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New! Signs Supplement: The Suicide Bombing Cycle

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Picture of the Day

©2004 Jason Knight

There is one statement that we think everyone, no matter their political orientation, can agree upon: things have changed since the events of September 11, 2001.

Afghanistan and Iraq have been attacked.

The US deficit has increased because of spending on the "War on Terror".

The US Patriot Act, versions 1 and 2, have restricted the rights of Americans in the name of the "War on Terror".

"Enemy combatants" have been held now for over two years at Guantanamo Bay without any legal rights.

The divide between the Republicans and the Democrats has grown wider than ever before. Dissenters are being portrayed as "un-American".

These facts would, we think, be agreed upon by everyone.

Where things get problematic is when we give a larger interpretation to these events. There are four main interpretations of 9/11

The US was coldly attacked by Islamic fundamentalists. The reaction of the Bush Administration has the best interest of the US at heart. "Terrorists" must be tracked down and killed where they live to prevent another 9/11 from happening on US soil.

The US was attacked on 9/11. The Bush Administration did not know it was coming, but is using these events to implement a pre-defined agenda. It is capitalising on the tragedy to carry out its plan.

The US was attacked on 9/11. The Bush Administration knew that the attack was coming, but did nothing to stop it in order to justify the political programme it wished to implement.

The US was attacked on 9/11. Members of the Bush Administration not only knew that it was coming, they took part in the planning, along with Israel intelligence, to provoke an outrage in the US that would justify implementing their political strategy.

We will look at each interpretation in turn.

Interpretation 'A' - Bush has done what is best after this tragic event

We admit it. This explanation is just too hard to swallow. If this was true, why would Bush need to lie repeatedly to justify his actions?

Let us imagine for a moment that this hypothesis is correct. If al Qaeda was behind 9/11, there would be proof of this. Bush would be able to present the proof and would have no need to lie. He would have clear evidence and would be able to present this to both the American public and to America's allies and all would agree that the war on terror, including the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was justified.

His government has never done this and many countries came out in open opposition to the Iraq invasion.

Why has he not provided one piece of hard proof that 9/11 was organised by al Qaeda? Why tie Iraq into 9/11 when there is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq was involved?

Why are some of the accused "hijackers" still alive? They were nowhere near New York or Washington at the time of the attack.

The passport of Mohammed Atta was supposedly found on the top of a pile of debris not far from the WTC. How likely is it that, with the fireball that ensued, his passport would escape and conveniently come to rest on the top of a pile of debris?

If it were in fact Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda that were responsible, why not give us the hard proof of this? Rather than proof, we were given faked videos of bin Laden and asked to simply believe that Bush was telling the truth.

Consider only some of the most important lies told by the Bush Administration:

"They hate us because of our freedoms." No. The US government is hated because of its politics in the Middle East where it supports Israel to the tune of billions of dollars a year, and where it supports reactionary regimes such as Saudi Arabia that are not democratic. The people of these countries are not dupes. They know the truth.

The US supported Saddam Hussein until the first Gulf War. The same men who now denounce him, Rumsfeld and Cheney, were doing business with him in the 1980s, supplying the chemical weapons that were used "against his own people" as they so pompously declaim today.

Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. False.

The evidence below should raise serious questions in the minds of anyone who seeks to know the truth about the events of 9/11.

Interpretation 'B' - The Bush Administration was surprised, but used the occasion to implement it political programme

There are several parts to this explanation. First, that Bush and Co were caught off-guard. They had no idea that the attacks were about to occur. Once attacked, they used the opportunity to implement a political programme that had nothing to do with al Qaeda: invading Iraq, abridging the civil rights of Americans, unquestioned support for Israel, redrawing the map of the Middle East in Israel's interest, etc.

Let us look at the first part. Did they know or not?

To answer this, we would have to find circumstantial evidence. Obviously, no one will admit to prior knowledge. They have denied this since it happened. But if that is true, then how do we explain the following:

The mayor of San Francisco was warned by the office of Condoleezza Rice not to fly on September 11.

The shares of United and American had irregular trading prior to the attack, trading that permitted the traders to profit from a dramatic fall in share prices.

Employees of the Israeli company Odigo, with office at the World Trade Centre, received email warnings early in the morning of September 11.

John Ashcroft had stopped flying on commercial airliners since July 2001.

None of these proves anything, but taken together they show a pattern of pre-knowledge of the events by people within the Bush Administration and possibly elsewhere.

One of the explanations offered by Condoleezza Rice is that the government had never thought of the idea that planes could be used as weapons. This is a lie. Why would she lie about this?

We see that there are a certain number of facts that indicate that people in government knew beforehand.

To examine the second point, that the Bush Administration used the attack as an excuse to implement a political programme that had nothing to do with the attacks themselves, we need to show first, that the programme implemented since 9/11 was already existing, and that, second, it has nothing to do with a real fight against terrorism.

First, the programme that the Bush Administration is currently implementing, including the policy of redrawing the map of the Middle East, was drawn up in 1996 by a group of neoconservatives. Were they working for the Republicans? No. The plan was submitted to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu! The same plan was rewritten several years later by PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, and became part of the policy of the Bush Administration. This is not surprising when we consider that many of the authors of this report for the Israeli government are now top members or advisors to the Bush government! Why do so many people in the Bush Administration believe that Israeli and US interests are identical? Is there any other country in the world where such close ties between members and advisors of another government would be permitted?

It has been reported by several observers that Bush was eager to find an excuse to invade Iraq right from the time he took office. The neocons in the administration had been pushing for this for many years. Rumsfeld told his staff to find links with Iraq on September 11, 2001. More on the Bush Administrations obsession with Iraq can be found here.

The Patriot Act was the seminal piece of legislation brought in by Bush after 9/11, justified by the "War on Terror". The act is 342 pages long. It was submitted shortly after 9/11 and passed within 45 days. The length of the Act makes it unlikely that it was drafted after the fact. It was likely already written, waiting for the "right moment". When it was passed, how many of the Congressmen involved had read the entire document?

So, on the one hand, the Bush Administration would like us to believe that they had no idea the attack was coming; on the other, we see that they were prepared to react.

Curious, no?

Thus, we see that there is evidence that the programme implemented after 9/11 was waiting in the wings. Is this evidence of the far-sightedness of the members of the Bush Administration? Should we believe that even if they didn't foresee the attacks of 9/11, they knew that "terrorists" would strike and so were prepared? And the measures advanced in response, do they make sense in the so-called "War on Terror"?

One of the provisions of the Patriot Act permits the government of collect a massive database on all residents of the United States. This database will be used to screen people who fly within or into the US and will soon be amended to include the collection of all information on rail and ship passengers also (see article on today's page). The books people buy or take out of the library will also be put into the database. All your financial transactions, too.

If the threat of terror comes from "Islamic fundamentalists", what is the purpose of building a database on all American citizens? Do the records of a man's alimony payments really have anything to do with terrorism? Does the matching of flyers's iris scans or finger prints help, given that the so-called "Islamic terrorists" are not very likely to have criminal records in the US? Are these measures really going to help "stop terror"?

Those of you who fly will have noticed the beefed up precautions at American airports. All luggage is now searched. Everyone is on "alert" for suspicious types. There is a list of people who are not allowed to fly, a list that is so absurd that Senator Ted Kennedy is on it.

Do you think for a moment that these precautions will stop another hijacking? Are not "terrorists" who can fly 757s into buildings going to be able to find other ways of smuggling weapons onto a plane?

Or are these measures in place simply to make the US population believe that "something is being done"? Further, are they in place to get you accustomed to answering questions about your life, to learn to stand patiently in line, to acclimate you to an environment of tyranny?

We think that the Patriot Act is less about the "War on Terror" and more about applying ever stronger controls over the US public.

Interpretation C - Bush and company allowed the attack to happen in order to implement their previously devised plans.

As we have seen, there is a certain amount of evidence to suggest that the Bush programme was ready and waiting for the necessary "excuse", what they have called "a new Pearl Harbor", an issue discussed in the book The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin. Griffin also discusses many of the inconsistencies in the official explanation of the events of 9/11.

