view Bush as a "disturbed and disturbing" person.

Bush is going to remove troops from South Korea. Washington and Seoul denied this at the time but the NYT ran an article that the 2nd US Division would be transferred to Iraq. There were a number of official qualifiers but the message is clear: If the troops now involved in the occupation of Iraq are not rotated very soon, there is every reason to expect outbreaks of mutiny among their ranks.

We have input from local papers across the country that states that recruitment has dropped off 90%.

On the way to the Georgia conference, Bush said on his plane, and was overheard: ‘I know I am being tested. You know God has placed me in the White House to do his will and now it looks like a bunch of evil Satanists are ganging up on me. They will pay for this, believe me. When I get reelected, and God will guarantee this, these sons of bitches will pay for disputing me. I don't care what these liberal faggots say about our mistreatment of terrorists. These are idol worshippers and they are trying to hurt us. Can't the people see that I am protecting them?' This is a quote taken from a clandestine pocket tape recorder. My source, a senior clerk, told me several times that Bush is becoming so erratic and explosive that his staff is trying to keep out of sight, even in the White House.

Some random comments: Old-time White House staffers have told me recently that Reagan was a very decent and genuinely friendly person. I personally deplore his politics but as a man, he was so far above this one as to be a farce. Rove has been angling for the widow Reagan to stump for George but is beginning to discover that the entire family, and most of the Reagan friends and co-workers are either disgusted by Bush or actually detest him. They see him as a complete phony who uses his hyped up religious views to get votes. [Redacted] told me she thought Bush was really not religious because his "language was so foul around women" that no real Christian would ever think or talk in that manner. It is very difficult to convey an opinion in print but I will make an effort. George Bush, the President, is one of the meanest, vindictive men I have ever met.

Initially, when everything was going his way, the atmosphere of the White House was one of triumph and euphoria but now that Bush's past deeds are about to crush him, he has reverted to what he was before he stopped boozing: a mean and spiteful person, given to a foul mouth and expressing really vulgar contempt for anyone and everyone who dares to cross him. Example: When Gore gave a strong and effective anti-Bush speech a few months ago, I heard Bush say (at a distance but he doesn't care who hears his outbursts) "Who the fuck cares what that shithead thinks? They should have stuck him in the funny farm instead of his crazy dumb ass wife." That is a direct quote. Rove is not much better either. Both of them remind me of a couple of interior decorators swinging their purses at a rival. They both give me the creeps and I am not the only one around the Monkey Palace to think, and now talk, that way.

Considering his gay contacts at Yale (a notorious black drag queen was one of them) Bush is projecting badly here. I think Hannibal Lecter would make a better president than this one.

If the vicious and stupid neo cons who instigated all of this crap are so determined on having their wars, why not draft them and ship them all off to Baghdad? It would be a sheer delight to see a picture of a barbequed Wolfowitz, in bits and pieces, dangling from a bridge."

Comment: While we cannot vouch for the authenticity of the above "insider" press reports, the below from New York Press would seem to confirm that Bush is indeed a man on the edge of sanity with little left to lose...

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How many bodies can fit in the trunk of the presidential limo?

It should come as no surprise that the Bush gang cavorted with a thug as sleazy and ruthless as Ahmed Chalabi, only to later whack him too. And these are only the high-profile hits. The Bushies exact revenge more frequently—and more inconspicuously—than Tony Soprano himself on any given day. Last week, Washington, DC, Republican city council member David Catania was banished from the Republican National Convention, told that he could not be a delegate and work on the platform committee—because he'd crossed the president.

Never mind that he had campaigned for Bush in 2000 after meeting with him and had raised more than $80,000 for Bush's re election campaign. The Bush mob put a contract out on Catania, an openly gay Republican, because he'd said that Bush's backing of a federal marriage amendment caused him to decide he couldn't support the president. The DC Republican Party chair Betsy Werronen was the designated hit woman, refusing to certify Catania's election as a delegate

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Three US soldiers killed as Bush says democracy is born in Iraq

16-06-2004,19 :52

A rocket hit an American logistics camp near the city of Balad on Wednesday afternoon, killing three U.S. troops and wounding25 including a pair of civilians, the US military said.

Two of the wounded were flown to Baghdad for treatment, according to a statement from the U.S. Army's13 th Corps Support Command.

Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, in a live speech to U.S. forces worldwide, said democracy was being born in Iraq despite the killings and attacks.

