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"You get America out of Iraq and
Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism."
- Cindy Sheehan |
P I C T U R E
O F T H E D A Y |
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©2005
Pierre-Paul Feyte |
CNN
Thursday, November 10, 2005
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Al Qaeda in Iraq, a group led by wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, is claiming responsibility for three suicide bombings in hotels in Amman, Jordan, according to a posting on a Web site Thursday.
At least 56 people were killed in the attacks Wednesday at the Grand Hyatt, Radisson and Days Inn hotels. Another 93 people were wounded.
The claim was made on a Web site used by the group. Its authenticity cannot be verified by CNN.
A Jordanian official earlier had said al-Zarqawi was a "prime suspect" in the terror bombings.
Several of those killed in the hotel blasts were Palestinian officials. [...]
Officials from other governments, however, were among the dead. Four Palestinians, including Maj. Gen. Bashir Nafeh, head of Palestinian military intelligence, died in the blast at the Grand Hyatt, according to chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat. Also killed was Col. Abed Allun; Jihad Fattouh, the brother of the Palestinian parliament speaker; and Mosab Khoma, Erakat said. The four were on their way back from Cairo, Egypt, he said, adding that he condemned the attack in the strongest terms possible. [...]
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By Middle East correspondent Matt Brown
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Thursday, November 10, 2005. 6:19pm (AEDT)
Jordanian officials say the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, may have been behind three blasts at landmark hotels in the capital Amman.
Jordanian officials say the most wanted man in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, may have been behind three blasts at landmark hotels in the capital Amman.
Up to 70 people were killed and about 300 wounded in the attacks.
Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Moasher says Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, is a prime suspect in the Amman bombings.
Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for an attack aimed at two US warships in Jordan in August and Zarqawi was born in Jordan.
The Jordanian Government is also struggling to contain militants not directly linked to Zarqawi.
Previous plots to launch chemical and bomb attacks have not involved his group and numerous cells made up of Jordanians and foreigners from elsewhere in the Middle East have been active in the country.
Wedding victims
Meanwhile, many of the victims were Jordanians attending a wedding celebration at the Radisson SAS hotel.
Ahraf Al Khaled was the man getting married.
"We tried to save how many we can, but there's a lot of people injured and some of them dead," he said.
"Some of them are from my family and some are from my wife's family as well.
"Myself, I lost my father, I lost my father-in-law as well."
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By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Haaretz
10/11/2005
A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.
A number of Israelis staying on Wednesday at the Radisson hotel were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. They were escorted back to Israel by security personnel.
The Foreign Ministry stated Wednesday that no Israeli tourists are known to have been injured in the blasts. Representatives of Israel's embassy in Amman were in contact with local authorities to examine any report of injured Israelis, but none were received. There are often a number of Israeli businessman and tourists in Amman, including in the hotels hit Wednesday.[...]
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By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 09 November 2005
UK Independent
A leading campaign group has demanded an urgent inquiry into a report that US troops indiscriminately used a controversial incendiary weapon during the battle for Fallujah. Photographic evidence gathered from the aftermath of the battle suggests that women and children were killed by horrific burns caused by the white phosphorus shells dropped by US forces.
The Pentagon has always admitted it used phosphorus during last year's assault on the city, which US commanders said was an insurgent stronghold. But they claimed they used the brightly burning shells "very sparingly" and only to illuminate combat areas.
But the documentary Fallujah: the Hidden Massacre, broadcast yesterday by the Italian state broadcaster, RAI, suggested the shells were commonly used and killed an unspecified number of civilians. Photographs obtained by RAI from the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, show the bodies of dozens of Fallujah residents whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised by the effects of the phosphorus shells. The use of incendiary weapons against civilian targets is banned by treaty.
Last night Robert Musil, director of the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, called for an investigation. He told The Independent: "When there is clear testimony that use of such weapons has done this, it demands a full investigation. From Vietnam onwards there has been a general condemnation of [the use of white phosphorus] and concern about the injuries and consequences."
The 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons bans the use of weapons such as napalm and white phosphorus against civilian - but not military - targets. The US did not sign the treaty and has continued to use white phosphorus and an updated version of napalm, called Mark 77 firebombs, which use kerosene rather than petrol. A senior US commander previously has confirmed that 510lb napalm bombs had been used in Iraq and said that "the generals love napalm. It has a big psychological effect."
John Pike, director of the Washington-based military studies group GlobalSecurity.Org, said the smoke caused by the bombs could confuse or blind the enemy or mark a target. "If it hits your clothes it will burn your clothes and if it hits your skin it will just keep on burning," he said.
Experts said that, if not removed, white phosphorus - known as Willy Pete - can burn to the bone. The fumes from phosphorus cause severe eye irritation.
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Mike Marqusee
Thursday November 10, 2005
The Guardian
The destruction of Falluja was an act of barbarism that ranks alongside My Lai, Guernica and Halabja
One year ago this week, US-led occupying forces launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja. The mood was set by Lt Col Gary Brandl: "The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to destroy him."
The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US troops cut off the city's water, power and food supplies, condemned as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused occupying forces of "using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". Two-thirds of the city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters' camps without basic facilities.
As the siege tightened, the Red Cross, Red Crescent and the media were kept out, while males between the ages of 15 and 55 were kept in. US sources claimed between 600 and 6,000 insurgents were holed up inside the city - which means that the vast majority of the remaining inhabitants were non-combatants.
On November 8, 10,000 US troops, supported by 2,000 Iraqi recruits, equipped with artillery and tanks, supported from the air by bombers and helicopter gunships, blasted their way into a city the size of Leicester. It took a week to establish control of the main roads; another two before victory was claimed.
The city's main hospital was selected as the first target, the New York Times reported, "because the US military believed it was the source of rumours about heavy casualties". An AP photographer described US helicopters killing a family of five trying to ford a river to safety. "There were American snipers on top of the hospital shooting everyone," said Burhan Fasa'am, a photographer with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. "With no medical supplies, people died from their wounds. Everyone in the street was a target for the Americans."
The US also deployed incendiary weapons, including white phosphorous. "Usually we keep the gloves on," Captain Erik Krivda said, but "for this operation, we took the gloves off". By the end of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines.
The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources disagree. When medical teams arrived in January they collected more than 700 bodies in only one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly civilians - a proportionately higher death rate than in Coventry and London during the blitz.
The collective punishment inflicted on Falluja - with logistical and political support from Britain - was largely masked by the US and British media, which relied on reporters embedded with US troops. The BBC, in particular, offered a sanitised version of the assault: civilian suffering was minimised and the ethics and strategic logic of the attack largely unscrutinised.
Falluja proved to be yet another of the war's phantom turning points. Violent resistance spread to other cities. In the last two months, Tal-Afar, Haditha, Husaybah - all alleged terrorist havens heavily populated by civilians - have come under the hammer. Falluja is still so heavily patrolled that visitors have described it as "a giant prison". Only a fraction of the promised reconstruction and compensation has materialised.
Like Jallianwallah Bagh, Guernica, My Lai, Halabja and Grozny, Falluja is a place name that has become a symbol of unconscionable brutality. As the war in Iraq claims more lives, we need to ensure that this atrocity - so recent, so easily erased from public memory - is recognised as an example of the barbarism of nations that call themselves civilised.
· Mike Marqusee is a co-founder of Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
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lewrockwell.com
It may sound like an exaggeration to say that just about every major claim made about Iraq and Saddam by the U.S. government since the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has been misleading or simply false, and that the mainstream media has bought into these distortions with nary a peep of opposition, but that’s just about the only conclusion one can draw from Wanniski’s case. If you think it’s an open and shut case that Saddam "gassed his own people," not to mention countless other episodes routinely cited to work us into a frenzy for war, you need to read this.
I have never recommended a book as strongly as I am recommending Neoconned and Neoconned Again, two new collections of essays that make just about every argument you can think of against the war in Iraq. Now if you’re thinking that you’ve read enough about this subject already, or that such books just aren’t your cup of tea, or that you have too much to read as it is, I urge you to abandon such thoughts right away. These books need to be purchased by everyone, right away, this minute, and need to be circulated just as far as possible.
I was asked early last year to contribute an essay to these volumes. At that time I was consumed by the task of writing The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, along with my usual dozen other projects, and unfortunately had to decline. All I can say is, they sure didn’t need my essay. Light in the Darkness Publications has assembled one of the most impressive lineups of scholars and commentators I have ever seen on any subject. Many of the names will be familiar to LRC readers; see the list for volume 1 here and volume 2 here.
Worth the price of the two volumes alone is the very lengthy interview with the late, great Jude Wanniski, the supply-side theorist who had such influence on President Ronald Reagan (and who therefore cannot be dismissed so easily as a leftist peacenik). In recent years Wanniski had become – along with all too few other conservatives – skeptical not only of government intervention on the domestic front but of its foreign interventions as well. (Recall Joe Sobran’s amusing dictum: if you want the government to intervene domestically you’re a liberal, if you want the government to intervene abroad you’re a conservative, if you want the government to intervene both domestically and abroad you’re a moderate, and if you don’t want the government to intervene either domestically or abroad you’re an extremist.)
It may sound like an exaggeration to say that just about every major claim made about Iraq and Saddam by the U.S. government since the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has been misleading or simply false, and that the mainstream media has bought into these distortions with nary a peep of opposition, but that’s just about the only conclusion one can draw from Wanniski’s case. If you think it’s an open and shut case that Saddam "gassed his own people," not to mention countless other episodes routinely cited to work us into a frenzy for war, you need to read this. (Saddam did brutally suppress uprisings against his regime, but violence in the service of nationalism seems to disturb the neoconservative conscience only selectively – China and Iraq bad, Russia and the United States [under Lincoln] good.)
Although not every essay touches on the issue explicitly, the first of the two volumes is organized around Catholic just-war theory and what it has to say about the war in Iraq. Now hold on a minute before you say you’re non-Catholic and just move along. The principles of Catholic just-war theory, long appropriated and developed by a great many non-Catholics, are widely regarded as useful tools for moral reflection, and you’ll be surprised at just how satisfying it is to see how dramatically short the war in Iraq falls on the basis of every one of those principles.
Wanniski also reminds us of the real history of the past 15 years. He recalls the destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure, including the deliberate targeting of water treatment facilities (followed by a sanctions regime that forbade the entry into Iraq of equipment needed to repair them) and other installations vital to civilian life. This was all necessary, say the shills, because Saddam was such a bad person. The sanctions, too, which led to half a million children dead – "worth it," according to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who did not question that figure – were routinely defended on the same grounds. (Wanniski also addresses the "if Saddam hadn’t built so many palaces he could have fed his people" argument.) A prosperous, secular country that was liberal by regional standards, and which could boast one of the finest health care systems in the Middle East, was reduced to an economic basket case, and plagued by a nightmare of disease, malnourishment, and sick and deformed children – all as the result of a vain effort to dislodge its leader. If the "Saddam was bad" defense strikes you as insufficient to justify the infliction of this degree of suffering – of which this is the tip of the iceberg – welcome to the human race.
That people who describe themselves as Christians supported this policy is but the icing on the cake. As I recall, there was a Christian theologian of no small importance who condemned the idea that we should "do evil that good may come."
A surprising contributor to these volumes is Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani, who headed what in his day was known as the Holy Office of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Ottaviani was known for his outspoken opposition to the new rite of Mass, which he considered an intolerable liberal innovation, so it would not be easy to accuse him of "liberalism." And yet the editors include for us a wonderful and compelling essay of his called "Modern War Is to Be Absolutely Forbidden." Let’s see pro-war Catholics wiggle out of this one.
Professor Peter Chojnowski, another traditional Catholic, contributes a surprisingly radical essay on the right of conscientious objection. He reminds us of an important statement by the Ethics Committee of the Catholic Association for International Peace six decades ago. That committee included distinguished and orthodox scholars such as Msgr. Fulton Sheen (who wrote scholarly books early in his career) and Msgr. John A. Ryan. It concluded:
Practically speaking, the task of deciding the justice or injustice of any particular war devolves upon the conscience of the individual conscript or soldier. It is his conscientious duty to decide, as a matter of concrete fact, whether any particular war is aggressive or defensive, and, if defensive, whether it is justified or unjustified, and, in consequence, whether he is free or obliged or forbidden to participate formally in it, whether he is free or obliged or forbidden to be a conscientious objector.
That’s another small taste of the hidden history that these books have made available.
Volume 2 is, if anything, more impressive still, and features a wider variety of ideological perspectives. No, I don’t much care for some of what Noam Chomsky says, but I am prepared to give a respectful hearing to anyone with the intelligence and the strength of character to denounce wickedness and folly, especially this particular case of wickedness and folly. Featuring an introduction by former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, volume 2 includes dozens of essays by such authors as Claes Ryn, Kirkpatrick Sale, Alexander Cockburn, Gordon Prather, Mark and Louise Zwick, Justin Raimondo, Robert Fisk, and Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.
Like many Americans, I’ve grown sad and frustrated at the triumph of neoconservative foreign policy. It was sold to Americans not merely on the basis of lies, but also by means of bumper-sticker slogans trotted out – and dutifully absorbed and repeated by shills determined to live down to every caricature of conservatism ever devised – by a White House that cynically exploited ordinary people’s patriotic inclinations in order to prosecute a war whose aims remain obscure to this day.
These books, a small victory in themselves, actually lifted my spirits. It was a great pleasure to see how many serious, intelligent observers were keeping a watchful eye on the Bush administration well before criticism of the Iraq misadventure became fashionable, and to see their case against it laid out with such devastating precision. That case is so powerful and overwhelming that it will leave you more dumbfounded than ever that anyone ever fell for it, that anyone got away with denouncing skeptics of transparent White House propaganda as "unpatriotic," or that so many people believe conservatism involves no higher value than giving intellectual cover to a series of ever-changing, ad hoc rationalizations for war.
These books deserve to become bestsellers. To those who opposed the Iraq war, think of purchasing these books as casting a vote against the War Party, against the war-war choice of Bush/Kerry that we got in 2004, and against a cowardly, servile mainstream media whose mea culpas about pre-war intelligence came, well, rather too late.
If you have friends on the left or the right, or even in the center for that matter, please forward this column to them. The same supposedly "liberal" media that brazenly repeated White House fabrications that a simple Google search could have refuted are unlikely to showcase these books. (Can someone please remind the major conservative publications that the "liberal" media supported this war with a vengeance?) They belong not only in Americans’ homes but also in classrooms, libraries (buy a set and donate it!), and wherever intelligent Americans may be found.
Ordinary Americans who were too busy with their own lives to investigate the administration’s claims too closely may come to see they’ve been had, if they haven’t realized it already. But the most outspoken of the war’s supporters are all but impossible to persuade. Some of them are simply venal, eager to curry favor with the regime no matter how idiotic or intellectually insulting the line they are expected to tow. Others, whether they realize it or not, look at the world as a giant baseball game, with the U.S. government as our team. They’ll rush out of the dugout to protest an obviously sound call at first base or a called strike that was in fact well within the strike zone. When in matters of foreign policy their team sets forth a barrage of propaganda they would have laughed at had it come from the Soviet Union in the 1980s or Syria today, they cannot defend it enthusiastically enough. Go, team.
Such a juvenile mentality would have been considered utterly beneath conservatism in, say, the 1940s. At that time, you could find major conservatives who were willing to hold their own government to the same moral standards they applied to others. Even a man known as "Mr. Republican," Senator Robert Taft, could cast a skeptical eye on the Truman administration’s early Cold War foreign policy as – no, this isn’t a misprint – gratuitously provocative.
Today, even to look for motivations behind 9/11 is to invite accusations of "blaming America" for the attacks, as if a detective seeking a killer’s motive should be accused of blaming the victim for his fate. It is next to impossible to render serious judgments about foreign policy when public discourse is dominated by anti-intellectual hysterics calling themselves patriots. These two books do the best job yet.
It may be worth noting, if only in order to underscore the intensity of my feelings about these volumes, that not only do I have no relationship to Light in the Darkness Publications, an imprint of IHS Press (no relation to the Institute for Humane Studies), but I have actually had some public and contentious exchanges with J. Forrest Sharpe, one of the editors of Neoconned, on unrelated matters. I am happy to let bygones be bygones. Sharpe has done his country and the cause of truth a valuable service and deserves only the most enthusiastic support.
It is not possible to do these books justice in a single column. All I can say is that they are of the utmost importance. I cannot urge readers of this column strongly enough: put aside any inclination you may have to let these volumes pass you by, or even to put off buying them until a later date. Buy them right now. You will not regret it.
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Angus Reid Global Scan
November 9, 2005
Many Americans believe the governments of the United States and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to justify military action, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 43 per cent of respondents believe both administrations lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq.
Many Americans believe the governments of the United States and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to justify military action, according to a poll by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 43 per cent of respondents believe both administrations lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq.
Conversely, 41 per cent of respondents think the U.S. and Britain were themselves misinformed by bad intelligence, five per cent think weapons of mass destruction might still be found in Iraq, and 11 per cent do not know.
The coalition effort against Saddam Hussein’s regime was launched in March 2003. At least 2,056 American soldiers have died during the military operation, and more than 15,300 troops have been injured.
Pre-war speeches by U.S. president George W. Bush mentioned specific chemical agents, such as mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve gas as banned substances allegedly secured by Iraq. State secretary Colin Powell assured the United Nations (UN) Security Council in February 2003 that Hussein possessed biological weapons.
The final report of the Iraq Survey Group—presented to the U.S. Congress on Sept. 30, 2004—concluded that Hussein’s regime did not possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and had not implemented a significant program for their development.
Among those respondents who think the U.S. and Britain lied before the invasion of Iraq, 24 per cent say the two governments chose to focus only on the intelligence that supported military action, while 17 per cent believe they knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
Polling Data
Before the war, the U.S. and Britain claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been found. Why do you think they made this claim?