There is something worrisome in the convenience of the attacks, coming as they do so closely upon the heels of suggestions by the neocons that such an event might be necessary to wake up the American people to the threat of terrorism. Again, if they were so far-sighted, why didn't they know it was coming? Why do they lie when they say that they had never considered the possibility that a plane would be used as a weapon?

Given that they had "foreseen" the need for such an event to catalyse American opinion, is it too far-fetched to imagine that they were willing to let it happen?

Think back again to the warnings to San Francisco mayor Willie Brown not to travel, the warning to the employees of Odigo.

There was also the matter of CIA intelligence, which warned Bush:

"The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning." - CIA Intelligence Report for President Bush, July, 2001 -- just weeks prior to 9/11

And the little matter of the training exercises on the morning of September 11th:

"On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building." - From the promotional literature for the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute's conference "Homeland Security: America's Leadership Challenge", Chicago on 6 Sept 2002. The star speaker was Rudolph Giuliani. One of the other speakers is CIA man John Fulton.

Someone knew what was coming, but whoever it was were not warning Arabs to stay away. They were warning a US politician and employees of an Israeli company in the WTC.

Curious, no?

Interpretation D - That people in the US government, with Israeli intelligence, organised and carried out the attack

Many people who are critical of the way Bush has handled 9/11 are willing to consider that his Administration capitalised on the event. They are reluctant, however, to consider that there was any complicity in the organisation.

So let us look at who benefited from the attacks on 9/11. Surely, an organisation capable of implementing such a deed would do so to obtain a goal. It would have considered the consequences. It was attempting to achieve something.

Has al Qaeda benefited from the attack?

Bush supporters could argue that, yes, al Qaeda has benefited. The Holy War is raging in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has been drawn into a costly guerrilla war. Al Qaeda's numbers have been swollen by the American reaction.

Except that to argue this is to admit that the "War on Terror" has been a catastrophic failure. Not a very good thing to do in an election year where the President is being portrayed as a "Strong Leader" who won't "submit to terrorism".

So who has benefited?

Israel: Since 9/11 the Likud platform of relentless crushing of anything and anyone identified as a "terrorist", whether or not the allegation is true, has become the policy of the United States and Britain. Following the recent attack on the school in Beslan, Vladimir Putin is now singing in harmony with Bush and Sharon. Israel has intensified its destruction of Palestinian lands, of the Palestinian people, all a part of the so-called "War on Terror". There is no longer even the semblance of criticism for Israel's actions from the US. Whatever Sharon wants, Sharon gets.

The United States: The US has invaded two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing billions of dollars of contracts to a few selected US corporations, conveniently very tightly associated with the Bush Administration. The US has also taken receipt of Iraq's oil reserves. War has been good business, even as the Iraqi people are subjugated, without electricity, medicine, sewage disposal, etc. The poppy trade, so lucrative for the CIA, has begun again since the fall of the Taliban.

Is there anyone else who has benefited? The American people? No. They will be paying for this war for years to come. The Arabs? No. They are hated and considered Godless animals by many in the US.

In clandestine activity, one must look at who profits when the facts are unclear. We have seen who has profited. Of course, this does not prove that either country was implicated. We must continue searching for clues.

The single most damning piece of evidence is what happened at the Pentagon.

Consider the following:

The Pentagon was hit in an area that had recently undergone renovation installing reinforced windows and beefing up the wall structure.

That part of the Pentagon had the fewest employees because the renovation was not completely finished.

Had the plane crashed into the roof of the building, presumably an easier target than the first floor on the side, the building would have been more damaged. It seems the "terrorists" were seeking to minimise the damage!

Although the plane was said to have touched the ground in front of the building, photos taken immediately after the crash show no such damage.

Rumsfeld himself, in an interview one month after the crash, said the Pentagon had been hit by a missile.

There was no wreckage, according to spokesmen, because the heat of the explosion vaporised the aluminium and metal in the plane.

In spite of this intense heat, the bodies were recovered.

Six months later, the story had changed and now the FBI claimed they had reconstituted the entire plane in a hangar.

Rumsfeld's office "happened" to be on the far side of the building.

All videos of the crash, with the exception of a video from the Pentagon car park which appears to be doctored, have been confiscated by the FBI and have never been shown. Why not show them if they offer proof of the official version?

Do these points prove that elements of the US government were involved in the attack?

No. But they certainly are suggestive. We may never have proof of what happened. Of course, those who carried this off were banking on that. As long as there are ambiguities, they know that most Americans will refuse to believe their elected officials or government employees could engage in such activities.

Which brings us to the Northwoods file, a plan drawn up forty years prior to 9/11 in which the Joint Chiefs of Staff propose a phony attack scenario on US citizens to justify a hard-line on Cuba. No, this plan was never carried out. However, the US has carried out chemical, biological, and nuclear experiments on US citizens in order to study and analyse the effects on human populations. See our COINTELPRO Timeline for more on these activities.

So smaller scale operations have been conducted by US intelligence agencies on the US population. When the stakes are higher, would they not be willing to take greater risks?

Proof? No, once again. But curious, nonetheless.

The FBI knew the whereabouts of the supposed "hijackers" before the attack. They were studying flying at schools in Florida that had associations with the CIA. Atta had attended a training course at a military base in Alabama in 1996. For more on Atta and his friends, see Mad Cow Morning News.

Proof. Again, no, but certainly enough questions that should provoke each and every American to investigate this issue for him or her self. Yes, the charge that members of the government, in alliance with Israel, organised the attack is a serious one. It is not made lightly. But if it were in fact true, the repercussions are extremely severe. Can you afford to slough off the inconsistencies and questions given everything that is at stake?

Of course, were these elements to carry off such an attack, they would wish to blame it on their adversaries, the Islamic world. They would organise it in such a way that at first glance there was no doubt as to who carried it off. They would play on the credulity of the American public.

Hitler did the same thing with the Reichstag fire in 1933.

Summing Up

Now we will consider the various hypotheses and the probabilities that we would assign to them. We think this is the most reasonable approach to take as there is no proof to confirm any of them.

Bush's lies and his subsequent actions that have embroiled the US in two wars, encumbered the US with a huge deficit, and brought about a restriction on the rights and liberties of Americans unheard of in American history, have nothing to do with a so-called "War on Terror". Therefore, we exclude the first hypothesis, the official version. Bush may believe he is acting in the interests of the US. He may well be sincere. He may well believe that what he does is done in good faith, as God's behest. But, then, why the lies? Because he is being manipulated by those who do understand what is really going on? By those who know what the goals really are?

If so, this also means the first hypothesis must be excluded.

The second hypothesis must also be given a very feeble probability of being true. There are too many facts that show that someone knew prior to the attack what was coming. Was it Bush? Probably not. Better to keep him in the dark, to let his natural reactions play on national TV. He probably was shocked when it happened. But, then again, he says he saw the first plane hit the first tower before he went into read to the school children that morning. How was that possible when it hadn't been broadcast?

The third hypothesis is very plausible. We have seen that the programme that was implemented after 9/11 was elaborated prior to the attack. It was waiting for an excuse. The neocon advisors and members of his government had predicted that a "new Pearl Harbor" would be necessary to wake up the American people to the danger of "terrorism". Very convenient. Such people, we think, would be very willing to allow such an event to take place, even if they had prior knowledge, if it would further their ends. And a few phone calls to warn their friends might be necessary. We would assign this a high probability.

As to the fourth hypothesis, that elements of the US government, what might be called the "secret government", members of the military-industrial complex, were involved, along with Israel, we think that there is enough circumstantial evidence to assign this one a high probability. We are convinced that the government is not telling the truth about the Pentagon crash. There are too many inconsistencies in the story. If a plane hit the Pentagon as they insist, then why change the story?

A well-designed attack on the Pentagon serves as the perfect cover. "What, we didn't have anything to do with it. They attacked us!"

This is an old trick in the mystery novel. How many times have we read a story where the real murderer arranges a fake attack in order to remove him from suspicion?

And Rumsfeld himself said it was a missile. Curious, no?

Proof? No. Many unanswered questions? Indeed.