"We have come not to conquer, but to liberate people and we will stand with them until their freedom is secure," Bush told several thousand troops. "By helping the rise of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the world, you are giving people an alternative to bitterness and hatred, and that is essential to the peace of the world."

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US likely to guard Saddam

From correspondents in Baghdad
June 17, 2004

THE US and Iraq are close to a deal to transfer ousted dictator Saddam Hussein into Iraqi legal custody although he will remain under the lock and key of US wardens, a coalition source said today.

Saddam would be under Iraq's legal jurisdiction, but the US-led coalition would still guard the former head of state, the source said.

"This is the arrangement we're close to reaching," the source said, adding: "This is probably what's going to happen."

Comment: The US has made the same arrangement for Saddam that they made for the entire country: let the Iraqi's claim legal jurisdiction, but keep the country and the former friend of Ronald Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld under American lock and key.

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Huge bomb targets Iraq army recruits

At least 35 people have been killed in a car bomb attack at an Iraqi army recruitment centre in western Baghdad.

The car, packed with artillery shells, blew up at the gates of the centre, housed in an old airport. The blast was heard throughout the city.

According to reports, the car drove into a crowd of about 100 people queuing to volunteer before exploding.

Debris was scattered along a four-lane highway. At least one shell could be seen lying on the blood-stained road.

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An act of faith: U.S. religious leaders apologize to Iraqis

A Register-Guard Editorial - June 16, 2004

A single organ note drones almost imperceptibly in the background as the video image flickers to life. The Rev. Don Shriver's face fills the screen, and the Presbyterian minister says:

"A Salaam A'alaykum ["Peace be with you" in Arabic]. As Americans of faith..."
Shriver's face dissolves into the calm countenance of American Muslim cleric Imam Feisal Abdur Rauf, who continues Shriver's sentence:

"...we express our deep sorrow at abuses committed in Iraqi prisons."

Rauf's gentle baritone is replaced by the image of Sister Betty Obal, a Catholic nun, who says:
"We stand in solidarity with all those in Iraq and everywhere..."

And then the white-bearded Rabbi Arthur Waskow finishes her sentence, intoning:
"...who demand justice and human dignity."

The gently powerful apology continues, with each of the four American clergy sharing portions of the final sentence:

"We condemn the sinful and systemic abuses committed in our name, and pledge to work to right these wrongs."

The screen fades to black as it fills with the words: "This message was endorsed and paid for by thousands of Americans. www.faithful america.org"

The moving 30-second commercial, delivered in English with Arabic subtitles, began airing Tuesday throughout the Arab world on Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. In less than a week, thousands of visitors to FaithfulAmerica.org's Web site donated nearly $41,000, more than twice what was needed to pay the $20,000 cost of airing 10 spots on the Arab cable networks. The group intends to keep running the message until its money runs out

FaithfulAmerica.org is a project of the National Council of Churches that "aspires to be an online wing of a powerful, new progressive faith movement, like the ones that fought for independence, abolition and civil rights." Troubled by the implications of the Iraq torture scandal and the efforts of U.S. leaders to blame a few "bad apple" soldiers, FaithfulAmerica.org decided the Arab world needed to see a different kind of response from the American faith community.

"We need to send a message directly from us, the people of the United States, to the people of Iraq and the Arab world, telling them that as Americans we stand shoulder to shoulder with them in demanding justice for these sinful abuses committed in our name," says a statement on the group's Web site.

The humble contrition offered by the American Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders in FaithfulAmerica's ad is an eloquent reminder of the universal healing power of a heartfelt apology. It transcends the pitfalls of politics by letting people reach out to one another with an open hand that seeks forgiveness and pledges faith in a common dream for the future.

With a little luck, appealing to that common dream without glossing over previous failures will help FaithfulAmerica's message connect with skeptical Iraqis where slicker efforts so far have failed.

Comment: With a little luck, the Iraqi people can now have some of that old time religion alongside their American style freedom and democracy. Notice how the four representatives on the television spot come from the three major monotheistic religions? What have religions ever done except add fuel to the fires of war? With Bush and his direct line to the almighty, and Sharon as Yahweh's anointed defender of Israel, battling the evil-terrorist followers of Allah, it seems certain that much more blood will be shed in the name of religion in the days to come.