Mostly because they were themselves misinformed by bad intelligence 41%
Mostly because they lied to provide a reason for invading Iraq 43%
WMD might still be found 5%
Don’t know / Refused 11%
(Among the 43% who said "lied") - Do you think U.S. and British leaders knew Iraq had no weapons, or did they simply choose to believe only the intelligence that supported going to war?
Chose to believe only the intelligence that supported going to war 24%
Knew Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction 17%
Don’t know / Refused 2%
Source: Princeton Survey Research Associates / Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,201 American adults, conducted from Nov. 3 to Nov. 6, 2005. Margin of error is 3.5 per cent.
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Broadcast - 11/09/05
We speak with veteran war correspondent Robert Fisk of the London Independent about the U.S. abuse of prisoners in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and rendition to other countries as well as the role of journalists in a time of war.
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Information Clearing House
January 28, 2004
Updated January 29, 2004
A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak
Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately, Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year timeline of those warnings.
2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies
In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98]
FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]
SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]
SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]
2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case
Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.
JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]
FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NOT PROVIDED WMD TO TERRORISTS: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02]
APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02]
SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]
SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]
SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]
OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03]
OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003]
OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03]
2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings
Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.
LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]
FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03]
FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03]
FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03]
MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]
MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq . A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups. This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, 'cherry-picked the intelligence stream' in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ]
JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED: "The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters, 6/6/03]
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Agencies
Wednesday November 9, 2005
The Guardian
US Torture is being investigated by EU Council
The Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, has opened an inquiry into reports of secret CIA detention centres in Romania and Poland, the European commission said yesterday.
It follows a Washington Post report this month which said the intelligence agency has been interrogating al-Qaida captives in eastern Europe.
The CIA has also taken the first step toward a criminal investigation of the leak, possibly of classified information, on which the newspaper based its report, a US official said yesterday. The agency has sent a report to the US Justice Department.
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By Alec Russell in Washington
09/11/2005
UK Telegraph
In a critical test of his influence, Mr Cheney is pitting himself against the Senate and leading officials in the departments of State and Defence in his attempt to allow interrogators a free rein in questioning suspects.
Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, is fighting a rearguard action to stop Congress imposing more humane rules on interrogating prisoners.
Bowing to pressure over prisoner abuse scandals, the Pentagon has approved a set of rules for interrogations, it emerged yesterday.
Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney: led a lobbying campaign against a ban
The new policy seeks to address the fallout of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by establishing a clear chain of command for questioning and requiring CIA interrogators to follow Pentagon guidelines.
But the changes do not address a debate in Washington over whether a second, more far-reaching directive should include wording from the Geneva Convention barring "cruel, humiliating and degrading" treatment.
In a critical test of his influence, Mr Cheney is pitting himself against the Senate and leading officials in the departments of State and Defence in his attempt to allow interrogators a free rein in questioning suspects.
The argument comes at a sensitive time for Mr Cheney who is facing intensified scrutiny after the indictment of his chief aide, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, over a CIA-leak scandal.
Senator John McCain, the Republican behind legislation pushing for an explicit ban on torture and other inhuman treatment, yesterday piled on the pressure.
"I believe that he's doing what he thinks is best for America, and he's committed and passionate about it, we just simply have a disagreement on this issue," he told CNN. Mr McCain, who was detained and tortured in the Vietnam war, said that anyone who had been in combat knew that torture was a mistake. "The price we pay for being able to torture people is huge throughout the world."
Mr Cheney has led a lobbying campaign against a ban amid reports of fiery exchanges between him and senior officials in the Pentagon and the State Department.
He believes Islamist terrorism requires extraordinary measures and the military should have maximum "flexibility" to combat the threat. He is now campaigning for an exemption for the CIA from such a ban, which was approved by the Senate last month but faces further debate before it can become law.
He wielded huge influence in Mr Bush's first term with his aides playing a key role in the critical decisions in the countdown to the war in Iraq.
But with the situation in Iraq far less rosy than he predicted, and amid a renewed focus over America's interrogation procedures, the White House is being monitored closely for the slightest sign that he is losing clout.
America's record in interrogating prisoners has come under fresh scrutiny after the Washington Post reported that the CIA was running secret prisons across the world.
The administration has refused to confirm or deny the report, but the Council of Europe said yesterday it would launch an investigation. Mr Bush defended America's record on Monday saying "we do not torture".
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By E&P Staff
Editor & Publisher
Published: November 08, 2005
NEW YORK At today's White House press briefing, Scott McClellan was hit with a number of questions about the "ethics classes" the president's staffers are now attending. But much of the briefing featured efforts by Helen Thomas, at the start, and then other reporters to get McClellan to explain the apparent contradiction between his claims that the U.S. does not torture anyone and Vice President Cheney's request for an exemption in this matter.
Here are the exchanges from the transcript:
Q I'd like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don't do torture, but Cheney --
MR. McCLELLAN: That's about as straight as it can be.
Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he's asked for an exemption on torture? No, that's --
Q He did not ask for that?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- that is inaccurate.
Q Are you denying everything that came from the Hill, in terms of torture?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, you're mischaracterizing things. And I'm not going to get into discussions we have --
Q Can you give me a straight answer for once?
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me give it to you, just like the President has. We do not torture. He does not condone torture and he would never --
Q I'm asking about exemptions.
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me respond. And he would never authorize the use of torture. We have an obligation to do all that we can to protect the American people. We are engaged --
Q That's not the answer I'm asking for --
MR. McCLELLAN: It is an answer -- because the American people want to know that we are doing all within our power to prevent terrorist attacks from happening. There are people in this world who want to spread a hateful ideology that is based on killing innocent men, women and children. We saw what they can do on September 11th --
Q He didn't ask for an exemption --
MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are going to --
Q -- answer that one question. I'm asking, is the administration asking for an exemption?
MR. McCLELLAN: I am answering your question. The President has made it very clear that we are going to do --
Q You're not answering -- yes or no?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, you don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen, and I'm going to tell them the facts.
Q -- the American people every day. I'm asking you, yes or no, did we ask for an exemption?
MR. McCLELLAN: And let me respond. You've had your opportunity to ask the question. Now I'm going to respond to it.
Q If you could answer in a straight way.
MR. McCLELLAN: And I'm going to answer it, just like the President -- I just did, and the President has answered it numerous times.
Q -- yes or no --
MR. McCLELLAN: Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people. We are engaged in a global war against Islamic radicals who are intent on spreading a hateful ideology, and intent on killing innocent men, women and children.
Q Did we ask for an exemption?
MR. McCLELLAN: We are going to do what is necessary to protect the American people.
Q Is that the answer?
MR. McCLELLAN: We are also going to do so in a way that adheres to our laws and to our values. We have made that very clear. The President directed everybody within this government that we do not engage in torture. We will not torture. He made that very clear.
Q Are you denying we asked for an exemption?
MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, we will continue to work with the Congress on the issue that you brought up. The way you characterize it, that we're asking for exemption from torture, is just flat-out false, because there are laws that are on the books that prohibit the use of torture. And we adhere to those laws.
Q We did ask for an exemption; is that right? I mean, be simple -- this is a very simple question.
MR. McCLELLAN: I just answered your question. The President answered it last week.
Q What are we asking for?
Q Would you characterize what we're asking for?
MR. McCLELLAN: We're asking to do what is necessary to protect the American people in a way that is consistent with our laws and our treaty obligations. And that's what we --
Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from the military?
MR. McCLELLAN: David, let's talk about people that you're talking about who have been brought to justice and captured. You're talking about people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad; people like Abu Zubaydah.
Q I'm asking you --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, this is facts about what you're talking about.
Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from rules that would govern the conduct of our military in interrogation practices?
MR. McCLELLAN: There are already laws and rules that are on the books, and we follow those laws and rules. What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible, not only --
Q What does that mean --
MR. McCLELLAN: What I'm telling you right now -- not only to protect Americans from an attack, but to prevent an attack from happening in the first place. And, you bet, when we capture terrorist leaders, we are going to seek to find out information that will protect -- that prevent attacks from happening in the first place. But we have an obligation to do so. Our military knows this; all people within the United States government know this. We have an obligation to do so in a way that is consistent with our laws and values.
Now, the people that you are bringing up -- you're talking about in the context, and I think it's important for the American people to know, are people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh -- these are -- these are dangerous killers.
Q So they're all killers --
Q Did you ask for an exemption on torture? That's a simple question, yes or no.
MR. McCLELLAN: No. And we have not. That's what I told you at the beginning.
Q You want to reserve the ability to use tougher tactics with those individuals who you mentioned.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, obviously, you have a different view from the American people. I think the American people understand the importance of doing everything within our power and within our laws to protect the American people.
Q Scott, are you saying that Cheney did not ask --
Q What is it that you want the -- what is it that you want the CIA to be able to do that the U.S. Armed Forces are not allowed to do?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into talking about national security matters, Bill. I don't do that, because this involves --
Q This would be the exemption, in other words.
MR. McCLELLAN: This involves information that relates to doing all we can to protect the American people. And if you have a different view -- obviously, some of you on this room -- in this room have a different view, some of you on the front row have a different view.
Q We simply are asking a question.
Q What is the Vice President -- what is the Vice President asking for?
MR. McCLELLAN: It's spelled out in our statement of administration policy in terms of what our views are. That's very public information. In terms of our discussions with members of Congress --
Q -- no, it's not --
MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of our members -- like I said, there are already laws on the books that we have to adhere to and abide by, and we do. And we believe that those laws and those obligations address these issues.
Q So then why is the Vice President continuing to lobby on this issue? If you're very happy with the laws on the books, what needs change?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you asked me -- you want to ask questions of the Vice President's office, feel free to do that. We've made our position very clear, and it's spelled out on our website for everybody to see.
Q We don't need a website, we need you from the podium.
MR. McCLELLAN: And what I just told you is what our view is.
Q But Scott, do you see the contradiction --
MR. McCLELLAN: Jessica, go ahead.
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By MARTIN SCHRAM
Nov 9, 2005
© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
As Karen Hughes goes about her urgent job of trying to repair America's disastrously debased image throughout the world -- especially the Muslim world -- she is being undercut by what has become her mission's worst nightmare.
Dick Cheney.
The vice president's steely hand and hard-line handiwork are making it impossible for the Bush-Cheney administration's undersecretary of state for public diplomacy to succeed in her prime mission - winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It happens, of course, mainly behind closed doors in the West Wing, the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.
The latest is something that once would have been unthinkable as a policy of the United States: The officially sanctioned abuse and inhumane treatment of some prisoners or suspects in the war on terror.
Cheney mounted a major effort to defeat an amendment to the defense spending bill that merely adopted as U.S. policy the standard Geneva Convention language prohibiting the treatment of terrorist prisoners or suspects in "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" ways. The amendment was introduced by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Navy hero in the Vietnam War who was among the many Americans who were beaten, abused and tortured as prisoners of war.
After the Senate adopted the amendment by a vote of 90-9, Cheney began urging Republican senators to at least add a loophole that would exempt operatives of the CIA from that policy. In other words, America's veep would have America tell the world that it is OK for certain U.S. personnel to treat prisoners and suspects in ways that are "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" _ as long as the U.S. personnel draw paychecks from the appropriate pocket of the U.S. bureaucracy. In this case, the CIA.
It is enough to sadden the hearts and boggle the minds of Americans who remember when the world recoiled at horrific tales of Japanese and German torture of prisoners in World War II _ and North Vietnamese abuses of U.S. captives (including McCain) in the prison known as the Hanoi Hilton.
That is why prominent Republican senators recoiled from Cheney's effort. House Republican leaders bowed to the veep, delaying a vote on the bill, but advised the measure is likely to pass.
Now think about the hearts and minds in the Arab world and the effect Cheney's policy will have on them. One day, Muslims see pictures of inhumane abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib and accounts of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Next, they hear Bush officials assuring that torture and abuse is not U.S. policy. Now comes pleading for a loophole that can only mean it is policy.
Which brings us to Karen Hughes. Before President Bush asked his close confidant to return from the private sector to take the job, a Government Accountability Office report had warned that "recent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world. ... Such anti-American sentiments can increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States' ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics' enthusiasm for U.S. business services and products."
No wonder a prominent administration figure promptly hailed Hughes' appointment by noting that public diplomacy "has been a very weak part of our arsenal ... (but) having Karen Hughes over there ... gives us the best combination of people (to) actively and aggressively address those issues." That designated hailer-in-chief was Cheney.
This just in: The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Army field manual has been revised to tighten controls over the questioning of suspected terrorists. But not all is clear. The new manual says CIA interrogators will follow Pentagon guidelines in interrogating "military prisoners." But the Bush administration also maintains that terrorist suspects are not military prisoners.
On Monday, Bush issued a ringing declaration: "We do not torture." It was followed by a wiggling explanation: "Our country is at war and our government has the obligation to protect the American people. Anything we do to that end, in that effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law."
Meanwhile, Cheney is keeping his hard-line hand in it, struggling to bend the law and the definitions just enough to give CIA operatives room to do their unspoken, undefined thing. If Cheney succeeds, there will be pictures of those unspoken/undefined acts and the revelations will rocket around the world and be recycled 24/7 on Arab television.
Which is to say that if Cheney succeeds, Hughes fails. And America will be forever enshrined in the worst of all ways within millions of hearts and minds around the world.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
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New York Times
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: November 9, 2005
A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.
The previously undisclosed findings from the report, which was completed in the spring of 2004, reflected deep unease within the C.I.A. about the interrogation procedures, the officials said. A list of 10 techniques authorized early in 2002 for use against terror suspects included one known as waterboarding, and went well beyond those authorized by the military for use on prisoners of war.
The convention, which was drafted by the United Nations, bans torture, which is defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and prohibits lesser abuses that fall short of torture if they are "cruel, inhuman or degrading." The United States is a signatory, but with some reservations set when it was ratified by the Senate in 1994.
The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.'s inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The agency said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday, but would not comment on any classified report issued by Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in American law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
The current and former intelligence officials who described Mr. Helgerson's report include supporters and critics of his findings. None would agree to be identified by name, and none would describe his conclusions in specific detail. They said the report had included 10 recommendations for changes in the agency's handling of terror suspects, but they would not say what those recommendations were.
Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, testified this year that eight of the report's recommendations had been accepted, but did not describe them. The inspector general is an independent official whose auditing role at the agency was established by Congress, but whose reports to the agency's director are not binding.
Some former intelligence officials said the inspector general's findings had been vigorously disputed by the agency's general counsel. To date, the Justice Department has brought charges against only one C.I.A. employee in connection with prisoner abuse, and prosecutors have signaled that they are unlikely to bring charges against C.I.A. officers in several other cases involving the mishandling of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the current and former intelligence officials said Mr. Helgerson's report had added to apprehensions within the agency about gray areas in the rules surrounding interrogation procedures.
"The ambiguity in the law must cause nightmares for intelligence officers who are engaged in aggressive interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects and other terrorism suspects," said John Radsan, a former assistant general counsel at the agency who left in 2004. Mr. Radsan, now an associate professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, would not comment on Mr. Helgerson's report.
Congressional officials said the report had emerged as an unstated backdrop in the debate now under way on Capitol Hill over whether the C.I.A. should be subjected to the same strict rules on interrogation that the military is required to follow. In opposing an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, Mr. Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney have argued that the C.I.A. should be granted an exemption allowing it extra latitude, subject to presidential authorization, in interrogating high-level terrorists abroad who might have knowledge about future attacks. [...]
Some former intelligence officials have said the C.I.A. imposed tighter safeguards on its interrogation procedures after the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison came to light in May 2004. That was about the same time Mr. Helgerson completed his report.
The agency issued its earlier statement on the legality of approved interrogation techniques after Mr. Goss, in testimony before Congress on March 17, said that all interrogation techniques used "at this time" were legal but declined, when asked, to make the same broad assertion about practices used over the past few years.
On March 18, Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, the agency's director of public affairs, said that "C.I.A. policies on interrogation have always followed legal guidance from the Department of Justice."
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November 9, 2005
Wayne Madsen
GOP hypocritically calls for probe of CIA secret prison leak. The House and Senate GOP leadership is hypocritically calling for a congressional and Justice Department probe of the leak of classified material concerning a network of secret prisons around the world. In so doing, the GOP is verifying the veracity of the Washington Post's report about the existence of the prisons.
This GOP strategy is aimed at 1) diverting attention away from the White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates non official cover network; 2) equating a crime (divulging a highly sensitive covert operation) to blowing the whistle on systematic violations of U.S. and international law (revealing U.S.-run torture camps in secret locations); and 3) trying to get the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to target anti-war journalists who have written about the secret detention centers to reveal their sources.
Adding to the poisonous waters he has already created, CIA Director and Bush flunky Porter Goss has asked the Justice Department to investigate the leak about the secret prisons. There are reports that the information on the prisons actually emanated from a GOP senator who is opposed to the torture of prisoners and who serves on one of the oversight committees -- Intelligence and Armed Services. Expect the FBI to talk soon to Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Trent Lott.
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By John Hendren and Warren Vieth
Los Angeles Times
November 09, 2005
In a contentious exchange with White House reporters on Tuesday, McClellan said Cheney's lobbying efforts were intended to preserve the ability to question suspected terrorists aggressively, "consistent with our laws and values."
McClellan denied that the CIA exemption sought by the vice president would allow CIA operatives to torture foreign detainees to extract information about suspected terrorist plots.
McClellan declined, however, to specify exactly what practices Cheney was attempting to preserve in his conversations with lawmakers.
WASHINGTON -- The White House on Tuesday defended its efforts to head off new restrictions on the U.S. treatment of war prisoners as the issue headed toward a showdown in Congress that has attracted worldwide interest.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Vice President Dick Cheney was representing the views of President Bush in lobbying lawmakers to exempt the CIA from legislation that would ban the inhumane treatment of suspected terrorists and other detainees.
McClellan said existing laws and regulations were adequate to prevent torture of the prisoners, including those held in what are reported to be secret CIA-operated facilities in Eastern Europe.
"We follow those laws and rules," McClellan said. "What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible."
