Souljah

"We" have moved..

2007-02-01T15:04:00.000-05:00

For newer information, click here. For even newer information, click here (my last Blogger hosted blog).

My current blog is here. I think you will find that each hosts information relevant to our current situation, economically, politically, socially, and ecologically.

Thanks for visiting. This is the last post here. Eric out..

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2006-10-16T18:00:00.000-04:00

FINAL POST TO THIS BLOG

2006-10-12T11:58:00.000-04:00

It is possible that I get a chance, at some point, to continue my research. Should that ever manifest, it will be posted at my OTHER blog. This particular one has served its purpose and will stand as a relic.

It might be a week or it might be three months, but hopefully new items related to my research on the remote piloting attack on the World Trade Center will be posted here. That blog archives items that are not at this one and I hope you will peruse them.

Please bookmark it and please don't give up on it, or me. I have been through a whole hell of a lot more in the past five years than a little electronic disruption over my unwillingness to submit to the Lie. They haven't stopped me.

I would like to thank the folks at What Really Happened as well as Jeff Rense. Veterans for 9/11 Truth, by the way, is equally deserving of thanks and their site deserves a good, thorough looking at.

Resistance is fertile!

Please see EXPOSED: VIDEO COURT TESTIMONY - PROGRAMMER WAS HIRED TO WRITE VOTE-RIGGING SOFTWARE!

Interesting Visitors to this Site

2006-10-11T15:31:00.000-04:00

You know, I don't even need to make another post. You can visit my tracker anytime you want to (bottom of the page) and just see who is interested in what I have put up. Some of these outfits are giving themselves away, spelling it out for you better than I ever could! YOU GUYS WAGED A WAR ON DISSENT, ON THE POOR, AND ON THE TRUTH SO YOU GUYS CAN SUFFER!

KSA's Internet Service Provider - Quwayzah, Makkah: Saudi Arabia (wc-02.sps.net.sa) - 212.11.191.18 - linked here from an item I posted on an anonymous browser and given how it is supposed to work, it could be false data that is being provided to my tracker...

CNCGROUP Beijing province network - Beijing, China (go to search.blogger.com and look up CNCGROUP sometime)

Lockheed-Martin Corporation - Denver, CO

HQ, 5th Signal Command - ce2.stuttgart.army.mil - IP Address 139.139.33.12 - Armed Forces Europe, Middle East, & Canada

STARTING TO GET A LOT OF HITS FROM CONNECTICUT - ORIGINAL HOME OF THE BUSH FAMILY AND LOCATION OF RESIDENTIAL DISTRICTS OF MANY ELITES..

Hughes Network Systems

KNOBBE MARTENS OLSON & BEAR - specializing in intellectual property law..you are wasting your time guys - I haven't made a dime off of this...

Is someone looking up my military records? They are kept here: National Archives and Records Administration - workstation178-194.nara.gov - 207.245.178.194

ANY hit out of Fairfax, VA is noteworthy: ip72-196-221-214.dc.dc.cox.net - 72.196.221.214 - Cox Communications

Organization: Adelphia - 68.235.246.79 - Lake Worth, Florida (fell under investigation by the SEC in the wake of WorldCom, Enron, and Global Crossing)

Munitions System Division at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida

UUNET Technologies out of Rochelle, Texas.. check out these items on UUNET's Gubment Hackers - btw, they are a subsidiary of WorldCom and if you follow the dots through Kenneth Lay you will end up at ENRON..Kenneth Lay is dead by the way..

Booz, Allen, and Hamilton - IP Address 156.80.49.153 McLean, VA

LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES - IP Address 135.245.8.36

Defense Contract Management Agency - LAX.dcmdw.dcma.mil (responsible for oversight of defense contractors - like Halliburton and Brown & Root) - this hit was out of LAX - Los Angeles

LOTS OF HITS OUT OF MIAMI

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

EXCALIBUR SYSTEMS - specializing in avionics (aviation electronics) with a hand in unmanned aerial vehicles - check out this site if you dare - israeli government site mentioning excalibur

Check out this Googlemap [warning: Google is Big Brother] search for uav,"global hawk","hughes electronics"

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Advanced Computer Concepts (contractor similar to Mitretek) - Washington, D.C. - lots of offices out of Arlington, VA (D.C.) and Houston, TX..several in Denver area (not far from NORAD) - apparently, the National Heritage Foundation (privatization think tank - look up Milton Friedman and his CFR links some time) has as a member, a former five year head of Advanced Computer Concepts..Julie L. Houk - they don't just specialize in defense but also:

Tank Gauging Suppliers & Ma...
... Texas, USA AC2, Inc., also known as Advanced Computer Concepts provides automation solutions to the oil & gas i More... www.ac2.net. Saab Tank Control ...
processregister.com

Hubble Space Telescope STIS...
... AH(; Advanced Computer Concepts, Inc., Code 681, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771; .), AI(; Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin ...
harvard.edu

On-Orbit Performance of STI...
... Advanced Computer Concepts, Inc., NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics, Code 681, Greenbelt, MD 20771 ...
uchicago.edu

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Travis Correll and Company (implicated in banking scams involving dummie religious charities - so often in the past this Bush/5th Column gang has used bank scams to fund terror and now someone that is part of this "company" that is so accused is interested in MY BLOG?)

AT&T Global Network Services Japan LLC - out of NEW ZEALAND?

HQ Global Workplaces - (had an office in WTC) Irving, TX

AMOCO Corporation out of Houston, Texas - like the Bush Gang

SITA-Societe Internationale de Telecommunications (spoof - this visitor is a hacker or a spook) - IP Address: 57.80.136.6

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A hit from Norway: Telenor Business Solutions AS (just happen to have one of their few U.S. offices in Houston)

Project Intelligence
Organization: TELENOR BUSINESS SOLUTIONS AS. Organisation:, TELENOR BUSINESS SOLUTIONS AS. Type:, Unknown. Country:, NORWAY. Region:, NORGE. City:, Unknown ...pi.ijs.si/pibrain.exe?Cm=Org&Org=TELENOR+BUSINESS+SOLUTIONS+AS - 4k - Cached - Similar pages

US Forest Service office in Arizona

United States Army Corps of Engineers - gnwp91h.nwp.usace.army.mil

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State of Idaho - someone in the gubment in Boise ...could be good...could be bad...

It's nice to see that this information has made it to a user at Tucson's public library... after all, all information SHOULD BE FREE

LOTS OF HITS OUT OF TEXAS AND NEAR D.C. INCLUDING MARYLAND AND FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA...

Apparently, this blog's url is being passed around to employees of Bloomberg Financial Market, as well.

BY REGION:

United States 10308 78.33%
Canada 1114 8.47%
United Kingdom 412 3.13%
Australia 272 2.07%
Germany 100 0.76%
Netherlands 75 0.57%
New Zealand 71 0.54%
France 57 0.43%
Japan 46 0.35%
Switzerland 33 0.25%
Thailand 32 0.24%
Sweden 31 0.24%
Malaysia 29 0.22%
Ireland 29 0.22%
Mexico 26 0.20%
Spain 25 0.19%
Finland 24 0.18%
Korea, Republic of 24 0.18%
South Africa 23 0.17%
Singapore 22 0.17%
China 20 0.15%

ANOTHER Mitre Corp/9-11 Investigative Journalist BEING TARGETTED

2006-10-11T10:59:00.000-04:00

One 9/11 independent investigator has been bloodied, another driven offline entirely (we'll see if I can sneak in a few more posts), and the former subsequently fired from the American Free Press. What both of these 9/11 researchers have in common is that they have looked at 9/11 from the Warren Buffet/Mitre Corp./Ptech/Booz-Allen angle.

Bollyn on Mitre Corporation

Why follow a 9/11 lead provided by GW?

State Department, media launch assault on 9/11 dissent

It's been real folks!

I POSTED THIS TO DOZENS OF MAILING LISTS THAT I BELONG TO

The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11

Legislation To Reopen Hearings Into Cointelpro

Refuting the lie, a response to Popular Mechanics: debunking 9/11 myths

Global Hawk, Artificial Intelligence, Boeing, DARPA, and September 11

Indymedia Finally Picks Up the 9/11 Cause

Letter to a Spook

A thinker's guide to conspiracy theories

Big Medicine

It's been real folks!

2006-10-09T16:45:00.000-04:00

Blogger Note: I am no longer referencing Google search links in my work and you will see why if you check the Google information that I have linked to. I DID reference some YahooGroup links as the only places that some things are archived at all. I had no choice. Time, as you will read, is a factor. My net presence is on its way to elimination.

In Bed with the Enemy
by Eric Stewart

Is it just a coincidence that many of the same players that are implicated in the atrocities of 9/11 and everything from the Bay of Pigs to Operation Northwoods to LBJ to the Miami 5 to JFK's assassination to the Venezuelan Coup to Jeb Bush and the election fraud to those mysterious flight schools to to Watergate to Iran-Contra to BCCI all have a concentration of Florida connections? Can you say WACKENHUT? Given Havana's reputation globally seventy five and fifty years ago, wouldn't you say there are some powerful people that probably want Cuba back? Would they be, say, socialists or do you think we are dealing with capitalists. Two things are for sure regarding this and one is that CUBA is not a capitalistic entity. The other is that the anti-Castro gang is the very circle of elites (those with the greatest number of personnel stationed around the world to assassinate, wreak havoc, and blow shit up) that we begin to discern when we follow the Florida connection to the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Let's not forget the fact that documents that had been subpoenaed implicating both Dick Cheney and Sir Alan Greenspan that were being kept "safe" there or that the World Trade Center changed ownership one month before that day. Dare I remind all that John O'Neil, the United States assigned and premier expert on Osama bin Laden, the man assigned by the federal government to track him, was stripped of his FBI post and re-assigned to head security at the WTC ONE MONTH prior?!?

The National Reconaissance Office sent up a satellite on September 8, 2001 and three days later it operated nicely while helping to facilitate the "wargames" that the military was engaged in on 9/11 and all the while we get reports from the U.K.'s online Space News Feed from their weekly edition on the 16th that satellite communications were down all over the planet. I guess the NRO's new baby was somehow immune, OR IT HELPED TO CAUSE IT!

"The devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, New York and the Pentagon have shocked and horrified us all. The attacks also caused disruption for satellite and space companies across the USA.",

Trivia question: WHO was it that was conducting the war games and where was it happening? Did you say USSPACECOM, otherwise known as NORAD? So close!

Who said USSTRATCOM?!? That's right it happened out of Offut Air Force Base! NORAD wasn't involved except for the complicit silence of a few senior officers. It was stood DOWN, remember?

Trivia question: WHO was at Offut AFB that base with a small handful of CEO's from the World Trade Center? That's right! It was Warren Buffet.

WHO did Mitre Corporation (specializing in real time battle command and unmanned aerial vehicles - remote piloting) used to brag having as an investor? Warren Buffet.

WHO was known to be in tight with with a Massachusettes firm called Ptech? Mitre Corporation, that's who. Mitre Corp., as a matter of fact, is the spawn of Lincoln Laboratories at MIT, in Massachusettes.

A charity owned by the CIA-employed actor we call Osama, had as a client, Ptech.

And these ARE actors. They work together getting away with crap right in front of us because modern day spooks don't so much hide behind bushes as they hind behind taboos, playing out a drama scripted at the Council on Foreign Relations designed to shaft us and pit us against each other at the same time and by EACH OTHER I mean HUMANS (reinforcement of the existence of racial tension with disinformation designed to keep people apart).

They've Done it to Me Again
by Eric Stewart

I really thought I had it covered. After years of difficulties of all types, I thought I pretty much knew just how the man might come after me. 'The man' could deposit malicious bugs of various sorts to disrupt me. He could have webmail accounts destroyed as well as mailing lists. He could implement a denial-of-service of sorts or hijack or otherwise disrupt a web page. He could have simply offed me or busted in with some trumped up charges that my dissidence made me an enemy combatant. He could have even embarked on an online smear campaign.

In short, the national security cabal reached into my computer and deliberately deleted only my most important files. The details of this matter I will not be able to divulge for reasons I will also not be able to divulge, in the interest of PERSONAL security.

I had spent much of the past month tracing my way back through the world wide web to find that a majority of the information that I had used, a few years ago, to trace a comprehensive story of treason and conspiracy involving Warren Buffet, Mitre Corporation, Ptech, and Booz, Allen, and Hamilton (later I will cite references although they will be decidedly less in number than if I still had my files) was still to be found. I had looked before but this time I put a whole lot more time into it.

Q: the conspiracy?

A: September 11, 2001

It is not so much that I would have to spend another month re-acquiring this data that drives me to pass on the baton (someone grab it PLEASE) but the very fact that with an undetectable national security trojan at work, apparently, allowing a human being to simply sit and peruse my files and decide which ones live and die, then I have to evaluate a few other things, not the least of which is my personal security.

I cannot stress enough that a wide variety of activism oriented files including numerous relating to 9/11 remain but only the ones pertaining to the deepest culprits are gone. It took a hacker or a spook, if indeed there is any difference any more and probably WAS a spook hacker because of the fact that the person doing the deciding on what lived or died in my research obviously knows a whole hell of a lot more than ninety-percent of 9/11 investigators know. They know about James Woolsey and the NRO.

I have been accused recently of spending less time trying to interfere with the fascist transnational state than I do explaining why I am worthy of the attention of it. I would like to, at this time, address this matter:

In attempting to bring certain realities to the conscious forefront of people's minds, I discovered years ago that there was SOMETHING about my approach and/or the particular information I was putting forth that was ruffling big feathers. I have been told countless times how other people just don't experience things like this, usually as an argument that I, therefore, am suffering from some delusional phenomenon.

To make what is going to be a bit of a story not quite so long, I have had to show, repeatedly and for a long time, just how undeniable the ops directed at me are in order to validate the INFORMATION that I deal with. If you are among those that think I just can't get enough of myself then know that such explanations are not directed at you; they are, in fact, present so that those who do doubt but have an open mind may make up their own minds with an unembellished narrative of the events as they occurred. My posts on this particular matter are a result of a habit developed in the face of years of these arguments. That said, I will move on.

I have been chased offline before. There is much archived online that validates this, in case you think that it is I that is an op or if you think I am merely making it up. This will be my last blog entry. I have not given up on us or on hope. I have done my job, again. This time, I was not able to spend quite so much time doing so but what little time that I did, I think I made a difference. I have given up on having a presence of my own online but it is your turn. If enough of you pick up this ball and run, well, they can't do what they have done to me to a thousand people at a time that have all gone from a low level threat to the national security state, suddenly, to a high level one (wrapping your brain, depending on the individual, around that one may require a temporary suspension of ego).

Should you accept this mission, know that if you spend a month doing what I just did for a month that you, too, may be able to motivate another thousand people. Some of you may become targetted but if a hundred of those thousand are, it will already be too late. The thousand each of the first thousand reached will have become a million. You can help us all reach that critical mass.

Also, the following information bears mentioning:

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which would later become the DEFENSE Advanced Research Projects Agency, developed the internet. It was a DOD project before it was a public forum, which would later be turned over to the private sector for "management." Much of today's intelligence has been outsourced to private outfits and one of the reasons is that the strict standards that have traditionally been applied to government activities are laws that affect only that: the government. Most of these laws are worded that they don't apply to private entities.

This means that this tool that you use to shop, to surf, and to talk with your friends was born and raised in the cold war community.

Some of the following links rest on other links that no longer exist (especially at the Angelfire sites - they link to Memes.org and Indymedia, neither of which carries this information any more). This is where you come in. Simply plug in the terms that you see at these sites and you will find that the truth is still out there.

INTERNET SECURITY (OR THE LACK THEREOF)

Watching What You Say

Hacktivismo Releases Torpark

IMPORTANT - BIG BROTHER ALIVE & WELL AT YAHOO?

Information Warfare on the Internet

Digital Freedom Network

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Electronic Privacy Information Center

Evolution of Spy Tools

Google developing eavesdropping software

The National Security's capabilities EIGHT YEARS AGO were probably a lot higher than we thought, as always

Operation Shamrock

Yahoo!

Google Bad

On the NSA

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

Condoleezza Rice evades charges over 9/11

Booz, Allen, and Hamilton

Operation Two Towers

Falls Church, VA and 9/11

Damning Evidence of Warren Buffet Role in 9/11

Al Qaeda are the U.S. Gov't's Greatest Ally

The Warren Buffet - Mitre Corp. - Chemtrail - 9/11 Connection

The Propaganda Preparation for 9/11

Bush and bin Laden's Shared Political Goals Are Enough To Freak Out Anybody

Does al-Qaeda exist?

Al Qaeda does not exist and never has

Israel 'faked al-Qaeda presence'

State Department, media launch assault on 9/11 dissent

Indymedia Finally Picks Up the 9/11 Cause

Refuting the lie, a response to Popular Mechanics: debunking 9/11 myths

At Least Four of Nineteen Alleged 9/11 Hijackers are Alive

Killtown on Buffet and the Offut AFB Story

Hughes Electronic Corp.