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UN to Caterpillar: Stop selling bulldozers to Israel

Wed, 16 Jun 2004

GENEVA - A U.S.-based company has been warned by a United Nations expert not to sell bulldozers to Israel because of the way the Israeli army is using them.

Jean Ziegler, the UN's special expert on the right to food, sent a letter to Caterpillar Inc. saying that the company could be considered an accomplice in human rights violations.

The letter to Caterpillar chief executive James Owen expressed Ziegler's concerns "about the actions of the Israeli occupation forces in Rafah and in other locations in Gaza and the West Bank."

A resolution passed this year by the UN Human Rights Commission extends responsibility to protect rights to "non-state actors."

Ziegler's letter, dated May 28, said the Israelis are "using armoured bulldozers supplied by your company to destroy agricultural farms, greenhouses, ancient olive groves and agricultural fields planted with crops."

There's been no comment from Caterpillar headquarters in Peoria, Ill.

The letter also says Caterpillar bulldozers have been used to destroy "numerous Palestinian homes and sometimes human lives, including that of the American peace activist Rachel Corrie."

Corrie, 23, was crushed to death in March 2003. She was trying to stop an Israeli army bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes in a Gaza Strip refugee camp.

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McGuinty promises U.S. security 'vigilance'

CANADIAN PRESS
Jun. 16, 2004. 05:17 PM

WASHINGTON - Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty proposed a special bi-national clearance zone today at the Canada-U.S. border to improve security against terrorists while speeding trade.

His idea includes the contentious notion of allowing American officials to carry arms in Canada when they pre-clear passengers destined for the United States, a major sticking point for many Canadians.

"I give you my word Ontario will do its part to protect North America from terrorists," McGuinty told the Canadian American Business Council.

"We will not allow ourselves to be used as a base for future terrorism operations against the United States. We will not be exploited. We will be vigilant." [...]

The premier, who said he'd raise the idea in a meeting with Tom Ridge, head of the U.S. Homeland Security Department, later likened the scheme to the process at airports, where Canadians are scrutinized by American customs officials. [...]

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Suspected Colombian rebels massacre at least 34 farm workers

09:09 PM EDT Jun 16
KIM HOUSEGO

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Suspected leftist rebels raided a ranch in one of Colombia's biggest cocaine-producing regions, tied up 34 farm workers with the hammocks they had been sleeping in, and gunned them all down, officials said. [...]

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'Spooky' science offers promising step toward ultra-fast computers

By MALCOLM RITTER

(AP) - In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, scientists have transferred physical characteristics between atoms by using a phenomenon so bizarre that even Albert Einstein called it "spooky."

Such "quantum teleportation" of characteristics had been demonstrated before between beams of light.

The work with atoms is "a landmark advance," H. J. Kimble of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and S. J. van Enk of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., declare in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. [...]

Teleportation between atoms could someday lie at the heart of powerful quantum computers, which are probably at least a decade away from development, Wineland said. Although his work moved information about atomic characteristics only a tiny fraction of a centimetre, that's in the ballpark for what would be needed inside a computer, he said.

His work involved transmitting characteristics between pairs of beryllium atoms, while the Austrian work used pairs of calcium atoms. Each atom's "quantum state," a complex combination of traits, was transmitted to its counterpart.

Key to the process was a phenomenon called entanglement, which Einstein derided as "spooky action at a distance" before experiments showed it was real.

Basically, researchers can use lab techniques to create a weird relationship between pairs of tiny particles. After that, the fate of one particle instantly affects the other: if one particle is made to take on a certain set of properties, the other immediately takes on identical or opposite properties, no matter how far away it is and without any apparent physical connection to the first particle.

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Golly, gee, Super Darn coming to Nunavut

Jun 16 2004 10:10 AM CDT

IQALUIT - A group of international scientists want to set up radar stations in Rankin Inlet and Inuvik.

Saskatchewan physics professor George Sofko says the communities could become home to something called the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network.. or Super DARN.

Sofko says the international network of radar sites measures electrical activity in the Earth's atmosphere, also known as space weather.

Sofko says space weather is centred around the earth's magnetic poles making Rankin Inlet and Inuvik so appealing.

"Earth's magnetic pole is in that region to the north of Rankin and Inuvik, so both our radars will make measurements over this polar cap region which (is) critical to the measurement of space weather systems."
Sofko says measuring space weather would protect communications satellites.

He says knowing where auroral activity is going to happen would also help satellites change course to avoid hazardous conditions.