The White House's aggressive lobbying comes as House and Senate negotiators are considering a torture ban that, as an amendment to a defense spending bill, breezed through the Senate last month on a 90-9 vote.
The debate was being watched closely in other countries. Some critics of the U.S. have interpreted the administration's aversion to new restrictions as confirmation that it favors the use of torture as an interrogation tactic.
The torture ban, which was omitted from the House version of the defense spending bill, would make the Army field manual the authority on interrogations and would bar all U.S. government agencies from "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" of prisoners.
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on Tuesday postponed formal discussions on the amendment by negotiators until next week. But a House GOP leadership aide said that the top House and Senate lawmakers have been unofficially meeting on the torture-ban amendment, which was proposed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
As Congress considers the torture ban that would apply to all government agencies, the Army is scrambling to tighten its rules for prisoner interrogation.
Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey plans to enact 204 "corrective actions" in a new draft version the Army Field Manual and other policy directives, Army officials said.
Criticism of US. interrogation tactics was largely spurred by a series of abuses shown in photographs of naked, hooded detainees at the Abu Ghraib military prison outside of Baghdad. The photographs were released last year, and several soldiers have been prosecuted on charges stemming from the abuse.
One of the new rules clarifies the chain of command for military prisons. For instance, A military police commander -- not a military intelligence officer -- must be in charge of the detention facility.
Medical personnel, who were criticized in a New England Journal of Medicine article for allegedly helping interrogators spot physical and mental vulnerabilities among prisoners, would be barred from providing information to interrogators, officials said.
Other changes would require a senior officer and a senior noncommissioned officer to be inside a prison facility at all times, require that all soldiers handling detainees be certified by the Army in such duties, and require autopsies for all detainees who die in custody. Red Cross reports must be sent to commanders within 24 hours. Contractors would be required to have the same training as Army troops and will be monitored.
In a contentious exchange with White House reporters on Tuesday, McClellan said Cheney's lobbying efforts were intended to preserve the ability to question suspected terrorists aggressively, "consistent with our laws and values."
McClellan denied that the CIA exemption sought by the vice president would allow CIA operatives to torture foreign detainees to extract information about suspected terrorist plots.
McClellan declined, however, to specify exactly what practices Cheney was attempting to preserve in his conversations with lawmakers.
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BILL TORPY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/30/05
The president of embattled Taser International came to Atlanta Tuesday in his ongoing effort to win over hearts and minds.
Tom Smith's mission this time was to try to change the mind of Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Charles Steele, Jr., who has called the Taser stun gun a "murder weapon" and is seeking a moratorium on the Taser's use and sales.
The president of embattled Taser International came to Atlanta Tuesday in his ongoing effort to win over hearts and minds.
Tom Smith's mission this time was to try to change the mind of Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Charles Steele, Jr., who has called the Taser stun gun a "murder weapon" and is seeking a moratorium on the Taser's use and sales.
"I believe there's a lot of misinformation on this issue," Smith told the group that included four SCLC officials. "We're saving lives and reducing injuries all across the country. We can't save all the lives." The meeting ended in a stalemate.
"I'm more convinced now we need a moratorium," Steele said after Smith finished his presentation on how the weapon is a vital "less-than-lethal" alternative for police in subduing dangerous and unruly subjects. "I'm disappointed to hear that," Smith responded.
Steele said the device, which fires two small fish hooks into a subject and then knocks them down with an electric shock, was sold too forcefully to law enforcement agencies before the medical side effects were known. Taser says nearly half the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies purchased the weapon since its release five years ago.
Amnesty International has said at least 129 people died between 2001 and July 2005 after being shocked with Tasers. At least 18 autopsies have labeled the Taser as a contributing factor in the deaths.
The SCLC last week announced it will stage a Nov. 12 protest march in Gwinnett County over the 2004 death of inmate Frederick Williams. The group also said it would mount a new national attack against Taser. "The reality of the fact is people are dying," Steele said after the meeting. "There are some officers with a feel-good mentality [about] using the Taser."
Both Steele and Smith brought law enforcement experts to the meeting held at a downtown hotel.
Terry Hilliard, a retired Chicago police superintendent who works as a Taser consultant, said: "If we have a moratorium, those cops will go back to deadly force. You know who's most affected is those kids in the inner cities."
Tuscaloosa County, Ala., Sheriff Ted Sexton, long a friend of Steele's, attended the meeting at the SCLC leader's request. Sexton, who is also the president of the National Sheriffs' Association, recently called for a moratorium on most Taser use in his department.
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Mathew Kristin Kiel,
August 31, 2005
Signs of the Times
It also seems that tasers remove all empathy from the officers who use them. It may be that most officers have been so thoroughly convinced of the taser's benign nature they simply fail to understand that it can harm anyone, not even a small child. It is nearly certain that they do not consider it a weapon of last or next to the last resort, but of first and only choice in conflicts with even minimally recalcitrant members of the public. They do not hesitate to use tasers immediately and repeatedly. This is insanity. It would be immediately recognized as insane behaviour if the weapon being used so frequently, arbitrarily and dangerously by police officers were a cudgel or a whip, for example. But there is a peculiar and lethal blind spot in the public's attention and consciousness regarding tasers. Yet tasers are frightening technological devices that deliver a massive dose of artificial lightning to the victim's body and brain.
Before reading this article, please click on the web link below. Listen to the screams of the young woman who was tasered by 2, burly, fully armed Boynton Beach, Florida, police officers, during a routine traffic stop. Her "crime?" She had refused to get out of her vehicle immediately, when so ordered by the officers. She can be heard clearly, in the video, attempting to finish informing a contact on her cell phone, her mother, as to her exact location and circumstances. That is an important point in this incident for a number of reasons. Rather than to allow her the few seconds, or perhaps a minute or two at most, to calm down and finish her call, the officers tasered her. Not once, twice.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html
How many seconds of her screams were you able to endure before having to stop the video or turn off the sound? 5 seconds? 10? 30? The entire video? The answer to that will probably be shortest for those who have experienced the greatest amounts of physical pain and longest for those who have never known dire pain up close, ugly and personal, from the inside out. But, think about this: The officers who inflicted that brutal torture upon her not only felt no empathy for the indisputable agony they'd caused, they tasered her a second time for the "offence" of being unable to place her hands behind her back. Yet the officers had to have known that their first shot had rendered her completely unable to initiate or control any movements of her body.
It is also necessary, in an effort to clarify the issues in this incident, to provide some background on the circumstances in which Ms. Goodwin found herself when she was pulled over for a traffic violation. Another serious problem with tasers is the detrimental effects they seem to have on the abilities of the law enforcement personnel wielding them to use sound judgment as to when, and when not, to use a potentially lethal weapon against a civilian who is not in the act of committing a violent crime and not attempting to flee. The background in Ms. Goodwin's case provides a striking example of the apparent loss of reason and judgment present in taser armed law enforcement officers.
A growing number of women in the U.S., including several Florida residents, have been raped by one or 2 men posing as cops making routine traffic stops. This common criminal MO has been used by rapists in every area of the country, and several women were killed in the midwest, along Interstates 80 and 90, during the 1990s. The fact that rapes and rape-murders by police, and/or police impostors, have been happening since the 1970s should be common knowledge to every active duty law enforcement officer in this country. Women's rape support groups and self defense organisations, including those affiliated with the national YWCA, have long recommended that women driving alone, when ordered to pull over by a patrol car should continue to drive slowly, safely and carefully until reaching a police station, firehouse, ambulance company or other municipal office, rather than stopping at once.
In addition, women who have cell phones are advised to contact a friend or family member and report their exact location and circumstances to someone they can trust to follow up on the call. They are advised do so before either opening the window or getting out of the vehicle. These guidelines have been sent to police departments around the country, and should be common knowledge to all police officers by now. Ms. Goodwin was following exactly the recommended personal safety guidelines for any woman driving alone when she called to report her situation to her mother.
But the Boynton Beach Police Department is evidently unaware of even that much factual information regarding the rights and needs of the public they are allegedly sworn to "protect and serve." Not coincidentally, among traffic stop taser incidents thus far reported, all but one victim was a woman, one of whom was 8 months pregnant. Never before have police in routine traffic stops even considered using weapons against a pregnant woman, or women in general, nor against children, elderly and disabled people, but such incidents are now becoming routine for law enforcement and security personnel armed with tasers.
Other police tasering victims in the past months include a 75 year old woman who was a confused visitor in a nursing home, a 13 year old girl who was yelling at her mother, an epileptic man in need of medication, and an unruly 6 year old child in a school principal's office, tasered to supposedly "keep him from hurting himself" with a piece of broken glass he was wielding. There is obviously some essential element of the plain old common sense police officers once used in their jobs that is being forgotten as soon as a taser is in hand. They fail to realize that the taser is, in fact, a weapon, and that tasers can kill. This is largely due to the product "information" they have received about tasers from the manufacturer. The only taser product information available, as yet, comes from Taser International, Inc., and without benefit of any actual scientific and medical studies of tasers' actions and effects having ever been done.
A basic psychological element tasers seem to cancel is the self restraint of police officers using them. A fundamental and important question comes to mind here: What would they have done, in all of these situations, had they NOT had tasers? Tasers are being used indiscriminately, with alarming and growing frequency, in situations where there is no justification for the use of a weapon, and where there would have been a far less violent, or even lethal outcome, had no taser been available. The last point holds especially true for all of the past year's 103 taser related deaths. Had the officers involved not had tasers, it is most likely that all of those victims would still be alive.
It also seems that tasers remove all empathy from the officers who use them. It may be that most officers have been so thoroughly convinced of the taser's benign nature they simply fail to understand that it can harm anyone, not even a small child. It is nearly certain that they do not consider it a weapon of last or next to the last resort, but of first and only choice in conflicts with even minimally recalcitrant members of the public. They do not hesitate to use tasers immediately and repeatedly. This is insanity. It would be immediately recognized as insane behaviour if the weapon being used so frequently, arbitrarily and dangerously by police officers were a cudgel or a whip, for example. But there is a peculiar and lethal blind spot in the public's attention and consciousness regarding tasers. Yet tasers are frightening technological devices that deliver a massive dose of artificial lightning to the victim's body and brain.
In the video of Ms. Goodwin's tasering, the utter loss of reason by the police officers is striking. They DO know that the taser's effect is to make all voluntary movement and muscle control impossible. That is why and how it "stuns" someone. That information, including witnessing the effect, even shooting each other with their tasers and experiencing it for themselves, is an integral part of their training in the use of these weapons. Yet, they tasered this woman a second time for her "disobedience" in "refusing" to put her hands behind her back, when she was, in fact, absolutely incapacitated from doing that by the very taser blast they'd just given her. That is completely irrational behaviour. Their logical, reasoning minds had ceased to function at all. They had ceased to be human at that point, and were then acting/reacting on the purely "lizard brain" level. They had reverted to instinctual, predatory, hunting pack mentation and behaviour.
WHAT WOULD THESE POLICE OFFICERS HAVE DONE IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN ARMED WITH TASERS? Whatever it was, that is what and as they should have done, and never even thought to do, not only in Ms. Goodwin's case, but in all of the previously cited incidents of unjustifiable taser use against innocent civilians. Somehow, once armed with a taser, a police officer becomes worse than trigger happy. It becomes a literal "shoot first and ask questions," or even think at all, "later" reflex for them to use these weapons. The only problem being that there were 103 dead, innocent victims of tasers in the past year who would be alive here and now if the police officers who shot them had not been armed with tasers.
It is clear that the officer who fired the first time, as displayed in his gestures, voice and bearing, was angered by Ms. Goodwin's defiance of his order to leave her car at once. What really triggered the first tasering was his affronted ego. Next, it was her defenseless agony both of the officers reacted to in the second attack upon her. If you will consider the way a cat goes after a crippled and cornered mouse, then compare that classic predatory behavior with the actions of these two Boynton Beach cops, you will come to the realization that they were predators hotly pursuing and enjoying the "killing" of their chosen prey. While that dynamic may or may not be present in the tasering of other victims by police, it is the dynamic in this one incident, with these two police officers.
Whatever the full psychological underpinnings of the ease with which the police in this country and elsewhere are using tasers, there is an element of "gotcha" that has entered the equation. It is probably subconscious, and was previously kept in check by an awareness that all of the weapons available to them, i.e. nightstick, gun, mace, could and would cause injuries to their victims. Police officers, prior to being armed with tasers, knew that they themselves would be held accountable if they used any of their weapons in a trivial matter and caused injury to an innocent civilian. That was the check on their behaviour, the previous restraint which is now obviously missing. With the threat of their own personal accountability and probable punishment removed, the officers strike out at will, on a whim and whenever it suits them. And, thus far, no police department or court has told them to stop it, or yet held a single officer accountable for a taser fatality, let alone for the unnecessary use of a taser.
The blame for the rising numbers of taser deaths, and the rising frequency of taser use, lies squarely in two camps, both of which are profiting handsomely, in different ways, from the cancerous spread of the use of tasers. The owners of the company that makes the devices are getting filthy rich, and the police who use them are literally getting a free license to torture and potentially kill anyone who even dares to rub them the wrong way, let alone to "argue" with them or refuse to obey them immediately and in every slightest regard. Big payoffs indeed, for both sides.
Police armed with tasers think that they've been given the perfect means to "get" everyone who defies their authority even slightly, by using a weapon that will not result in harm to their targets. That is how the taser has been and is being billed, as a totally harmless weapon cops can use freely, anywhere, anytime, on anyone, with no adverse or lasting consequences to the victims beyond the temporary, all encompassing pain and paralysis it inflicts.
However, in the horrendous "torture guidelines" that brought us Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and worse, one of the criteria cited, in an absurdly narrow definition of what does constitute torture, is "producing pain sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death." Thus, it has clearly been long known and well documented that pain alone, if severe enough, can and will kill. Is it the agony inflicted by tasers, an essential ingredient in their much touted "stopping power," that is randomly killing people?
The amount of pain necessary to reduce any human being to the horrified screams of Ms. Goodwin, after the first taser blast, is at least equal to that of having several major bones broken, badly, all at once. Only those who have experienced that amount of pain for themselves will be able to fully appreciate the horror of that recording. An exponentially worse level of pain is required to reduce a human being to the hopeless, uncontrollable type and cadence of moaning semi-screams being heard after she was hit with the second taser jolt. By the time any human being has been reduced to the second stage, he or she would gladly die to escape the agony. Again, only those who have experienced it themselves will know the truth of it. Those who have not had the intimate experience of pain severe enough to cause such responses should fervently hope that they never will.
The sounds you heard in that video are not those of a hysterical woman over- reacting to a fairly mild pain. They are the sounds of a human being who has just been psychologically and emotionally destroyed by a torture so profoundly shattering that she will never be the same again. She will have PTSD from it, and suffer damages in mind and spirit for the rest of her life. It will either make her or break her, in terms of her personal development over all the rest of the years of her life. Either way, SHE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN. Neither will any victim of a taser.
She has lost the last vestiges of her innocence: Her belief that there is any safety for her in this world; her innate certainty that bad things won't happen to her, personally; her naiveté in not being aware of her own vulnerability to every possible ill, terror and suffering that can afflict a human being; her basic sense of worth, of being deserving anything good; her dignity and sense of personal privacy. All those things and more were annihilated with the taser's total and violent destruction of her body and brain's neuro-synaptic impulses and connections. The taser inflicts a lifetime's worth of punishment upon its victims in a very few minutes. Make no mistake of that. The pain tasers inflict is, all alone, "sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death."
There is a solid and growing body of medical evidence to support the contention that the electrical shock delivered by a taser can and does kill, based upon the overall health, age, sex, race, galvanic skin conduction status and serum electrolyte balance of the victims. There were 103 taser deaths in the U.S and Canada in the past year, and the one, most obvious cause of death failing to be considered by coroners is the systemic neurological shock and trauma to the brain that can result in death from pain alone, if the pain is severe enough. It is directly because of the advertising and promotional materials distributed by the manufacturer of tasers that this very real and probable cause of death for taser victims has been overlooked, or even deliberately denied and hidden.
Those pamphlets and promotional videos say, over and over, as a litany - begging the remark that the makers of tasers "doth protest overly much" - that the electrical shock of a taser does not produce severe enough pain to cause harm. That is a blatant lie. Any injury that inflicts so much pain as to render an adult unable to control their own muscles and causes the bladder to void from the stress, induces the most extreme degree of pain possible. The taser incapacitates the target through the induction of systemic neurological shock and neurological pain.
It shorts out the body's electro-cerebral impulses with a 50,000 volt blast of artificial lightning. That is the very definition of a serious electrical injury to the nerves and brain. Anyone who received the same amount and kind of electric shock from any source other than a taser would be taken to a hospital at once, treated for acute electrical shock and placed under observation, at the very least, for the next 24 to 72 hours. Guarding a patient against sudden cardiac arrest and/or sudden respiratory arrest after he or she has had a major electrical shock, or been hit by lightning, is necessary for a minimum of 24 hours and the danger is not entirely past for 3 to 5 days.
Everyone knows that electric shocks are dangerous. A household electrical socket, in the US and Canada, will only deliver 110 volts, but there are very few people who would consider getting seriously shocked with even household current to be "harmless." Electrical shocks most often injure the autonomic nervous system, that part of the brain and nervous system that controls involuntary functions such as breathing, respiration, temperature, pulse and blood pressure, all of which can fluctuate wildly, even fatally out of control, without warning, for many hours after a major electrical shock.
The primary criteria used to determine whether any kind of electrical shock, other than from a taser, was strong enough to recommend that a person be placed under observation for a day or more is whether the shock was strong enough for the victim to have been knocked unconscious, to have been temporarily paralysed, or to have caused the patient severe pain accompanied, even briefly, by uncontrollable muscle spasms and twitching.
These are exactly the results of a taser's shock, and the means by which it "stops" the target. Tasers have been aggressively, and very profitably marketed, by their inventor and manufacturer, Tom Smith, founder and CEO of Taser International, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona, as a risk free, non-lethal restraint device. There are at least 129 taser related deaths since the introduction of tasers in 2001, 103 of them in the past year alone. Mr. Smith is either not telling the whole truth about the danger of tasers or else, as is entirely possible, he believes his own hype about their safety and is in denial of their dangerously lethal reality.