People who are worried by the questions raised here are encouraged to do their own research. Don't take our word for it. There are many sites out there with pages and pages of data and theories about the events of 9/11. Go out and do the work yourselves.

However, regardless of whether it was the third hypothesis or the fourth, we have a serious problem. There are in power in the US today a group of people who allowed US citizens to be brutally murdered so that they could impose their tyranny and justify the invasion of two countries, across the globe, one supposedly the site of tremendous oil reserves, the other, the site for a future gas pipeline -- a pipeline the Taliban had refused to OK in the summer of 2001. Coincidence. We think not.

Much has changed since that day in September. Thousands died then, thousands more have died since. Iraq has been reduced to the state of civil war. Warlords control the majority of Afghanistan. The US is more than ever isolated from its traditional allies. Rights and liberties in the US have been severely curtailed. Dissent is once again "un-American" - and yet, we have a vague memory that this has all happened before...about 70 years ago...

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But Then It Was Too Late

Third Reich Roundtable

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.

"You will understand me when I say that my Middle High German was my life. It was all I cared about. I was a scholar, a specialist. Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the universe was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was "expected to" participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one's energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."

"Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on."

"Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

"How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.

"Your "little men," your Nazi friends, were not against National Socialism in principle. Men like me, who were, are the greater offenders, not because we knew better (that would be too much to say) but because we sensed better. Pastor Niemoller spoke for the thousands and thousands of men like me when he spoke (too modestly of himself) and said that, when the Nazis attacked the Communists, he was a little uneasy, but, after all, he was not a Communist, and so he did nothing: and then they attacked the Socialists, and he was a little uneasier, but, still, he was not a Socialist, and he did nothing; and then the schools, the press, the Jews, and so on, and he was always uneasier, but still he did nothing. And then they attacked the Church, and he was a Churchman, and he did something - but then it was too late."

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don't want to "go out of your way to make trouble." Why not? - Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad" or "You're seeing things" or "You're an alarmist."

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can't prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don't know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh- pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to – to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That's the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked – if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in "43" had come immediately after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in "33". But of course this isn't the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying "Jew swine," collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in – your nation, your people – is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven't done ( for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or "adjust" your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say.

"I can tell you," my colleague went on, "of a man in Leipzig, a judge. He was not a Nazi, except nominally, but he certainly wasn't an anti-Nazi. He was just – a judge. In "42" or "43", early "43", I think it was, a Jew was tried before him in a case involving, but only incidentally, relations with an "Aryan" woman. This was "race injury", something the Party was especially anxious to punish. In the case a bar, however, the judge had the power to convict the man of a "nonracial" offense and send him to an ordinary prison for a very long term, thus saving him from Party "processing" which would have meant concentration camp or, more probably, deportation and death. But the man was innocent of the "nonracial" charge, in the judge's opinion, and so, as an honorable judge, he acquitted him. Of course, the Party seized the Jew as soon as he left the courtroom."

"And the judge?"

"Yes, the judge. He could not get the case off his conscience – a case, mind you, in which he had acquitted an innocent man. He thought that he should have convicted him and saved him from the Party, but how could he have convicted an innocent man? The thing preyed on him more and more, and he had to talk about it, first to his family, then to his friends, and then to acquaintances. (That's how I heard about it.) After the "44" Putsch they arrested him. After that, I don't know."

I said nothing.

"Once the war began," my colleague continued, "resistance, protest, criticism, complaint, all carried with them a multiplied likelihood of the greatest punishment. Mere lack of enthusiasm, or failure to show it in public, was "defeatism." You assumed that there were lists of those who would be "dealt with" later, after the victory. Goebbels was very clever here, too. He continually promised a "victory orgy" to "take care of" those who thought that their "treasonable attitude" had escaped notice. And he meant it; that was not just propaganda. And that was enough to put an end to all uncertainty.

"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it. The people abroad who thought that war against Hitler would help the Jews were wrong. And the people in Germany who, once the war had begun, still thought of complaining, protesting, resisting, were betting on Germany's losing the war. It was a long bet. Not many made it."

Comment: The close parallels between the above account of how creeping fascism spread throughout Germany in the 1930's and the current state of the average America mind set in relation to the US government and its "war on terror" should be obvious. Many of the tools employed by the propaganda wing of the Nazi regime are being used today by the Bush administration.

Few Americans will argue with the fact that the German people were manipulated by the Nazis, but equally few seem prepared to allow for the possibility that they could be vulnerable to the same deception.

Why is this?

If you lived in Nazi Germany, do you really think that you would have been able to see past the patriot propaganda and the host of economic and social manipulations to which the German people were subjected?

Why do Americans today credit themselves with the ability to recognise a massive government lie when just 70 years ago the German people, and indeed much of the population of the rest of the world, were unable to do so?

With the vast increase in mass media communication in the later half of the 20th century, if it chose to do so, today it would be much easier for a government to deceive the people en masse than it was back in the 1930's.

People give lip service to the maxim that "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it", but it appears that they do not take that concept seriously. Why is this?

Hitler and the Nazis showed us all how it was done. They showed the world that through the slow propagation of the "big lie", through diversion and promotion of bogus threats to the lives of the citizenry, an entire people can be completely and unconditionally deceived.

Read again this extract from the above article - and think about it.

"The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway.

Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

Today, the government controls every aspect of the life of the average citizen, whether they know it or not. From the food we put in our mouths to the thoughts we think, there is no facet of life that does not have a government agency assigned to monitor it. This is natural, but is also the crux of the matter.

In the case that a government decided to deceive the population in a wholesale manner, is it really reasonable to be so smug as to assume that we would immediately and easily recognise such a deception? Many of our readers, and most Americans seem to think so.

We are not suggesting that it is impossible for a person to know if their government is lying to them, but if we expect to ever know the truth, we must stop blindly accepting everything that we are told, or fleeing into denial at the first sign that our comfort zone might be disturbed. Objective research and analysis is required, there can be no 'sacred cows', nothing can be taboo, all evidence must be weighed up impartially and given its due without pity for ourselves, others, or our illusions.

But among all the resources available to us in this task, one of the most important is history. By scrutinising the events that make up our world history, we may arm ourselves with the knowledge derived from the hard-won lessons of those that have gone before us. In that respect and in relation to the current US, and global, political and social climate, the experiences of the German people under the Nazis contain some crucially important lessons for us to learn. It behooves us all to learn them, before it is too late - again.

"Once the war began, the government could do anything "necessary" to win it; so it was with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem, which the Nazis always talked about but never dared undertake, not even the Nazis, until war and its "necessities" gave them the knowledge that they could get away with it.

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The State of the Union, Three Years after 9/11...

Maui student caught up in mass arrests at Republican convention

Mauinews.com 
By MELISSA TANJI
Staff Writer
An unidentified Bush official (Brownshirt?) pulls the hair of a demonstrator as he forces her out of an auditorium where Dictator Bush was addressing a crowd of 'supporters' at Byers Choice in Colmar, Pa., Thursday Sept. 9, 2004.
(AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)

HONOLULU - A 21-year-old Olinda woman says she was unjustly arrested and held in inhumane conditions last week in New York City while she and other Hawaii students were involved in protests at the Republican National Convention.

Summer Starr, a graduate student in political science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was among 1,821 people arrested during the convention last week.

According to reports, New York police allegedly corralled people who were walking down the street so they could not move, then arrested all of them, often without first ordering them to disperse and giving then a chance to do so.

The New York Civil Liberties Union is compiling stories from protesters who say they were arrested for no reason, detained for unnecessarily long periods or held in unsafe conditions. The group is also considering suing the city over police conduct.

"I went up to New York initially to protest the Republican National Convention. Actually at the time of the arrest, I wasn't physically engaged in protest," Starr said in a telephone call from Manoa on Monday.

She said a group of people were cornered by officers near Bryant Park in Manhattan and were arrested on Aug. 31. They has been at the New York Public Library protesting when police made them scatter toward Bryant Park, Starr said.

"They didn't inform us why we were being arrested," she said. "At least I didn't hear it."

Starr said the arrest "was not justified in anyway. We weren't violent. We were absolutely peaceful."