Comment: According to the SuperDARN website, they have 15 radar stations around the north and south pole covering over 4 million square kilometers each. Wonder what else they might be measuring besides "space weather"?

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SuperDARN - Super Dual Auroral Radar Network

An International Radar Network for Studying the Earth's Upper Atmosphere, Ionosphere, and Connection into Space

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SuperDARN Research

at the Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies of the University of Saskatchewan

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Secure your Gold & Oil Positions – Saudi Arabia is on the Brink of Civil War

By: Bill Ridley, Online Investors News

The last thing the United States needs right now is another conflict in the Mid East to deal with, but unfortunately America's key ally in that troubled region is showing signs that they are on the brink of a civil war. With 25% of the world's oil at stake, our next military mission will likely be in Saudi Arabia.

For the worst possible reasons, the likelihood of oil and gold dropping much further in price seems highly unlikely. In fact, it is very possible we could see a sharp price spike.

A couple of weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that the "declared war on terror is closer to the beginning than the end.."

This ominous statement was followed by a speech by President George W. Bush to Air Force Academy graduates at Colorado Springs, where he remarked that the war on terrorism will be the "work of decades."

Due to the inescapable fact that the source for terrorism funding and manpower comes mostly from Saudi Arabia and that Saudi is the major global supplier for oil, Rumsfeld and Bush could have just as easily said that securing the Mid East oil fields will be the work of decades.

Today, the biggest political and economic disaster in the making is taking place in Saudi Arabia. Increased al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in that country are a major reason why we are now paying more to fill up our cars and why inflation is on the rise.

[...] Aside from al Qaeda, much of the Saudi population are not big fans of the United States either because of the close ties we have had with Israel and because we have had a military presence there since the end of the Gulf War.

Once King Faud dies, the potential for civil war within Saudi Arabia will be high.

Comment: When you understand that al-Qaeda is a front for Neocon/Mossad/CIA operations, this article takes on another meaning. Israel is using the US to destabilise Saudi Arabia in order to secure the oil supplies for itself and to remove a financial supporter of the Palestinians.

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Global Eye: Funeral Games

By Chris Floyd

Some cynics say that Heaven's newest sunbeam, Ronald Reagan, was called "The Great Communicator" because he delivered his innumerable lies in words of one syllable. But this is just a typically vicious liberal canard.

For Reagan truly was a great communicator, though not with words -- or with facts, which he once called "stupid things." No, his genius lay in the manipulation of symbols to convey powerful messages that could no longer be voiced openly in polite society -- messages of hate, envy, fear and violence.

Reagan officially launched his successful 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia -- not the Quaker "city of brotherly love" in Pennsylvania, but a small town in the piney swamps of Mississippi, where three young civil rights workers had been brutally murdered by local officials in 1964 for the heinous crime of registering black people to vote. This was the famous "Mississippi Burning" case, a stark symbol of the era of violent race-hatred and government-sanctioned oppression. The decades-long struggle to bring full constitutional liberty into this system was fiercely resisted under the rubric of "states' rights" -- a codeword for the preservation of white privilege and black subjugation. Every Southerner raised in that system (including your correspondent) understood this secret language.

To win in the South -- and counterbalance the heavy black vote for Democrats elsewhere -- Republican elitists adopted this ugly, divisive code. Their deliberate stirring of base emotions was also aimed at preventing working-class whites from making common cause with blacks and other minorities against the elite's systematic destruction of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" social contract, which had placed a few mild restraints on the worst excesses of corporate greed.

Reagan, a long-time shill for corporate sugar-daddies, was a master at playing the race-card game on their behalf. Of course, he couldn't actually come out and say, "We're gonna put these darkies back in their place." But he didn't have to. Instead, he chose to stage the symbolic kick-off of his campaign in the symbolic city of Philadelphia, where -- to make his intent unmistakably clear -- he declared in the symbolic language of race hatred: "I believe in states' rights." This was a great communication indeed: Reagan carried every Southern state but one -- against a Southerner, the tepid New Dealer Jimmy Carter.

Once in power, Reagan slashed civil rights protections and supported the use of public money for private "religious" colleges that discriminated against blacks. He decimated housing, health, education and economic development programs for the poor. He helped flood the nation's ghettos with cheap cocaine through his criminal Iran-Contra scam, where the CIA countenanced -- and sometimes facilitated -- drug running by the Central American ganglords that Reagan employed to funnel illegal arms to his terrorist Contra army in Nicaragua -- as the CIA itself admitted in 1998, Consortiumnews.com reports.