Another Largely Unexplored Vein of 9/11 Research

911 Truth Petition

More on Booz, Allen, and Hamilton (James Woolsey {ex-?-CIA}, by the way sat on the board of Mitre Corporation and currently works for Booz-Allen.)

If you really want to make a difference in the 9/11 Truth Movement see to it that the perpetrators get theirs. See to it that this information (CLICK HERE OR HERE)gets backed up. File: Save As...

MY EXPERIENCES OVER THE PAST 8 YEARS AS AN ACTIVIST

I POSTED THIS TO DOZENS OF MAILING LISTS THAT I BELONG TO

Jan. 25, 2003 - The Day of the Most Serious Death Threat I Received

A Vast Array of Online Problems - Total Information Oppression

On Mike Ruppert

Legislation To Reopen Hearings Into Cointelpro

U.S. Domestic Covert Ops

OTHER IMPORTANT LINKS

IAEA: U.S. Report on Iran 'Dishonest'

"We Are Conducting Military Operations Inside Iran Right Now."

Unpacking the Israeli Lobby’s Arguments

Govt Will Appeal FOIA Ruling on NRO Budget Docs

Bush Claims Right to Lie to American People

Vicious Attacks on Anti-Bush Demonstrators in Portland

Is the October Surprise a Major Escalation in the War for U.S. Global Dominance?

Forest Service Spends Record $1.5 Billion Fighting Wildfires

No Kidding: FDA Approves Adding Virus to Foods

Woodward: Over 800 attacks every week in Iraq

Radar Matrix

Shock & Awe Revisited

Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism

A thinker's guide to conspiracy theories

Urgent Letter from Dennis Kucinich about Bush Administration Plans for a US War vs. Iran

Who the hell is this 'Agent Smiley' guy any way?

Chemtrail Schemes

Wildfire Arsonists Help Logging Industry - Deliberate?

Chemtrails Cause Droughts

Aeronet

Weather Modification

Radar Matrix

Secrecy News

Cigarettes

Electrolysis & Barium

Owning the Weather

Centre for Research on Globalization

Behind the Bushes

Save the Internet

Cyberjournal

Information that Informs

Selected Writings of John Judge

The Grand Chessboard

Keeping the border safe for defense-contractor profits

Third World Traveller

Off the Grid

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor

Progressive Review

Battle for Your Mind

Refuse & Resist

Reclaim your Mind

So your listserv has a troll (or five)...

Bush's Tries to Pardon Self

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial

Fun with Microsoft's Terra Server

Even in Winter, Arctic Ice Melting

Junk Culture Killing Childhood

Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb’

Psychological Operations

...AND YOU'RE BUYING ASPIRIN?

Obedience and Disobedience

Bureaucracy in Action

Undernews

War on Hippies

Creativity and What Blocks It

Deride and Conquer

Ishmael

Tao te Ching

My Old Blog

IN THE FIELD

to the streets

June 1, 1997

Logging causes wild fires

On that HUGE Oregon fire from a couple of years ago

More on arsonists that seem to love timber sales

Why did the Forest Service interfere with efforts to put out that huge AZ fire (the fire that was set by a gov't [BIA] contracted worker)?

ANOTHER "wild" fire that was started by a gov't contracted worker (USFS - Dept. of Agriculture)

Article from a couple of years ago: Officials suspect arson in numerous Western wildfires

Fighting Forests With Fire: A Soldier's Story

Western Fire Ecology Center

Forest Service Spends Record $1.5 Billion Fighting Wildfires

No More Ancient Forest Logging, Anywhere, Anytime

Newest Alternative Energy - Portugal's Wave Power Plant

Get Ready for Freak Weather, World's Polluters Told

Seattle in 1999

Letter to a Spook

Global Crossing

Richard Perle

Worldcom

SI International

SAIC

Micromanaging Shock & Awe to create "Deep Psychological Injury"

Gitmo Prisoners are Enemy Combatants because Northern Alliance Said So

POLICE ATTACK PEACEFUL PROTESTERS - VIDEO [PORTLAND, OR]: Click here to watch video of calm bystanders being pepper sprayed. When deep down you know what you are doing is wrong but you have made a committment to doing it anyway, there is a tendency to want to make witnesses go away. Check it out.

WHEN YOU CAN REACH THE PEOPLE THROUGH THE SAME POWERFUL MEDIUMS THAT THEY ARE EVEN NOW JADED TO, OR SOME MEDIUM MORE POWERFUL THAT IS YET TO BE DISCOVERED, WITH HOW THE POWERS THAT BE (NOT FOR LONG)ARE DRIVING DAGGERS INTO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US AND THAT LIFE IS NOT SOMETHING THAT IS HAPPENING TO THEM, WE WILL BE ON OUR WAY. IF YOU DO NOTHING YOU ARE STILL DOING SOMETHING AND BEING A COCREATOR IN OUR STATE OF AFFAIRS.

In the immortal words of the Cult of the Dead Cow: "Save Yourself. Go outside. Do something!"

Big Medicine

Watching What You Say

2006-10-08T22:20:00.000-04:00

The Nation IS the only publication of much size (that I know of) to tackle this issue with the hard hitting fervor that I attribute to the very mentioning of the company Booz, Allen, and Hamilton. I have added the hyperlinks that you will find embedded in the following text. Where you find hyperlinks assigned to repeating terms, I urge you to check each one out. They are not all the same.

Watching What You Say
by Tim Shorrock

Two months after the New York Times revealed that the Bush Administration ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance of American citizens, only three corporations--AT&T, Sprint and MCI--have been identified by the media as cooperating. If the reports in the Times and other newspapers are true, these companies have allowed the NSA to intercept thousands of telephone calls, fax messages and e-mails without warrants from a special oversight court established by Congress under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some companies, according to the same reports, have given the NSA a direct hookup to their huge databases of communications records. The NSA, using the same supercomputers that analyze foreign communications, sifts through this data for key words and phrases that could indicate communication to or from suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers and then tracks those individuals and their ever-widening circle of associates. "This is the US version of Echelon," says Albert Gidari, a prominent telecommunications attorney in Seattle, referring to a massive eavesdropping program run by the NSA and its English-speaking counterparts that created a huge controversy in Europe in the late 1990s.

So far, a handful of Democratic lawmakers--Representative John Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Senators Edward Kennedy and Russell Feingold--have attempted to obtain information from companies involved in the domestic surveillance program. But they've largely been rebuffed. Further details about the highly classified program are likely to emerge as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pursues a lawsuit, filed January 31, against AT&T for violating privacy laws by giving the NSA direct access to its telephone records database and Internet transaction logs. On February 16 a federal judge gave the Bush Administration until March 8 to turn over a list of internal documents related to two other lawsuits, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seeking an injunction to end the program.

Despite the President's rigorous defense of the program, no company has dared to admit its cooperation publicly. Their reticence is understandable: The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation of the government officials who leaked the NSA story to the Times, and many constitutional scholars and a few lawmakers believe the program is both illegal and unconstitutional. And the companies may be embarrassed at being caught--particularly AT&T, which spent millions advertising its global services during the Winter Olympics. "It's a huge betrayal of the public trust, and they know it," says Bruce Schneier, the founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a California consulting firm.

Corporations have been cooperating with the NSA for half a century. What's different now is that they appear to be helping the NSA deploy its awesome computing and data-mining powers inside the United States in direct contravention of US law, which specifically bans the agency from collecting information from US citizens living inside the United States. "They wouldn't touch US persons before unless they had a FISA warrant," says a former national security official who read NSA intercepts as part of his work for the State Department and the Pentagon.

This is happening at a time when both the military and its spy agencies are more dependent on the private sector than ever before, and an increasing number of companies are involved. In the 1970s, when Congress acted to stop domestic spying programs like Operation Shamrock, in which the NSA monitored overseas telegrams and phone calls, the communications industry was in its infancy. "It was basically Western Union for cables, and AT&T for the telephone," says James Bamford, who revealed the existence of the NSA in his famous book The Puzzle Palace and is a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit. "It's much more complicated now." In fact, today's global telecom market includes dozens of companies that compete with AT&T, Sprint and MCI for telephone and mobile services, as well as scores of Internet service providers like Google, Yahoo! and AOL that offer e-mail, Internet and voice connections to customers around the world. They are served by multinational conglomerates like Apollo, Flag Atlantic and Global Crossing, which own and operate the global system of undersea fiber-optic cables that link the United States to the rest of the world. Any one of them could be among the companies contacted by intelligence officials when President Bush issued his 2002 executive order to obtain surveillance without FISA approval.

Nobody's talking, though. Asked if AT&T, which was recently acquired by SBC Communications, is cooperating with the NSA, AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp said, "We don't comment on national security matters." He referred me to a recent AT&T letter to Representative Conyers, which stated that AT&T "abides by all applicable laws, regulations and statutes in its operations and, in particular, with respect to requests for assistance from governmental authorities." MCI, which was acquired in January by Verizon, and Sprint, which recently merged with Nextel Communications, declined to comment. Attorney Gidari, who has represented Google, T-Mobile, Nextel and Cingular Wireless (now part of AT&T), believes that "some companies, both telecom and Internet," were asked to participate in the NSA program. But he suggests that only a limited number agreed. "The list of those who said no is much longer than most people think," he says.

The NSA, some analysts say, may have sought the assistance of US telecoms because most of the world's cable operators are controlled by foreign corporations. Apollo, for example, is owned by Britain's Cable & Wireless, while Flag Atlantic is owned by the Reliance Group of India. Much of the international "transit traffic" carried by the cable companies flows through the United States (this is particularly true of communications emanating from South America and moving between Asia and Europe). The NSA could get access to this traffic by sending a submarine team to splice the cables in international waters, as the agency once did to the Soviet Union's undersea military cables. But that is an extremely expensive proposition, and politically dicey to boot--which is where the US telecoms come in. "Cooperation with the telcos doesn't make NSA surveillance possible, but it does make it cheaper," says Schneier, the technology consultant.

According to Alan Mauldin, a senior research analyst with TeleGeography Research in Washington, DC, it would be possible for US intelligence operatives to gain access to transit traffic from anywhere in the country with the cooperation of a US company. "You could be inland, at an important city like New York or Washington, DC, where networks interconnect, and you could have the ability to tap into the whole network for not only that city but between that city and the rest of the world," he says. Foreign-owned cable operators, says Gidari, are also required by US law to maintain security offices manned by US citizens, with background checks and security clearances at the landing sites in Oregon, Florida, New Jersey and other states where fiber-optic cables come ashore.

The government has gone to great lengths to insure law-enforcement access to foreign-owned telecom companies. Take the example of Global Crossing, which owns several undersea cable systems and claims to serve more than 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs. Three years ago, as Global Crossing was emerging from one of the largest bankruptcies in US history, it was purchased by ST Telemedia, which is partly owned by the government of Singapore. As part of the US approval process (which occurred at a time when Global Crossing was being advised by Richard Perle, then-chairman of Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board), the company signed an unprecedented Network Security Agreement with the FBI and the Defense Department. Under the agreement, which is on file with the Federal Communications Commission, Global Crossing pledged that "all domestic communications" would pass through a facility "physically located in the United States, from which Electronic Surveillance can be conducted pursuant to lawful US process." (Global Crossing declined to comment.) Legal experts say the wording is significant in the context of the NSA spying flap, but cautioned not to read too much into it. "These agreements are not uncommon in the industry," says James Andrew Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "They provide assurances that US interests won't suffer damage with foreign ownership."

History proves a good guide to how the NSA would go about winning cooperation from a telecom company. When telephone and telegraph companies began assisting the NSA during the 1940s, only one or two executives were in on the secret. That kind of arrangement continued into the 1970s, and is probably how cooperation with the NSA works today, says Kenneth Bass III, a Justice Department official during the Carter Administration. "Once the CEO approved, all the contacts [with the intelligence agencies] would be worked at a lower level," he says. "The telcos have been participating in surveillance activities for decades--pre-FISA, post-FISA--so it's nothing new to them." Bass, who helped craft the FISA law and worked with the NSA to implement it, adds that he "would not be surprised at all" if cooperating executives received from the Bush Administration "the same sort of briefing, but much more detailed and specific than the FISA court got when [the surveillance] was first approved."

For US intelligence officials looking for allies in the industry, AT&T, MCI and Sprint have a lot to offer. In 2002, when the spying program began, AT&T's CEO was C. Michael Armstrong, the former CEO of Hughes Electronic Corp. At the time, Armstrong was also chairman of the Business Roundtable's Security Task Force, where he was instrumental in creating CEO COM LINK, a secure telecommunications system that allows the chief executives of major US corporations to speak directly to senior members of Bush's Cabinet during national emergencies. Randall Stephenson, a former SBC Communications executive who is now AT&T's chief operating officer, is a member of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, a group of executives from the communications and defense industries who advise the President on security issues related to telecom.

Those executives, all of whom hold security clearances, meet at the White House once a year--Vice President Cheney was the speaker at their last meeting--and hold quarterly conference calls with high-ranking officials. (Asked if the NSA surveillance was ever discussed at these sessions, committee spokesman Stephen Barrett said, "We do not participate in intelligence gathering.") AT&T also makes no bones about its national security work. When SBC was preparing to acquire the company last year, the two companies underscored their ties with US intelligence in joint comments to the FCC. "AT&T's support of the intelligence and defense communities includes the performance of various classified contracts," the companies said, pointing out that AT&T "maintains special secure facilities for the performance of classified work and the safeguarding of classified information."

MCI, too, is a major government contractor and was highly valued by Verizon in part because of its work in defense and intelligence. Nicholas Katzenbach, the former US Attorney General who was appointed chairman of MCI's board after the spectacular collapse of its previous owner, WorldCom, reiterated MCI's intelligence connections in a 2003 statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "We are especially proud," he wrote, "of our role in supporting our national-security agencies' infrastructure, and we are gratified by the many positive comments about our service from officials at the US Department of Defense and other national-security agencies." MCI's general counsel--who would presumably have a say in any decision to cooperate with the NSA--is William Barr. He is a former assistant general counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency and served as Attorney General during the Administration of President George H.W. Bush.

Sprint Nextel is top-loaded with executives with long experience in national security and defense. Chairman and CEO Gary Forsee is a member of Bush's telecom council (as is Lawrence Babbio, the vice chairman and president of Verizon). Keith Bane, a company director, recently retired from a twenty-nine-year career with Motorola, which has worked closely with US intelligence for decades. William Conway Jr. and former FCC chairman William Kennard are managing directors of the Carlyle Group, the Washington private equity fund that invests heavily in the military and has extensive contacts in the Bush Administration.

There's another group of companies, largely overlooked, that could also be cooperating with the NSA. These are firms clustered around the Beltway that contract with the agency to provide intelligence analysts, data-mining technologies and equipment used in the NSA's global signals-intelligence operations. The largest of them employ so many former intelligence officials that it's almost impossible to see where the government ends and the private sector begins. Booz Allen Hamilton, the prime contractor for Trailblazer, a huge NSA project updating its surveillance and eavesdropping infrastructure, employs several NSA alumni, including Mike McConnell, its vice president, who retired as NSA director in 1996. (Ralph Shrader, the company's CEO, joined Booz Allen in 1978 after serving in senior positions with Western Union and RCA, both of which cooperated with the NSA on Operation Shamrock.) SI International, a software and systems engineering company with NSA contracts, recently hired Harry Gatanas, the NSA's former director of acquisitions and outsourcing, to oversee its $250-million-a-year business with US intelligence and the Pentagon. Science Applications International Corporation, another big NSA contractor, is run by executives with long histories in military intelligence, including COO Duane Andrews, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence.

Are firms that cooperate with the NSA legally culpable? Bamford, who is not a lawyer but probably knows more about the NSA than any American outside government, says yes. "The FISA law is very clear," he says. "If you don't have a warrant, you're in violation, and the penalty is five years and you can be sued by the aggrieved parties." Kevin Bankston, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, adds that US law "not only prohibits unauthorized wiretapping; it also prohibits unauthorized disclosure or use of illegally wiretapped information. As long as you were doing that, you're potentially liable." Schneier, the technology consultant, harbors no doubts either. "Arguing that this is legal is basically saying we're in a police state."

But Gidari, the Seattle telecom attorney, believes that companies would be insulated from legal challenges if they had assurances from the government that the program was within the law. He also says Congress has passed legislation granting immunity to companies operating under "statutory grants of authority" from the government. "It's not a slamdunk, but it is a good-faith defense," he says. Former Justice Department official Bass agrees but says reliance on oral requests from US officials is another matter: "If they didn't get the type of legal assurances the FISA provides for"--such as a written statement from the Attorney General--"there could be some legal exposure." But a full airing of the legal issues raised by the surveillance program may be a long time coming. "The likelihood of any enforcement absent a change in administration is zero," Bass says.