Following her arrest, Starr said all of the people with her were placed in plastic cuffs and were bused to Pier 57, a large, dirty building with concrete floors. The holding area was a former bus terminal.

"It was absolutely inhumane and not a proper place to be holding people," Starr said.

One of the individuals being held was a girl dressed up in a black dress. Starr said the girl had been stepping out of her apartment to go out when she was swept up with a group and arrested.
[...]

At home on Maui, Starr's mother, Erin, got a call from one of Summer's friends on Oahu that Summer was arrested and taken to Pier 57. Erin Starr said Pier 57 was nicknamed "Little Guantanamo," referring to the holding facilities set up at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where detainees from Afghanistan are being held without charges.

"I looked it up on the Internet and fear crept into me," said Erin Starr. "I called my daughter's cell phone over and over, saying 'It's mom, where are you? Call me.'"

Summer Starr's personal belongings were taken away from her when she was arrested.

She said that she and others were kept at Pier 57 for about a day.

"Every single one of us were covered in black grease," she said about being held at the former bus terminal.

Starr said did not eat because she is a vegetarian and the only food provided was a meat sandwich.

"I wasn't expecting to be treated like a queen, (but) I wasn't expecting to be treated like a political prisoner," she said.


On the day after the arrest, Starr said she was taken to a Manhattan jail where she and others were regularly moved from cell to cell. She said they were told they were going to be released soon and that the fingerprinting process was slow.

She said she was released around 10 p.m. on Thursday, about two days after she was arrested.

It was on that day that Judge John Cataldo of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan ordered the city to release more than 550 protesters who had been detained, in some cases, for as long as 60 hours.

Starr said as the New York detainees were being released, there was a person handing out tickets to those arrested. She said she was cited for disorderly conduct and has a summons to appear in a New York City court on Oct. 6.

She had asked that she not be required to return to New York for court proceedings because she lives in Hawaii, noting that some others arrested did not have to return. But she was told she would have to appear.

Erin Starr said the family has retained an attorney in New York who is trying to dismiss the summons.

Summer Starr said she was denied a lawyer during proceedings in New York, but "didn't want to make a big fuss." She said she was frightened by the treatment.


"I didn't want them to put me back in," she said.

"We were scared out of our minds to get arrested again," she said. "It was a horrible, horrible experience."


Sound cannon, first tested on the streets of Baghdad, now used on US citizens exercising their right to free speech at the Republican convention in New York

Comment: As noted by the article on Nazi Germany, the process involves a slow eroding of rights, gradually acclimatising the people to accept more and more strictures, until, one day, the curtain is drawn back and the true face of tyranny is exposed - at that point, it is much too late. This is what happened under the Nazis, and precious few noticed, or were prepared to really look, until it was too late.

Do YOU notice? Are YOU prepared to really look?

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." - Adolf Hitler

The following article is a letter from Starr's mother to the Maui News:

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No Patriot Act Victims? Tell It To Summer Starr!

The RNC's "Little Guantanamo"

mauinews.com
9-9-4

From: Erin Starr - Makawao, Maui, Hawai'i

LETTER BY ERIN STARR

My 21-year old daughter disappeared from NYC last Tuesday afternoon when walking with friends through a park where no protest was being held -- and was held prisoner -- without being charged -- by the NYPD for three days.

The first day and night she spent in an unsafe and inhumane facility at Pier 57 ("Little Guantanamo") provided by the Republican Party. Yes, it was managed by the Republican National Committe. It was leased by the RNC to hold political dissenters who disagreed with the Bush administration. The second two days, my daughter was in a city jail in Manhattan, where her treatment improved. She practices Buddhist precepts of compassion (she told the NYPD officers that she knew they must be tired and overworked also, and she did not resist arrest).

She is a graduate student in Poli Sci at the University of Hawaii and is a MortarBoard honor society/service club member. The notorious Pier 57 (owned by the HudsonRiver Trust--a city/state consortium) was dubbed "Little Guantanamo" by reporters who also got caught up in police sweeps and who said it looked like the Guantanamo Bay prison built by the USA to hold the Al Qaeda terrorist political prisoners in Cuba. Pier 57 was leased by the RNC before their convention. They arranged for the NYPD to put up the chain link holding pens with razor wire on top in the old Pier 57 warehouse that had oil, gas and asbestos dust on the floor from a previous fire. My heart was in my throat when I got a call from one of my daughter's friends on Oahu who told me she had been arrested and taken to Little Guantanamo. I looked it up on the internet and fear crept into me.

I called my daughter's cell phone over and over ("it's mom, where ARE you, call me"). She didn't answer. Only hours before, she had been calling us with joy, telling us of the peaceful protests and beautiful march. But now, nothing. I had nightmarish visions of a fire sweeping over the combustible floor with hundreds -- nearly a thousand -- trapped in the chainlink pens, razor wire on the top of the pens making escape impossible.

My husband called the NYPD to ask who had issued a Certificate of Occupancy or Fire Safety Inspection Certificate and who wasmanaging Pier 57. He was given the number for the Republican National Committee. Yes. My husband and I looked at each other in silent, cold horror. In America? The Republicans have set up a private detention camp for their political prisoners that can hold 1000 under inhumane and unsafe conditions!? My husband slowly dialed that number, got the RNC, and the Republican rep who answered the phone said, in answer to my husbands' inquiries about safety: "those protesters don't deserve a Holiday Inn, and they're all criminals anyway!"

....Say what?! My daughter, who doesn't smoke or drink or do drugs and is a practicing Buddhist Vegan? A criminal? Warning signs that reporters saw posted around Pier 57 said not to enterwithout protective clothing and mask. My exhausted daughter, with hundreds of others, tried to sleep that first night ...on the chemical-covered oily, cold cement floor of these pens, without food or water, without being read her rights, without being offered a chance to post bail, without seeing a judge although the National Lawyers Guild offered to represent them pro bono, without being charged or told why she was arrested and handcuffed and taken there, without being allowed to make a call to a lawyer or friend or parent or anyone -- all cell phones were confiscated as "terrorist weapons." Her purse was taken. She had nothing but the clothes on her back.

Meanwhile...ordinary criminals arrested that same day in NYC for burglary, rape and heinous crimes were processed by the courts in less than 10 hours. My daughter, who had committed no crime, was incarcerated for three days incommunicado. People suffered chemical burns, bug bites, overcrowding and medical problems because their medicine was confiscated. A pregnant woman sat crying on the floor in the oil. It wasn't until my daughter was taken out of the Republican-managed "Little Guantanamo" and placed in a cell in a Manhattan city jail that a guard kindly brought her Vegan food and gave her a blanket to lay her grime-smeared body on at night in her crowded cell. I never thought I'd be grateful to get a call from a friend saying that my daughter was in a Manhattan city jail cell, but the knowledge that she was out of that Little Guantanamo actually gave me relief. I called Hawaii's Republican Party Headquarters, and asked them to report it to Hawaii's Governor Linda Lingle, who was at the convention in NYC and could intervene for my daughter and other UH students incarcerated illegally by her party. [...]

My daughter had gone to NYC to walk in the peaceful protest of 500,000 people the day before the Republican National Convention began. She was not engaged in protest at the time of her arrest. She had been walking with friends near a park. [...]

I recall that when the Democrats held their convention to nominate Senator John Kerry as their candidate for President, there were only 6 people arrested, if I remember correctly. At the Republican National Convention to elect Bush as their candidate, there were thousands arrested. I suspect that Republicans might say this was a good thing. Being tough. This group-roundup tactic is called by the Republican party "preventative detention" (like the "pre-emptive war" in Iraq). It is used to terrorize those who might protest Bush's agenda when he is in town.

America, wake up. Hitler told the German people that they would have to "give up a few of your rights ...temporarily...so that we can fight the enemy." That's what Ashcroft said, about the misnamed PATRIOT ACT. Wake up, America. The American flag that proudly waves by MY front gate and is on the back window of MY car...doesn't seem to be the same American flag that the Republican Party is waving.

-- Erin Starr, Makawao, Maui, Hawaii

Comment: How many Americans out there are aware of the mass detention of protestors at the Republican National Convention? We would guess that the vast majority are aware.