Reagan then championed draconian drug laws and "mandatory sentencing" rules that transformed the American justice system into a vast gulag-state that imprisons more people than any nation on earth. When Reagan took office, there were approximately 300,000 people in prison; when he left, the figure was 800,000. Now, under his ideological soulmate, George W. Bush, the number has topped 2 million, Reuters reports. Incredibly, one in every 75 American men is now incarcerated; 68 percent of these are racial minorities.

But we don't mean to imply that Reagan was personally a racist. No, his toxic legacy shadows every race, creed, color and nationality. His crimeful enterprises at home and abroad set the stage for today's lawless, murderous Bush-bin Laden world.

In Afghanistan, Reagan armed and trained hordes of Islamic extremists in terror tactics, and schooled their children in unrelenting hatred of infidels. In fact, the Taliban adopted the U.S.-written jihadi texbooks as their own; al Qaida's supporters in Pakistan are still using them today. Osama bin Laden was a prime beneficiary of Reagan's unholy Afghan alliance with the intelligence services of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Communist China, MSNBC reports. Reagan also coddled Saddam Hussein, helped him coordinate chemical weapon attacks on Iran -- even approved the sale of anthrax and other poisons to Iraq, the Buffalo News reports.

Reagan willingly abetted the murder of countless thousands of innocent people throughout Central America, killed at the hands of U.S.-trained death squads and military units -- more than 200,000 civilians murdered in Guatemala alone, Consortiumnews.com reports. Many more were tortured and raped by U.S. proxies -- all this with the connivance of Reagan officials, who lied to Congress about the atrocities. One of these liars, Elliot Abrams, was convicted of perjury; but pardoned by George Bush I, he now directs Middle East policy for George Bush II.

In 1980, candidate Reagan and his running mate Bush I committed treason by bargaining with Iran's extremist mullahs to prevent the release of American hostages before the election: a dirty deal confirmed by ex-Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin's probe of Kremlin intelligence files (at the request of the U.S. Congress), and by several direct participants in the covert op -- but ultimately whitewashed by timorous Congressional investigators, Consortiumnews.com reports.

Finally, Reagan brought the ruthless Bush family into the center of world power. For generations, this ambitious clan has used war, weapons, oil and espionage to advance its senseless quest for more loot, more leverage, more privilege -- just more. Reagan armed them with the full might and authority of the U.S. government to work their greedy will on the entire planet.

Yes, as the laudatory headlines noted incessantly this week, Reagan indeed changed the world. It's a harsher, uglier, more unjust, more violent, more ignorant and fear-ridden place because of his leadership. God save us from any more communicators this "great."

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Tenet's Perjury And Resignation

by Mark Levey
published by Democrats.com

Reporters for the major papers may have missed the first page of the biggest story since the 9/11 attacks. When his resignation becomes effective July 11, 2004, CIA Director George Tenet will no longer be covered by Executive Privilege. He may then be compelled to testify about what he as a Director of Central Intelligence told the President regarding several matters about which both he and Bush have thus far displayed a startling lack of candor.

Tenet will no doubt be pressed to truthfully answer what he said to George W. Bush in the weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Owing to his perjury before the 9/11 Commission, Tenet has also forfeited his qualified immunity on topics relevant to his meetings with the President in August and early September 2001. This will give potential prosecutors enormous leverage. In exhange for his true testimony about this, and what he knows about the Bush White House's illegal outing of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, we should expect Tenet to ask for and receive immunity from prosecution.

Tenet's perjury and resignation presents Congressional investigators and a special prosecutor with an unexpected opportunity later this summer to finally get to the truth of what the President was actually knew and when he knew it. This is also, of course, the Bush White House and the Republican's worst nightmare.

The widely-known but as yet unspoken truth in Washington is that Tenet committed perjury in his April 14 statements before the 9/11 Commission. The CIA Director raised his right hand and was sworn-in before that official inquiry. He stated repeatedly he had not met with President Bush in August 2001. When given several opportunities by Commission members to correct or retract his story during his sworn testimony, he did not do so. It wasn't a momentary memory lapse or slip of the tongue. Tenet lied repeatedly under oath. That is the very definition of perjury. But, within hours it was apparent that public records contradicted Tenet's statement about his meetings with Bush. CIA aides called reporters later that afternoon and offered that Tenet had "misspoken." The alternative explanation given was that Tenet had "temporarily forgotten," and that is what was reported in the newspapers. The story was all but buried.