SOURCE: The Nation

I POSTED THIS TO DOZENS OF MAILING LISTS THAT I BELONG TO

2006-10-08T13:32:00.000-04:00

I have, for years, experienced electronic harrassment targetting my activism that goes above and beyond, at times, what most think is even possible with today's computer technologies. This is why I fully expect to be experiencing more and more now that I have returned to the online activists' cybersphere.

Recently, I returned to Yahoogroups as a means of reaching large amounts of people. I had stayed away from Yahoo for well over two years and during that time, the extent of harrasment was minimal. About a month ago I returned to online activism and for the first time in a couple of years I had online problems. More recently, I rejoined Yahoo and for the first time since I left Yahoo, my email address has been spoofed in attempts to unsubscribe me from various groups - mostly the ones with a large membership. In the past, there have been instances in which various political figures and world and state leaders have been emailed in my name. It was very disconcerting because of the fact that I have no way of knowing what words were ascribed to me.

I am writing this because it is entirely possible that my Yahoo presence disappears and even, my blog. I think my blog is more secure than my other web projects but I could be wrong. In case you haven't pieced this together yet, there is a reason that pro-war, pro-Bush techies have hounded me for YEARS. Do you think it is because I deal in useless information? Logic would suggest exactly the opposite.

Here are some links related to my "claims":

Jan. 25, 2003 - The Day of the Most Serious Death Threat I Received

Who the hell is this 'Agent Smiley' guy any way?

A Google Search Combining the Terms ERIC STEWART and DEATH THREAT

Why follow a 9/11 lead provided by GW?

A Google Search Utilizing the Terms ERIC STEWART and TOTAL INFORMATION OPPRESSION

Links that are less directly related but still so:

Vicious Attacks on Anti-Bush Demonstrators in Portland

Bush Claims Right to Lie to American People

Condoleezza Rice evades charges over 9/11

State Department, media launch assault on 9/11 dissent

Indymedia Finally Picks Up the 9/11 Cause

Legislation To Reopen Hearings Into Cointelpro

Letter to a Spook

On Mike Ruppert

The following is snipped from an older autobiography of mine:

By 1999, I had been involved in a degree of online activism for about two years. I was just becoming aware of the level of online surveillance that occured, managed by the National Security Agency. The full extent of it would not be made plain to me until about three years later but what I had already found out necessitated resistance, I thought.

So we devised a plan to get millions of people, worldwide, to send out emails on October 21, 1999, that would contain a long list of known keywords in the NSA's Echelon dictionary. Echelon monitors phone calls and emails for known keywords and other 'suspect' patterns. If you mention the word 'bomb', for instance, a hundred times in a months, a human will be reading your emails and evaluating you as a potential threat. If you set up a Hotmail account and send an encrypted email, the same day, to Baghdad, a red flag most definitely will go up. I think you get the idea.

The alert we sent out globally managed to get translated into at least seven languages. Very soon, though I had conducted all of this via webmail, I was getting vaguely threatening emails in my home AOL account. I left family, house, and home in order not to endanger them and went underground for a while. I thought that I would be safe. What I would soon find out was that my interests had been recorded as a signature in some surveillance CPU. I was alright for about a week but when I got online on a public computer in Santa Cruz, California and began to merely catch up on news, suddenly a two-year period of intense harrassment would begin.

Jam Echelon Day had targetted the premier surveillance outfit in the world. What had I expected - that they wouldn't find me? We had brought awareness of Echelon from conspiranoia trash to the spotlight of Sixty Minutes. I had personally done an interview with the Village Voice. Yeah, they had figured out that I was Robert Kemp and I was on their shit list.

Today, according to the Patriot Act, such a fight to publicize a lack of American privacy is categorized as terrorism. We knew we would not jam up the computers but we knew that by getting people to participate we would raise awareness.

Over the next two years I would be harrassed and come to know the meaning of hell, at least my own personal one.

[...]

A woman who was a very close friend of mine for over a year, one day, told me she had been assigned to me. With the Aryan overtones that had managed to make their way into my life, I dropped her like a sack of potatoes and have not returned to California since. I went to Boulder, Colorado which turned out, as well, to be a mistake. While California is behavior modification central, Boulder is defense contractor central, where the harrassment is less subtle and more direct.

Here, near the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, near umpteen NRO, NGIA, CIA, NSA, and DOE contractors, I would happen upon a vein of research that would open a Pandora's box of revelations regarding 9-11 (Operation Two Towers) and...here is that "C" word...chemtrails.

[...]

It was at the Boulder RTD bus depot that I would receive the first in-person death threat that I had ever had. An Alabama boy (judging by his drawl) with war written all over him would say these words: "I am going to kill you."

Note: I am still alive, obviously, and I would guess that the intent was as more of a psy-op. Killing me would be better accomplished without a warning. I do not have quite the net presence that I did a couple of years ago so it is entirely possible that I don't quite have the spotlight as fully on my side as I did. The spotlight can be a great protector; when someone in the spotlight gets offed for what they stand for it only serves to validate their message. Unfortunately, this locks a person in a repeating cycle of having to stay in the news in order to survive. We shall see.

IMPORTANT NEWS:

Vicious Attacks on Anti-Bush Demonstrators in Portland

Is the October Surprise a Major Escalation in the War for U.S. Global Dominance?

This email is likely to precipitate a barrage of attacks on my character. I am used to it. It is entirely possible, however, that it happens after my presence has been neutralized, when I am no longer around to defend myself. Be wary of those that do so for they are identifying themselves, for those with eyes to see.

Often, a period of weeks, or even months transpires before this tactic is pursued.

My blogs:

Big Medicine
http://justanotherblowback.blogspot.com/

Souljah
http://to-the-dome.blogspot.com/

Vicious Attacks on Anti-Bush Demonstrators in Portland

2006-10-08T10:55:00.000-04:00

Anyone that doubts that police would initiate a riot simply hasn't seen it happen, as have I, so don't even try to convince me otherwise. See June 1, 1997: My Introduction to Teargas

Vicious Attacks on Anti-Bush Demonstrators in Portland

I have been to many protests, witnessed countless acts of police brutality, but none compare to what I saw today. Bean bag guns, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and billy clubs; all of them used to attack peaceful protestors. Friends of mine were trampled by horses, beaten by billy clubs, and peppersprayed severely. All in an disgusting display of extreme police brutality. My hands are still shaking and my eye still hurts from pepper spray so I will try to write this as best as I can... [read more...]

From the open publishing newswire: This is sick... World Can't Wait in Portland, you are disgusting individuals. I'm honestly still in awe about how people fighting to stop bush could be that backstabbing, that fascist, and I'm sorry, I can't write anymore about this, I am entirely too upset. [read more...]

From the open publishing newswire: It is standard operating procedure for the media to dutifully repeat the claims of the police. Remember that "bottle" in the 2002 Bush protest. Sure, no one actually threw one but the media repeated it for weeks, and never offered a correction nor an apology when the video footage from protesters and police alike contradicted their "reports". I just hope their were some good videographers out today and that we'll see a new round of lawsuits against the city. [read more...]

Pig Riot WCW Congratulates Police Police Horses Trample Girls Arrest Updates: [ 1 2 3 report from an arrestee ] Interfering with Jail Support: [ Channel 6 Sgt. Davis ] RRR: Observations Audio: Rally and Outside Oregonian Pics: Cops Shooting People Corpo Media Colloboration: [ KOIN Oregonian ] NWCRC: Press Release Call the Mayor

Blogger Note: Click here to watch video of calm bystanders being pepper sprayed. When deep down you know what you are doing is wrong but you have made a committment to doing it anyway, there is a tendency to want to make witnesses go away. Check it out.

MIRROR SITE

Also see Seattle in 1999

Indymedia Finally Picks Up the 9/11 Cause

2006-10-08T10:22:00.000-04:00

Five years after 9/11, a large number of protests, screenings, concerts and meetings were held across the US [ New York: 1 2 ; SF Bay Area: 1 2 ; Los Angeles: 1 2 ] to demand the truth about the events of September 11th 2001, the subsequent "War on Terror" and the imperial invasion of key countries in the oil-rich Middle East. In the UK over 100 truth protestors gathered outside the US Embasy in London to oppose the official conspiracy theory [ photos: 1 2 ].

The attacks of September 11th 2001 have been used, on both sides of the Atlantic, to justify a spectrum of attacks on civil liberties and illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The 9/11 Truth Movement fears that, until the lies are exposed, the attack will continue to be used to justify perpetual war and further attacks on dissent and freedom. Post-9/11, steps down the road to a police state in the UK have included terror raids, shoot to kill, detention without trial, torture training, profiling, rendition and a host of other Orwellian "Big Brother" proposals like ID cards.

The 9/11 Truth Movement has received varied responses from Indymedia, ranging from feature articles condemning conspiracy theorists (NYC) to dedicated 9/11 topics and feature articles asking why the network is ignoring the call for a 9.11 investigation (Portland). In the months following the attack UK-IMC carried many articles questioning the official story and analysing what the attacks would mean for the anti-capitalist left (for example: 9/11: A Desperate Provocation By U.S. Capitalism), but in the years following the attack an ad-hoc policy of hiding all articles questioning 9/11 was adopted. This has now changed: the 9/11 Truth Movement is gradually gaining recognition as a legitimate, albeit still controversial, part of the broad global justice movement.
read more

Bush Claims Right to Lie to American People

2006-10-07T23:55:00.000-04:00

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it’s appropriate for the administration to know what reports go to Congress and to review them beforehand.

“There can be a discussion on whether to accept a change or a nuance,” she said. “It could be any number of things.”

The American Bar Association and members of Congress have said Bush uses signing statements excessively as a way to expand his power.

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg said Bush is trying to subvert lawmakers’ ability to accurately monitor activities of the executive branch of government.

“The Homeland Security Department has been setting up watch lists to determine who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed,” said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

He said the Homeland Security Department has the most significant impact on citizens’ privacy of any agency in the federal government.

New ID cards in the works

Homeland Security agencies check airline passengers’ names against terrorist watch lists and detain them if there’s a match. They make sure transportation workers’ backgrounds are investigated. They are working on several kinds of biometric ID cards that millions of people would have to carry.

The department’s privacy office has put the brakes on some initiatives, such as using insecure radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, in travel documents. It also developed privacy policies after an uproar over the disclosure that airlines turned over their passengers’ personal information to the government.

The last privacy report was submitted in February 2005.

Bush’s signing statement Wednesday challenges several other provisions in the Homeland Security spending bill.

Bush, for example, said he’d disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security.”

His rationale was that it “rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office.”

SOURCE: MSNBC

Condoleezza Rice evades charges over 9/11

2006-10-07T21:02:00.000-04:00

"...the time and resources—not to mention prurient interest—that the media has devoted to the exposure of Foley’s emails and instant messages stand in sharp contrast to its virtual silence on the revelations—first reported September 28, the same day that the emails from Foley surfaced on ABC News—in the new book by Bob Woodward, State of Denial."

By Bill Van Auken
7 October 2006

The fixation of both official Washington and the mainstream media on the emails of Congressman Mark Foley (Republican of Florida) and the Republican House leadership’s cover-up of his pursuit of teenage male pages has served to divert public attention from a far more significant cover-up of a far greater crime.

The Foley story has highlighted the official corruption and hypocrisy that characterize the political establishment as a whole in America. The spectacle of a party that has made “family values” its battle cry and sought to exploit homophobia and religious backwardness for political ends being caught up in such a scandal has undoubted popular appeal.

For the Democrats, it provides a useful political club, without compelling this second party of corporate America to advance a single substantive difference with the Republicans on domestic or foreign policy.

But the time and resources—not to mention prurient interest—that the media has devoted to the exposure of Foley’s emails and instant messages stand in sharp contrast to its virtual silence on the revelations—first reported September 28, the same day that the emails from Foley surfaced on ABC News—in the new book by Bob Woodward, State of Denial.

Most damning among them is the revelation that former CIA Director George Tenet and the CIA’s chief of counterterrorism, J. Cofer Black, sought and obtained a July 10, 2001 emergency meeting with Condoleezza Rice to discuss the imminent threat of a major terrorist attack by Al Qaeda on US targets, and were “brushed off” by the then-national security adviser.

In the relevant passage, Woodward writes,

“On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence, showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

“Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away... He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action...”

Woodward writes that Tenet hoped to “shake Rice” and that Black “emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy... They needed to take action that moment—covert, military, whatever—to thwart bin Laden...”

Woodward continues, “Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn’t want to swat at flies...”

The damning implications of this reported conversation are self-evident. The chief adviser on national security to President George W. Bush was given an explicit warning, just two months before the hijacked passenger jets crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, claiming nearly 3,000 lives, and nothing was done.

Black is quoted in the book as saying, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.”

In a subsequent report, the McClatchy Newspapers quoted an official who had helped prepare the briefing describing it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10” in terms of the seriousness of its warning of an imminent attack.

The revelation of this meeting follows the similar exposure, during the hearings held by the 9/11 Commission two years ago, that on August 6, 2001 Bush was given a Presidential Daily Brief (PDA) from the CIA, entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States.” As with the July 10 meeting, the PDA provoked no action by the administration, and Bush remained on vacation for the next three weeks at his Texas ranch.

The Bush administration has unceasingly invoked the events of September 11 as the justification for all of its policies—from wars of aggression abroad to the destruction of basic constitutional and democratic rights at home. Yet the revelations concerning the July 10 meeting only add to the mounting body of evidence that the administration was, at best, criminally negligent in failing to take action to prevent attacks that had been widely predicted or, at worst, directly complicit in allowing them to take place.

More than five years after the attacks, one thing is certain: no one in the US government has ever been held accountable. Even if one takes the official version of what happened on September 11 as good coin, the inescapable conclusion is that it represented the greatest single failure of US intelligence and national security in the country’s history. Yet, not one official in the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon or any other agency suffered so much as a demotion.

Woodward’s book suggests that tensions over who bears the blame for 9/11 are continuing to generate internecine struggles within official Washington, and Tenet is determined not to be made a scapegoat for the administration’s policies. A new book by Ron Suskind, entitled The One Percent Doctrine, quotes Tenet as saying he wished he “could give that damn medal back,” referring to the Medal of Freedom bestowed upon him by Bush when he resigned from the CIA in 2004.

The administration’s reaction to Woodward’s book is every bit as damning as the book’s contents. The White House has sought to discredit the author’s credibility, a difficult task given that the Bush administration had previously turned the veteran Washington Post reporter into a virtual court chronicler, providing him with unprecedented access while he wrote two previous and largely laudatory volumes on Bush: Plan of Attack and Bush at War.

As a measure of its alarm, the administration issued a detailed response to Woodward’s account, posted prominently on the White House web site. The thrust of this attempted refutation was to claim that there had not been a cover-up of the July 10 meeting, and that Rice had responded seriously to Woodward’s claims.

However, after excerpts from the Woodward book were first published, Rice initially feigned ignorance about the conversation with Tenet and Cofer, referring to it as a “supposed meeting,” while adding that it was “incomprehensible” that she would have ignored such warnings. Soon after, the State Department was forced to admit that a review of official records revealed that the encounter had indeed taken place.

As a fallback position, Rice’s spokesman at the State Department, Sean McCormack, declared, “The information presented in this meeting was not new, rather it was a good summary from the threat reporting from the previous several weeks.”

This alibi echoes almost precisely the tack taken in response to the revelations concerning the August 6 presidential brief, which Rice similarly insisted contained nothing new and was “historical” in character. It was only after the administration was compelled to release the document that it became clear it contained a clear and stark warning that Al Qaeda was actively preparing an attack within the US, singling out New York and Washington DC as likely targets.

Before the title of this document was made public, Rice had insisted—as she now claims in relation to the July 10 meeting—that the presidential briefing did not make any warnings of attacks within the United States. She was lying then, and it is clear that she is lying now.

McCormack continued to insist that his boss could not specifically recall the July 10 meeting in which she was told that a massive terrorist attack on the US was imminent.

Rice was not the only one suffering from selective amnesia. Coming to the aid of the beleaguered administration, former Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a statement clearly aimed at discrediting Tenet. “It just occurred to me how disappointing it was that they didn’t come to me with this type of information,” he told the Associated Press October 2. “The FBI is responsible for domestic terrorism.”

But no sooner had Ashcroft made this claim than the State Department revealed that the ex-attorney general had indeed been given the same CIA briefing less than a week after the meeting with Rice. Once again, nothing was done. Actually, one step was taken—Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines.

Woodward’s revelations prompted protests and comments from various members and staff of the September 11 commission. Philip Zelikow, who served as the panel’s executive director, told the press that no witness who testified before the commission had ever mentioned such a meeting, including Tenet and Black, who made both private and public statements to the panel.

“If we had heard something that drew our attention to this meeting, it would have been a huge thing,” he told the New York Times. “Repeatedly Tenet and Black said they could not remember what had transpired in some of those meetings.”