Clearly, there is something directly related to the nature of the taser itself that is the cause of these deaths, and no research to find out exactly what a taser does to the human body has ever been done. NONE. Not one single study.
In strictly medical terms, it is never "safe" or "risk free" to provide the human brain/body system with 50,000 volts electrical shock. That is a massive shock, whether such a huge amount of voltage is delivered at 0.01 amp, 1 amp or 50 amps. The voltage alone is sufficient to potentially cause brain and neurological damage, cardiac arrhythmia or arrest, temporary respiratory paralysis and even death. And, exactly as with any other source of serious electrical shock, the deeper neurological or cerebral injuries won't necessarily appear in the first few minutes after the shock was inflicted.
The taser's mechanism of action in the human body is akin to that of being hit by natural lightning. It electrically creates a systemic cerebral, neuroleptic and synaptic shock. Those who display its "harmlessness" by voluntarily allowing themselves to be shocked are playing a deadly game of Russian Roulette. In fact, since the effects may be cumulative over time, or delayed several years in their onset, not uncommon with neurological damages of all kinds, the lasting, lifelong neurological and/or cognitive impairments will come a few years down the road. Those who have volunteered for any previous taser jolts would be well advised to stop doing so at once. The lives they save may be their own.
Someone who has been shot with a taser a dozen times and lived to tell the macho tale may just happen to have a slight potassium deficiency the next time, perhaps from sweating heavily on a hot day, or from hard exercise. Even worse, he might still be covered with sweat. If so, then the next voluntary taser shot will very probably kill him. That is just how unpredictable and random the factors determining who will live and who will die from any given use of a taser really are.
Galvanic skin conduction is vastly increased by the presence of sweat on the skin: The heavier the sweat, the greater the electrical conductivity of the skin. A person whose body is entirely soaked with sweat will offer zero resistance to the taser's voltage, from head to toe, and, no matter where the taser's barbs strike, the voltage will be freely, uniformly distributed over every inch of the body that is covered by the sweat.
Sweat is loaded with electrolytes, such as potassium, sodium and calcium, all of which are electro-conductive metals. It is even more highly conductive of electricity than water. Sweating will render a polygraph test unreadable. Sweat filled pores and their fully active sweat glands may also provide a direct conduit for the conduction of a taser's voltage into the interior of the body and directly into the root nerves, lymphatic and endocrine systems thereby.
When a body covered with sweat is shocked by a taser, or other electrical source, the actions of the sweat in enhancing the punch delivered by the voltage is directly analogous to the function of the wet sponge placed under the helmet of a condemned person in the electric chair to assure maximum delivery of electricity into the brain. The sweat conducts the taser's 50,000 volts directly and deeply into the entire body, including the sweat soaked head, thus the brain. The result of tasering a sweating person quite possibly is death by electrocution, plain, simple and ugly.
The actions of a taser's voltage within the human body, the kind and quantity of the pain it creates and the way in which it produces that pain, are the real causes of death. The factors determining a taser victim's survival are: a) How much of that voltage gets delivered; b) How deeply it is conducted into the body; c) Where it goes in the body; and d) How much voltage a specific individual can withstand, at the level of the brain and neuro-synaptic pathways in the central and peripheral nervous systems, at a given moment, on any given day. There is simply no way to know who will die except by who does. Any new medication with the unpredictable kill rate already demonstrated by tasers would have been banned by now. The taser is a highly dangerous weapon that has been falsely labeled and sold to law enforcement and the public as "safe."
This is NOT the harmless stun gun of the Star Trek "phaser" variety that it is purported to be. It could kill any victim, any and every time it is used. For the American public now facing taser armed cops, with all of the psychological restraints against using a weapon removed by the taser's presence, every traffic stop or other law enforcement confrontation has become a "crap shoot" and a potential immediate sentence of death by electrocution, cardiac arrest, respiratory arrest or systemic shock. Whenever anyone fires the leads of a taser into someone's flesh there is no possible way to measure all of the variables involved so as to know whether that individual is going to die. It all depends on a wide number of factors, unique to each and every individual and variable from one hour to the next within each person's body. There is simply NO means for any police officer, or anyone firing or facing a taser, to be sure that the person being shot will not die.
The taser has been aggressively promoted as a "safe, harmless, nonviolent restraint and personal defense device." I find that to be a somewhat misleading representation for any weapon that leaves its victims screaming in sudden and potentially lethal agony. The only question remaining is not whether tasers are deadly weapons, but how many innocent people will have to be killed by tasers before action is taken to prohibit their indiscriminate use, if not by banning them entirely, at the very least by putting them under the same use guidelines and ownership restraints, and in the same category of lethality, as handguns.
Already, in an effort to gag the press over printing the facts about taser deaths, Taser International is suing Gannet Publishing, the owners of USA Today, for libel over their reporting on taser deaths in the U.S. and Canada, and for raising the same questions about the taser's alleged safety as are asked here. I have gone USA Today one better and presented some of the biomedical realities of what the taser actually does to the human body. There are abundant, solid, scientific and medical facts available to make Taser International's claims of the weapon's safety somewhat dubious, at best. The one fact that not even Taser International can deny is that the taser inflicts an instantaneous electrical shock severe enough to render the victim helpless to move or resist. That is what they claim in their own marketing brochures. It is their biggest selling point.
I have spent 30 years closely studying what science and medicine have as yet learned about the substances and structures of nerves, the brain, the spinal cord, how they work, and how pain works on all of the various systems in the human body, particularly its effects upon the cardiovascular and endocrine systems where pain causes the greatest changes and damages anywhere outside of the brain and central nervous system. The first thing to understand about pain is that it is the body's primary means to alert the brain to the fact that something is wrong somewhere. Pain is necessary to our survival. Because of that, the brain is hardwired to respond to pain with maximum speed and force, commensurate with a given pain's severity and speed of onset.
It is, for example, not the disease of leprosy itself that causes disfigurations, such as fingers or toes rotting away and falling off, as the myths and ancient texts have it. Rather, leprosy gradually kills off the sensory nerves, central and peripheral, especially in the outer extremities and the face. Its victims become unable to feel any pain when they are injured, thus ignoring minor wounds until they've become infected, often to the point of gangrene, resulting in the lass of fingers, toes, noses to severe infection. Without the essential warning of pain, there would be no way for us to know when we've been injured, or when a disease has attacked an internal organ, or if the heart is getting too little blood from a blocked artery. Pain, in its rightful place serves one of the most life- saving of functions for us all.
However, there is, innate to the brain's functions, a "ratings system" for pains. There are various alert levels specifically related to the severity of pain. The more pain there is, and the more sudden its onset, the greater the alarm the brain sends out. In the event of an abrupt pain so severe that it is "of a kind sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death," every system in the body is put into an imperative, reflexive emergency reaction/response mode.
Some functions, such as circulation of blood to the extremities, urine production, liver enzyme and bile production, blood sugar production and protein metabolism, digestion and peristalsis are shut down entirely or greatly slowed. Others, such as blood pressure, adrenaline production and release, heart rate, sweating, electrolyte metabolism, respiration, serotonin cascades and endorphin releases in the brain, are turned up to the maximum very briefly. All of the stops are pulled out because the brain has assumed that the severity and suddenness of the pain indicates that the body has been injured badly enough to possibly die.
Shock inevitably follows the first alert stage, after a period of time as short as 5 minutes to as long as several hours. Shock, syncope, is the second phase of the basic severe injury survival mechanisms hardwired into the brain/body system. First comes the hyper-charging reaction to help you run away or fight back, and next comes the shock to make you be still after your escape or victory. It is a survival strategy that is in place in the base brain of every vertebrate life form on Earth, from the frog to the human being.
In systemic shock, the body is placed into a state that is almost a natural form of suspended animation. All life support functions are abruptly shut down to the most minimal levels, except for the heart rate, which sometimes will stay as high as double the normal rate for hours. Blood flow is taken away from the brain, skeletal muscles, face, arms and legs, then concentrated in the heart, lungs and internal organs, in a reflex to minimise potential bleeding and prevent movements and agitation. Shock, left untreated, can be fatal. The brain, once shock has set in, cannot necessarily reset or restart the body's normal balance without external stimulation, especially not if there are continuing stressors, such as would ld naturally be the case with someone who had been tasered then jailed. the stress of being in jail would ld deepen the degree of shock by causing the continuing release of higher than normal amounts of adrenaline.
This may have been the case in several taser victims who died while in transport to a jail, or in a jail cell in the hours immediately following being tasered. Since the officers have no way of knowing that the taser's blast induces severe enough pain to cause shock, they wouldn't know to take taser victims to the hospital, as a matter of course, as is the case with gunshot victims. If, in fact, the dead taser victims had all been wounded by a conventional police pistols, their chances for survival would have been far better because they'd have received immediate medical care. At the very least, the same policy of transporting taser victims to hospitals, not jails, must be put into place. Being shot is being shot, whether with a taser or a firearm.
An abrupt drop in blood sugar is also induced by severe pain and can be sufficient to induce an endogenous insulin shock in someone with no history of either diabetes or hypoglycemia. In a person who suffers from hypoglycemia, blood sugar that tends to often run or suddenly drop too low, a taser's shock produces extreme, sudden pain that could induce a fatal hypoglycemic episode. It is estimated that for every person known to have hypoglycemia there may be as many as ten more undiagnosed sufferers. Since it is far more common in women than men, this is but one of several factors that might account for why more women than men have died from being shot by police armed with tasers.
Neither Taser International nor any independent product testing group has done studies on the short or long term after effects of being hit by a taser's charge. Not one controlled study yet, in a clinical setting, where hourly post shocking blood tests, neurological exams, EEGs and EKGs, brain scans, galvanic skin response measurements, mental orientation, memory and other tests could be conducted. There have been no neurological tests done on a broad range of victims immediately following tasering, and no studies done to determine precisely where and how in the nervous system the taser's effects are created, or how far they extend throughout the body, or what changes about those effects in the presence of sweat, or what the specific cardiac responses to them might be. No one has even asked the question, let alone done the tests, to determine if, as is nearly certain, taser victims do go into shock.
With the increasing number of inexplicable deaths from taser use, these questions MUST be asked. Unless we force the issue, things are only going to get worse, much worse. Tasers are spreading throughout all levels of law enforcement personnel like a cancer, from the smallest local constables offices up to the US Secret Service and the FBI. The social and psychological ramifications of this are enormous and ominous.
My advice, should you find yourself on the business end of a taser, do not anger the cop. The pain tasers inflict is, based upon my study of their effects and of how they do work in the human body, "sufficient to cause bodily injury, organ failure or death." Do anything and everything to avoid having a police officer fire that taser at you, because there is absolutely no guarantee that it will not kill you, or else induce permanent psychological trauma and even neurological injuries that could be extremely painful and debilitating.
For now, domestic terrorism has arrived for each and every human being who faces a taser wielding police or other officer. Those who have them will use them: anywhere, anytime, on anyone, without provocation and without any rational need or justification for their use. There is nothing but a guarantee of unbearable, possibly lethal agony to come from attempting to reason with anyone bearing a taser. And it is obvious that tasers have removed the abilities to use reason and to behave rationally from the minds of those who use them.
This is the inevitable, predictable result of giving police officers a weapon that is sold and promoted by its inventor and makers as "completely safe and harmless" for use against anyone, anytime, in any manner, under any conditions, when, in fact, there have never been any objective scientific and medical studies done to either prove or disprove the safety of tasers. However, there is a substantial and rapidly growing body of evidence, found in the dead bodies of taser victims, to indicate that these weapons are far from being so "safe for all law enforcement and personal protection uses" as their manufacturer has claimed.
In exactly the same way and for exactly the same reasons that the pharmaceutical companies have been held accountable and made to pay for the deaths caused by their falsely labeling as "safe when used as prescribed" medications that have subsequently turned out to be intermittently and unpredictably deadly, it is high time for the families of the victims of tasers to seek redress against Taser International, Inc. of Scottsdale, Arizona. As yet there has been no public information made widely available about tasers' many and potentially deadly adverse effects. Hopefully that has now begun to change.
In the meantime, civilians beware. Tasers have given a license to law enforcement members to torture anyone who crosses their paths, at will, for no reason at all other than that they feel like it. If you see a taser pointed at yourself, surrender, in every way and regard possible, immediately, and do not attempt to move or speak except in response to questions orders. RESPOND TO ANY TASER ARMED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WITH IMMEDIATE AND ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE, AS IF YOUR SURVIVAL DEPENDED UPON IT. IT MAY, AND THE ONLY WAY TO FIND OUT IS TO RISK YOUR OWN BRUTALLY PAINFUL DEATH BY ELECTROCUTION.
The psychological and physical harm you risk, and the strong possibility you might be killed, by not obeying a cop with a taser, is a far greater form of damage than merely being cuffed and arrested. Even if you are utterly innocent, do not dare to argue with any police or other law enforcement officer wielding a taser. Do not attempt to reason, because, with the advent of tasers, the stakes are much too high, and the capacity for reason is hugely diminished or gone from police officers armed with tasers. It is your life that hangs in the balance now. All of our lives hang in the balance now, with every law enforcement encounter we face, no matter how trivial.
I assure you, no one wants to know what kind of pain it takes to make a human being sound like Ms. Goodwin did in that video, nor to have to live with the psychological trauma that it will leave with them for the rest of their lives. No one deserves to be electrocuted by the roadside for a speeding ticket either, and that has already come to pass. Nor should people have to live under the constant threat that at any moment, in any kind of interaction with any officer of the police or government, that kind of brutal pain can and will be inflicted upon them, without one second's hesitation, and with their potential death added to the threat.
However, that is the tragic reality that has come to us all with the advent of tasers. Never have we been so endangered, in the course of living law abiding lives and going about our routine daily activities, as we are now endangered by police officers armed with highly destructive and potentially lethal weapons that they believe are utterly harmless. No drug "epidemic," no "crime wave," no "threat of terrorism", nor any other possible harm committed in the course of a criminal or illegal activity has ever put the average citizen at so much risk of injury or death as the widespread use of tasers by law enforcement agencies now does.
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By Tony Freinberg and Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
The Telegraph
(Filed: 19/09/2004)
Microwave weapons that cause pain without lasting injury are to be issued to American troops in Iraq for the first time as concern mounts over the growing number of civilians killed in fighting.
The non-lethal weapons, which use high-powered electromagnetic beams, will be fitted to vehicles already in Iraq, which will allow the system to be introduced as early as next year.
Using technology similar to that found in a conventional microwave oven, the beam rapidly heats water molecules in the skin to cause intolerable pain and a burning sensation. The invisible beam penetrates the skin to a depth of less than a millimetre. As soon as the target moves out of the beam's path, the pain disappears.
Because there are no after-effects, the United States Department of Defence believes that the weapons will be particularly useful in urban conflict. The beam could be used to scatter large crowds in which insurgents operate at close quarters to both troops and civilians.
"The skin gets extremely hot, and people can't stand the pain, so they have to move - and move in the way we want them to," said Col Wade Hall of the Office of Force Transformation, a body formed in November 2001 to promote rapid improvement across all of the American armed services.
Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, where the systems were developed, took part in testing the weapon and was subjected to the microwave beam which has a range of one kilometre. "It just feels like your skin is on fire," he said. "[But] when you get out of the path of the beam, or shut off the beam, everything goes back to normal. There's no residual pain."
A heated battle on a crowded Baghdad street last week that left 16 Iraqis dead, highlighted once again the pressing need to reduce the number of civilian casualties, and at the same time prevent further damage to relations between American troops and the Iraqi population. American commanders later admitted using seven helicopter-launched rockets and 30 high-calibre machine gun rounds in last Sunday's incident.
The armoured vehicles will be named Sheriffs once they have been modified to carry the microwave weapons, known as the Active Denial System (ADS). Col Hall said that US army and US marine corps units should receive four to six ADS equipped Sheriffs by September 2005.
The project was initiated only three months ago but US military chiefs intend to rush the Sheriffs into the front line, believing that they can be of immediate assistance.
In another development, the Sheriffs will be fitted with Gunslinger, a rapid-fire gun currently under development that will detect enemy snipers and automatically fire back at them.
If the Sheriffs prove successful, their use will be expanded in combat zones. They will also be deployed for security at ports and air force bases, and could take part in border patrols.
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Dave Heller, article originally appeared in Garlic and Grass
Dave has degrees in physics and architecture and is a builder and engaged citizen in Berkeley, California.
None of the many 9-11 researchers can definitively say exactly what happened on that fateful day in September almost 3 years ago. But any sensible person can easily spot dozens of inconsistencies in the official story that is being forced upon us. And the fact is, most of the available 9-11 evidence points to at least some level of government complicity or foreknowledge.
Please, read more for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Most of all, do not buy the double-speak that visible politicians and the media use to discount any question about 9-11. Clearly, there are no "conspiracy theories" surrounding 9-11. The official story itself affirms that there was obviously some kind of conspiracy. It's just a question of which conspiracy occurred. We know it wasn't mere coincidence that several hijackers happened to be on several different airplanes and happened to hijack them at the exact same time and happened to pick the World Trade Center as a target. The real question is, "Who was involved in the conspiracy?"
While it may be difficult to awaken everyone from their state-induced fog of fear, we are at a critical point in history which requires us to try. We truly must take an objective look at the facts and evidence surrounding 9-11.
While none of the many 9-11 researchers knows exactly what happened on that fateful day in September almost 3 years ago, any sensible person can easily spot dozens of inconsistencies in the official story that is being forced upon us.
And these inconsistencies are huge. They range from the apparent stand-down of our immense military arsenal (for over an hour and a half) to the small hole and lack of debris at the Pentagon. There was Bush's bizarre, uninterrupted photo op in a Florida elementary school, and then there is the matter of the remains of Flight 93 being scattered over eight miles of Pennsylvania farmland, a fact which suggests the plane may have been shot down. The official story seems wrong on all of these points.