Now, how many lawsuits have been filed for unlawful detention? Where is the outrage that thousands of protestors - and even people who happened to be walking down the street at the wrong time - were thrown in a makeshift concentration camp without charge and without access to a lawyer?

How many of us have heard an official explanation for the illegal arrests, such as, "We had to be careful because there was new information about a possible terrorist strike"? No one? Well, isn't that interesting...

Perhaps the RNC detentions were a test - just how much can they get away with? There were reports that police officers were apologizing for detaining protestors, saying that it was their job. It was the old, "I was just following orders" routine - quite a popular defense among Nazi war criminals after WWII.

It seems that Bush and his gang can get away with pretty much anything. They even have ordinary Americans spitting venom at anyone who disagrees with Bush or the war on terror. Detained protestors? Bah, they're all criminals! Terrorists! Three years ago to the day, the first shoe dropped. Can the second be far behind now?

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Chicago plans advanced surveillance
By Debbie Howlett, USA TODAY
Fri Sep 10, 6:14 AM ET

A surveillance system that uses 2,000 remote-control cameras and motion-sensing software to spot crimes or terrorist acts as they happen is being planned for the city.

If that sounds a little like Big Brother is watching, he might be.

"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mayor Richard Daley said Thursday. "They are the next best thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble spot."

The system would exceed existing projects in how it would tie cameras to emergency operations, said Ron Huberman, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management.

Neither the courts nor the American Civil Liberties Union have objected to cameras in public places, saying there is no expectation of privacy on a city street.

"We live in a video world," said Ed Yohnka of the ACLU of Illinois.

The high-definition, motorized cameras can rotate 360 degrees and include night-vision capability. They will be mounted on buildings and utility poles across the city.

Most are already in use - 30 by the police department and 1,000 at O'Hare International Airport. Other cameras are on elevated train platforms and the city's 600 schools. An additional 250 cameras yet to be installed will raise the number to more than 2,000.

The city is also considering allowing private companies to join the network, for a fee. Officials said the system size is nearly limitless.

The linchpin in the network - paid for with a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and scheduled to be up by March 2006 - is software designed to detect "suspicious" activity.

For instance, if someone left a suitcase in a stairwell, the software would engage any camera within range and alert a worker at the emergency operations center. It would do the same if an individual rushed up to another and dragged him away. A series of cameras could track fleeing criminals, and 911 operators would be able to give police descriptions of suspects.

Huberman said the cameras will also allow city departments to be more vigilant. Public works will be able to spot a broken water main instantly or the transportation department can see traffic jams developing.

"It really adds a whole new tool to public safety," Huberman said. "It gives us a tremendous early warning and detection capacity."

Chicago is the first U.S. city to install such a network.

Officials here said they studied systems used by Las Vegas hotels and casinos, as well as the Pentagon and the city of London, where it's said that the average resident is viewed by 300 cameras a day.

Baltimore is trying to build a network with around-the-clock surveillance cameras. Other cities have used them during big events.

Police in Tampa tried the cameras, using a mug shot database and facial recognition software to identify criminals on the street. It abandoned the effort after two years because it never identified a wanted criminal.

Huberman said Chicago considered face-recognition technology but rejected it as inefficient and immature. But, he said, it's a possibility in the future.

"Chicago has a history of pioneering 911 operations," Huberman said. "Now, we're stepping off in the direction where 911 operation is going to be in the future."

Comment: This is how it begins - more security, more surveillance. Don't worry though, the system exists only to monitor "potential trouble spots"... But what exactly contistutes a trouble spot? Couldn't terrorists or criminals strike anywhere, any time?

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Rumsfeld: Abuse of Iraqis Isn't Terrorism
JOHN J. LUMPKIN
Associated Press
Posted on Fri, Sep. 10, 2004

WASHINGTON - American abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were terrible, but they are not crimes on par with beheadings and other acts carried out by terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday. [...]

Rumsfeld rattled of a list of statistics aimed at showing the military is
addressing the problem. He said there are 11 separate investigations into prisoner abuse, eight of which are completed. Investigators have recommended 45 people face court-martial, and a few have already been prosecuted. Twenty-three people were discharged from the military in connection with the scandal.

Shortly before Rumsfeld spoke, Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts sharply criticized Rumsfeld and the Bush administration in a Senate floor speech, calling the abuses at Abu Ghraib "just one part of a much larger failure for which our soldiers have been paying a high price since day one." [...]

Also Friday, Rumsfeld said Iraqi cities like Fallujah, which are not under control of the U.S.-backed interim government and serve as havens for anti-U.S. fighters, would be brought into the fold, either peacefully or by force.

"We know what will take place in Fallujah. And that is that it will be restored as something under the control of the Iraqi government eventually. What we don't know is whether it will be done peacefully or by force. But one way or another, it will happen," he said. [...]

Rumsfeld also predicted terrorists will time attacks to affect coalition
countries' elections. Terrorist strikes on commuter trains in Madrid are
credited with swinging the vote in Spain to a party that pledged - and did - pull its forces from Iraq.

"We're going to have to say to people, 'Don't be faint-hearted. Don't think you can make a separate peace. Don't think you can make a private deal as a person or a country. You can't. We're in it together,'" he said.

Comment: If the severe physical and psychological torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib isn't terrorism, then what is it? Rummy seems to be getting a bit desperate in his effort to make the war crimes he ordered disappear - at least until after November.

It is also rather interesting that Rumsfeld suggests that voting against Bush due to another terrorist attack on US soil would mean one is "faint-hearted". Rummy also tells the American people to leave the "private deals" to the Bush administration. We can't help but think of the financial deals done as a result of the invasion of Iraq.

While reading the following excerpt from Wikipedia, also keep in mind the above article about the detentions at the Republican National Convention:

Ideologically fascism and Nazism reject the most important aspects of Marxist theory. For instance, Hitler did not exalt the working class over the capitalist class as Marx prescribed. In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote 'the suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists... We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims. ' [...]

There were ideological shades of opinion within the Nazi Party, particularly prior to their seizure of power in 1933, but a central tenet of the party was always the leadership principle or Führerprinzip. The Nazi Party did not have party congresses in which policy was deliberated upon and concessions made to different factions. What mattered most was what the leader, Adolf Hitler, thought and decreed. Those who held opinions which were at variance with Hitler's either learned to keep quiet or were purged, particularly after 1933. [...]

In power, the Nazis jettisoned practically all of the socialistic aspects of their program, and worked with big business, frequently at the expense of both small business and the working classes. [...]

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Night and Fog
Global Eye
By Chris Floyd
Published: September 10, 2004

You think it's not true, you think it's not coming, you think "it can't happen here." But it can, and it is, right before your eyes.

George Bush's United States is clearly in a proto-fascist condition. Of course, there's no such thing as direct equivalence between historical events. The same dangers never come around again -- not in the same form nor with precisely identical content. At every point in time, a new set of elements and circumstances coalesce to create the unique reality of that particular historical moment.

But if you take the general definition of fascism provided by its founder, Benito Mussolini -- "the merger of corporate and state power" -- and apply it to the elements that are coalescing in America at this historical moment, you could hardly find a more apt description of the Bush Regime. Couple that with the Bushists' radical transformation of party politics into a quasi-religious cult of militarism and leader worship, and you have not an equivalence but certainly an ever-deepening resonance with the malevolent spirit that swept Germany and Italy during the first half of the 20th century.

The Bushist convention in New York -- an unprecedented belching forth of bile, mendacity and bootlicking -- gave ample proof that Republicans now "claim to be far more than a political party; they [are] a movement, sweeping up the ... people and carrying them unstoppably to a better future," as historian Richard Evans described a similar ugly metamorphosis in his excellent new book, "The Coming of the Third Reich." "The vagueness of the [party's] program, its symbolic mixture of old and new, its eclectic, often inconsistent character, to a large extent allowed people to read into it what they wanted and edit out anything they might have found disturbing," he wrote of the Nazis. Evans also notes: "What the [party] did not offer, however, were concrete solutions to [the nation's] problems, least of all where they were most needed, in economy and society."