Democratic commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, likewise told the Times that the meeting “was never mentioned to us.” He added, “This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about.”

Subsequently, however, the Washington Post and other sources revealed that Zelikow and Ben-Veniste were both told about the meeting in secret testimony given at CIA headquarters by Tenet, who provided them with a detailed outline of the briefing he had given Rice. Clearly, Tenet wanted to make his warning part of the record.

Zelikow, an administration loyalist and long-time academic colleague of Rice, has since been appointed to a top job at the State Department. No reference to the July 10 meeting ever appeared in the 9/11 commission’s reports.

McClatchy Newspapers has quoted Ben-Veniste as acknowledging that Tenet did give him and Zelikow the Rice briefing in secret testimony, but said that Zelikow would have to answer as to why it was not mentioned in the commission’s report. Zelikow failed to respond to inquiries on this issue.

Several of the commissioners seemed genuinely shocked and outraged that the meeting had been concealed, indicating that they were not informed of Tenet’s secret testimony.

“None of this was shared with us in hours of private interviews, including interviews under oath, nor do we have any paper on this,” said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission and a former member of the House of Representatives from Indiana. “I’m deeply disturbed by this. I’m furious.”

These latest revelations leave not one shred of credibility to the Bush administration’s repeated claims that the 9/11 attacks could not have been anticipated. What has emerged is that not only were they foreseen, but explicit warnings were made that were deliberately rebuffed by the White House. Moreover, the very existence of these warnings was then concealed through an elaborate cover-up that culminated in a white-wash by the 9/11 commission.

The fixation of official Washington with the Foley affair in the context of these revelations constitutes a continuation of the cover-up. The detailed parsing of statements by the Republican leadership as to what they knew about Foley’s sexual behavior and when they knew it stands in sharp contrast to the indifference of the media and politicians of both parties to contradictory statements, evasions and outright lies related to a crime that resulted in the greatest loss of life on American soil since the Civil War.

A crime, moreover, that has served as the pretext for a global eruption of American militarism that has killed and maimed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The evidence points inexorably to one conclusion: The attacks of September 11 were facilitated by powerful elements within the government itself, which engineered a “stand-down” of the US intelligence and security apparatus. That a terrorist attack was coming was known and welcomed by those seeking a casus belli for long-planned wars to secure US hegemony over the strategic oil reserves of the Middle East and Central Asia.

If there is no great impetus to probe these matters, it is because every section of the American political establishment, including the media and the Democratic Party, is so thoroughly implicated.

SOURCE: World Socialist Website

Wall Street's political cash favors Democrats

2006-10-07T18:25:00.000-04:00

By Tim McLaughlin

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Wall Street has shifted its allegiance in the 2006 election cycle by donating more to Democrats than Republicans who have been the investment banks' usual benefactors, U.S. Federal Election Commission data show.

Five leading firms Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bear Stearns Companies Inc.,Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. have contributed $6.2 million so far to candidates before the November elections, with about 52 percent going to Democrats.

"People give ideological money and they give money to people they think are going to win," said Maurice Carroll, director of Quinnipiac University's Polling Institute in Hamden, Connecticut. "It looks like it's going to be a good year for Democrats."

Despite being awash in record profits, Wall Street executives, investment bankers, brokers and traders may be getting weary of Republican control, Carroll said. President Bush's polling numbers are low and growing violence in Iraq also weighs heavy on Republican leadership, he said.

Meredith McGehee, policy director at The Campaign Legal Center, said Wall Street also may be concerned about the U.S. deficit, which has ballooned during the Bush administration.

"The last time the deficit was under control was under the Democrats," McGehee said.

Still, it's unlikely Wall Street would embrace higher taxes, a move some Democrats favor to cut the deficit.

The 2006 election cycle that began Jan. 1, 2005, marks the first time in a dozen years that securities firms' donations have skewed leftward, according to analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks political contributions.

Democrats have received $23.8 million from Wall Street compared to $21.7 million for Republicans. Over the previous five election cycles, Republicans captured 52 to 58 percent of the industry's political donations.

About 80 percent of the contributions from the industry comes from employees. The rest comes from political action committees, which remain loyal to Republicans for lowering tax rates on dividends and capital gains, for example.

LONGTIME TIES TO WASHINGTON

Goldman Sachs, a firm with longtime ties to Washington, has contributed $2.6 million, the most in the industry, through its employees and its political action committee. Democrats have received 60 percent of that money, reflecting a trend that dates to at least 1990.

Morgan Stanley ranks second with $1.6 million in contributions, with 52 percent going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The shift in overall contributions to Democrats reflects allegiance to New York's powerful Democratic senators, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, analysts said. Clinton, seen as a leading candidate for the White House in 2008, is the biggest beneficiary, receiving $1.1 million during the 2006 election cycle.

As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Schumer is using his home field advantage on Wall Street to outflank Republican fund-raisers. The DSCC, which wants to regain control of the senate, has raised $81.3 million compared to $69.2 million by the National Republican Campaign Committee.

For example, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's new chairman and chief executive, gave $25,000 to the DSCC. His predecessor, Henry Paulson, was a major Republican donor while at the firm before becoming Bush's treasury secretary.

RAISING MONEY EASILY

The industry has contributed $6.2 million to the DSCC, compared to only $2.6 million for the Republican's national committee. Schumer might easily raise money on Wall Street because he is a member of the Senate banking committee and chairman of the economic policy subcommittee.

"People from all walks of life -- including those in the finance world -- are tired of the Bush administration's inept management of the government and are looking to the Democrats to restore some accountability to Washington," DSCC spokesman Phil Singer said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee wasn't available for comment.

One of Wall Street's leading political action committees, however, isn't tired of Republican candidates.

The Securities Industry Association, which represents Wall Street in Washington, gives more to Republicans because traditionally they're more likely to support the industry's agenda, such as in 2003 when the maximum tax rate on capital gains and dividends was lowered to 15 percent.

SOURCE: Reuters

Unpacking the Israeli Lobby’s Arguments

2006-10-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

In Defense of Divestment: Unpacking the Israeli Lobby’s Arguments
by Ed Janzen
Canadian Dimension Magazine, September/October 2006 Issue

Not long after CUPE Ontario passed its now-famous Resolution 50 in support of the divestment, boycott and sanctions (DBS) campaign against Israel, the union received a significant letter of solidarity from the Congress of South African Trade Unions. The letter admonished CUPE, “Those supporting the ideology of Zionism and the pro-Israeli lobby will muster their substantial resources against you.”

Muster they did, and for a while CUPE took serious heat — until Israel’s recent bloody invasions of Gaza and Lebanon. Today, the critics of divestment look silly. But everyone knows they’ll be back like bad pennies soon enough. We at CD thought it might be a service to our readers to collect their ritualized arguments in a single article, and shoot them down one by one.

Get ready. It’s pitiful stuff!

1. Divestment singles out democratic Israel while ignoring the many nations that have no respect for human rights.

Darn right we’re singling out Israel — just like we singled out South Africa. If anyone knows how to run an anti-apartheid campaign without choosing a clear objective, please let us know.

Actually, Israel singles out itself — actively and often. Israelis and Israel apologists never hesitate to proclaim how across the whole Middle East Israel is the only democracy (false), the only Middle Eastern country where women can vote (false) and that values human rights (patently absurd!). Jewish citizenship in Israel is widely considered a “birthright” and right-wing religious Israelis (many “secular” Israelis, too) will tell you that Israel’s claim to the land of Palestine stems from God Himself. Clearly, Israelis and their advocates have a pretty high opinion of themselves!

As for Israeli democracy, instead of asking Jewish Israelis about it, ask Palestinian Israelis — about one fifth of Israel’s population. Palestinian citizens of Israel can run for public office — but only if they support Israel’s Jewish “state character.” Jewish Knesset members routinely insult and humiliate Palestinian members — and frequently call for the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens from Israel.

Palestinian Israelis are also denied the lion’s share of social services and property rights. In Israel’s 2002 budget, for example, the housing ministry allocates about $30 per person in Israeli Arab communities over against $3,100 per person in Jewish communities. Another example: Rather than buying land, Israelis lease it from the Jewish National Fund. Jews may “buy” land on 99-year leases; Palestinian Israelis can only get leases of a few years — and in general Palestinians experience a continuous struggle against a regime of permits and licenses that are often next to impossible to obtain.

Related, the United Nations Committee Against Torture has repeatedly condemned Israel for its continued use of torture against Palestinian civilians. Amnesty International notes that, “Israel is the only country on earth where torture and ill treatment are legally sanctioned.” And over 9,000 Palestinians are being held as political prisoners by Israel, including 400 children.

One could go on and on with such examples without even mentioning the millions of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere who are not citizens of Israel. At press time, the kind of Israeli “democracy” available to these Palestinians is visible on the international news pretty much every night.

2. Israel and South Africa are apples and oranges.

No one claims that the situation in Israel is exactly the same as that in South Africa. Indeed, certain former victims of South African apartheid no less distinguished than Bishop Desmond Tutu have suggested that the situation of Palestinians under Israeli occupation is if anything far worse than that of South African Blacks under apartheid.

Further, back when South Africa was a global pariah under general embargo, Israel was one of the South African apartheid regime’s biggest supporters. Israel helped South Africa develop its nuclear program and to circumvent the international embargo.

3. Wouldn’t promoting dialogue be a more productive approach to building peace in the region?

Wouldn’t it? Israel has always tried to paint itself as a benevolent, do-gooder “peace partner” locked into a cycle of failed negotiations with pig-headed, trigger-happy Arabs who “never fail to miss an opportunity” for peace. Yet, a more measured look at the facts will reveal that Israel has never shown interest in diplomacy and negotiations with its Arab neighbours.

Throughout its history Israel has treated the Palestinians with unwavering contempt. Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, proposed solving the “Palestinian problem” by turning Palestinians into “human dust.”

Israel’s unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza last year offers another example of Israeli unwillingness to deal with Arabs. In the words of Dov Weisglass, Ariel Sharon’s senior political advisor: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process … you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem…. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” Do people truly eager to negotiate peace and friendship normally employ terms used in embalming and taxidermy?

At press time, the Israeli forces are out on killing sprees in both Gaza and Lebanon supposedly because of three captured Israeli soldiers. Were Israel truly concerned about recovering its soldiers alive, it could have attempted to negotiate their release. To date, no such move toward dialogue has been attempted.

4. Advocating for divestment and boycott is anti-semitic.

Anti-semitism accusations against critics of Israel are a form of rhetorical shrapnel: they’re ugly, cheap to produce and can knock an opponent’s forces out of play. The shrapnel analogy obtains further: If your opponents are firing it at you, chances are you’re flying near the target. In this calculus, the most educated, informed, eloquent critics of Israel must also be the most virulent, irrational anti-semites.

The problem of anti-semitism is real, but the problem is far more limited in scope than the never-ending fear mongering perpetuated by Israel apologists would allow. Every two or three years, B’nai Brith and the Anti-Defamation League publish reports warning of some “new anti-semitism” in Europe and North America — even as Jews on both continents enjoy greater material wealth, privilege, prestige and social integration relative to most other ethnic groups. “Anti-semitism of the Left” is an even wilder assertion, and those who fling it never seem able to accompany their accusations with explanations. Confronted with the fact that a large fraction of Palestine liberation activists are of Jewish descent, the Israel apologists invented the concept of “self-hating Jews.” It’s anti-semitism for Jews! I told you this was pitiful stuff.

With an arrogant, unilateralist Israel on the rampage, and the world’s most powerful nations unprepared to act, the situation in Palestine isn’t pretty. It therefore falls to us, the people of the world, to compel Israel to walk in accordance with international law and respect for human rights. Through the DBS campaign, we can bring the necessary pressure to bear. With apologies to Margaret Thatcher: There is no alternative.

SOURCE: Canadian Dimension

Get Ready for Freak Weather, World's Polluters Told

2006-10-07T13:06:00.000-04:00

October 05, 2006 — By Catherine Bremer, Reuters

MONTERREY, Mexico — The world's top polluting nations were told Wednesday to prepare for decades of weather turmoil, even if they act now to curb emissions and pursue green energy sources.

Environment and energy ministers meeting in the Mexican city of Monterrey vowed to work faster to control global warming as scientists told them each year wasted in curbing greenhouse gas emissions would cost them dearly.

Yet even if countries froze emission levels tomorrow, the world still faces 30 years of floods, heatwaves, hurricanes and coastal erosion, the British government's chief scientific advisor David King, said.

King - who considers global warming a bigger threat than terrorism - said rich nations must help the developing world prepare for a weather shift that could put millions of lives at risk.

"We've got 30 years of climate change ahead of us even if we stop right now. Were persuading countries they have to adapt to the changes that are ahead of them," King told Reuters at the meeting of top greenhouse gas emitting countries.

"Because we've raised the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere so quickly, the earth's climate system is falling behind. This is way in excess of anything the planet has known, probably for 45 million years," he said.

Among countries who sent ministers to Monterrey were China and India, whose ballooning demand for energy has made them some of the worst polluters after the United States, which pumps out a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases.

The United States, which could face fiercer hurricanes as sea temperatures rise, sent a senior official, but U.S. officials did not brief the press.

Already, a roughly 1 degree Celsius temperature rise over the past century has allowed icy Greenland to start growing barley, and farmers in Spain are battling arid conditions.

"The people in denial now are the equivalent of the Flat Earth Society," British Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks told Reuters in an interview. "Humankind is in a race for life against global warming."

Delegates discussed energy efficiency, conservation and how to fund initiatives like storing the carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants deep underground.

But it is likely to be at least the end of the decade before most projects can get off the ground.

"Time is running out, and the size of the challenge is enormous," Mexican Environment Minister Jose Luis Luege said.

Developing countries at the talks - including South Africa, Brazil and Mexico - were told to adapt for possible floods, droughts, storms and a surge in tropical diseases like malaria.

Source: Environmental News Network

Marine: Gitmo guards bragged of beatings

2006-10-06T18:41:00.000-04:00

By THOMAS WATKINS, Associated Press Writer

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo "told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison," the statement said.

"One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others," but that he was never punished, the statement said. The paralegal was identified in the affidavit as a sergeant working on an unidentified Guantanamo-related case.

The statement was provided to the AP on Thursday night by Lt. Col. Colby Vokey. He is the Marine Corps' defense coordinator for the western United States and based at Camp Pendleton.

A Guantanamo Bay spokesman said the base would cooperate with any Pentagon investigation. A Pentagon spokesman declined immediate comment. A call to the inspector general's office was not immediately returned.

Other guards "also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees" that included hitting them, denying them water and "removing privileges for no reason."

"About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees" and that included "punching in the face," the affidavit said.

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees."

Vokey called for an investigation, saying the abuse alleged in the affidavit "is offensive and violates United States and international law."

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand condemned abuse or harassment of detainees and said he would cooperate fully with the inspector general.

"The mission of the Joint Task Force is the safe and humane care and custody of detained enemy combatants," he said.

Guantanamo was internationally condemned shortly after it opened more than four years ago when pictures captured prisoners kneeling, shackled and being herded into wire cages. That was followed by reports of prisoner abuse, heavy-handed interrogations, hunger strikes and suicides.

Military investigators said in July 2005 they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment of a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo Bay that included forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog.

However, the chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, said "no torture occurred" during the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Last month, U.N. human rights investigators criticized the United States for failing to take steps to close Guantanamo Bay, home to 450 detainees, including 14 terrorist suspects who had been kept in secret CIA prisons around the world.

Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, fewer than a dozen inmates have been charged with crimes.

SOURCE: Associated Press

Newest Alternative Energy - Portugal's Wave Power Plant

2006-10-05T15:08:00.000-04:00

This is quite an amazing breakthrough in power generation. It's safe, easy to deploy, and not harmful to the environment. Hopefully we can see these in north amertica soon.

A Scottish company will deploy sausage-shaped tubes off Portugal to create the world's first commercial wave power plant, providing electricity to 1,500 homes from 2006, a partner in the Scottish firm said on Friday.

Ocean Power Delivery (OPD) will build the wave farm about three miles off Portugal's northern coast, near Povoa de Varzim, OPD's Norwegian backer Norsk Hydro said.

OPD will deliver three wave power generation units with capacity of 2.25 megawatts to Portuguese renewable energy group Enersis for million, but the project could be expanded significantly, Norsk Hydro said.

OPDs Pelamis P-750 wage energy converter is an elongated metal unit that looks like a big semi-submerged sausage, with hinged segments that rock with the sea, up and down and side to side, pumping fluid to hydraulic motors that drive generators.

The power produced by the generators is fed into underwater cables and brought to land.

A letter of intent for a further 30 Pelamis wave machines for a total of 20 megawatts before the end of 2006 was also signed, subject to satisfactory performance by the initial installation, Hydro said.

"If all goes well, many additional sites producing up to a total several hundred MW could be developed along the coast," Norsk Hydro said.