But the focus of this article is on just one point: the odd collapse of the three buildings in the World Trade Center complex.
How I First Began to Question: WTC7
The World Trade Center (WTC) contained seven buildings. The Twin Towers were called buildings One (WTC1) and Two (WTC2). They collapsed in truly astounding fashion, but the event that caused me first to question the official story about the events of 9-11 was viewing videos of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC7).
If you've forgotten, WTC7 was a 47-story building that was not hit by an airplane or by any significant debris from either WTC1 or WTC2. Buildings 3, 4, 5, and 6 were struck by massive amounts of debris from the collapsing Twin Towers, yet none collapsed, despite their thin-gauge steel supports.
World Trade Center Buildling 7 implodes
WTC7, which was situated on the next block over, was the farthest of the buildings from WTC1 and WTC2. WTC7 happened to contain the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM), a facility that was, according to testimony to the 9-11 Commission, one of the most sophisticated Emergency Command Centers on the planet. But shortly after 5:20 pm on Sept. 11, as the horrific day was coming to a close, WTC7 mysteriously imploded and fell to the ground in an astounding 6.5 seconds.
6.5 seconds. This is a mere 0.5 seconds more than freefall in a vacuum. To restate this, a rock dropped from the 47th floor would have taken at least 6 seconds to hit the ground. WTC7, in its entirety, fell to the earth in 6.5 seconds. Now, recall, we're supposed to believe that each floor of the building "pancaked" on the one below. Each of the 47 floors supposedly pancaked and collapsed, individually. Yet WTC7 reached the ground in 0.5 seconds longer than freefall. Is this really possible?
Judge for yourself. Watch WTC7 go down.
It takes 6.5 seconds. Take out your stopwatch.
What About Towers One and Two?
The odd, swift collapse of WTC7 made me reconsider the Twin Towers and how they fell. As I had with WTC7, I first studied video footage available on the web. Then I acquired and watched a DVD of the collapses, frame by frame.
What struck me first was the way the second plane hit WTC2, the South Tower. I noticed that this plane, United Airlines Flight 175, which weighed over 160,000 pounds and was traveling at 350 mph, did not even visibly move the building when it slammed into it. How, I wondered, could a building that did not visibly move from a heavy high speed projectile collapse at near freefall speed less than an hour later?
Next, I turned my attention to steel beams that fell in freefall next to the building as it collapsed. The beams were falling at the same rate that the towers themselves were descending. Familiar with elementary physics, including principles of conservation of energy and momentum, this seemed quite impossible if the towers were indeed "pancaking," which is the official theory.
The height of the South Tower is 1362 feet. I calculated that from that height, freefall in a vacuum (read, absolutely no resistance on earth) is 9.2 seconds. According to testimony provided to the 9-11 Commission, the tower fell in 10 seconds. Other data shows it took closer to 14 seconds. So the towers fell within 0.8-4.8 seconds of freefall in a vacuum. Just like WTC7, this speed seemed impossible if each of the 110 floors had to fail individually.
As I was considering this, another problem arose. There is a principle in physics called the Law of Conservation of Energy. There is also the Law of Conservation of Momentum. I'll briefly explain how these principles work. Let's assume there are two identical Honda Civics on the freeway. One is sitting in neutral at a standstill (0 mph). The other is coasting at 60 mph. The second Honda slams into the back of the first one. The first Honda will then instantaneously be going much faster than it was, and the second will instantaneously be going much slower than it was.
This is how the principle works in the horizontal direction, and it works the same in the vertical direction, with the added constant force of gravity added to it. Jim Hoffman, a professional scientist published in several peer-reviewed scientific journals, took a long look at all of this. He calculated that even if the structure itself offered no resistance, that is to say, even if the 110 floors of each tower were hovering in mid-air, the "pancake" theory would still have taken a minimum of 15.5 seconds to reach the ground. So, even if the building essentially didn't exist, if it provided no resistance at all to the collapse, just the floors hitting each other and causing each other to decelerate would've taken 15.5 seconds to reach the ground.
But of course the buildings did exist. They had stood for over 30 years. The floors weren't hovering in mid-air. So how did the building provide no resistance?
Yet another observation one makes in watching the collapsing towers is the huge dust clouds and debris, including steel beams, that were thrown hundreds of feet out horizontally from the towers as they fell. If we are to believe the pancake theory, this amount of scattering debris, fine pulverized concrete dust, and sheetrock powder would clearly indicate massive resistance to the vertical collapse. So there is an impossible conflict. You either have a miraculous, historical, instantaneous, catastrophic failure that occurs within a fraction of a second of freefall and that kicks out little dust, or you have a solid, hefty building that remains virtually unaffected after a massive, speeding projectile hits it. You either have a house of cards or a house of bricks. The building either resists its collapse or it doesn't.
And we know the WTC Towers were made of reinforced steel and concrete that would act much more like bricks than cards.
Thus, put simply, the floors could not have been pancaking. The buildings fell too quickly. The floors must all have been falling simultaneously to reach the ground in such a short amount of time. But how?
What About the Fires?
The official story maintains that fires weakened the buildings. Jet fuel supposedly burned so hot it began to melt the steel columns supporting the towers. But steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire, since they're built from steel that doesn't melt below 2750 degrees Fahrenheit. No fuel, not even jet fuel, which is really just refined kerosene, will burn hotter than 1500 degrees Fahrenheit.
Steel-framed skyscrapers have never collapsed from fire.
It's also odd that WTC7, which wasn't hit by an airplane or by any significant debris, collapsed in strikingly similar fashion to the Twin Towers. There wasn't even any jet fuel or kerosene burning in WTC7.
According to the 9-11 report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), "the specifics of the fires in WTC7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this tim."
Aside from its startling nonchalance, this statement makes a rather profound assumption. Again, no building prior to 9-11, in the 100-plus year history of steel frame buildings, had ever collapsed from fire.
This fact was known to firemen. Hence their unflinching rush up into the skyscrapers to put out the fire. Partly it was bravery, to be sure, but partly it was concrete knowledge that skyscrapers do not collapse due to fire. Yet after 100 years, three collapsed in one day.
Did the FEMA investigators not think to ask the New York City Fire Department how they thought the fire started, or how the fires could have caused the astounding, historical collapse? This would seem to be an elementary step in any investigation about a fire. Instead, they chose to leave the cause of the collapse "unknown."
Conclusion
So if the science in this article is correct (none of it goes beyond the tenth grade level), then we know that the floors of the three WTC buildings were not pancaking but were falling simultaneously. We also know that fire is an insufficient explanation for the initiation of the collapse of the buildings.
Why, then, did the three WTC buildings fall?
There is a method that has been able to consistently get skyscrapers to fall as fast as the three buildings of the World Trade Center fell on 9-11. In this method, each floor of a building is destroyed at just the moment the floor above is about to strike it. Thus, the floors fall simultaneously and in virtual freefall. This method, when precisely used, has indeed given near-freefall speed to demolitions of buildings all over the world in the past few decades. This method could have brought down WTC7 in 6.5 seconds. This method is called controlled demolition.
A controlled demolition would have exploded debris horizontally at a rapid rate. A controlled demolition would also explain the fine, pulverized concrete powder, whereas pancaking floors would leave chunks of concrete. Controlled demolition would also explain the seismic evidence recorded nearby of two small earthquakes, each just before one of the Twin Towers collapsed. And finally, controlled demolition would explain why three steel skyscrapers, two of which were struck by planes and one of which wasn't, all collapsed in essentially the same way.
Ongoing Questions
But having established that all three WTC towers had to have been assisted in their failures, I asked myself, Who could have planted the explosives to blow up the buildings in a controlled demolition? Could fundamentalist Muslim fanatics have gotten the plans for those buildings, engineered the demolition, and then gotten into them to plant the explosives?
This seemed improbable. And after learning that WTC7 housed the FBI, CIA, and the OEM, it seemed impossible. Then I thought, Why would terrorists engineer a building to implode? Wouldn't they want to cause even more damage to the surrounding buildings and possibly create more havoc and destruction from debris exploding away from the building? And if they'd planted explosives in the buildings, why would they have bothered hijacking and flying planes into them? Perhaps WTC7 was demolished to destroy evidence that would answer these questions. To this day, I don't know. But this is how I began to question the official story about 9-11.
Recently I learned that President Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, is a part owner of the company that not only provided security for both United and American Airlines, but also for the World Trade Center complex itself. I also discovered that Larry Silverstein, who had bought the leasing rights for the WTC complex from the NY/NJ Port Authority in May of 2001 for $200 million, had received a $3.55 billion insurance settlement right after 9-11 - yet he was suing for an additional $3.55 billion by claiming the two hits on the towers constituted two separate terrorist attacks! He stood to make $7 billion dollars on a four month investment. Talk about motive.
In conclusion, I'll repeat myself. None of the many 9-11 researchers can definitively say exactly what happened on that fateful day in September almost 3 years ago. But any sensible person can easily spot dozens of inconsistencies in the official story that is being forced upon us. And the fact is, most of the available 9-11 evidence points to at least some level of government complicity or foreknowledge.
Please, read more for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Most of all, do not buy the double-speak that visible politicians and the media use to discount any question about 9-11. Clearly, there are no "conspiracy theories" surrounding 9-11. The official story itself affirms that there was obviously some kind of conspiracy. It's just a question of which conspiracy occurred. We know it wasn't mere coincidence that several hijackers happened to be on several different airplanes and happened to hijack them at the exact same time and happened to pick the World Trade Center as a target. The real question is, "Who was involved in the conspiracy?"
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Laurence W. Britt
Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2.
[T]here is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of theprinciples [of Humanism]. It is fascism. And fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for. The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.
Laurence Britt identifies 14 characteristics common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 "identifying characteristics of fascism."
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.
5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.
6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.
7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.
9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.
14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.
Does any of this ring alarm bells? Of course not. After all, this is America, officially a democracy with the rule of law, a constitution, a free press, honest elections, and a well-informed public constantly being put on guard against evils. Historical comparisons like these are just exercises in verbal gymnastics. Maybe, maybe not.
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BBC
Thursday, 10 November 2005, 09:53 GMT
Fingerprints taken from one of the suspected militants killed in Indonesia on Thursday match those of bomb expert Azahari Husin, police have said.
Azahari, a Malaysian, is an explosives expert believed to have built the bombs used in the 2002 Bali attacks.
Earlier, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said he was "convinced" the dead man was Azahari.
Azahari and two other men were killed after police surrounded their house in East Java.
He was initially thought to have blown himself up, but national police chief General Sutanto told reporters on Thursday that Azahari was either shot during the raid or died when another militant detonated a homemade bomb.
"Thirty wired explosives were found inside the house, which were possibly to be used to conduct bombings," Gen Sutanto said, according to the Detikcom online news service.
He added that at least two backpacks believed to contain explosives were also found.
Azahari's death came as Indonesian police said they had identified two of the three suicide bombers involved in the latest attack on Bali, on 1 October.
Police only released the two men's initials - MS and MN - and said they came from Java Island.
Bali police chief I Made Mangku Pastika said the authorities had known who the men were for a while, but had kept the information secret so they could track Azahari.
Australian police commissioner Mick Keelty said that the identification of one of the bombers had led them to Azahari's hideout.
He added that fragments of the bombs used in Bali on 1 October matched those found in the house where Azahari was killed.
Key mastermind
Azahari is believed to have built the bombs which killed more than 200 people - 88 of them Australians - on the tourist island.
Australia, Malaysia and security experts welcomed the news of Azahari's death.
Known as "Demolition Man" in his native Malaysia, he is also suspected of masterminding other attacks.
Along with fellow Malaysian, Noordin Mohammad Top, he is said to be a key member of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI).
Analysts say his death will deal a major blow to JI's network, but it is unlikely to completely destroy their ability to mount more attacks.
The incident happened when police tried to raid a house in Batu, near the city of Malang in East Java on Wednesday.
Three men were in the house and reportedly put up stiff resistance, throwing grenades at the police outside.
They set off several explosions and fired at police.
One police spokesman said the house had been under surveillance for the last 10 days after a tip-off from an arrested terrorist suspect.
Azahari Husin, a trained engineer, once worked as a university lecturer in Malaysia and gained a doctorate in property valuation from the UK's University of Reading.
A married father-of-two in his late 40s, he is said by some to have been a fanatic, ready to die for his cause.
Azahari, and his alleged accomplice Noordin Mohammad Top - whose whereabouts are still unknown - have been on Indonesia's most wanted list for years, for a string of bomb attacks in the country.
As well as being the suspected mastermind behind the Bali attacks, he and Noordin Mohammad Top were also wanted in connection with an attack on Jakarta's JW Marriott hotel in 2003, and one on the Australian embassy in 2004.
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BBC
Thursday, 10 November 2005, 12:29 GMT
Tony Blair has accused some MPs of being out of touch with the public and of failing to face the terror threat.
Mr Blair met his Cabinet after a vote on anti-terror plans brought his first Commons defeat as prime minister.
He told ministers there was a "worrying gap between parts of Parliament and the reality of the terrorist threat and public opinion".
MPs on Wednesday rejected plans to allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.
The plans were defeated by 31 votes, with 49 Labour MPs rebelling against the government.
The Commons instead backed a compromise proposal to extend the detention time limit from the current 14 days to 28 days.
The prime minister's official spokesman said the Cabinet was disappointed but united in believing it had been right to hold the vote.
Mr Blair met police and security service officials on Thursday and their latest security assessment had been "sobering" and had reinforced his view, he said.
The spokesman insisted MPs were given enough information on why police believed they needed the new detention powers.
But he argued: "It is a matter of how to educate people about the threat without compromising sources."
Pressing ahead?
Downing Street is signalling that Mr Blair wants to push ahead with his reform agenda despite warnings from some of his backbenchers.
Asked if the prime minister was ready to change his plans on other policies, the spokesman replied: "The Cabinet believe their manifesto commitments."
Mr Blair says his authority is intact despite losing the vote over a key part of his anti-terror plans.
But Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy warned Mr Blair could become a "lame duck" leader.
And outgoing Conservative leader Michael Howard says Mr Blair should resign, although he does not think critics could win a no confidence motion.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke told BBC News he had "no doubt" that Mr Blair would still serve a full third term in Downing Street.
The vote was a particular case where serial rebels had combined with MPs who had genuine concerns about civil liberties, he argued.
'Taking the rap'
Mr Clarke said Mr Blair had left it to him as home secretary to decide whether to hold a vote on the 90-day plan.
But Downing Street said the prime minister was "in no way saying he is going to let the home secretary take the rap".
Some Labour MPs expressed concerns about Mr Blair's authority, particularly over planned reforms.
Former Health Secretary Frank Dobson, one of the Labour rebels, said: "Quite a number of people who voted with the government told me that there is no question of them supporting the education White Paper or plans to privatise parts of the National Health Service."
Mr Dobson said he did not want a change of prime minister, but wanted Mr Blair to change.
Labour MP Paul Farrelly, who supported the government, also said if the prime minister used the same style of leadership on health and education reforms there "there will be hell to pay".
Another supporter and former minister John Denham said Mr Blair must learn that backbenchers would no longer take him on trust.
But Labour backbencher Stephen McCabe said Mr Blair's power was not in doubt.
"There's actually a quite broad base of support for this legislation because we realise just how serious the stakes are," he said.
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Thursday November 10, 2005
The Guardian
Mathieu Kassovitz
La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz's critically acclaimed 1995 film, detailed the aftermath of a riot on an impoverished Paris housing project. Kassovitz put this statement about this week's riots - and the reaction of France's minister of the interior - on his website yesterday
As much as I would like to distance myself from politics, it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who has appeared in the media like a starlet from American Idol and who for the past years has been showering us with details of his private life and political ambitions, cannot prevent himself from creating an event every time his ratings go down. This time, Sarkozy [who last week described the rioters as "scum"] has gone against everything the French republic stands for: the liberty, the equality and the fraternity of a people.
The minister of the interior, a future presidential candidate, holds ideas that not only reveal his inexperience of politics and human relations, but which also illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would-be Napoleon.
If the suburbs are exploding once again today, it is not due to being generally fed up with the conditions of life that entire generations of "immigrants" must fight with every day. These burning cars are [in direct response to] the lack of respect the minister of the interior has shown towards their community.
Sarkozy does not like this community. He wants to get rid of these "punks" with high-pressure water hoses and he shouts it out loud and clear right in the middle of a "hot" neighbourhood at 11 in the evening.
The response is in the streets. "Zero tolerance" works both ways. It is intolerable that a politician should allow himself to upset a situation made tense by years of ignorance and injustice, and openly threaten an entire segment of the French population.
By acting like a warmonger, he has opened a breach that I hope will engulf him. Hate has kindled hate for centuries and yet Sarkozy still thinks that repression is the only way to prevent rebellion. History has proved to us that a lack of openness and philosophy between different communities engenders hate and confrontation. Sound and fury are the only means for many communities to make themselves heard.
Sarkozy wants to become the president of our republic and nobody will get in his way, as he dramatically puts it. If this man does not fail at least once in his initiatives to win the presidency of this country, nothing indeed will get in his way, and his desire for absolute power will finally be fulfilled.
Does history repeat itself? Yes. It always has done. A desire for power and the egocentricity of those who think they hold the truth has always created dictators. Sarkozy is certainly a little Napoleon, and I do not know if he has the potential of a real one, but it will be impossible to say tomorrow that we didn't know.
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AFP
PARIS, Nov 10
Exactly two weeks into one of the worst crises in the country's modern history, France's government was cautiously hopeful Thursday that the wave of violence that has swept through many of its towns and cities could be past its peak.
A marked downturn in the number of car-burnings overnight Tuesday -- coupled with a carrot-and-stick initiative combining emergency police powers with the promise of more help for the impoverished suburbs -- provided the first hint that calm could be returning.
There was a "significant fall" in the level of violence in French towns and cities overnight, with 482 cars burned and 203 people arrested, national police chief Michel Gaudin said Thursday.