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Vietnam issues new alert on bird flu

www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-17 13:34:31

HANOI, June 17 (Xinhuanet) -- The Vietnamese government has issued an instruction, asking localities nationwide to keep on preventing the reoccurrence of bird flu, following the deaths of fowls in several areas, including some testing positive to avian influenza viruses.

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Doctor 'faked blood tests to show vaccines had worked'

By Jeremy Laurance Health Editor
17 June 2004

A doctor who ran a private clinic offering single vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella deceived parents into believing their children had been protected from the diseases, a court heard yesterday.

David Pugh, 54, who ran the private Elstree-Aero Medical Centre, had offered the single jabs to parents worried about the safety of the triple MMR vaccine.

But when doubts were raised about their effectiveness he fiddled blood tests to prove to parents that the vaccines given at his clinic near Borehamwood, Herts, had worked, St Albans Crown Court heard.

Dr Pugh charged £70 per vaccination and his clinic was treating 250 children and had a turnover of £17,500 a week. He had a second clinic in Sheffield not linked to the case.

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Food giants given final warning over salt content

By Andrew Clennel
17 June 2004

The Government is threatening action against some of the country's major food companies - includingSainsbury's, Waitrose, McDonalds, Heinz and Nestlé - for failing to cut salt in processed food.

The Health Minister, Melanie Johnson, has warned more than 20 companies that if they fail to come up with improved proposals by September, the Government will likely introduce compulsory warnings on high-salt products.

"This is their final chance really," a Department of Health spokesman said last night.

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Are we really all doomed?

JIM MCBETH AND JAMES REYNOLDS

THE inimitable Private Fraser of Dad's Army encapsulated the Malthusian doctrine to grim comic effect when he suggested an end to civilisation as he knew it.

He was not the first - or the last - to oil the wheels of the doomsday machine.

For it seems that if humans cannot have Apocalypse Now! we can have Apocalypse When? From Nostradamus's suggestion of global calamity, occasioned by the arrival on Earth of Satan (confidently, but erroneously, predicted for 1999) we believe the end is nigh. The 16th-century French astrologer - and drug abuser - wrote of the end of the world in Quatrain 74, which related to events in July 1999. Somehow, however, we survived.

But, no matter where we are in history, it is an age of anxiety, and our fears have grown exponentially over the past half- century.

From the Cold War to the latest prognostication that we will soon go the way of Atlantis, we embrace the threat of calamity.

The psychologist Dr Jack Boyle believes that, as a species, we need to latch on to worst-case scenarios because "medium-case" bore us.

"We likes extremes," he said, and added: "Because it is removed from our experience.

"The majority of people exhibit safe and cautious behaviour. Titillating news sells. Doomsday stories are an extension, an enjoyment of extremes which fascinate.

"The truth is, though, that few historical forecasts come true."

Comment: We suppose we could take this article in several different ways. We could be reassured that "few historical forecasts come true." Then again, when we're talking about this kind of event, you don't need very many of them to come true to create all sorts of problems...

We also note that the following article are linked from the page where we found the article above by one of the reporters...

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Flood toll could climb to 2bn

JAMES REYNOLDS ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT

TWO billion people worldwide will be at risk of devastating flooding by 2050 due to climate change, deforestation and rising sea levels, according to experts at the United Nations University (UNU).

One billion people, the majority of them among the world's poorest inhabitants, are estimated to live in the potential path of a permanent flood and unless preventive efforts are stepped up worldwide, that number could double or more in two generations.

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WHITE WITCH HOPES TO CONTACT NESSIE'S GHOST IN A SEANCE

ERLEND BARCLAY
17 June 2004

The monster thought to live in the murky depths of Loch Ness is a ghost, according to the high priest of British white witches.

Kevin Carlyon, 45, from East Sussex, claims the legendary monster which has eluded scientists for decades and attracted hordes of tourists to the Highlands, is a spirit haunting the famous stretch of water.

Mr Carlyon now plans to take a boat into the middle of the loch and hold an overnight seance to raise the spirit of the monster following a recent drop in the number of sightings.

The plan has already prompted a local minister to warn people of the dangers of dabbling in things not completely understood.

Comment: Yes, much better to leave them completely misunderstood, right?

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