"We see this order as just the first step in developing the Portuguese market, which is anticipated to be worth up to a billion euros over the next 10 years," OPD Managing Director Richard Yemm said in the statement.

OPD is also in talks with Scottish Power, which has shown interest in installing a wave farm in the United Kingdom, Hydro said.

The European Union requires 22 percent of electricity consumption to come from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and wave by 2010. Renewables currently meet about six percent of European demand, Hydro said.

SOURCE: Progressive Review

Drudge Blames Teen for Seducing Foley

2006-10-05T14:22:00.000-04:00

MATT DRUDGE - If anything, these kids are less innocent -- these 16 and 17 year-old beasts . . . and I've seen what they're doing on You Tube and I've seen what they're doing all over the internet -- oh yeah -- you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages, back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on. The kids are trying to get this out of him. We haven't got the whole story on this.

SOURCE: Washington Post

Fox Can't Stop Calling Foley a Dem

2006-10-04T23:05:00.000-04:00

I would like to thank Blue Gal in a Red State for this. Her blog is here

I don't think this is an accident. Fox has labelled Foley a Democrat repeatedly in the past few days. The messed up thing is that many of Fox's viewers really do get all their reality from that station. The people that I know that watch Fox would argue with me to the death that Foley WAS a Democrat, just because Fox said so. Many of these people really do live in such a vacuum and here is a scarier thought: they vote.

More on Fox's Propaganda Ploy

Flashback: It's the 80's and let's pretend you were actually paying attention

Mark Foley and the unmasked Republican Party

Republican Hypocrisy Revealed

A Compendium of Republican Sex Scandals Involving Children

Forest Service Spends Record $1.5 Billion Fighting Wildfires

2006-10-04T13:32:00.000-04:00

October 04, 2006 — By Rebecca Boone, Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho — Wildfires across the country have burned a record number of acres this year, and with the scorched land comes a record bill, a federal official said Tuesday.

The U.S. Forest Service's firefighting efforts for fiscal year 2006, which ended Sept. 30, cost more than $1.5 billion, at least $100 million over budget, said Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary for natural resources and the environment.

To pay for the fires, money was transferred from other programs that had surpluses, including a reforestation program, said Kent Connaughton, the Forest Service comptroller.

The wildfire season is not over yet, but so far more than 15,515 square miles, or 9.93 million acres, have burned in the Lower 48 states, Rey said. That is the most since at least 1960, when the Boise-based National Interagency Fire Center began keeping reliable records.

The previous record was in 2005, when more than 8.6 million acres burned. The average of the past 10 years has been 4.9 million acres.

The 2006 tab compares with $690 million spent in 2005 and $726 million in 2004, Forest Service spokesman Dan Jiron said.

This year, for the first time, the Forest Service had a comptroller overseeing expenses, and fires that reached certain expense levels automatically triggered an independent review, Rey said.

"We're getting better results in terms of cost, as a consequence of making cost efficiency and cost containment something that we spend a lot of time on," he said. "There's a three-way tension: The safety of firefighters, protecting homes and property and not spending a gazillion dollars. I think we've made some strides."

This fire season was exacerbated by seven large-scale dry lightning storms, more than double the normal number, Rey said. Such storms can ignite several thousand small fires, forcing crews to scramble to make sure all are extinguished.

So far this year, 674 homes -- primary residences, not vacation houses -- have burned in wildfires, Rey said. That's a drop from 2002, when roughly 2,000 homes burned, and 2003, when about 3,000 burned.

That indicates property owners and federal and state entities are making progress in reducing fuels around homes and developing wildland protection plans, he said.

President Bush said Tuesday that Congress needs to pass further laws that will provide ways to restore forests once they've been burned and commended the Forest Service for their operational planning.

"I really want to thank the brave firefighters who risk their lives on a daily basis to contain the fires," said Bush, who was in Los Angeles, where a giant wildfire about 50 miles northwest of the city was extinguished Monday, nearly a month after it began.

Environmental News Network

Also see Timber Company Appeals Ruling Restoring Forest Protections

and Western Fire Ecology Center

Man Says He Was Arrested After Criticizing Cheney

2006-10-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

By P. Solomon Banda, AP Writer
Read Howards' Complaint (pdf)

(AP) BEAVER CREEK, Colo. A Colorado man filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday accusing a Secret Service agent of arresting him on trumped-up allegations of assaulting Vice President Dick Cheney after he told Cheney the administration's policies in Iraq were "reprehensible."

Steven Howards' lawsuit said the agent arrested him in June a few minutes after he had confronted Cheney in the resort town of Beaver Creek, where Cheney was attending a conference.

The lawsuit said Howards saw Cheney in a crowd, shaking hands and posing for photos. He said he walked to within 3 feet of Cheney and told him, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," and then left.

In an interview, Howards said he may have touched Cheney on the elbow or shoulder, like others in the crowd.

Minutes later, when he was returning through the area with another son, Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr. questioned him, handcuffed him and told him he would be charged with assaulting the vice president, the lawsuit said.

When Reichle took him to the Eagle County jail, however, he told deputies to issue him a summons on a state charge of harassment, the suit said. Howards said the harassment charge was dropped less than a month later at the request of the district attorney.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren in Washington declined comment, saying agency officials had not seen the suit. Lon Garner, special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Denver, said Reichle would not be made available for an interview. A White House spokesman referred questions to the Secret Service.

In the lawsuit, Howards, 54, claims Reichle violated his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure.

"It's such a blatant attempt to suppress a right to free speech. Such a traumatic event for my son, I couldn't just let it pass," Howards told the AP Monday night, before the suit was filed.

Howards accused Reichle of "badgering" him about whether he assaulted or touched Cheney.

Howards said he told Reichle, "If Mr. Cheney wants to be shielded from criticism he should avoid public places. I closed by telling him, `If exercising my constitutionally protected rights to free speech is against the law, you should arrest me."'

Howards said he was assertive with Reichle but not argumentative.

The lawsuit asks for money for attorneys fees and damages that include loss of enjoyment of life.

It was at least the second lawsuit filed in Colorado by people who say they were singled out for criticizing the administration. Three people who were kicked out of President Bush's town hall meeting in Denver in March 2003 alleged they were told to leave because of a "No blood for oil" bumper sticker on their car.

SOURCE: Spontaneous Arising

Washington Post Hires Top Bush Speechwriter

2006-10-04T11:58:00.000-04:00

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Smoking Gun: Washington Post Hires Top Bush Speechwriter
by Jeff Cohen

Few media marching bands have beat the Iraq war drums more frantically and with more influence than the editorial pages of the Washington Post. On Monday, the Post announced the hiring of another drummer boy, one who played a key propaganda role inside the Bush White House.

The Post editorial pages were an echo chamber for pre-war distortions and paranoid fantasies originated by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG). So it’s grotesquely fitting that the Post would hire as an op-ed columnist, Michael Gerson, Bush’s top speechwriter who – as a key wordsmith within WHIG – helped originate the flights of rhetorical fancy that so dazzled the Post’s laptop warriors. Gerson spun the deceit; the Post peddled it. Now they’ll operate under the same roof.

In explaining why the Post was adding yet another pro-war voice to its op-ed page, hawkish editorial page editor Fred Hiatt described Gerson as being “a different kind of conservative from the other conservatives on our page.” Thanks, Fred, for all the diversity.

In their new book “Hubris,” Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that it was Gerson who –

* inserted references to the yellowcake-from-Niger tale into various Bush speeches, including the 2003 State of the Union.

* helped prepare Secretary of State Colin Powell’s dishonest and bellicose speech to the U.N.

* conceived Team Bush’s trademark paranoid “soundbite” warning of a potential Iraq nuclear program: “The first sign of a smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.”

According to “Hubris,” the “mushroom cloud” line was intended for a Bush speech, but was too good to hold. It was first deployed in September 2002 by anonymous White House aides in a New York Times front-page scare story (by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon) warning that Iraq had “stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons.” On CNN that day, Condoleezza Rice declared: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” And Gerson’s line became a standard and manipulative war cry from then on.

Speechwriter Gerson should be right at home at the Washington Post. From September 2002 through February 2003, the Post editorialized 26 times in favor of the Iraq war. As Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman have documented, its op-ed page was also dominated by hawks screaming for war. War skeptics were denounced as “fools” and “liars” and worse – and the skeptics were not given space to respond.

As Gerson’s “smoking gun/mushroom cloud” soundbite took flight, Al Gore made an Iraq speech questioning “preemptive war.” On the Post op-ed page, Gore’s speech was “dishonest, cheap, low” and “wretched…vile…contemptible.” And that was all in one column. Another called it “a series of cheap shots.”

By contrast, the error-filled Colin Powell speech at the U.N. (that Gerson worked on) was hailed at the Post with almost Pravda-like unanimity. An editorial – headlined “Irrefutable” – declared: “It is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.” And the Post op-ed page from right to “left” embraced Powell’s speech.

“When reading the Post’s pre-war coverage,” summarized journalist Robert Parry, “there was a whiff of totalitarianism in which dissidents never get space to express their opinions but are still excoriated by the official media. When the state speaks, however, the same media hails the government’s brilliance.”

Gerson and his new colleagues at the Post worked together to help bring us one of the worst foreign policy debacles in our nation’s history. Newspapers are supposed to hold discredited public officials to account. The Post is hiring him.

It’s partly because of the Post’s inexcusable coverage before the war, and its ongoing pro-war editorial bias, that I will be joining Scott Ritter, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and other activists at Camp Democracy in Washington D.C. this Tuesday, Sept. 19, for a public forum on the media’s role in Iraq and Iran.

There will also be a protest march to the Washington Post headquarters that evening. With the newspaper’s hiring of Gerson, I know an appropriate slogan: “Two, four, six, eight/Separate the press and state.”

Jeff Cohen is the founder of FAIR, and author of the new book: “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media”

Source: Common Dreams

Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean

2006-10-04T11:51:00.000-04:00

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
October 1, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca

Editor's note We bring to the attention of our readers, this carefully documented review of the ongoing naval build-up and deployment of coalition forces in the Middle East. The article examines the geopolitics behind this military deployment and its relationship to "the Battle for Oil". The structure of military alliances is crucial to an understanding of these war preparations. The naval deployment is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean. Both Israel and NATO are slated to play a major role in the US-led war. The militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel. Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade of a UN peace-keeping mission pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1701. In this context, the war on Lebanon must be viewed as a stage of a the broader US sponsored military road-map. The naval armada in the Persian Gulf is largely under US command, with the participation of Canada. The naval buildup is coordinated with the planned air attacks. The planning of the aerial bombings of Iran started in mid-2004, pursuant to the formulation of CONPLAN 8022 in early 2004. In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022. These war plans must be taken very seriously. The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity. In the weeks ahead, it is essential that citizens' movements around the world act consistently to confront their respective governments and reverse and dismantle this military agenda. What is needed is to break the conspiracy of silence, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State. It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war. Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 1 October 2006

For an enormous amount of reliable documentation on this matter (and the rest of this article), visit the: Centre for Research on Globalization

No More Ancient Forest Logging, Anywhere, Anytime

2006-10-03T19:26:00.000-04:00

September 29, 2006

There exists a terrible, painful split within the forest conservation movement between those working to preserve with full protection [search] all the world's remaining ancient forests, and those that believe that certified industrial forest logging [search] of the world's last forest wildlands adequately protects these resources and their ecological values. The latter have worked for two decades and have failed both to demonstrate ecologically sustainable forest management on any scale, and to acknowledge and adapt to new science that indicates selective logging irreversibly diminishes biodiversity and ecosystems, including ancient forests' ability to hold carbon.

The same groups that greenwashed the sell-out of British Columbia's ancient temperate rainforests to logging interests (most major environmental groups and foundations) are at it again - this time working with a voracious largely clearcut logging industry in Canada's boreal forests. These formerly massive forests are being devastated by intensive logging that is both unnecessary - for throw away products like Kleenex tissues - and is ecologically devastating. The forest sell-outs are wheeling and dealing with big foundation money to legitimize industrial ancient forest logging. The forest conservation movement must not allow a deal in Canada's boreal forests, Africa or anywhere else that justifies continued diminishment of these critical global ecological systems. The answer is to end ancient forest logging, not try to reform it yet again.

Be warned, any deal with industry that allows continued industrial forestry for token protected areas in Canada will be vociferously blocked by bright green activists. Ending all ancient forest logging anywhere and anytime it is occurring is a global imperative if the Earth System (Gaia if you will) is to continue to function. Too many large, contiguous old-growth forest blocks have been lost already to maintain an operable biosphere. All that remain must be protected, and secondary forests restored and allowed to again become old-growth.

What is needed is more programs that pay for forests to not be industrially developed - that offset the opportunity costs to local governments and peoples for deciding to maintain their large natural forest ecosystems in an intact condition. We need to follow the example reported on in Bolivia and pay for the biodiversity and ecosystem benefits including carbon sequestration these vital Earth organs provide.

Those working to "certify" desecration of the world's ancient forests as being "environmentally friendly" do not understand the magnitude of the threats posed by both forest loss and diminishment, and climate change. The future of the Earth and humanity is at stake. Saving the Earth and humanity requires among other things large contiguous forest ecosystems. And we must be willing to pay for it. Ecological Internet will maintain its campaign to confront those - even our mislead environmental brethren - that carry out or are greenwashing ancient forest logging. This is the last warning, expect a major campaign soon.

SOURCE: Rainforest Conservation Issues

Woodward: Over 800 attacks every week in Iraq

2006-10-02T17:06:00.000-04:00

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday September 30, 2006
The Guardian

The Bush administration has misled the American people about the level of violence in Iraq, where there is an attack by insurgent forces every 15 minutes, Bob Woodward, the investigative journalist, said yesterday.

In a new book, State of Denial, Woodward argues that the White House disregarded warnings from advisers in the autumn of 2003 that it needed thousands more troops to put down the insurgency. He says the administration continues to deny the gravity of the situation in Iraq because of Mr Bush's conviction that it was right to go to war.

"It's getting to the point now where there are 800-900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces," Woodward told CBS television in an interview to be aired tomorrow night.

The Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq, presented to Congress and posted on the defence department website on September 1, shows the number of attacks rising to 792 a week in August. However, that figure includes attacks on Iraqi civilians, infrastructure and Iraqi police as well as US and coalition troops. Iraqi civilians suffered the majority of casualties.

Woodward argues the administration routinely glosses over such news from the ground, as well as intelligence predicting further deterioration in Iraq, because they collide with Mr Bush's convictions.

The White House failed to act on a memo from Robert Blackwill, then the senior Iraqi adviser on the National Security Council, calling for 40,000 additional troops in Iraq, he writes. It is equally resistant to intelligence forecasts of worsening violence in the year ahead.

The National Intelligence Estimate, parts of which were released this week by Mr Bush, predicted rising violence in Iraq as the conflict there becomes a "cause célèbre" for the global jihad.

"The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], 'Oh, no, things are going to get better'," Woodward told CBS.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, remained similarly unswayed by mounting evidence that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction, phoning weapons inspectors at 3am to advise on possible locations of chemical warfare sites.

Such criticism is unlikely to dent Mr Bush's confidence in his decision to go to war. In a speech in Washington yesterday, he criticised those who say the war exposed Americans to greater risk of an attack by al-Qaida. "This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them," he said.

But as he tried again to rally Americans, the commander of US forces in the volatile Anbar province was predicting that the insurgency would not end until US forces were gone. "The insurgency's days will eventually come to an end. And they will come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis, who, by definition, will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own," said Colonel Sean MacFarland.

In this, his third book on the administration, Woodward relies on the off-the-record interviews with US officials that have become his trademark. But unlike his earlier chronicles of the White House, Woodward did not have access to Mr Bush or Mr Cheney.

SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited

On Zionism and anti-Semitism

2006-10-02T15:14:00.000-04:00

Regarding the New Fault Line on the Left

The author of the article that prompted this post so demeans people that are experiencing anti-Semitism and very much helps anti-Semitism to thrive, which is why I find it absolutely despicable that he opens his piece with: "There are those who take the question of anti-semitism seriously - and those who do not." It is a textbook example of doublespeak.

How can one disagree with that, after all? He begins his piece with one of the most commonly used catch phrases known and catch phrases, as we all know, usually elicit unexamined thought processes, unconscious and knee-jerk reactions.

Here I supply the link to his piece and below, I tear apart, for those with ears to hear and a mind their own, the very premise that his "critique" rests upon. Here is a snip from said article and my response:

"Here, for example, is Steven Rose: 'Anti-semitism is the cheapest rallying cry of Israel's Zionist apologists and one that I, as one of Jewish ethnicity, find particularly nauseating.'

Well, my colleague at the Open University should get his sick bag ready. First, notice the structure of his criticism. Anti-semitism is a 'rallying cry' - it's a way of mobilising people, it's an instrument. This instrumental conception of the question of anti-Semitism rests on two assumptions: first, that there is nothing in the charge, and second, that those who make it do so in bad faith."