The previous night saw 617 cars torched and 330 people arrested.
The fall was especially marked in the Paris region, where the riots began on October 27 but which saw only 95 cars burned overnight. The figures confirmed a pattern established since the weekend which has seen the provinces overtake the capital as the prime focus of the unrest.
At the peak of the trouble on Sunday night some 1,400 vehicles were burned 395 people arrested across the country.
Isolated outbreaks of violence were reported during the night at Lyon -- where there was a two-hour power cut for many residents because of an act of sabotage -- Toulouse, Lille, Belfort and Saint-Quentin.
In the worst outbreak of urban violence since May 1968, France has been struggling to contain a surge of car-burnings, arson attacks and rioting carried out in the main by young Arab and black residents of the country's poor out-of-town estates.
After the main focus of the riots shifted at the weekend away from the capital, the violence appeared to be spurred by a spirit of competition among neighbourhoods across the country, which police officials were hoping had now run its course.
However tensions remained high, and there was acute awareness that a mishandled situation -- or worse the injury or death of a rioter -- could easily plunge the high-immigration 'banlieues' back into the abyss.
Meanwhile controversy surrounded a call by the tough-talking interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy for foreigners convicted of acts of violence during the troubles to be deported -- a measure denounced by left-wing parties and campaigning groups as a breach of human rights.
Sarkozy -- who is already the number one hate-figure of the young rioters -- caused further fury among his political opponents when he spoke out in favour of explusions for foreigners convicted of violence, even those bearing residence permits.
"If someone has the honour of carrying a residence permit, the least one can say is that he shouldn't get himself arrested for provoking urban violence," the minister said. Some 120 of those detained are believed to bear foreign nationality.
Human rights groups and left-wing politicians said Sarkozy was playing to the gallery at a time when there is widespread pressure to stop the violence, and that explusions would be in breach of French and European law, as well as natural justice.
It remained far from clear if Sarkozy's call would lead to any deportations, as many of those detained are minors and any attempt could be challenged in the courts.
Questions were also being asked over how long the state of emergency which the government declared on Tuesday -- invoking a 50 year-old law dating from the Algerian war -- should be kept in place, if the downward trend in the nightly disturbances continues.
In several towns on the Riviera such as Nice, Cannes and Antibes, as well as at Orleans in the centre and Rouen, Le Havre and Amiens in the north, unaccompanied children under the age of 16 have been ordered to stay at home.
The decision to keep the state of emergency in effect is a sensitive one because to extend the state of emergency beyond the first 12 days would require a government bill, which would itself have to be rubber-stamped by the cabinet at the end of this week.
However the government of president Jacques Chirac is worried that setting the machinery in motion would send out a dangerous signal that the country is on a permanent emergency footing -- especially when the measure has been condemned by the left as a provocation to the Arab minority.
The crisis has left the country's political landscape in a state of limbo, with deep uncertainty over which leaders will emerge with their reputations enhanced or in tatters.
Chirac himself, who is 72 and probably in the closing phase of his long career, has been criticised for appearing to take a back seat during the crisis and leaving day-to-day management to his ally Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and the combative interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
The pair are bitter political rivals -- both eye a presidential bid for 2007 -- but after initial tensions over Sarkozy's tough "zero tolerance" response to the unrest, they have presented a united front as the unprecedented scale of the crisis sank in.
On Tuesday their twin-track approach was in evidence as a tough security line -- states of emergency with sweeping curfew and search powers -- was presented alongside a classic package of social aid measures such as extra investment and the promise of state jobs in stricken areas.
First indications were that the measures are highly popular in the country -- with 73 percent in one poll saying they approve the curfews and only 13 percent saying they understand or have sympathy with the rioters.
The government was hopeful that it has found the right formula for defusing the immediate unrest -- but beyond the short term the prospects continue to look bleak.
While there has been widespread criticism that France's country's model of social integration -- based on the ideal of colour-blind equality -- has not worked, there is far from a consensus on what steps to take to address the alienation of hundreds of thousands of black and Arab youths.
Sarkozy proposes a radical policy of positive discrimination combined with economic liberalisation to create jobs, but these ideas remain anathema to most of the political establishment.
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AFP
WASHINGTON, Nov 9
The riots in France remained on the front page of major US newspapers Wednesday, with some saying that the unrest was a wake-up call for Europe and others warning that extremists are exploiting the violence.
The conservative Washington Times said that while the street riots did not appear to be instigated by overseas terrorists "there are growing fears that Islamic extremists are exploiting the unrest".
An opinion piece in USA Today newspaper said the "civil disobedience should serve as lessons to neighboring countries on how not to treat a minority population".
"If France wants to avoid paying for past mistakes in a wider European intifada (...), its leaders must do more to provide immigrant citizens greater equality in terms of job opportunities, civil liberties and education," the article said.
The New York Times and Washington Post also gave widespread coverage to the riots.
In addition to a news article on the unrest, the Post carried three commentaries about the violence, one of which bluntly said that the French should clean up their own backyard before criticizing Americans.
"We could (...) help them shatter the myth that they live in an enlightened society, insulated from racial tension, by mass-mailing them copies of Le Monde with the word 'America' crossed out in all editorials and the word 'France' substituted instead," the commentary by Anne Applebaum said.
The New York Times for its part ran a front-page article and two opinion pieces on the violence Wednesday, one of which warned that America "should take little pleasure in France's agony -- the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world."
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Wayne Madsen Report
November 9, 2005
France imposed a state of emergency as rioting continued for a 13th straight night and spread to more towns, including Calais, the French end of the "Chunnel" rail link to England; St. Raphael; Amiens; Grasses; Bassens; Savigny-sur-Orge, and Arras. Other cases of arson were reported throughout Belgium -- in Ghent, Antwerp, Lokeren -- and in Germany, where Cologne was hit for the first time with car arson.
WMR has emphasized that the arson attacks are well planned, coordinated, and only plaguing the three major NATO countries that opposed the war in Iraq, For that reason, European law enforcement and intelligence agencies should place 24x7 surveillance on Israeli diplomatic and intelligence personnel who may be engaged in "Lavon Affair" and "911" style false flag operations. Such an operation aimed at Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez may have just been uncovered in Trinidad and Tobago.
In what may have been an attempt to stage a set of bombings in the Caribbean oil region and point the finger at Venezuela's significant Arab and Muslim population, a Russian-born Israeli national was recently arrested in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Vatang Agrunov (who uses the aliases Bhatang Agranouve and Dahtang Mik Agarunov), 26, is being questioned by Trinidadian authorities for his connections to four bombings in Port of Spain this year-- on July 11 on busy Frederick Street (injuring 14 people, 2 seriously, one woman losing her leg), August 10 on busy George Street, September 10, and November 3. As was the case with Israeli "art students" and "movers" who have been detained in the United States and Canada, Agrunov played dumb, first claiming he did not steal an immigration extension stamp that could be illegally used to grant visa extensions in Trinidad. According to the Trinidad and Tobago Express, in typical broken English and proffering a sob story, Agrunov told police, "I just want to say I take the stamp and finish this story. I don't want to stay in this country any longer. I want to go home. I just want to finish this and go back to my country because my family does not know what happened to me."
Agrunov had used the immigration stamp to extend his own stay in the country. Caribbean authorities have intelligence that Agrunov is a suspected terrorist.
Israeli terrorists in Caribbean setting the stage for attacks in Venezuela?
Trinidad and Tobago authorities, including the Trinidad Anti-Crime Unit, the Criminal Investigation Division, and the local Interpol representative, are awaiting an Interpol report on Agrunov. Port of Spain Magistrate Maureen Baboolal-Gafoor denied Agrunov bail, citing him as a flight risk. Israeli agents have been arrested in New Zealand and Australia on charges that they were involved in the theft of New Zealand passports. As typical in such cases, the Israeli government denied any knowledge of the Trinidad affair. The Israeli embassy in Caracas, which has responsibility for Israeli affairs in Trinidad, said it had no information on Agrunov's arrest.
The unfettered use of a Trinidad visa stamp by an Israeli false flag cell would have permitted Israeli agents to secretly enter and exit Venezuela via nearby Trinidad, which is only 7 miles away -- an excellent cover for committing terrorist attacks on tourist centers or oil installations in either Venezuela or Trinidad -- and blaming them on "Al Qaeda" or Arabs and Muslims living in the area. The previous bombings in Trinidad were at first blamed on local Muslim activists.
There is also evidence that the FBI arrived in Trinidad after the July blast to cover up for the Israelis. Local police complained that the FBI presence was not required and Prime Minister Patrick Manning said he was unaware that anyone had requested help from the FBI at the time. In cases where local police and Federal agents detained Israeli agents snooping around sensitive industrial and military facilities in the United States, the FBI quickly had them transferred to their control whereupon they were hurriedly deported from the United States. In some cases, deported Israelis have returned to the United States.
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By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writer
Nov 09 4:57 PM US/Eastern
WASHINGTON - Congress is moving to curb some of the police powers it gave the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, including imposing new restrictions on the FBI's access to private phone and financial records.
A budding House-Senate deal on the expiring USA Patriot Act includes new limits on federal law enforcement powers and rejects the Bush administration's request to grant the FBI authority to get administrative subpoenas for wiretaps and other covert devices without a judge's approval.
Even with the changes, however, every part of the law set to expire Dec. 31 would be reauthorized and most of those provisions would become permanent.
Under the agreement, for the first time since the act became law, judges would get the authority to reject national security letters giving the government secret access to people's phone and e-mail records, financial data and favorite Internet sites.
Holders of such information - such as banks and Internet providers - could challenge the letters in court for the first time, said congressional aides involved in merging separate, earlier-passed House and Senate bills reauthorizing the expiring Patriot Act.
The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because the panel has not begun deliberations.
Under the 2001 law, the FBI reportedly has been issuing about 30,000 national security letters annually, a hundred-fold increase since the when they first came into existence under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Last year, a federal judge in New York struck down the national security letter statute as unconstitutional because he said the law did not permit legal challenges to the letters or a gag rule on recipients of the letters. The administration has appealed.
Civil libertarians lauded the deal's preliminary terms, saying recent accounts of the FBI's aggressive use of national security letters have lent credibility to their call for caution.
"Without those checks and balances, there will be abuses," said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., of Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances.
The Bush administration contends there have been no abuses.
"In the four years since the passage of the USA Patriot Act there has not been a single verified abuse of the act's provisions, including in the department's own inspector general's report to Congress," said Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
Hashed out over two months by senior House and Senate aides, the preliminary terms still have to be approved by a panel of lawmakers from each chamber and then by the full House and Senate. The process is taking shape this week, with the appointment of House members to the panel on Wednesday and the bicameral committee's first meeting expected on Thursday.
The power to conduct wiretaps and install covert listening devices without court approval had been on the administration's wish list for more than a year but was never seriously considered by either chamber's Judiciary committee.
Both the House and Senate versions of a Patriot Act extension, debated over the summer, proposed giving the judiciary a role in national security letters. "The court may quash or modify a request if compliance would be unreasonable or oppressive," according to a summary by the Congressional Research Service. The Senate added more conditions: "or violate any constitutional or other legal right or privilege."
Some version of those curbs is expected to be passed as part of the compromise bill.
Less specific but looked upon favorably is a proposal to add a new restriction on evidence-gathering of classified material that would require investigators to return or destroy any materials that are not relevant to the probe, the congressional aides said.
Polls show that most Americans do not distinguish between the Patriot Act and the war on terror, and a majority knows little about the four-year-old law. But the more Americans know about the Patriot Act, the less they like.
A poll conducted in August by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut showed that almost two- thirds of all Americans, 64 percent, said they support the Patriot Act. But only 43 percent support the law's requirement that banks turn over records to the government without judicial approval; 23 percent support secret searches of Americans' homes without informing the occupants for a period of time.
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Reuters
November 10, 2005
WASHINGTON - Record oil prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and a drop in overall exports helped push the U.S. trade deficit to a record $66.1 billion in September, shattering the previous high of $60.4 billion set in February, the government said on Thursday.
The record trade gap was much wider than a mid-point forecast of $61.0 billion made by Wall Street economists.
The Commerce Department said the deficit widened 11.4 percent from August, the largest month-to-month jump since June 2004.
U.S. crude oil prices hit a record $70.85 per barrel following Katrina, which slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast on August 29, shuttering much of the region's oil-producing and refining capacity.
Oil import prices averaged a record $57.32 per barrel in September, helping push the trade deficit with OPEC countries to a record $9.1 billion, as U.S. exports to the oil-producing countries plummeted. The quantity of U.S. crude oil imports fell to the lowest level since February 2003, the Commerce Department said.
Despite the disruption to U.S. exports and U.S. Gulf Coast ports caused by Hurricane Katrina, and later Hurricane Rita, overall imports jumped 2.4 percent in September to a record $171.3 billion, led by the record value of petroleum imports.
Imports of food, animal feed and beverages and industrial supplies and materials also hit records and imports of services were near all-time highs, the Commerce Department said.
U.S. exports tumbled 2.6 percent to $105.2 billion, the biggest setback since the September 2001 attacks on the United States.
In addition to the Gulf port problems, a strike at aircraft maker Boeing took a big bite out of commercial aircraft exports, which fell $2.4 billion to $925 million. However, exports of autos and auto parts, as well as consumer goods, hit records.
The politically sensitive trade deficit with China hit a record $20.1 billion in September, as imports from that country rose to a record $23.3 billion.
Washington and Beijing reached a deal this week to rein in China's surging clothing and textile exports to the United States through 2008.
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By Melanie Hunter
CNSNews.com Senior Editor
November 04, 2005
According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.
President Bush and the current administration have borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 presidents combined, a group of conservative to moderate Democrats said Friday.
Blue Dog Coalition, which describes itself as a group "focused on fiscal responsibility," called the administration's borrowing practices "astounding."
According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.
"The seriousness of this rapid and increasing financial vulnerability of our country can hardly be overstated," said Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition and member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
"The financial mismanagement of our country by the Bush Administration should be of concern to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion," said Tanner in a press release.
Earlier this year, the Blue Dog Coalition unveiled a 12-step plan to "cure" the nation's "addiction to deficit spending." It included requiring all federal agencies to pass clean audits, a balanced budget, and the establishment of a rainy day fund for use in emergencies specifically a natural disaster.
"No American political leadership has ever willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests in the manner we have witnessed over the past four years," said Tanner. "If this recklessness is not stopped, I truly believe our economic freedom as American citizens is in great jeopardy."
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By T.K. Maloy
UPI Deputy Business Editor
Nov 08, 2005
Washington - Online holiday shopping is poised for strong growth this year, among other factors helped along by higher gas prices.
Several retail analyst groups -- Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen/NetRatings and Harris Interactive -- said Monday they would be jointly tracking online sales during the holiday season, adding that predictions were for a solid cyber-selling season.
The companies said that factors driving consumers to make online purchases this year include: convenience of online product research and comparison shopping, competitive pricing, Web-only sales promotions and gas prices.
"Online sales should see robust growth this holiday season, partially aided by rising gas and heating prices, as consumers seek to maximize their holiday budgets," said Heather Dougherty, senior Retail analyst, Nielsen/NetRatings.
"Multi-channel retailers will look to capitalize on the trend toward the online sales channel by incentivizing holiday buyers through discounts, reduced or free shipping for guaranteed on-time delivery, and gifts with purchases." [...]
The joint group of analyst firms said that product categories poised for growth this holiday season include:
-- Computers and consumer electronics, as shoppers utilize comparison shopping tools to price the latest must-have gadgets.
-- Toys and games, as a consistently strong product category with children and parents.
-- Apparel, based upon previous online purchasing experiences and a greater selection of products and sizes available online.
-- Books, music and DVDs, driven by popular holiday releases and affordable price points.
-- Gift cards, encouraged by online/offline redemptions for last-minute gift ideas.
"From a historical perspective, it will be interesting to see if this coming season's research will show a dramatic shift in the holiday gift budget designated for online purchases," said Karen Chiarelli, vice president of Technology Research, Harris Interactive. "Each year has seen the addition of more tenured shoppers and improved consumer satisfaction, which stands to increase again this year." [...]
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By Ernest Partridge
Co-Editor The Crisis Papers
11/09/05 "ICH "
The failure of Bush’s FEMA to deal with the Katrina catastrophe can not be hidden forever from the public. Nor can the loss of manufacturing jobs and their export overseas. Nor can the rising price of gasoline and the obscene profits of the oil companies. Nor can the upward redistribution of national wealth from the producers to the owners of that wealth. Nor can the corruption and the consequent indictments or investigations of the malefactors: DeLay, Safavian, Frist, Libby, Abramoff, and now Tomlinson. Nor can the horrendous tales of torture in Bush’s Gulag. Nor can the shredding of our Constitution and the loss of our “inalienable rights.” Nor can the mounting casualties from the Iraq war, as they return home in caskets (“transfer tubes”) or with broken minds and bodies. And despite the media conspiracy of silence, the evidence of election fraud can not be suppressed. The unthinkable is becoming thinkable.
“The Americans will always do the right thing” Winston Churchill once remarked, “after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”
The American public may be running out of alternatives. If so, the Bush Administration and the Republicans have reason to be very worried.
It is all too easy to despair over the ignorance and gullibility of “the American mind.” This is a public, after all, a majority of which rejects the theory of evolution – the central coordinating concept of the biological sciences. In addition, the National Science Foundation reports that more than a third of Americans believe in UFOs and that astrology “has scientific merit.”
And yet, amazingly, at many crucial moments in our history, public opinion has somehow moved toward a wise and appropriate point of view.
For example, public support for the Vietnam war eroded until eventually the war was unsustainable. Richard Nixon’s landslide re-election in 1972 was no use to him when, less than two years later, the full extent of his “crimes and misdemeanors” became known and he was forced from office.
Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton was hounded by a hostile press, while $70 million of taxpayers’ money was expended in search of a crime to fit the punishment. Eventually he was caught in a sexual indiscretion. It was then widely assumed that Clinton’s public approval scores would drop into the basement. Instead, “the hunting of the president” backfired as Clinton’s high approval scores held steady, while those of his tormentor, Kenneth Starr, plummeted.