Again, the resonances are striking. Like the Nazis, the Bushists are not interested in actual policies, actual governance. They are not even interested in politics as such, i.e. the pursuit of effective government through open debate and honorable compromise with fellow citizens of opposing views. No, what drives their "movement" is a lust for raw power: the power to impose their brutal vision of unbridled state corporatism -- which Bush calls "the single sustainable model of national success." Policies, programs, grand ideological crusades ("family values," "national security," "war on terror," "defense of marriage," "ownership society") are all just empty blather to the Bushists, false fronts to be shuffled, twisted or dropped as necessary to mask the rapacious (and unpopular) nature of their ultimate goal.

Bush's state corporatism entails the destruction of government as an instrument for social good and civic life; any possible fetters on the desires of the powerful for more money and more privilege must be removed. The only "legitimate" functions of government in such a system are dividing the spoils of power among favored interest groups (Bush's loyal cadre of Christian extremists, for example), and maintaining a gargantuan military machine to "project dominance," grab loot and provide fat contracts for arms dealers, servicing companies, mercenaries and other corporate war profiteers. Everything else can be privatized, outsourced, sold off to cronies -- or simply eliminated in "forced" cutbacks blamed on deliberately engineered budget deficits.

The Bushist movement also entails the destruction of ordinary politics. Any opposition to the "single sustainable model" -- even the timid deviations offered by the thoroughly corporatized Democrats -- must be crushed, and relentlessly demonized as an "attack on America from within," as the Bushists declared at their convention. Even the democratic process itself -- the Constitutionally mandated presidential election -- was scorned from the podium as nothing more than a "manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." Thus the very idea of free, contested elections -- "the consent of the governed" -- is now openly dismissed as a dangerous notion, a sign of mental illness.

There are more sinister resonances between Reich and Regime, of course. One is the penchant for aggressive war based on false premises, in the name of protecting the sacred "Homeland" from imminent attack by godless evildoers. Another is the brazen use of the "Big Lie," such as Bush's repeated public assertions that he was "forced" to invade Iraq because "Saddam wouldn't allow the inspectors back in" -- an extraordinary perversion of reality on a par with any of Hitler's delusionary propaganda.

Finally, as in earlier fascist movements, the faith of Bush's adherents has been sealed in blood: a proven method of binding followers to a ruthless leader. With his illegal aggression, Hitlerian in principle if not yet in scale, Bush has made his followers -- and by extension, his nation -- complicit in mass murder. The terrorist horrors of Beslan have been replicated 70-fold across Iraq, where an estimated 35,000 noncombatants have been killed. As in Beslan, this slaughter of innocents was often deliberate. For example, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld personally approved every bombing raid likely to kill 30 or more civilians -- and there were more than 50 such willful mass terror killings in all, The New York Times reports. No wonder Bush's zealots swallow his lies so readily; otherwise they would have to acknowledge the blood dripping from their own hands.

You think it's not happening, because the crudities of yesteryear -- brownshirts, goose steps, shattered glass -- are absent, because the targets of wrath and fear are different. But the Bush Regime is the form that state corporatism -- fascism -- is taking in this particular historical moment. It is happening. The night and fog are coming.

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Yet Another Prozac Scandal
By FRED GARDNER
Counterpunch
September 11 / 12, 2004

Just about every newspaper and TV station in America reported August 18 that a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed Prozac and cognitive behavior therapy, in combination, to be the most effective treatment of depression in adolescents. Here are some of the headlines with which we were bombarded: "Drugs and therapy aid depressed kids, study says." "Drug Therapy Combo Best for Teen Depression." "Combined Approach Better Than Drugs or Therapy Alone." "Depressed Teens Need Drug Therapy." Etc., Etc.

The research, conducted over three years at 12 medical centers, was funded and coordinated by the National Institute of Mental Health at a cost to US taxpayers of $17 million. A total of 439 adolescents aged 12-17 were given Prozac, Prozac plus cognitive behavior therapy, placebo plus CBT, or placebo alone. After 12 weeks, 71% of those treated with Prozac and CBT showed improvement (defined by the therapists and the subjects' responses to questionnaires). Improvement was reported by 60% of those taking Prozac without CBT, 43% getting CBT alone, and 35% taking placebo alone.

NIMH Director Thomas Insel told the media it was a "landmark study" because "it's the largest publicly funded study and the only study this size that doesn't have pharmaceutical funding." Insel would have been accurate if he'd said the NIMH study didn't get direct funding from the pharmaceutical industry. But lead investigator John March of Duke University Medical Center is on the Eli Lilly payroll, and five of his10 co-authors also get drug-company grants.

Data to which March et al did not draw attention -and few stories about the study even mentioned- showed a higher incidence of harmful behavior among teens taking Prozac (11.9%) compared to those on placebo (5.4%) and CBT alone (4.5%). Few stories mentioned that teenagers to whom suicidal thoughts had occurred had been excluded from the study before it began. A summary of the study by Jeanne Lenzer in the British Medical Journal pointed out a structural flaw: two"arms" were blinded (neither subject nor investigator knew whether Prozac or placebo was being given), but the two arms involving CBT were not. The BMJ also quoted a succinct criticism of the study by David Antonuccio of the University of Nevada School of Medicine: "The authors' value judgment is that the benefit of a few extra improved patients is worth the cost of a few extra harmed patients."

Reports in the popular media failed to mention the ominous bottom-line conclusion of the NIMH study:"the identification of depressed adolescents and provision of evidence-based treatment should be mandatory in health care systems." In other words, if Lilly has its way, screening by a doctor or a school, followed by mandatory Prozac (with a few hours of talk therapy thrown in for the Colin Powell effect), may be coming soon to a teenager near you. [...]

Comment: Combined with Bush's recommendation for widespread screening of the masses for mental illness, it seems America is heading towards a "ban" on depression - and a heavily medicated and brain dead population.

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Inmates probed as 15 governors get rigged letter
CNN
Saturday, September 11, 2004

CARSON CITY, Nevada (AP) -- Federal and state investigators questioned Nevada prison inmates Friday after at least 15 governors received letters rigged to catch fire when the envelope was opened.

The letters apparently did not contain writings but bore a return address from Nevada's maximum-security Ely State Prison. In three cases, a match inside the envelope flared when the letter was opened, but no one was hurt.

The other letters were intercepted Thursday and Friday during screening or because of an alert issued by the Homeland Security Department. In addition to the governors, Nevada's corrections director received a booby-trapped letter.

The letters listed one or the other of two Ely inmates as the sender, but authorities are not sure if either prisoner was involved, said Glen Whorton, assistant director for the Nevada Corrections Department.

"We're not assuming the names on the envelopes are simply the end of the matter," he said. "Investigators are not just talking to the two inmates." [...]

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Florida braces for third hurricane
CNN
Friday, September 10, 2004 Posted: 7:49 AM EDT
KEY WEST, Florida (AP) -- Before Florida could catch a breath from a furious hurricane double-whammy, residents of the Keys were sent scurrying under new evacuation orders Friday as yet another powerful storm was taking aim at the state.

In South Florida, long lines reappeared at gas stations while shoppers snapped up hurricane supplies at home building stores and supermarkets in preparation for the possibility of a third strike in a month -- this time by Hurricane Ivan, which forecasters said could slam Florida's narrow island chain as early as Monday. The state has not been hit by three hurricanes in a single season since 1964.

Still busied with recovery efforts from hurricanes Frances and Charley, Gov. Jeb Bush said workers would redouble their around-the-clock efforts. "We're not worried about hurricane amnesia anymore," he said. "We're worried about hurricane anxiety." [...]

Comment: The focus of Bush's theft of the 2000 election was in Florida. The 2004 election approaches, and the state is slammed by three hurricanes in a row. Coincidence? We think not.

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9/11 Revisited...

9/11 Commission Wants "No-Fly" List Expanded to Trains, Ships

 Newsmax | September 9 2004


The government should check travelers' names against terrorist watch lists before they board passenger trains or cruise ships, the Sept. 11 commission recommended Wednesday. Airlines now check their passengers' names against such a list, a responsibility that the Transportation Security Administration plans to assume sometime next year.