Mr. Rose didn't say that all instances of charges of anti-Semitism were erroneous and he didn't say that all such charges had, as their source, "Israel's Zionist apologists," though Jon Pike attempts to insinuate that such is the case. What he did imply, however, was that we should be wary of anything that normally provokes an unconscious response, like patriotism or any blind acceptance of anything.

Pike has extrapolated Rose's comments in just the way necessary to demean his message and, though he could have been mistaken in so many ways in his interpretation, he is mistaken in just such a way as to imply that those who state that false charges of anti-Semitism demean the actual anti-Semitism that exists are, in fact, being anti-Semitic. A more apt example of circular logic I can't think of. As such, he is screaming to be labelled an Israeli apologist and all I can say about that is that every single Jewish friend I have ever had must be crawling with disgust, being misrepresented to the western public. Some, I KNOW, are not so willing to walk down the street as they were a few years ago and a lot of it has to do with the fact that the "Isreali" bloc is ruthless in its condemnation of reason.

Pike may be merely showing his biases (giving the benefit of the doubt) yet biases can perpetuate tyranny just as silence or ignorance can.

Of course there are plenty of people around screaming about Zionists that are merely latching onto the latest, somewhat politically correct way to express their hate but we ought not to lump a Jewish man into that, especially since his words had to be twisted to do so.

I could extrapolate the author's words to - wait a minute - I have it! He is assuming that this is a Jew being anti-Semitic and it must all be that Jewish self-hate and guilt that white racists always talk about. That's it!

But of course, that's not it at all. You see, just because one can rationalize something does not mean that one is being rational.

I, for one, do not confuse religion with race. What more could a Nazi ask for, after all. Jews are being misrepresented by Zionists and the hostility toward Jews continues to grow.

Deja vu!

Postscript: I only got as far as the first three paragraphs of Pike's piece when I wrote this response. Upon finishing, I went back and scanned through only to find out that he directly addresses charges that he and others fake concern with anti-Semitism in order to defend Israel. Of course the author could see this charge coming. He knew exactly what he was doing and as is illustrated by my having noticed immediately what he was up to (I am no rocket scientist), so do others.

Everyone needs to get used to the idea, and I mean everyone, that people of their own race are entirely capable of selling them out. This is what makes the threat of these times cross all racial boundaries. Oppressors come in all colors as do the oppressed.

RELATED MATERIAL

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American Zionism

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Israeli Zionism

Revoke ExxonMobile's Permission to Kill Polar Bears

2006-10-01T13:48:00.000-04:00

Petition Target: Mr. John Bridges, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

On September 20, the Fish and Wildlife service gave ExxonMobile the right to kill polar bears as part of their drilling/oil exploration in Alaska! Not only will drilling disturb polar bear habitat and scare polar bear mothers into abandoning their cubs, but now, the oil giant has been given permission to KILL them OUTRIGHT.

We the undersigned DEMAND that Congress and the Fish and Wildlife Service revoke ExxonMobile's right to "take polar bears incidental to oil and gas industry exploration activities in the Beaufort Sea and adjacent northern coast of Alaska." We must be thoughtful in this dangerous time to protect our future.

The United States is PROUD of its rich and glorious wildlife population and our abundant wilderness. Let us stay proud and defend our land -- leave it intact. Once our wild heritage is destroyed, we will have nothing left to protect.

For the official transcript of the Fish and Wildife Service's death sentence to polar bears, click here.

PETITION HERE

I guess a lot of Exxon-Mobile executives want to have nice white fluffy polar bear rugs in their vacation homes, before polar bears go entirely extinct!

PLEASE SIGN AND PASS ON TO YOUR FRIENDS AND GROUPS.

Source: World-News

Brother-in-law of new Saddam judge slain

2006-09-29T21:30:00.000-04:00

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A relative of the new presiding judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial was shot and killed in Baghdad on Friday, an attack condemned by the country's top prosecutor as an attempt to force the trial to be moved out of Iraq.

On Friday night, the government imposed a complete curfew for the capital effective immediately through Sunday morning, the prime minister's office said. It did not give a reason for the ban on all vehicles and pedestrians.

A source at the Interior Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk with the press, said intelligence information on the security situation made a curfew necessary. He refused to give further details.

In the past, such wide-ranging curfews have been imposed following intelligence information that car or suicide bombs were planned in Baghdad. The U.S. military has forecast a surge in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which began on Monday. A senior U.S. military official said the first week of Ramadan was the worst for suicide bombings since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Prosecutor General Jaafar al-Mousawi said the attack on a car carrying the judge's brother-in-law and nephew, the latest in a string of violence linked to proceedings against the former Iraqi leader, would not stop the court from moving ahead. During Saddam's first trial, three defense lawyers were killed, and a fourth fled the country in fear of his life.

"The terrorists and criminals are aiming through this act to stop the justice and the democratic process in Iraq," al-Mousawi told The Associated Press. "Killing a lawyer or a judge or their relatives is an attempt to prevent the trial from continuing, and then to transfer it abroad, but that goal will never be achieved."

Saddam's defense team has wanted to move the trial to another country in the belief that the current judges are biased against their client and that he is not receiving a fair trial. However, al-Mousawi did not elaborate on why those who attacked the judge's relatives might want the trial moved.

It was unclear whether Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa's relatives were targeted because of his role in the trial, or if the shooting was just another of the sectarian attacks that have been plaguing Baghdad.

The judge's brother-in-law, Kadhim Abdul-Hussein, was one of at least six people who died in violent attacks in Iraq on Friday.

Abdul-Hussein was driving through the predominantly Sunni neighborhood Ghazaliyah neighborhood when assailants shot at his car, killing him and wounding his son, Karrar, police 1st Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said.

Al-Khalifa, a Shiite, took over Saddam's trial last week. He had been deputy to the original chief judge, Abdullah al-Amiri, who was removed after being accused of being too soft on Saddam. Among other things, al-Amiri angered Kurdish politicians by declaring in court that Saddam was "not a dictator."

Saddam's nine lawyers walked out of the trial Monday to boycott the proceedings as a protest of al-Amiri's removal. Al-Khalifa later adjourned the trial until Oct. 9, saying he wanted to give the defendants time to persuade their original lawyers to end the boycott, or to confer with new attorneys.

The trial, Saddam's second, began Aug. 21. He and six co-defendants face genocide charges for their roles in a bloody crackdown against Kurdish rebels in the late 1980s. The defendants could face the death penalty if convicted.

With sectarian violence rising during Ramadan, police found the corpses of 14 people who had been tortured in and around Baghdad, all blindfolded with their hands and legs bound — likely victims of the death squads that roam the city.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops raided the home of Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, detaining his guard Khudhir Farhan, al-Dulaimi told the AP. Al-Dulaimi said 10 Humvees circled his western Baghdad home, then troops went through the building with a dog.

"I condemn this act and I demand they free the guard," al-Dulaimi said, adding they had the "illusion ... of the guard's involvement with terrorist activities."

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said he had "no reason to dispute his claims" that U.S. forces raided his house, but that he could not comment further on "our ongoing operational activities."

"They found nothing," al-Dulaimi said.

The commander of U.S. forces in Ramadi, capital of volatile Anbar province, said the insurgency can be beaten but probably not until after U.S. troops leave Iraq.

"An insurgency is a very difficult thing to defeat in a finite period of time. It takes a lot of persistence — perseverance is the actual term that we like to use," Army Col. Sean B. MacFarland, commander of 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, said in a video-teleconference with reporters at the Pentagon.

"Who knows how long this is going to actually last?" he added. "But if we get the level of violence down to a point where the Iraqi security forces are more than capable of dealing with it, the insurgency's days will eventually come to an end. And they will come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis, who, by definition, will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own."

In Ramadi, the insurgency has become so entrenched and feared by residents that the city has no Iraqi mayor. Recently, however, the tide has begun to turn against al-Qaida in Iraq, which has become the dominant anti-government force, the colonel said.

"It's a situation that's beginning to spiral in our favor," he said.

A U.N. report released Wednesday said fewer foreign fighters have been killed or captured in Iraq in the last few months, suggesting that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq "has slackened."

SOURCE: Associated Press

White House Says No Change on U.S. Carbon Strategy

2006-09-29T14:55:00.000-04:00

September 29, 2006 — By Timothy Gardner, Reuters

NEW YORK — The Bush administration has no plans to ease its opposition to national limits on greenhouse gas output despite talk that a change may be under consideration, a White House spokeswoman said on Thursday.

"The president has said continually said that one of reasons he doesn't like a mandated cap is because it has the potential to move jobs overseas and hurt the economy," said Kristin Hellmer, spokeswoman for James Connaughton, the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Growing concerns about global warming have prompted California, Arizona and seven Northeastern states to take steps to bypass President George W. Bush and set their own greenhouse limits.

Bush pulled out of the 163-nation Kyoto Protocol on global warming in 2001, saying it would hurt the economy and unfairly left rapidly developing countries like China and India without limits on emissions.

A national cap on emissions would mean heavy industries in the United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, might have to make big decisions, like investing in alternative energy or clean-burning natural gas.

Hellmer said Bush is sticking with his 2002 plan calling for voluntary reductions, with an eye to trimming greenhouse emissions intensity -- or emissions per unit of economic output of the U.S. economy -- by 18 percent by 2012.

"If we're not meeting (the emissions intensity) goal, (Bush) has always said he will look at new policies and new ideas," Hellmer said. "But now we are on track to meet that goal."

Critics of Bush's voluntary greenhouse plan say it is too lenient to industry, especially as overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have risen 13 percent since 1990.

EXPLORATORY TEAM

A source who has worked in the energy profession for decades told Reuters he was approached in New York last month by a team containing White House staff that was exploring the use of national regulations on greenhouse emissions.

The source, who declined to be named, said the team, led by an official at the Department of Energy, was weighing the benefits of three ways to regulate several sources of greenhouse emissions.

"One is for the electric utility industry, one for industrial sources, and another for what they are calling fuels, or vehicles," said the source, who added he thinks the team was far from making conclusions on emissions.

A DOE spokeswoman said the department official said to lead the team was not available to comment on whether he had met with the source to talk about an emissions cap, and said the agency had no knowledge of such contacts.

The source said talks centered on trying to provide regulatory certainty for businesses by extending the plan far past Kyoto's first phase, which requires about 40 developed countries to cut emissions about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

The team has talked about cutting emissions by a yet-to-be-determined amount by 2020 using the year 2000 as an emissions baseline, the source said.

"It's certainly nothing to do with Kyoto," the source said.

SOURCE: Environmental News Network

Severe drought hits US farmers

2006-09-29T14:20:00.000-04:00

by Goska Romanowicz

The United States government has allocated $780m in aid in response to a severe drought that is ravaging crops across the central United States and forcing farmers to sell off herds of cattle.

Low rainfall combined with extreme heat has led to severe water shortages in North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming, dried out corn and sunflower fields, and deprived cattle of pasture land.

The drought follows a recent report (see related story) that predicted worsening water shortages across a number of regions, including parts of the US.

Scientists from the University of Nebraska have called the drought the worst for 50 years. Summer temperatures climbed to the highest on record, with a thermometer reading at a meteorological station in North Dakota reaching 48 degrees C in mid-July.

Meanwhile, official figures for South Dakota indicate that winter wheat crops were 43% lower than normal, and alfalfa was expected to fall 35% below an average year's yield.

Corn crops were down also because temperatures had been too high for pollination to occur.

Many farmers transported cattle out of the drought-stricken area, despite high fuel prices, while others sold entire herds.

Some rainfall in August seemed to provide temporary relief but did nothing to alleviate the long-term water shortages, scientists said.

Michael Rounds, the governor of South Dakota, has asked the federal government to introduce a special "agricultural disaster status" across most of his state, and took the unusual step of asking citizens to pray for rain.

SOURCE: Edie News

So your listserv has a troll (or five)...

2006-09-29T06:13:00.000-04:00

This was posted to a mailing list about a year ago:

Totalitarians use misfits to disrupt free speech on the internet. This procedure will destroy the totalitarian's most effective method of disrupting free speech on the internet. Please pass this around. Permission to add this to web pages is granted.

What is a troll?

An Internet "troll" is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He tries to start arguments, and upsets people.

Trolls see internet communications as convenient venues for their bizarre game. They are actually afflicted with a form a sadism; in that, they take joy in hurting people. A sadist gets sexual pleasure from causing pain. The troll is engaging in "cyber sex" for the sadist. Many trolls are bigots. Bigotry is a good cover for sadism.

Trolls feel no sorrow whatsoever for the pain they inflict. Indeed, the greater the suffering they cause; the greater their joy. For the moment, the relative anonymity of the net allows trolls to flourish.

Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism (constructive or otherwise).

Arguing with a troll is like playing Russian roulette with a dead man.

The troll's usual reaction to a response will be amazingly similar to the adolescent phrase:

"I know you are, but what am I?"

When the trolls become very desperate, they will resort to insulting the normal member; by name, AND IN THE SUBJECT LINE, OF THE MESSAGE.

Trolls are quite predictable. Within a few hours of the first time, that that this message was posted , one of the internet's most active trolls posted a message, with my name in the subject line, saying that I am the ultimate troll.

After this message was first posted, many people asked if there was a web page; which gave a list of known trolls. If you want the trolls to identify themselves, just post this message, and see who takes offence, and pops in to comment.

It is safe to conclude that if one were to throw a rock into a pen full of pigs, and one of them squealed, that the one that squealed, would be the one that you had hit.

You cannot negotiate with trolls. You cannot cause trolls to feel shame or compassion. You cannot reason with trolls. Trolls cannot be made to feel remorse. You can say:

"Why don't you take your silly bickering to the chat room, and stop filling up everyone's mail box with drivel?"

BUT THEY NEVER WILL.

The reason that the trolls refuse to take their silly bickering to the chat room is that then everyone would see how few people are interested in what they have to say, by the fact that NO ONE would go with them to the chat room. NO ONE, BUT THE TROLLS, WOULD BE THERE! ALSO, then they would not be filling up everyone's mail box,
with drivel; which is their real goal.

Trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules of courtesy or social responsibility.

Perhaps this sounds inconceivable. You may think, "Surely there is something I can write that will change them." But a true troll can not be changed by mere words.

The only way to deal with trolls is to limit your reaction to reminding others not to respond to trolls.

When you try to reason with a troll, he wins. When you insult a troll, he wins. When you scream at a troll, he wins. The only thing that trolls cannot handle is being ignored.

Taking out the trash:

There is a scenario which repeats itself continuously on the internet egroups.

A group, which was originally formed for a specific purpose, loses it moderator, and is taken over by trolls. The trolls bully the normal members, and drive many of them out, with insults and personal attacks. You could put the troll into your "blocked sender" list, but then you would not know what he is saying about you. If the normal members leave then they have turned the list OVER to the trolls.

There is a simple solution:

The list decides on one "Designated Driver for the garbage truck". The "garbage truck" is for hauling away the trash, from list trolls.

All but ONE member, of the list, puts the troll into their "blocked sender" list. The "Designated Driver" for the garbage truck reads the troll's garbage, and notifies the list, or notifies any individual members PRIVATELY, of anything that might interest them. Then the rest of the list can operate at peace. No one is worried about what the troll in writing about them, AFTER they put him into the blocked sender list..

No one EVER responds to the troll's message.

If you think that someone might have read the troll's insults and slander, then just make a general post, that does not mention the troll, but addresses his slander. This should NEVER be posted as a reply. Replying TO THE TROLL will cause those who have put him into their blocked sender list, to have to see his message.

OF COURSE, the list trolls can create new ID's, that are not blocked, as long as they like, but that is fine. It only takes one click, with the mouse, to put the new ID in "blocked sender" also. The troll will get ONE POST PER ID. IF YOU REPORT THE TROLL, eventually he will lose each of those ID's.

Trolls are a way of destroying freedom of speech.

See Information Warfare on the Internet

Group wins public relations deal in Iraq

2006-09-29T00:32:00.000-04:00

By REBECCA SANTANA
© 2006 The Associated Press

BAGHDAD, Iraq — A public relations company known for its role in a controversial U.S. military program that paid Iraqi newspapers for stories favorable to coalition forces has been awarded another multimillion dollar media contract with American forces in Iraq.

Washington-based Lincoln Group won a two-year contract to monitor a number of English and Arabic media outlets and produce public relations-type products such as talking points or speeches for U.S. forces in Iraq, officials said Tuesday.

"Lincoln Group is proud to be trusted to assist the multinational forces in Iraq with communicating news about their vital work," Lincoln Group spokesman Bill Dixon said in a statement. Details about the contract were confirmed by the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, and were also described in documents posted on a federal government Web site outlining contracts awarded.

The contract is worth roughly $6.2 million per year over a two-year period, according to Johnson.