And so right now, something remarkable is taking place. At long last, however belatedly, the public is beginning to appreciate the shallowness and incompetence of George Bush and the unparalleled mendacity and corruption of his administration. Moreover, it has arrived at this realization on its own, despite the determination of the captive mainstream media to hide these manifest failures from the public, through distraction, non-reporting, and occasionally through outright lies.
For five years, the Rovian smoke and mirrors have worked spectacularly well. A majority of the public was persuaded that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, was somehow behind the 9/11 attacks and was an active agent of al Qaeda. At the same time, the skeletons of Bush’s past – his AWOL from the Air National Guard, his business failures, his insider trading, his suspected drug use – were all kept hidden in the closet. A package of lies about Al Gore was concocted to “prove,” ironically, that Gore was a “serial liar.” John Kerry, an authentic war hero, was successfully portrayed as a coward and a fake.
Thus did the Bush message machine vanquish the Democratic opposition and reduce it to pathetic impotence. However, there was one adversary that Bush, Inc. could not defeat: reality. And at long last, reality is retaliating and the public is taking notice.
The failure of Bush’s FEMA to deal with the Katrina catastrophe can not be hidden forever from the public. Nor can the loss of manufacturing jobs and their export overseas. Nor can the rising price of gasoline and the obscene profits of the oil companies. Nor can the upward redistribution of national wealth from the producers to the owners of that wealth. Nor can the corruption and the consequent indictments or investigations of the malefactors: DeLay, Safavian, Frist, Libby, Abramoff, and now Tomlinson. Nor can the horrendous tales of torture in Bush’s Gulag. Nor can the shredding of our Constitution and the loss of our “inalienable rights.” Nor can the mounting casualties from the Iraq war, as they return home in caskets (“transfer tubes”) or with broken minds and bodies. And despite the media conspiracy of silence, the evidence of election fraud can not be suppressed. The unthinkable is becoming thinkable.
Moreover, the public has a memory. The weak but growing voice of the independent progressive media and internet has recorded and now broadcasts the lies in the voices of the liars: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." (Cheney, August, 2002) "We know where [the WMDs] are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." (Rumsfeld, May, 2003). "We found the weapons of mass destruction." (Bush, May, 2003).
Despite their self-congratulatory myth of rugged individualism, Americans are herd animals; they look around, then follow the crowd. When Bush’s approval scores were in the high eighties and the media were meekly and uncritically passing on the official lies, few dared to resist. Troublesome news, such as election fraud, foreign opposition, citizen protests, the looting of the treasury, and the Downing Street memos, were absent from the print and broadcasts of the mainstream media. Those in the media who did resist, like MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield and Phil Donanue, soon found themselves out of a job. Their example was not lost on the survivors. But now the beast is wounded and just a few of the bolder predators are coming out of the woods to investigate. At last, the hidden issues are beginning to come into play.
And the public? Ever so gradually, public opinion has shifted and now the critics and skeptics are in the majority. No longer can dissenters be successfully branded as traitors who “hate America.” More and more of us are remembering that America was born out of resistance to tyranny and has flourished through dissent and open debate. Protest is once again becoming fashionable, and there is a whiff of possible success in the air. The message of the American people to the media? “Lead, follow, or step out of the way. You have made yourselves irrelevant.”
When asked the secret of success in show business, George Burns replied: “sincerity – if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” For five years, it worked for Bush and his gang, but now the public is finally seeing through the fakery. And once the politician loses his grip on the fakery – once he has lost the trust of the public -- he can never get it back.
And so, Bush’s approval and trust ratings are now in the mid-thirties, and heading south. According to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, two-thirds of the public has a negative opinion of Bush’s ethics and believes that the country is headed in the wrong direction. Sixty percent believes that the Iraq war was a mistake. A majority doubts Bush’s honesty and integrity, and believes that Bush misled the country prior to the invasion of Iraq. And amazingly, a majority would want to see him impeached if it were proved (as is likely the case) that Bush lied to get the U.S. into the war.
Significantly, many GOP politicians and the media are beginning to sense that support of Bush and his administration is distinct liability – a liability that can cost the politicians their offices, and the media their audiences. Moreover, as the demise of the Miers nomination attests, the religious right is finally beginning to realize that they’ve been had, cynically kept on the GOP reservation with promises, such as the repeal of Roe v. Wade, that the GOP dare not fulfill.
Is it over for the Bush Administration? Don’t count on it. As I wrote at the outset: “at many crucial moments in our history” the American public gets it right. “At many crucial moments,” not all. There are no guarantees. And the Busheviks still have formidable weapons at their disposal as they struggle to maintain their grip on power.
Accordingly, this is no time for the opposition to sit at the sidelines, content to be spectators of the self-inflicted decline and fall of Bush, Inc. This malignant regime may not go over the precipice unless it is pushed.
What then is the ordinary citizen to do? The question requires a separate essay – several, in fact. But here are some brief suggestions.
Regarding election Fraud: Spread the word, person-to-person. Do your part to make respectable a skepticism of past elections and the demand for election reform. If the conspiracy of media silence is sustained and the paperless machines and secret software remain in place, the GOP won’t lose no matter what the voters have to say about it. If the fraud is exposed, they can’t win. It is just possible that if the polls forecast a Democratic blowout – say, twenty-plus percent – the GOP won’t dare to reverse the outcome. But beware: fake polls are not out of the question.
Thankfully, there is one institution that remains independent of Bushevik control: the criminal justice system. Thus the aforementioned criminal indictments, present and forthcoming. Herein may be the best hope for the restoration of honest and verifiable elections. In the United States, elections are administered at the local and state level. Surely there must be some prosecutors somewhere in the realm prepared to investigate this crime with the powerful instruments of subpoena, discovery and perjury threat. So let us, as concerned citizens, demand criminal investigation and prosecutions of the crime of voting fraud.
Put pressure on the media. Boycott the offending corporate media and their sponsors, and tell them that you are doing so. Demand that they investigate malfeasance of office and report “all the news that’s fit to print” about issues of public concern. And if they won’t, make them irrelevant. As Sinclair Broadcasting learned in the last election, if right-wing propaganda results in a loss of market-share, the management must answer to the stockholders.
Support the alternative independent media and the progressive internet – the last, best hope of a free press that the founders of our republic insisted was indispensable to a republic of free citizens.
Encourage progressive candidates to oppose the “GOP-lite” Democrats in the primaries. Even if the “Democrats in Name Only” (DINOs) win, they will be given a message: “represent us, or next time your done for!”
And write your Senators and Congress members, repeatedly. Send a constant stream of letters to the editor. Add your feet and voices to the public protests. Organize!
At the close of the 1970 movie, “Tora, Tora, Tora,,” Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto warns his staff: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." The words are those of the screenwriter, not the Admiral: there is no evidence that Yamamoto ever said this. No matter, the words fit our times.
Today, the great American public stirs. But will it awake? In the captive corporate media, there is no Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite in evidence who will protest the evil issuing from the White House and the Congress, much less a media management willing to give them a microphone. There is no John Dean from inside this malignant regime that will step forward and volunteer to break open this criminal conspiracy – at least, not yet.
It is up to us, the American public, and it is possible that we the people are finally beginning to wake up. But there are no guarantees that we will prevail, restore our Constitution and our rights, and win back our country.
This is no time for each of us to stand alone, looking after our own diminishing self-interests, and privately but uselessly lamenting our fates. Echoing Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Gandhi spoke the truth that transcends political and religious boundaries: "He who loses his life will gain it; he who will seek to save it shall lose it. Freedom is not for the coward or the faint-hearted."
Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge
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By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: November 9, 2005
The New York Times
The New York Times and Judith Miller, a veteran reporter for the paper, reached an agreement today that ends her 28-year career at the newspaper and caps more than two weeks of negotiations.[...]
Lawyers for Ms. Miller and the paper negotiated a severance package, the details of which they would not disclose. Under the agreement, Ms. Miller will retire from the newspaper, and The Times will print a letter she wrote to the editor explaining her position. Ms. Miller originally demanded that she be able to write an essay for the paper's Op-Ed page challenging the allegations against her. The Times refused that demand - Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page, said, "We don't use the Op-Ed page for back and forth between one part of the paper and another" - but agreed to let her write the letter.
In that letter, to be published in The New York Times on Thursday under the heading, "Judith Miller's Farewell," Ms. Miller said she was leaving partly because some of her colleagues disagreed with her decision to testify in the C.I.A. leak case.
"But mainly," she wrote, "I have chosen to resign because over the last few months, I have become the news, something a New York Times reporter never wants to be."
She noted that even before going to jail, she had "become a lightning rod for public fury over the intelligence failures that helped lead our country to war." She said she regretted "that I was not permitted to pursue answers" to questions about those intelligence failures.[...]
Ms. Miller, 57, leaves the paper after serving for many years as an investigative and national security correspondent. She has written four books and in 2002 was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for reporting, prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.
But her reporting came under criticism with her subsequent reports suggesting that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, coverage that helped the Bush administration build its case for invading Iraq but that turned out to be wrong.
Ms. Miller was released from jail Sept. 29 after being locked up longer than any reporter in American history for refusing to testify and reveal her sources in the leak case. The case became a test of press freedoms and it may foreshadow an increase in subpoenas to force other reporters to testify about their confidential sources.
After asserting that she would not disclose her sources, Ms. Miller revealed that her source was Mr. Libby, who has since been indicted on five charges related to the C.I.A. leak investigation and has pleaded not guilty. Then Ms. Miller testified that she could not remember who gave her the name of a covert C.I.A. operative.
In her letter to The Times, Ms. Miller said she agreed to testify only after Mr. Libby gave her a personal waiver to speak and after the special prosecutor agreed to limit his questioning of her to those germane to the C.I.A. case.
"Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor's inquiry into serious crimes," she wrote.
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Thursday, November 10, 2005. 12:08pm (AEDT)
Some Riverina residents, in southern New South Wales, feared they had witnessed a plane crash early last night when they saw an apparent meteor shower. [...]
"Oh, there was a big ball of flame falling out of the sky ... it would have been about 6.30pm [AEDT] and would've been north, north-east of where we were. It didn't last very long, you had to be quick to see it," he said.
Some Riverina residents, in southern New South Wales, feared they had witnessed a plane crash early last night when they saw an apparent meteor shower.
The fire brigade received a number of calls from people in inland New South Wales who thought a plane was coming down.
One listener to ABC Riverina this morning, Allan, described the incident.
"Oh, there was a big ball of flame falling out of the sky ... it would have been about 6.30pm [AEDT] and would've been north, north-east of where we were. It didn't last very long, you had to be quick to see it," he said.
Griffith resident Susan says the meteor was so bright she and her family were sure a plane was falling out of the sky.
"It really frightened us because the direction it was in and the place that it was directly over our neighbour's property and he has an ultralight and we thought, 'my god, he's fallen out of the sky'," she said.
Vince Ford from the Mount Stromlo Observatory says the current meteor activity is creating a lot of talk around the world.
"At the moment we've got a meteor shower running and it's the one that produces the brightest meteors through the year usually," he said.
"In fact, when it started running a week ago, Germany went UFO mad, everyone was ringing up saying spaceships were crashing. Well, they were partly right, it is rubbish from space, in this case it's little chunks left over from the passage of ... a comet ... back in the 1800s."
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Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Richard L. Hill
Fireballs -- large meteors that are a rare treat in fall's typically cloudy weather -- have been spotted streaking across the Oregon sky in the past two weeks.
Dick Pugh, a meteor expert with with the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at Portland State University, said he received reports from surprised eyewitnesses of fireballs Oct. 30 and Monday evening.
A Beaverton man reported seeing Monday's fireball at 7:16 p.m. It lasted about four seconds and was nearly the diameter of a full moon.
"He said it moved from the northwest to the southwest and ended up looking like a dumbbell," which indicates it probably was breaking up, Pugh said.
The fireballs are part of the annual Taurid meteor shower, which is caused by the Earth passing through debris shed by comet Encke. The tiny dust grains make white-hot streaks of light as they slam into the atmosphere at 65,000 mph.
The normally unremarkable Taurid shower is putting on a good show this year, with Earth apparently going through a debris area with unusually large particles.
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MSNBC
Nov. 4, 2005
HANOI, Vietnam - One of the many mysteries of bird flu is that it has not infected more people like Ha Thi Quynh.
The woman in her late 30s holds up a plump, live goose by its feet at Hanoi’s largest poultry market. Although blood, feathers and bird droppings cling to her pants and rubber sandals, she doesn’t worry about bird flu.
“I have no problem,” she says. Quynh has driven a motorbike loaded with about 35 chickens and geese on a two-hour trip to the market every day for the past 10 years. “If customers ask me to slaughter the chicken, then I will do it.” Story continues below ? advertisement
Quynh and the others at Long Bien market say they’re living proof bird flu is hard for people to catch. They work without fear or protective gear in a place where fresh blood runs through open gutters and stray feathers glide through the humid air, thick with the stench of death. They say not a single person from the market has ever gotten sick or died from the H5N1 bird flu virus.
Researchers agree. They’re just not sure why these people have stayed healthy. [...]
Why has the disease attacked mostly healthy children and young adults, who may have had a few chickens pecking in their back yards or villages? Is there some sort of immunity acquired by commercial farmers and others who have worked around the poultry for so long, or is it some other reason?
“The honest truth is that on a lot of answers to these questions, your guess is almost as good as mine,” said Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of Oxford University’s clinical research unit at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City. “It may be ... because of the nature of the way that people prepare chickens in their houses. It could be because there’s some difference in the immune response between younger people and older people.”
But most of it is just guesswork. [...]
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UPI
11/9/2005 3:55:00 PM -0500
GARCHING, Germany, Nov. 9 (UPI) -- Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope have recorded a massive star moving at more than 1.5 million mph.
Since stars are not born with such large velocities, its position suggests it was ejected from the Large Magellanic Cloud, perhaps by a massive black hole in the Milky Way's closest neighbor.
"At such a speed, the star would go around the Earth in less than a minute," said Uli Heber, one of the scientists at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, and Britain's Center for Astrophysics Research at the University of Hertfordshire, who conducted the study. The hot massive star, named HE 0437-5439, was discovered far out in the halo of the Milky Way, towards the Doradus constellation. "This is a rather unusual place for such a star: massive stars are ordinarily found in the disc of the Milky Way", said Ralf Napiwotzki, another member of the team. "Our data ... confirm the star to be rather young and to have a chemical composition similar to our sun." The data are to be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The Garching, Germany-based, ESO operates astronomical observatories in Chile.
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Last Updated Thu, 10 Nov 2005 05:34:56 EST
CBC News
Environment Canada is trying to determine whether a tornado was responsible for ripping the roof off an elementary school in Hamilton, Ont., on Wednesday, slightly injuring two students.
The children were among a group practising volleyball in the gym of the Lawfield Public School at about 4 p.m. when a bout of severe weather hit.
"I just heard a big gust of wind and the roof just collapsed," said Matt Theoret, one of the students in the gym. "The windows blew in... We all ran."
Two students who were hit by falling debris were taken to hospital for treatment.
"This emergency scene could have been much worse and a lot more tragic just due to the fact that if it had happened a half hour earlier, the elementary school would have been filled with children or with children leaving," said Bob Simpson of Hamilton's EMS.
A number of children still doing after-school activities at Lawfield were evacuated to a nearby arena, but then that building's roof began peeling off.
School officials have closed Lawfield until further notice.
Eyewitnesses reported black skies and funnel-shaped clouds just before the bout of severe weather hit, downing trees and power lines.
Environment Canada has yet to confirm a tornado was responsible for the damage, since an on-site assessment must be done. That will happen Thursday, when weather experts have a chance to examine the pattern of debris and the extent of the damage.
However, Hamilton is in a part of southern Ontario where tornadoes have hit in the past.
Houses damaged as well
A large tree fell in front of Steve Burkholder's house and the wind flipped over his camper trailer, which had been parked nearby.
Burkholder was inside with his daughter at the time.
"I just felt the windows kind of go whoosh," he said, describing how he looked outside to see his trailer sitting on its roof on his front lawn.
The winds took a toll on Hazel Clarke's house "We were all just relaxing and then we heard thunder and lightning and the door banged," she said. "Then we heard it again and all of a sudden the roof caved in. The whole of the roof of the house is gone."
About 5,000 homes were without power in the wake of the storm, but electricity had been restored to most of them by Thursday morning.
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AFP
Thu Nov 10, 2:04 AM ET
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan - United Nations officials have warned that widespread rain in Pakistan's quake zone could be disastrous for their struggle to contain an outbreak of acute diarrhoea in squalid tent camps.
There have been at least 200 cases and possibly as many as 750 at one camp for homeless quake survivors in Pakistani Kashmir, amid fears that it could be cholera, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNICEF said.
"Rain would be disastrous," WHO emergency coordinator Rachel Lavy told AFP at the main camp on the sports ground of the devastated university in the Pakistani Kashmir capital of Muzaffarabad, where around 3,000 people are living.
"Diarrhoeal illness and rain water go hand in hand," she added.
Light rain -- the first for six days -- started in quake-hit northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir early Thursday, while snow is expected at night, the Pakistani meteorological department said.
"All earthquake-affected areas will have intermittent rain today and Friday," a spokesman for the department said. "The rainfall will be moderate in the plains and heavy in mountainous areas."
Winter weather poses the biggest threat to survivors of the October 8 quake, which killed 74,000 in Pakistan and 1,300 in India. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned there could be a massive second wave of deaths.
The disaster left around three million people homeless. The numbers in the camps that have sprung up in almost every town and village are swelling as people come down from the freezing Himalayan mountains.
Aid workers said they had succesfully treated existing diarrhoea cases at the main camp in Muzaffarabad and were now focusing on prevention, by teaching people how to keep clean and setting up an isolation tent for the sick.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, had also dug new latrines at the site. [...]