Privacy advocates say the government is too secretive about how it puts people on the list and that those who are mistakenly identified as terrorists don't have an effective way of getting off it.

The proposal is one of 94 proposals released Wednesday that expand upon a handful of transportation security improvements the Sept. 11 commission recommended to Congress in July.

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Petition to the Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Petitiononline.com

To: The U.S. Senate

Petition to the Senate to Investigate Oddities Involving 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

We, the undersigned, do hereby petition the Senate of the United States of America to thoroughly investigate the events surrounding the acts of terrorism that transpired in the United States on September 11, 2001. Such an investigation would include research into the following peculiarities relating to the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11:

1.) Thousands of put stock options that were purchased on United and American airlines immediately prior to 9/11/01

2.) Financial transactions totaling more than 100 million dollars that electronically passed through the World Trade Center immediately prior to its destruction on 9/11

3.) Black-box recordings from the four planes which crashed on 9/11

4.) Cell phone calls made by passengers on hijacked flights on 9/11 which never emerged on their cell-phone bills

5.) Interviews of any air-traffic controllers on duty on 9/11

6.) Eyewitness accounts detailing Flight 93's explosion prior to its crashing

7.) Aircraft debris strewn approximately seven miles from the crash site of Flight 93

8.) Unocal's role in its quest to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan, plans implemented prior to 2001

9.) Carlyle Corporation's role in overseeing Unocal's quest to have an oil pipeline built across Afghanistan, plans implemented prior to 2001

10.) Role of remote-control software technology implemented in 9/11 hijackings and crashes

11.) George W. Bush's possible foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks on 9/11

12.) Role of the Northern Alliance in explosive growth of opium production in Afghanistan after U.S. military intervention


We respectfully petition the Senate to make public the results of this investigation.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

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Wargames Were Cover For the Operational Execution of 9/11
Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson | September 8 2004

For almost three years since 9/11 independent researchers have stockpiled individual smoking guns which prove that the official version of events was not only a lie but operationally impossible.

However, no single smoking gun has yet been forwarded to explain why air defenses categorically reversed Standard Operating Procedure and failed to respond to hijacked jetliners.

Until now. More and more individuals are looking at the facts and highlighting exercise drills that took place on the morning of 9/11.

It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.

The large numbers of 'blips' on NORAD screens that displayed both real and 'drill' hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked.

The drill scenario also explains a comment made by air traffic control personnel which was featured in a July 2004 BBC television report. The controller is told that a hijacked airliner is heading for New York and responds by saying, "is this real world or an exercise?"

What were the drills called and what was their nature?

1) OPERATION NORTHERN VIGILANCE: This was planned months in advance of 9/11 and ensured that on the morning of 9/11, jet fighters were removed from patrolling the US east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada, therefore reducing the amount of fighter planes available to protect the east coast.

2) BIOWARFARE EXERCISE TRIPOD II: Alex Jones first reported on this back in May when Rudolph Giuliani let the details of it slip in his testimony to the 9/11 Commission. FEMA arrived in New York on September 10th to set up a command post located at Pier 29 under the auspices of a 'biowarfare exercise scheduled for September 12. This explains why Tom Kenney of FEMA's National Urban Search and Rescue Team, told Dan Rather of CBS News that FEMA had arrived in New York on the night of September 10th. This was originally dismissed as a slip of the tongue. Giuliani was to use this post as a command post on 9/11 after he evacuated WTC Building 7. As we reported back in January , Giuliani knew when to leave WTC 7 because he got advanced warning that the Trade Towers were about to collapse. "We were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse," Rudolph Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News. How did Giuliani know the towers were about to collapse when no steel building in history had previously collapsed from fire damage?

3) OPERATION VIGILANT GUARDIAN: This exercise simulated hijacked planes in the north eastern sector and started to coincide with 9/11. Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, NORAD unit's airborne control and warning officer, was overseeing the exercise. At 8:40am she took a call from Boston Center which said it had a hijacked airliner. Her first words, as quoted by Newhouse News Service were, "It must be part of the exercise." This is another example of how the numerous drills on the morning of 9/11 deliberately distracted NORAD so that the real hijacked planes couldn't be intercepted in time.

4) OPERATION NORTHERN GUARDIAN: The details of this exercise are still scant but it is considered to be part of Vigilant Guardian, relating to simulating hijacked planes in the north eastern sector.

5) OPERATION VIGILANT WARRIOR: This was referenced in Richard Clarke's book 'Against All Enemies'. It is thought to have been the 'attack' component of the Vigilant Guardian exercise.

Another example of how air defenses were purposefully kept preoccupied so they couldn't protect New York was reported by this website in December of 2003. The Air National Guard's 177th Fighter Wing, based at Atlantic City International Airport in Pomona, were just eight minutes away from New York and could have intercepted both Flight 11 and Flight 175.

Under NORAD procedures that date to the Cold War, two F-16 fighters from the 177th were parked around the clock on the Atlantic City runway. Pilots waited in a nearby building, ready to scramble.

But on the morning of 9/11, the F-16's were performing bombing runs over an empty stretch of the Pine Barrens near Atlantic City after being decommissioned from their usual role of protecting the skies of the east coast.

It was only after both trade towers were hit that the two F-16s landed and were refitted with air-to-air missiles, then sent aloft.

Now that we have established how NORAD were confused, delayed and distracted by the numerous wargames, the next question to ask is who if anyone was aware of which planes were 'real world' and which planes were 'exercise'? The answer to this question will provide us with the name of the individual who ran the operatonal execution of the 9/11 attack.

Dick Cheney.

Cheney was initially taken by the secret service to an underground bunker in the White House called the Presidential Emergency

Operations Center.

From there, according to CNN , Cheney directed the US government's response to the unfolding attack.

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta was in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with Vice President Cheney as Flight 77 approached Washington, D.C. On May 23, 2003 in front of the 9/11 Commission, Secretary Mineta testified:

"During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out." "The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to "the plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

As the plane in question hit the Pentagon, what else can we conclude but that the 'order' was not to shoot down the aircraft and to let it find its target.

Mineta stated that he did not know what the 'order' was because he wasn't there when it was made.

After the Pentagon was hit, Cheney was transfered to another bunker in what the Philadelphia Daily News describes as 'the underground Pentagon'.

Site R, a highly secure complex of buildings inside Raven Rock Mountain near Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., close to the Maryland-Pennsylvania state line and about seven miles north of Camp David, is a 53-year-old facility conceived at the start of the Cold War as an alternate command center in the event of nuclear war or an attack on Washington.

The bunker is built into a mountain hillside and is virtually camouflaged to the naked eye. The location betrays itself by the vast gaggle of satellites, microwave towers and antennae that festoon the perimeter. Inside the facility there are computer filled caverns and communication and tracking technology that would put a James Bond movie to shame.

The entire facility is guarded by heavily armed military police.

Within hours of 9/11 unfolding, five choppers had landed on the facility's helipad and top officials such as Paul Wolfowitz were ushered in to join Cheney in the command bunker.

Site R - also known as Raven Rock or the Alternate Joint Communications Center is from where vice-President Dick Cheney ran the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. Cheney's command superceded the orders of the Pentagon, the FAA or the White House. He is the number one suspect in the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people.

In May of 2001, by presidential order, Cheney was handed direct control of all wargame and drill operations. This meant he was solely in charge of the overlapping NORAD drills and wargames on the morning of 9/11, that prevented Standard Operating Procedure from being implemented, and any of the hijacked planes being intercepted.

The smoking guns of 9/11 are no longer disparate jigsaw pieces that serve to just raise more questions than they answer. We now have a coherent and plausible explanation of how the events unfolded, why there was no air defense response, and a prime suspect as to who executed these actions. The facts fit this version of events.

The 9/11 truth movement has just taken a giant leap towards dismantling the lies of September 11and finally offering justice for those who lost their lives on that terrible day.

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Salvador Allende
(June 26, 1908 - September 11, 1973)
Democratically elected President of Chile, killed during a US organized and financed coup d'état.