The idea is to use the information to "build support" in Iraqi, Arabic, international and U.S. audiences for what the military describes as its goals in Iraq, such as destroying the insurgency and helping Iraqis build a democracy, according to contract documents.

The list of media outlets to be watched includes the New York Times, Fox Television and the satellite channel, Al-Arabia.

The Lincoln Group was mired in controversy last year when it became known that the company had been part of a U.S. military operation to pay Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories about coalition activities. According to the company's Web site, it was created in 2003 to do public relations and communications work in challenging environments such as Iraq.

The type of contract, its cost, and the fact that it was awarded to the PR and communications company have raised questions.

Rep. Robert Andrews, D-N.J., who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said he would be asking the Department of Defense for information about how this "controversial" vendor was chosen, saying the choice of the Lincoln Group "concerns me greatly."

But, Andrews said he's more concerned about the fact that the contract was awarded at all, not just to the Lincoln Group.

"I wish that our problem in Iraq was that the military wasn't getting good PR," Andrews said. "The problem seems to be that the country is sliding into civil war."

Johnson could not comment on how the Lincoln Group was chosen, simply saying it was a "standard contracting process." He said the contract did not include any provisions to purchase favorable coverage or pay for favorable stories. The Lincoln Group would not comment on the contract beyond the statement issued.

Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Arlington, Va., said she was worried about whether the military would be creating its own news through its own newspapers or Web sites.

"If they're trying to influence Iraqi opinion of Americans, I almost find that to be unconscionable because that would say that they do not value a free and independent press in Iraq," Dalglish said.

According to Johnson, the contract is really nothing new from programs that are already in existence.

Multi-National Forces-Iraq already has in place a one year contract with The Rendon Group, a Washington D.C.-based company, to perform many of the same functions this current contract would fulfill, Johnson said.

"We always monitor the press. Any organization, anywhere monitors the press to see what's being said to determine what messages are out there and how it's impacting the environment," Johnson said.

The Rendon Groups contract, worth $6.4 million over one year, was scheduled to expire this September but Johnson said it has been extended until Oct. 27 while the winner of the new contract is determined.

A key question is whether any public relations campaign in Iraq will work.

Nabil Khalid, the executive news director of Al-Arabia, one of the most popular Arabic-language television stations in the Middle East, said right now, the multinational forces in Iraq are losing the public relations battle.

"If you asked me who better influences the media, the insurgents or the multinational forces, I would say that the insurgents," Khalid said, speaking by telephone from the station's Dubai headquarters.

SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

Pentagon moves to second-stage planning for Iran strike option

2006-09-28T23:27:00.000-04:00

by Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Thursday September 21, 2006

The Pentagon's top brass has moved into second-stage contingency planning for a potential military strike on Iran, one senior intelligence official familiar with the plans tells RAW STORY.

The official, who is close to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officials of each branch of the US military, says the Chiefs have started what is called "branches and sequels" contingency planning.

"The JCS has accepted the inevitable," the intelligence official said, "and is engaged in serious contingency planning to deal with the worst case scenarios that the intelligence community has been painting."

A second military official, although unfamiliar with these latest scenarios, said there is a difference between contingency planning -- which he described as "what if, then what" planning -- and "branches and sequels," which takes place after an initial plan has been decided upon.

Adding to the concern of both military and intelligence officials alike is the nuclear option, the possibility of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons targeting alleged WMD facilities in Iran.

An April New Yorker report by Sy Hersh alleged that the nuclear option was on the table, and that some officers of the Joint Chiefs had threatened resignation.

"The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning," Hersh wrote. "Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iranï¿½without success, the former intelligence official said."

The senior intelligence official who spoke to RAW STORY, along with several military intelligence sources, confirmed that the nuclear option remains on the table. In addition, the senior official added that the Joint Chiefs have "come around on to the administration's thinking."

"The Joint Chiefs have no longer imposed roadblocks on a possible bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear production facilities," the intelligence official said. "In the past, only the Air Force had endorsed the contingency, saying that it could carry out the mission of destroying, or at least significantly delaying, Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon."

Preparation for such a strike would require contingency plans for securing oil transport lines and dealing with possible riots, as well as assessment of issues that arose during the Iran-Iraq war.

"Bahrain will be a battleground as it is majority Shi'a and has had Shi'a riots stimulated by Iran in the past," the official said. "The US Fifth Fleet is also based there. A system for [protection of] oil transport in the Gulf will have to be devised by the US Navy to protect against attacks."

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to repeated emails requesting comment.

Deployment orders

With allegations of a plan in place and contingency scenarios in play, several military and intelligence experts see this as proof of a secret White House order to proceed with military action.

Last week, a military intelligence official described to this reporter the movement of Naval submarines and a deployment order sent out to Naval assets of strategic import, such as minesweepers, that could indicate contingency planning is already under way to secure oil transport routes and supplies.

On Sunday, Time Magazine confirmed much of what the military intelligence source had described.

"The first message was routine enough: a 'Prepare to Deploy Order' sent through Naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters," Time's Michael Duffy wrote. "The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said be ready to move by October 1. A deployment of minesweepers to the east coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed, but until now largely theoretical, prospect has become real."

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner also expressed concern about the deployment orders, but cautioned that these particular ships are slow-moving and would take "a month or so" to arrive in position.

"Minecountermeasures, the four ships mentioned, are generally not self-deploying," Gardiner said Wednesday. "When previously sent to the Gulf, they were transported on the decks of heavy lift ships. The earliest they would arrive would be around the first of November."

Although some claim the Defense Department has denied the deployment order, no official denial has been made. The Pentagon does not comment on operational plans, not even to issue a denial.

Lawmakers in the dark?

Attempts to contact members of the Senate Armed Services Committee provided little help in confirming allegations of the deployment order made to this reporter and Time. Senate offices that were available for comment would not do so on the record.

From all appearances, however, it would seem that at least some members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have not been briefed on deployment orders or on any strike plans, even contingency plans. The Senate Intelligence Committee is attempting to get a grasp on what is and has been going on.

A source close to the Committee, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, explained that a series of briefings will be going on this week and into next.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has "embarked on a much more aggressive review of what the intelligence community knows and is doing regarding Iran," the source said.

"In fact [the Committee has] a number of Iran related briefings this week and next before the senators leave town," the source added. They "will cover the full spectrum including various aspects of their nuclear program and all U.S. collection efforts."

SOURCE: Raw Story

Keith Olbermann Terrorized and Gov Tries to Hide it

2006-09-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

by Rob Kall
www.opednews.com

Keith Olbermann Terrorized and Gov Tries to Hide it

Keith Olbermann is hitting home run after home run, taking on the Bush Cheney led right wing, immoral lie machine, pummelling them unmercifully with truth after truth. He is the strongest voice the left has in the mainstream media. Unlike Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, other strong voices, he does not couch his hard hitting messages in comedy. Last night, he did it again, presenting a chronology of Bush administration failures to do much of anything to respond to the clear warnings he documents that the Clinton administration left for the Bush administration. Now, in spirit, we won't call Condi Rice a liar, but she has her facts wrong.

We have serious reason to worry about Olbermann's safety. Last night, he reported that he'd been threatened, apparently with some anthrax-like substance that required him to be subjected to 10 hours of detention in a hospital. He was discharged with a prescription for Cipro.

Please check out the rest of this story here.

Who the hell is this 'Agent Smiley' guy anyway?

2006-09-28T14:45:00.000-04:00

Since June 1, 1997 I have been an activist of sorts, both on the web and in the field. June 1, 1997 marked my introduction to the nonlethal form of coercion called teargas. That is a long story so I will save it.

By late 1998, I would be starting my first mailing lists, via the web, and it was my first headlong venture into the cybersphere and I have returned to it repeatedly over the years, taking breaks that would last from a month to two years at a time. That is where IN THE FIELD comes in.

Much of the time that I undertook to carry my view of the world into the public arena of the world wide web, I was houseless and for a portion of THAT time I was, as well, homeless. You, the reader, would do well to understand that during MOST of that time, despite whatever you may assume about "the average homeless person," I was extremely active with all of my energy and time in attempting to bring about a new world, one relationship at a time. I was an anarchist but I was also taugth by healers so my approach was, I'd link to think, both radical and compassionate.

From that time until the middle of 2004, I remained houseless, plugging in to various work-exchange situations from intentional communities to rainbow gatherings to organic farms. It was in the process of this that I attained my fire, my strategies, and my attitude toward activism.

You see, if you don't spend a good deal of time taking it to the streets then you will, eventually cease to know what you are talking about, both politically and otherwise. It just happens. There's no way of getting around it. Sometimes, in walking the walk, one's own talk becomes much easier to evaluate, at least accurately. Sometimes, it even gets to where talking won't do at all.

Today, I operate with housing and a home. This became absolutely necessary in order that I find refuge from three years of harrassment. Living outside makes one more vulnerable and not only to physical threat but to routines of destabilization such as psychological operations (COINTELPRO style). This stuff came at me for a variety of reasons but for the most part they are detailed here, here, here, here, and here. Unfortunately, much of the supporting material that is hyperlinked to there is no longer online but I do intend to retrieve that material some day and hopefully soon!

The Billboard Liberation Front

2006-09-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

By P. Segal

In this the latter half of the twentieth century, human life has been overrun with media of every stripe. Wherever media intrudes, advertising has been close at its heels, telling us what to buy, think and resemble. Even in the encapsulation of our cars, with the radio off, on uninhabited stretches of highway, the media reaches out in the monolithic form of billboards.

For the last twenty-one years, the Billboard Liberation Front has taken a good-natured swipe at the phenomena of outdoor advertising. Largely powerless to alter the messages of television, radio or the print media, they could, in the dead of night, apply improvements to the giant boards that tower over streets and highways. Their philosophy requires that improvements be professionally accurate and easily removed; they are not spray-paint renegades sans souci. This is their story, and only the names of the living have been altered, for all the obvious reasons.

In the closing years of the 1970s, while the rest of the world seemed busy with the work of regrouping and returning to so called normalcy, a small group of San Franciscans gathered to buck the tide. To this secret society, amusement and adventure were the cardinal values, the more outrageous the challenge, the better. An element of danger enhanced rather than diminished the fun, and their pranks and adventures challenged the creative energies of the disparate personalities of the group. The San Francisco Suicide Club spawned and influenced many subsequent creative groups, the BLF being one of the longest lived and most nefarious.

It was the restless brilliance of one man, Gary Warne, that brought them together and ignited the spark. Any member of the society could initiate an event, but it was Warne along with Suicide Club co-founder Adrienne Burk who, one night, invited the members to an evening entitled "Enter the Unknown." Participants met, were blindfolded, and led to an undisclosed destination. Once there, the dozens in attendance climbed a rope ladder to the roof of the building, upon which was mounted a doubled sided billboard. On both sides of the board, the same commercial message was visible to passers-by:

"WARNING: A pretty face isn't safe in the city: fight back with Self Defense, the NEW moisturizer by MAX FACTOR."

"Now," said Warne, "we're going to alter this billboard, and we'll decide what it should say." Warne was clear about this prank. They were not going to vandalize the board, merely add embellishments with rubber cement, easily removable and not damaging. He had brought paper, paint and adhesive, and they would provide the improved message. After some discussion, dozens of improvements were suggested and, in the best tradition of confused democracy two were chosen by vote. The society members painted and applied two different versions of the underlying ad. One side read:

"...fight crap with Self Respect, the NEW moisturizer by MAX FACTOR"

and this, less concrete and far more amusing message adorned the 2nd formerly identical board:

"...fight back with Self Abuse, the NEW mutilator: AX FACTOR"

Nineteen year old Jack Napier remained fascinated by this Suicide Club exploit. What a great idea, he thought, to challenge the fortune and power of corporate America by borrowing their spaces, if only temporarily, to publicize ideas of his own. He also had a teenagers fascination for the fantasy of a crack "ninja" style team to carry out clandestine operations ( the Max Factor "hit ", innovative as it was could have been much more tightly organized). One other Suicide Club member Irving Glikk, agreed with Napier wholeheartedly. The 43-year old Glikk, with one bad leg and a cane, took to cruising the streets of San Francisco with Napier in the wee hours searching for billboards that invited improvement.

In December of 1977, Napier met Glikk at an appointed spot in a S.F. Chinatown alley. Glikks late model Ford Galaxy 500, passenger seat replaced with a beanbag, sat waiting, a banquet-sized ration of Chinese food adorning its roof and trunk and dribbling down the sides. Glikk was having marital problems that Napier preferred not to hear, but he had to ask: "whats with the Chinese food?"

"A kid came out of this restaurant with a big tub of leftover food," Glikk explained, so I offered him five bucks for it."

"Oh," said Napier. Glikk flipped on the windshield wipers, scattering chow fun to the left and right, smearing a swath of oyster sauce across the field of vision. They took off into the night.

Napier and Glikk found their board, an ad for Fact cigarettes placed in nine locations throughout the city. It read, "I'm realistic. I only smoke Facts." The newly organized Billboard Liberation Front set to work on the improvement

Improving a billboard, as described in the Fronts 1990 pamphlet, "The Art and Science of Billboard Improvement," is a laborious task. In the introduction, the authors acknowledge that "in most instances, it should not be necessary to use the elaborate--even obsessive--precautions that the BLF has resorted to...a can of spray paint, a blithe spirit and a balmy night are all you really need." The BLF, however, inspired by Warne, insisted that their "corrections" must be temporary, removable, and not damage the property onto which they were affixed, and that they be as graphically integrated with the board as the underlying message.

The Front visited the Fact boards, checking for access, lighting, escape. They measured letters, took paint samples, compared type styles and fabricated the overlays that would be rubber-cemented to the boards.

They made their hits on Christmas day 1977, dressed in workman's overalls that had "Acme Sign" printed across the backs. It was late afternoon when they pasted up the improvements on the sixth board, which now read, "I'm real sick. I only smoke Facts." They also installed a large stylized arrow pointing from the word "Fact" down to the surgeon generals warning.

The board was on a rooftop at the corner of Mission & Army Streets. Napier and his team of liberators were just about to pick up their gear and go off to the next location when a police car was seen driving up to the building and stopping. The officer got out and looked up. Obscured by the roofs decorative facade, Napier and his assistant, Steve Johnson crawled to the other side of the roof to descend the ladder. A peek over that side revealed yet another peace officers vehicle pulling up.

Trapped and unable to safely join their ground crew, the two dispirited pranksters turned their energy to creating alibis. Then suddenly, the officers on the south side of the building jumped into their vehicle and sped off.. They tore off the coveralls and made a shaky escape. Down on the street, they ran into a smiling man in early middle age carrying a cane. As they melted inconspicuously into the growing crowd of gawkers, Mr. Glikk, for that's who the man was, beckoned them over. Behind Mr. Glikk they could see the cops who had by then returned and were climbing a fire dept. ladder truck ladder up onto the now vacant rooftop. "The cops?" Glikk responded to their question: 'They got an anonymous call to assist an officer in distress a few blocks away I guess it turned out to be a false alarm" he grinned, "and then they decided to return to where the action is.

By the time Simon Wagstaff, a professional gazebo painter, took on the job as spokesperson for the BLF, he claimed their ranks had swelled to about 350 conspirators. Wagstaff undertook the task of trying to get the attention of the press, making phone calls to the San Francisco Examiner and sending out press releases for each "hit". He had a particular interest in drawing notice to their new project, as he himself was the auteur.

The subject of their improvement, an ad for Camel cigarettes, depicted a swarthy, barechested man smoking, presumably, a Camel. By the time the BLF was done with the three boards, at the busy intersections around town the Camel "Turk" was wearing a pink brassiere.

On October 9, 1978, the Examiner columnist, Jeff Jarvis, ran an interview with Wagstaff that elucidated the hit. "You can't show a naked woman's chest. So why show a naked man's? It's unfair. It's a double standard. We don't want our bodies used as sex objects to sell cars or cigarettes or anything else." He went on to explain another unfair aspect of the Camel man: "Some of us are kind of wimpy. We don't have hair on our chests, and when we smoke, we cough."

Like all good reporters, Jarvis was compelled to ask the essential question, why? And, like all good subjects, Wagstaff had an answer: "because they are there."

Wagstaff continued that the goal of the organization was to improve the messages of billboards, taking care not to damage the original message beneath. 'The unprofessional groups use spray paint," he said, "but that's below our standards." "Billboards," he concluded, "are the only form of advertising the consumer can improve. You can't do it with radio or television ads or magazines. Here you can improve the message."

In April, 1980, the BLF took on the giant of the tobacco industry, Marlboro. The board at First and Bryant Streets now read "Marlbore" and a cartoon balloon from the cowboy's mouth said simply "yawn."

The BLF had acquired letterhead, and a barrage of press releases began, together with calls to the Examiner. The press release maintained that the BLF had nothing against cigarettes, in spite of their history of altering boards that touted tobacco. What the BLF hates, it said, is dull advertising.