"If there is rain it will escalate the situation," she told AFP. "The hygiene situation is terrible in the camp, there is open defecation, kids are playing around -- it is quite a mess."
She added that there were more than 30 camps throughout Muzaffarabad, all of which could be affected and most of which lack adequate sanitation and water supplies.
UN officials say the symptoms closely fit the definition of cholera but add that there are other waterborne microbes that could cause the condition.
"We are taking it as seriously as if it were cholera," Jan Vandemoortele, the United Nations Emergency Coordinator in Pakistan, told AFP.
"We are still awaiting confirmation but this is in line with what we have been saying, that sanitation is a potential timebomb."
The WHO's Lavy said that "in a way it does not matter what it is because acute watery diarrhoea is serious. The main thing is that we have to prevent the spread of disease."
Lavy also appealed for more international donations to help survivors. A 550-million-dollar emergency UN appeal remains underfunded.
"The task is enormous, we don't have all the aid agencies here because they don't have money to come here. That's why we are constantly making urgent appeals to the international community to provide funds," she said.
US President George W. Bush called on Americans late Wednesday to open their wallets for the victims of the quake.
"I ask all of our citizens and businesses to contribute generously to this cause," the president said.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key Bush ally in the "war on terror", last week accused the West of double standards for giving more money after the Indian Ocean tsunami because foreign tourists were involved.
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SPX
Nov 10, 2005
A University of California, Berkeley seismologist has discovered a way to provide seconds to tens of seconds of advance warning about impending ground shaking from an earthquake.
While a few seconds may not sound like much, it is enough time for school children to dive under their desks, gas and electric companies to shut down or isolate their systems, phone companies to reroute traffic, airports to halt takeoffs and landings, and emergency providers to pinpoint probable trouble areas. Such actions can save lives and money.
An early warning system like this is possible thanks to the work of Richard Allen, UC Berkeley assistant professor of earth and planetary science, who in the last five years has demonstrated that within a few seconds of an earthquake rupture, he can predict the total magnitude of the quake and its destructive potential.
In San Francisco, for example, Allen estimates that it's likely the city could receive 20 seconds' warning of an impending temblor.
"We can determine the magnitude within a couple of seconds of initiation of rupture and predict the ground motion from seconds to tens of seconds before it's felt," Allen said. He and his colleagues are now testing a system, ElarmS, that would make these predictions, and the researchers are working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to determine how accurate these warnings would be.
Allen and coauthor Erik L. Olson, a former graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published their data on early earthquake ground motion predictions in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature.
Seismologists, especially those in the United States, have become increasingly pessimistic about being able to predict earthquakes. Experiments at the intensively monitored Parkfield, Calif., site have dampened enthusiasm that earthquake ruptures could be predicted hours or days before they happen.
To reduce loss of life and property, earthquake-prone regions generally rely on a combination of advance preparation and post-earthquake assessment and notification between five and 10 minutes after a quake.
Allen's early warnings come after a quake rupture has already begun but before the shaking is felt tens of miles from the epicenter.
San Francisco, for example, sits about midway along the northern half of the 800-mile San Andreas fault. If a rupture occurs at the extreme northern end, it could take 80 seconds, traveling nearly 2 miles per second, to reach the city. An early warning system could provide a critical buffer for residents, businesses and emergency responders, even if the time isn't sufficient to evacuate a building.
The early warning information also would feed directly into the new active-response building designs that change the mechanical properties of a structure to let it ride out shaking and minimize damage both inside and out. Active response buildings are already operational in Japan, Allen said.
"That is our long-term goal, to have the building feel the earthquake, not the occupants," Allen said.
Two years ago, while at the University of Wisconsin, Allen reported differences in the frequency of seismic signals emanating from small and medium earthquakes during the first four seconds of the rupture, with the larger quakes showing lower frequency signals than the smaller quakes. The signal is part of the primary wave, or P wave, that is the first, though least destructive, wave to arrive after a rupture. Most people experience the P wave, which is a pressure wave that travels through rock like sound through air, as a jolt.
This P wave is followed by a secondary wave, or S wave, that shears the ground back and forth and up and down. Shortly after, more destructive surface waves arrive that jerk the ground sideways and later roll in like ocean waves.
In the current study, Allen shows that the relationship between P wave frequency and the total magnitude of the quake holds for major quakes, up to magnitude 8 and higher, as well as for medium and small quakes.
Based on the correlation, he can predict the total magnitude of the quake to within 1 magnitude, and for a specific area, like the San Andreas Fault, to within half a magnitude. Magnitude is a measure of the total area that ruptures underground and the average amount of slip along the rupture. A half a magnitude amounts to a factor of 3 difference in ground motion.
"Most seismologists are surprised, and frequently skeptical, that you can predict the magnitude of an earthquake before it has ended, but this is telling us that there is something very different from what we thought about the physics of the processes involved in a rupture," Allen said.
Allen's findings conflict with the current model of earthquake rupture. The "cascade" model assumes that earthquake faults are made up of lots of different-sized patches, each under some degree of stress. When one of the patches is stressed enough to slip, the slip propagates to adjacent patches, which rupture in turn like falling dominoes. The rupture stops only when the stress propagating along the fault zone reaches a patch that is too solidly locked to slip.
Inherent in this model is the idea that the initiating rupture is the same for big and small quakes. Allen's findings suggest this is wrong. Instead, the rupture is different for large and small quakes from the beginning, and the initial rupture contains information that can be used to predict the final size.
He proposes that if the initial rupture generates a large "slip pulse" that travels continuously in all directions across the fault plane, the pulse can supply the necessary energy to propagate through patches that would not otherwise have ruptured. Only when the energy in the pulse drops to a level insufficient to overcome the grip of rock on rock does the rupture stop.
"If the rupture pulse initiates with a large slip, it is more likely to evolve into a large earthquake," he and Olson wrote in their report.
Allen's demonstration that this observation holds in earthquakes around the world, from California to Taiwan and Japan, provides a solid basis for constructing an early warning system. Once the magnitude of the quake has been estimated, computers can predict areas of serious ground shaking based on an understanding of a particular fault. Within five seconds, warnings could be sent to cities in the areas calculated to expect damaging ground motion.
Because humans couldn't respond fast enough, Allen said, these warnings would have to rely on computers programmed to respond to quakes of a certain magnitude.
"This allows people to get information about an event before the ground starts shaking and the system goes down," he said.
The ElarmS system also could warn rescue and clean-up personnel of aftershocks, which can cause collapse of unstable debris.
As the rupture proceeds, Allen said, analysis of seismic waves can refine magnitude and ground motion estimates, finally merging into the standard shake map typically produced within minutes of the end of an earthquake.
"We're at the stage where we need to test the accuracy of the system, which we're now doing," Allen said. "Next, we will determine whether the telemetry is fast enough to get data to us within seconds of a rupture."
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Nov 9, 4:08 PM (ET)
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
President George W. Bush met at the White House on Wednesday with the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, ignoring objections from China 10 days before he makes an official visit to Beijing. [...]
The human rights record in China, where everything from critical Internet postings to publishing underground newspapers to religious worship can carry a stiff jail term, is a constant source of friction between Beijing and Washington.
President George W. Bush met at the White House on Wednesday with the Dalai Lama, exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, ignoring objections from China 10 days before he makes an official visit to Beijing.
The private meeting with the president and the first lady came one day after the Bush administration named China a serious violator of religious freedom in a report to Congress.
"We've made our views very clear when it comes to our support for religious freedom... And we will continue to speak out on those issues," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The Chinese government opposed Bush's meeting with the Dalai Lama.
"The Dalai Lama is not a mere religious figure. He is a political refugee who has conducted activities splitting China and undermining national unity," said Chu Maoming, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
"We are opposed to any invitation by any country extended to him. We are also opposed to any meetings with him."
Wednesday's meeting was Bush's third with the Dalai Lama. Next week Bush is due to visit Beijing and hold talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The Dalai Lama told reporters on Tuesday that talks between Tibetans and China have done little to ease a "very repressive" atmosphere in Chinese-ruled Tibet.
The 70-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader, who is head of the Tibetan government-in-exile based in India, was visiting Washington for a conference on science and meditation.
He fled to India after a failed uprising by Tibetans in 1959, nine years after China's People's Liberation Army marched into Tibet to establish communist rule.
The human rights record in China, where everything from critical Internet postings to publishing underground newspapers to religious worship can carry a stiff jail term, is a constant source of friction between Beijing and Washington.
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By CLARK KAUFFMAN
DES MOINES REGISTER STAFF WRITER
November 9, 2005
A security firm fires an Iowa man who says he saw an apparition while on the job
Can a worker be fired from his job because he believes in ghosts?
Yes, according to one Iowa judge — although, the judge says, such beliefs don't constitute worker misconduct, which would disqualify him from receiving unemployment benefits.
Wade Gallegos of Des Moines was fired in September from Neighborhood Patrol of Urbandale, a security company where he had worked for about five weeks. According to state records, Gallegos was in a guard house outside a gated community on the night of Sept. 11 when he reported seeing a group of apparitions standing near a car.
Gallegos summoned a co-worker and supervisor. While the two men were there, Gallegos said he still could see the ghosts, although the other men assured him they could see nothing. The supervisor saw no evidence of drinking or drug use; five hours later he fired Gallegos.
Neighborhood Patrol later challenged Gallegos' application for unemployment benefits, arguing he was guilty of misconduct.
Administrative Law Judge G. Ken Renegar ruled that "such beliefs do render the claimant unfit to act as a security guard. The employer cannot have security guards who see ghosts and apparitions and inform the employer and then the employer sends out the patrol cars."
But Renegar added that the "the real issue" was whether the sighting of ghosts was the sort of misconduct that disqualified Gallegos from receiving benefits.
Gallegos was awarded unemployment benefits. He said Tuesday he's still at a loss to explain the incident. "It was kind of like one of those out-of-body experiences."
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Cambridge Evening News
09 November 2005
BLUE and white circular objects reported in the sky, shooting stars falling to the ground, a silver grey rod flying over a small town - it sounds like a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
But an exclusive News investigation has discovered normally quiet and unassuming small towns such as Huntingdon, Girton, Ely and St Neots are a hotbed of extra terrestrial activity.
Ten UFOs have been reported in Mid-Anglia in the past three years according to the Ministry of Defence, which revealed the figures after the News made a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
But is this an invasion of little green men or a figment of fertile imaginations?
Four lights, one brighter than the others, seen in the skies over Ely in February last year could be a signal from extraterrestrials that has travelled millions of lightyears to get here using physics we do not yet understand.
Or it could be a plane.
UFO sightings in the last three years in Mid Anglia:
- February 19, 2003 6.30pm Huntingdon: A shooting star falling to the ground.
- April 11, 2003 10.21pm Stansted Airport: A ball of fire, very bright, with no colour.
- June 14, 2003 6.00am Girton: Small circular object. Blue and white, translucent.
- January 9, 2004 10.30pm Thaxted: Strange light in the sky.
- February 8, 2004 9.45pm Ely: Four lights, one brighter than the others, sometimes fading.
- April 9, 2004 5.57pm Greater Chesterford: 60ft long symmetrical object.
- February 11, 2005 Huntingdon: The witness just said that it was a "UFO".
- June 4, 2005 12.30am St Neots: The object looked like a dim red light.
- June 8, 2005 4.45pm St Neots: The object looked like a rod that was silvery/grey.
The British UFO Research Association (BUFORA) has investigated reports of flying saucers, abduction, crop circles and all things alien since 1964. Robert Rosamond, the group's chairman, said most sightings can be rationally explained.
"Some are everyday like aircraft, military or civilian, or astronomical phenomena like shooting stars," he said.
"And they can be very rare like geological glowing balls of light. All these can be mistaken by people for UFOs. We find that 95 per cent of all reports can be explained."
Cambridgeshire seems to be a highway to the restaurant at the end of universe in the past 20 years, if reports are to be believed.
Teenager Jamie Wilks said he saw a strange craft defy the laws of gravity in Vinery Road at 10.30pm in August 1994.
The 14-year-old and his friends claimed they saw "strange pin-pricks" zipping backwards and forwards in the sky, followed by what looked like some sort of craft emerging from behind a cloud.
"I'm convinced it wasn't a plane," said Jamie. "Planes don't move like it was moving. It was defying the laws of physics."
Leslie Woodbridge was convinced he saw an alien craft while driving across the Fens near Ely early one morning in November 1987.
"I thought it was an aircraft, but its shape, speed and colour soon convinced me it was something far more strange," he said.
"I wasn't dreaming. It was incredible - the most fascinating thing I've seen in my life."
Mr Rosamond says BUFORA tried to be as scientific as possible while investigating possible UFOs.
"There are a few people who will hound you out a room if you say a sighting might not be UFO but we tried to be as objective as possible," he insists.
"We are neither pro-UFO nor anti-UFO. We look at each case individually and we try to look at the broad aspects of the phenomenon."
"Ufology", as it has been dubbed, takes in many other subjects, such as psychology, the sciences and astronomy, adds Mr Rosamond.
"We have all had individual cases where there is no obvious rational explanation but they are very rare. We never close a case and as we learn more it is possible phenomena we don't understand now can be explained later," he said.
Hollywood has also played its part. BUFORA files from the 1980s are bulging following the release of Stephen Spielberg's 1977 blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind and his later hit ET, says Mr Rosamond.
"We have files going back to 1924, and the stereotype image of grey aliens you can see on everything from the bottom of skateboards to TV commercials came from the US. Prior to that there was nothing in the UK," he adds.
Since Roswell, when an alien craft allegedly crashed in New Mexico in 1947, reports of UFOs grew but over the past 15-years interest in little green men has died and sightings have dwindled.
Mr Rosamond says: "We are keeping an open mind. We will keep searching for answers."
An Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "A combination of civil and military radar installations provide a continuous real-time 'picture' of UK airspace.
"Any threat to the UK Air Defence Region would be handled in the light of the particular circumstances at the time (it might, if deemed appropriate, involve the scrambling or diversion of air defence aircraft).
"Reports provided to us of 'UFO' sightings are examined within this department, but consultation with air defence staff is considered only where there is sufficient evidence to suggest a breach of UK air space.
"The vast majority of reports we receive are very sketchy and vague. Only a handful of reports in recent years have warranted further investigation and none revealed any evidence of a threat.
"The MoD does not have any expertise or role in respect of 'UFO/flying saucer' matters or to the question of the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial lifeforms.
"We remain totally open-minded, but to date we know of no evidence which substantiates the existence of these alleged phenomena."
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SPX
Nov 10, 2005
Winston-Salem NC - At a time when oil prices are reaching record highs and people are bracing for winter heating bills, researchers at Wake Forest University's Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials have made significant strides in improving the efficiency of organic or flexible solar cells.
Traditional silicon solar panels are heavy and bulky and convert about 20 percent of the light that hits them to useful electrical power. For years, researchers have worked to create flexible, or "conformal," organic solar cells that can be wrapped around surfaces, rolled up or even painted onto structures, but the best scientists have been able to do is about 3 percent efficiency, until now.
Researchers at Wake Forest, with the help of researchers at New Mexico State University, have achieved an efficiency rate for organic solar cells of almost 6 percent. In order to be considered a viable technology, the solar cells must be able to convert about 10 percent of the energy in sunlight to electricity. Wake Forest researchers hope to reach 10 percent by October 2006, said David Carroll, director of the nanotechnology center at Wake Forest.
"The consumer market would be really open to having these conformal systems if you could, for instance, roll them up and put them away," said Carroll, who is also an associate professor in Wake Forest's physics department. "Imagine a group of hikers with a tent that when you unrolled the tent and put it up, it could generate its own power. Imagine if the paint on your car that is getting hot in the sun was instead converting part of that heat to recharge your battery."
Carroll said flexible, organic solar cells also offer several possibilities for military use.
"The military would obviously want something like that because you could only put maybe tens of those big solar panels on a transport, but you could put hundreds of ultra-thin flexible ones on a transport and supply half the army," he said.
Most experts have estimated that flexible, solar cell technology for consumers was about a decade away, but Carroll said the new breakthrough at Wake Forest and NMSU means that consumers could be using this technology in the next five years.
Using a set of polymer coatings, researchers at Wake Forest constructed a nanophase within the polymer called a "mesostructure." The "mesostructure" changes the properties of the plastic and makes it better for collecting light. The researchers also removed the current from the polymer coating, Carroll said.
A test system at Wake Forest's nanotechnology center was used to simulate the sun, Carroll said, and the simulated spectrum was precisely measured and shot onto the organic solar cell, which appeared as a thin coat of paint. Devices at the center have registered almost 6 percent efficiency.
This breakthrough was announced in October at the Santa Fe Workshop on Nanoengineered Materials and Macro-Molecular Technologies, which was sponsored by Wake Forest's nanotechnology center.
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On the fourth
anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk
announced the availability of her latest book:
In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books
have sought to explore the truth behind the official
version of events that day - yet to date, none of
these publications has provided a satisfactory answer
as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately
responsible for carrying them out.
Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura
Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of
the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and
ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks
played out.
9/11: The Ultimate
Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September
11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered
the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been
many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed
and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless
individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative
aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as
a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to
keep us confused and distracted to the reality of
the man behind the curtain.
Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk
eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear
evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural
cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity
to the brink of destruction in the present day.
For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core
of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to
be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation
that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover
their tracks, 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE
definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's
true implications are for the future of mankind.
Published by Red Pill Press
Order the book today at our bookstore. |
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who wish to know more about who we are and what we do may visit
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Fair Use Policy Contact Webmaster at signs-of-the-times.org Cassiopaean materials Copyright ©1994-2014 Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. All rights reserved. "Cassiopaea, Cassiopaean, Cassiopaeans," is a registered trademark of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk. Letters addressed to Cassiopaea, Quantum Future School, Ark or Laura, become the property of Arkadiusz Jadczyk and Laura Knight-Jadczyk Republication and re-dissemination of our copyrighted material in any manner is expressly prohibited without prior written consent.
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