September 11 in History
Editor's Comments
©September11News.com
The most startling discovery was a book written in 1981, 20 years prior to the 2001 attacks, called "The Birth of Christ Recalculated". The author, Dr. Ernest L. Martin, claims to have calculated the exact date of Jesus Christ's birth based on the celestial charts for that era. The date of Christ's birth, based on the famous Star of Bethlehem, is calculated to be September 11, 3 B.C.. Dr. Martin's findings have been accepted by many scholars, theologians, historians, and astronomers. We also note that Jesus Christ has 11 letters. The crosses found standing in the ruins of the WTC, and the dominance of the number 11 in the 9-11 events, make this combination even more mysterious.

There is another significant religious event occurring about 2000 years later on September 11, 1999. According to Hebrew scriptures September 11, 1999 was the 6,000th anniversary of Adam's creation, and year 1 on the Hebrew calendar.

Most other historic events between those 2,002 years (3 B.C. -1999 A.D.) involve either war or violence. [...]

On September 11, 1941 construction officially begins at the Pentagon.

[...] Other events that appear to have uncanny similar timing in relation to the 9-11-2001 attacks were the 1972 Olympics, and President Bush's 1990 Gulf War Speech.

The world was introduced to terrorism at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. These games ended on September 11, 1972. There were 121 participating countries (11X11=121), and 11 Israeli athletes were killed. Exactly 29 years (2 9=11) after this terrorist horror ended, another more despicable horror occurred - the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On September 11, 1990 President George Bush (Sr.) made a dramatic speech to Congress, outlining the US position in the Kuwait crisis, and the preliminary steps the US was taking towards the Gulf War. Exactly 11 years later, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked America.

Comment: While we don't think that Jesus was born on September 11, 3 BC, and we would put a very low probability that Adam was created on a sunny September 11th, 6000 years ago, maybe some folks do. And if those folks think this, maybe it would somehow affect the way they date important events in their lives... maybe.

Another astonishing event occurred on September 11, this time in 2001. Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, predicted the attack on the United States!

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Rumsfeld Predicts 9/11
CNN

The following is an excerpt of the transcript of the Larry King Show of December 5, 2001.

KING: You were right here when the Pentagon...

RUMSFELD: I was.

KING: And someone told me that you had spoken to a congressional delegation...

RUMSFELD: Right here in this room.

KING: ... in this room about terrorism that morning.

RUMSFELD: I had said at -- I had an 8 o'clock breakfast -- that sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, 10, 12 months, there would be an event that would occur in the world that would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people, again, how important it is to have a strong, healthy Defense Department that contributes -- that underpins peace and stability in our world. And that is what underpins peace and stability. It's the fact -- we can't have healthy economies and active lives unless we live in a peaceful, stabile world. And I said that to these people.

And someone walked in and handed a note that said that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. And we adjourned the meeting. And I went in to get my CIA briefing right next door here, and the whole building shook within 15 minutes. And it was a jarring thing.

KING: And you ran toward the smoke?

RUMSFELD: Yes. [...]

KING: I know we're out of the allotted time, but Gary Hart has said that he expects -- his commission previously said this would happen. You were pretty prophetic that morning. But it's going to happen again.

RUMSFELD: Well, we have to recognize that it's a dangerous and untidy world. There's a lot of very powerful, lethal weapons that exist and ways that people can impose enormous damage. And we have to be vigilant. We have to be willing to invest to see that we have the kinds of capabilities that we can deter and defend and, where necessary, preempt.

KING: But it's an every-minute job.

RUMSFELD: It is. It is.

Comment: Given his powers of clairvoyance, we wonder why Rummy wasn't able to foresee the problems that would arise after Iraq was "liberated"! But, hey, even the best of mediums aren't on every day, and the Don Meister was very on that day.

Not only did Rumsfeld predict the first attack, once the WTC had been hit, he also predicted the attack on the Pentagon!

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Donald Rumsfeld Predicts the Second Attack
The Telegraph

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defence, was in his office on the eastern side of the building, in a meeting with Christopher Cox, the defence policy committee chairman of the House of Representatives. Mr Rumsfeld, recalls Mr Cox, watched the TV coverage from New York and said : "Believe me, this isn't over yet. There's going to be another attack, and it could be us."

Moments later, the plane hit. Mr Rumsfeld ran to the point of impact and helped load the wounded on to stretchers before retreating to the secure National Military Command Centre, beneath the building. There, he refused entreaties to evacuate even as the Centre filled with smoke.

Comment: Two for two! Not bad, Don!

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The State of the World...

SCHOOL TERRORISTS GOT ORDERS FROM ABROAD: PUTIN'S ADVISER
RIA Novosti
2004-09-06 21:23

MOSCOW - Terrorists who seized a school in North Ossetia's Beslan, September 1, were receiving orders from abroad throughout the three suspense-laden days, says Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's adviser for North Caucasian affairs.

"The men had their conversations not within Russia but with other countries. They were led on a leash. Our self-styled friends have been working for several decades, I deem, to dismember Russia. They are doing a huge, really titanic job. It's clear as daylight that those people are coming up as puppeteers and are financing terror," he said to the Rossia television company, national Channel Two, tonight.

Though the bandits named certain people they wanted to see as negotiators, and Mr. Aslakhanov was among them, he is sure the terrorist gang really did not mean whatever contacts.

Aslanbek Aslakhanov, a Chechen, was on the site throughout the tragedy, and contacted the gang on the telephone.

"The men were certainly not Chechens. When I spoke Chechen with them, they said they couldn't make out a word. 'Speak Russian,' they told me. Well, I did as they wished, though I speak Russian with a Caucasian accent," he said in his TV interview.

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Palestinian crushed by Israeli jeep
Aljazeera
Saturday 11 September 2004, 0:05 GMT

Aljazeera has aired exclusive footage showing an Israeli military jeep crushing a Palestinian teenager under its wheels in the West Bank city of Ram Allah.

The video, which was aired on Friday, showed 18-year-old Muhammad Abd Allah Jad al-Haq being rolled over twice and left for dead while he was on his way home from the funeral of Amir Aidiya, a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, killed earlier in Jericho.

The vehicle fled from the scene after running over Jad al-Haq.

Separately, a resistance fighter with the armed movement Hamas has been killed in clashes with Israeli occupation troops in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian security sources and medics said.

The killing took place on Friday in the Jabaliya camp of the Gaza Strip. Sources identified the slain fighter as 34-year-old Abd Al-Aziz al-Ashqar, a local Hamas chief.

Four other people were injured after Israeli tanks bombed the camp, Aljazeera's correspondent in Gaza reported. [...]

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Climate experts: El Nino developing in Pacific
CNN
Friday, September 10, 2004 Posted: 4:24 PM EDT (2024 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A mild El Nino is developing in the Pacific Ocean, climate experts said Friday. El Ninos can affect weather in other areas, sometimes worldwide.

"El Nino conditions have developed in the central tropical Pacific and are expected to last through early 2005," Jim Laver, director of the federal Climate Prediction Center, said in a statement.

These conditions occur when ocean waters become warmer than normal for the area, causing an increase in cloudiness and affecting air pressure and winds as well. [...]

The climate scientists said sea surface temperatures were more than 0.5 degrees Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) above average in the central and western equatorial Pacific during August 2004, the third month of warmer-than-normal readings.

While the current warming indicates the early stages of an El Nino, the conditions have not spread ocean wide, which means it is likely to be weaker than the 1997-1998 event, the agency said.

El Ninos occur about every four to five years and can last up to 12 to 18 months. The effects can range from drought in Indonesia, Australia and Africa, to storms in California and floods elsewhere.

The 1997-98 El Nino caused an estimated $20 billion in damage worldwide.

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4.4-MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE JOLTS EASTERN TAIWAN
2004/09/11 18:39:03

Taipei, Sept. 11 (CNA) An earthquake with a preliminary measurement of 4.4 on the Richter scale jolted eastern Taiwan Saturday afternoon, according to the Central Weather Bureau. Weather bureau officials said that the tremor struck at 1: 50 p.m., with its epicenter located 13.7 km east of the Hsihlin seismology station in the eastern county of Hualien at a depth of 40.4 km. The earthquake had an intensity of 2.0 at Fengpin township in Hualien County and 1.0 in Hualien City, the officials said.

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