"We felt that the whole Marlboro campaign using that macho cowboy is hackneyed and painfully dull," Wagstaff told the Examiner. "It's about time they got rid of it. We thought we'd help them along."

To join the Billboard Liberation Front, potential members must have a taste for adrenaline. While few members will ever climb onto the perilous heights of the billboards themselves, they will be pressed into service as ground crews, staked out in unfriendly corners of the late night urban jungle with walkie talkies, to warn comrades up above of potential interference from protectors of the advertisers' interests. Ground crews posing as staggering drunks, fighting couples, lost tourists or homeless persons camping in parks, among other covers, wait in doorways, bushes and cars while the painstaking aerial crews make their vandalism-free corrections, a process which might take many hours.

Before a hit is undertaken, a rehearsal will take place. The scene of the action will be impeccably combed for all details, including best means of quick escape, and the ideal positions for ground crews, to insure maximal early warning systems. In spite of all precautions, the free speech bandits have come close to being apprehended more than once.

"One time," Napier recalls, "we had a really narrow escape. Simon & I were up on one of the "Turk" boards over a parking lot off Market St. when an SFPD patrol car pulled into the lot and parked below us. In our haste to hide ourselves, Simon knocked over a bucket half full of rubber cement. This goo dripped onto the ground less than ten feet away from the cruiser as the officer sat doing paper work & drinking coffee for the next hour. We didn't move or breath the entire time."

The Billboard Liberation Front's media kit begins with a document entitled "Brief BLF History", a chronological description of actions since 1977. "May 31, 1980," it states, 'The Billboard Movement (BM), lead by Arnold Fleck, splits with the BLF. Massive competition in US market ensues; 1980-83, various actions occur in Europe, South America, and behind the Bamboo Curtain." Hmm.

"January 1984: BLF spokesperson Simon Wagstaff returns to his family's rendering business, prompting an amiable disolvement of the BLF. Other members return to their ancestral homes and tricky business concerns." In short, like most everyone who survived the '70s, they got degrees, opened businesses, became doctors, lawyers. bankers and all-around pillars of society.

As the Reagan-Bush dynasty climbed to new heights in their trashing of America the now-respectable members of the BLF felt the compulsion to regroup. In a press release issued on May 8, 1989, they announced their formal renaissance. "The Billboard Liberation Front, in a show of solidarity with our beleaguered and unjustly maligned corporate comrades at Exxon Corporation, have decided to dust off our coveralls and re-enter the vital field of outdoor advertising improvement."

A radio station billboard at six locations in California, two of them in the city, provided the canvas for the BLF. "HITS HAPPEN --NEW X- 100", with a bit of help, suddenly read "SHIT HAPPENS -- NEW EXXON."

Jack Napier's communiqué to the press applauded Exxon for expediting our ongoing evolutionary destiny, including "...the use of petrochemicals in the production of asphalt." The BLF's interest in asphalt is of course self-evident. "As we all know," Napier wrote in his preamble, "where there are roads, there are billboards." In conclusion, Napier voiced the BLF's stance: "Pave Alaska."

Back on a roll, the billboard liberators attempted the most obscure and intellectually subtle of their exploits. This time, Igor Pflicht, leader of the BLF's philosophical organ, IRANT (Institute for the Rational Analysis of National Trends), dreamed up the improvement for a huge board easily visible from San Francisco's main freeway.

The board said "Kent. The choice is taste.' When Pflicht and his cohorts had their way with it, motorists were enlightened by the new message: "Kant. The Choice is heteronomy."

Since most travelers on the central freeway have a scant knowledge of Kant, if any, Pflicht issued a press manifesto on July 15, 1989, "to edify and illuminate the commuting masses. IRANT, the Institute for Rational Analysis of National Trends, said Pflicht, "take it upon ourselves to reveal to humanity its true destiny."

"Kant's pathetic adulation of waking life, individual awareness and independent thought belong to an age long past and putrefying on the deathbed of its own naive ambition. Today, the wise choice is not freedom, but heteronomy." Heteronomy, the opposite of autonomy, proposes that all a person's decisions are made by someone else.

Pflicht's cant rubs it in further. "Who cares to be free anymore? The value of freedom has been rendered obsolete. There is no longer any need for individual choice in this age when all decisions can be left to a skilled professional who specializes in knowing our every desire and need: the Advertiser. Today only a sad hold-over of effete intellectual fossils cling to the tired idea of freedom. The people know better.. Let heteronomy reign!"

Who are these people, besides 350 Pantagruelian tongues in the Gargantuan cheek? According to their press materials, BLF was founded "at the Pacific Union Club in San Francisco by retired businessmen and civic leaders unhappy with the inferior state of billboard advertising." While it is unlikely that Napier, Glikk, Wagstaff and Pflicht had ever entered the Pacific Union Club in 1978, the grand irony is that they have become, with few exceptions, likely candidates for membership. (We turned 'em down -ED.)

New Year's Eve, 1989: The BLF had been busy for some months with preparations for their year-end celebration, a hit on the massive board for Harrahs casinos in California. The casino's name was centered at the top of the board, with a list on the left side of who was performing at their Reno location, and to the right, a list of who was appearing in Tahoe. At the dawn of the '90s. motorists eastbound on the Bay Bridge now saw this:

Harry Tuttle, Director of the BLF Holiday Preparedness Bureau, issued the BLF statement on this particular board. "We call for a return to the good old days," he wrote, "when uncontrolled disease, ugly poverty, and rampant substance abuse were safely restricted to the third world. We cannot abide the thought of fatal epidemics, starving families in the streets and armed gangs of drug-crazed youths deterring the American people from continuing the lifestyles promoted by the Reagan and Bush administrations.... DONT WORRY, BE HAPPY. If drugs, disease and poverty engulf our cities, you can always move to the suburbs. After all, it's a free country... See you at the shopping malls ."

Some members of the BLF work only on an occasional basis, or serve highly specific functions. Dogboy is one of them; his specialty is typography, and his contributions have centered around matching typefaces on targeted boards. "First we'd go out and take a look at the boards and determine what font they were in. Jack would go out and measure the letters, and maybe even take a tracing of one of them. If we were only going to replace one or two letters that already existed, we could just trace them. Otherwise, we had to create a copy of the font for missing letters, or in some cases, create whole alphabets. We didn't have access to computers in the beginning.., we could have done it a lot quicker and more easily."

Dogboy, together with an accomplice who is now such a pillar of the community that he wouldn't even mention his name, was piqued by a series of ads for the Hastings mens stores, featuring a succession of San Francisco notables dressed in their clothes. After a few years of various Hasting's Men, a board appeared with a dotted line around where the head of the figure should be. "Who will be the next Hasting's Man?" it read. Dogboy's partner fabricated a clown face and they put it on the board. It didn't take long before San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen caught it. He told his readers that the next Hasting's Man was a local politician who had managed to irritate him, and directed folks to Dogboy's board for confirmation.

Reporters see a lot of press releases, and most of them evoke that "yeah, yeah, yeah" reaction before they are jettisoned into the circular file. Of all the reporters who read the BLF's "Pave Alaska" bulletin, only one had the curiosity to ask "who ARE these people?" Tim Redmond, star reporter for the decidedly left-wing San Francisco Bay Guardian, ripped through the trash looking for a return address on an envelope, or any indication of a number to call. Searching again through the press release, he found this advice "to contact the BLF, place an ad in the Bay Guardian's spirituality classifieds. We will contact you.

Winslow Leach functions as technical advisor to the BLF, and is frequently in charge of security on hits. Once a well-functioning member of the computer industry, Leach found himself suddenly out of a job, due mainly to the advertising schemes of the company he was employed with. 'Since then," he avows, "I have devoted myself to truth in advertising."

Ethyl Keytone also felt compelled to join BLF because of negative attitudes towards the advertising industry and the mass market culture it commands. She worked in the industry itself, and like Leach, she was personally affected by it. For Ethyl, the changes made to existing boards are "beautification's, not just improvements."

Redmond's piece on the BLF attracted considerable attention. Among other notice, it got them on the Utne Reader list of "Ten Media Heroes for 1991". For these communications outlaws, the price of fame was another long period of temporary retirement, at least until they were more or less forgotten by the humorless authorities. Their forays were, for the moment, destined to be sporadic and relatively unlabored. One minor hit integrated the number of the beast onto a landmark advertising mural visible from San Francisco's main freeway

The six-six-six hit was the inspiration of L.L. Fauntleroy, one of the newer BLF recruits. Cruising down the freeway one day, she spotted the mural with the auto dealer flying through space in a Superman suit. "He looks like the Anti-Christ," she said, "he should have 666 on his twenty foot broad forehead." And so he did.

Fauntleroy isn't sure if everyone does it, but she says "1 think a lot of people look at advertising and think of some way to change it. they editorialize in their heads. It's a popular movement. I can't imagine anyone not liking it, except the corporations. It's a way of getting your word into the media, of talking back... and it's funny."

In 1993, the BLF ventured far from the urban setting to improve some advertising for the Hillsdale Mall which could be found on a freeway sign on US 101 about five miles from the mall. The board was adorned with huge neon letters spelling HILLSDALE. Beneath the neon, a painted board proudly announced "Something new is happening!" A nameless fellow traveler and former Suicide clubber, a man who among other exploits cofounded the Electronic Freedom Foundation suggested turning off the lights on the first three and last three letters. He passed by the board each day on his way to the office and told his friends at the BLF that the real message kept jumping out at him. Motorists on the highway were subsequently treated to an edifying new message: "LSD, The Beginning of Something Wonderful."

Over the next five years to the present day the BLF and various affiliates have been responsible for many advertising improvements. Zenith TV, Camel, Plymouth Neon, Levi's, Apple and many other worthy products have had their ad campaigns enhanced by the selfless efforts of the BLF. One of the things they have emphasized strongly throughout their twenty year career is the ease with which simple changes can so powerfully alter the integral meaning of an advertisement. Their core message; almost a mantra: that everyone who wants their own billboard should have one is a compelling message and by way of example quite possible. Any one who wants one bad enough can indeed have one.

SOURCE

White House refuses to release full terror report

2006-09-27T18:05:00.000-04:00

"We believe that the more we inform our American citizens, the better our government will be." ~ George W. Bush

White House refuses to release full terror report

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House refused Wednesday to release the rest of a secret intelligence assessment that depicts a growing terrorist threat as the Bush administration tried to quell election-season criticism that its anti-terror policies are seriously off track.

Press secretary Tony Snow said releasing the full report, portions of which President Bush declassified on Tuesday, would jeopardize the lives of agents who gathered the information.

It would also risk the nation's ability to work with foreign governments and to keep secret its U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, Snow said, and "compromise the independence of people doing intelligence analysis."

"If they think their work is constantly going to be released to the public they are going to pull their punches," Snow said.

In the bleak National Intelligence Estimate, the government's top analysts concluded Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, who are growing in number and geographic reach. If the trend continues, the analysts found, the risks to the U.S. interests at home and abroad will grow.

The rest of this story can be found here.

Bush's Tries to Pardon Self

2006-09-27T17:05:00.000-04:00

Bush seeks retroactive immunity for violating War Crimes Act
September 23, 2006
BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN

Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees.

The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11.

Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national.

Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ''prosecutors and independent counsels'' might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ''special prosecutors'' prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials.

Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.

To ''reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,'' Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn't apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.

When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.

What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.

Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former New York congresswoman, is co-author with Cynthia L. Cooper of The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens.

SOURCE: Chicago Sun Times

Also see Endless Hubris

No Kidding: FDA Approves Adding Virus to Foods

2006-09-26T21:15:00.000-04:00

By Byron J. Richards, CCN
August 24, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

On Friday, August 18, 2006, the FDA approved a viral cocktail to be sprayed on foods we eat. This is the first time viruses have been approved for use as food additives. The FDA wants you to believe it will be safe to consume these viruses every day for the rest of your life with no adverse health effects. This is a monumental announcement by the FDA, indicating they are throwing all caution to the wind regarding the safety of our food supply.

Are you willing to stand in line for a virus-laden sandwich? How do you like the idea of buying virus-infested food for your family? The first virally contaminated foods entering our food supply with the blessings of the FDA will be luncheon meat and poultry. Live viruses will be sprayed on foods such as cold cuts, sausages, hot dogs, sliced turkey, and chicken.

At issue is the very real problem of a poor quality FDA-approved food supply that is already full of diseased and sickly animals, many of them imported from other countries. The use of antibiotics during growth and radiation during food processing is required by the fast-food animal farms owned by multi-national companies to cover up the horrendous health of the animals they wish to feed to Americans. Animals in poor health are a friendly place for bacteria to grow and prosper, especially after such meat goes to market. Rather than address the source of the problem, the FDA wants to add another adulteration into our food supply.

The stated goal of the new FDA-approved viruses is to kill a rare bacterium known as Listeria monocytogenes. This bacterium is killed by cooking; however, it poses a problem in meats that are cooked during processing and not cooked again prior to consumption, so it can readily infect foods such as deli meats.

Yes, the FDA plans to use one infectious organism to fight another. The carnage of battle will end up in your digestive tract along with the victorious live viruses, which the FDA assures us will not attack human cells. However, they cannot possibly be certain the viruses will not attack the friendly bacteria that make up the lining of your digestive tract. The FDA approval was based on scant human testing, mostly from unrelated medical experiments. Such safety data is woefully inadequate to determine safe ingestion of a specific product by humans over the course of a lifetime.

Turning Loose the Bacteria-Killing Viruses

The company that produces these biotech viruses is Baltimore-based Intralytix, Inc. The viruses are known as bacteriophages, viruses that kill bacteria, or phages for short. Phages have been around a long time, living as parasites inside many bacteria.

Intralytix uses biotechnology to grow viral phages in a culture with Listeria, in theory teaching the viruses to recognize the bacteria. The FDA-approved cocktail contains six different viruses intended to attack one strain of bacteria.

This concoction is then sprayed on food. If Listeria is present in the food, the bacteria will ingest the viruses. This results in massive viral replication inside the bacteria, until such point as the bacteria simply bursts. This battle results in significant production of bacterial poisons called “endotoxins”, as the bacteria tries to defend itself. When the bacteria burst, these endotoxins are released. These, along with the victorious live viruses, will now be on the food that will be eaten.

The FDA and Intralytix would like us to believe that these viruses will only attack the specified bacteria they are intended to kill and will be harmless to humans. I’m sorry to burst their bubble, but they can’t possibly guarantee such safety. It is true that the viruses, at least at this time, cannot recognize human cells. However, the virus can potentially recognize normal bacterial cells in the human digestive tract and may be able to adapt to infect one or more of these friendly bacteria.

The FDA Certainly Knows There Are Risks

The FDA had some concerns about the amount of bacterial endotoxin in the Intralytix product before it is sprayed; however, FDA tests apparently showed that the product was adequately purified and so they declared it safe if used as approved. Will the FDA diligently monitor the quality of this product once it is on the market, or will it go the path of many FDA-approved drugs that the agency can’t keep track of?

There is certainly a risk that humans will be exposed to excessive amounts of endotoxin. This could come from the manufacturing of the viral cocktail, the interaction of the viruses with bacteria after being sprayed on food, and/or the interaction of the viruses with bacteria in the digestive tract.

The human immune system is highly reactive and sensitive to bacterial endotoxins. They provoke allergy, asthma, autoimmune problems, and elevate cholesterol. They also interfere with the healthy function of cells lining the digestive tract. Researchers have demonstrated that the presence of bacterial endotoxins can start cancer in the colon.

Additionally, the human immune system reacts directly to viral phages. Thus, a person who eats a lot of processed deli meat is certain to evoke an immune reaction to the viruses. What will this reaction be? Allergy? Asthma? Autoimmunity? Cancer? How can the FDA approve a food additive that it knows can induce a variety of human immune responses? Phages are so good at disrupting normal immunity that they are being considered for use as part of organ transplant medicine.

The ingestion of significant amounts of viral phages into the human digestive tract is a wild card full of unknown outcomes. For example, it is certainly possible that these phages, which constantly mutate in order to survive, are likely to find a way to infect bacteria they were not intended to infect. Since phages are parasites, they could hijack the friendly bacteria of the digestive tract and turn them into viral machines, constantly generating viral particles that are likely to confuse the human immune system, if not directly infect the body. We know from history that these viral phages can turn innocuous bacteria into a killer, which is how cholera occurs.

Furthermore, the Listeria bacteria are not going to take the issue lying down. They will develop resistance to the viruses over time, as we have seen with the overuse of antibiotics. Going down this path we are likely to have hundreds of viral food additives in the food we eat, all designed to combat some possible infection coming from poor quality food. Sooner or later we will inadvertently create deadly new super-strains of bacteria and/or parasitically infect the human digestive tract with an untreatable infection.

There is also the very real possibility of unintended viral recombination. What happens when a person with viral stomach flu eats food containing a dose of this viral food additive? It is certainly possible for the genetic material of the flu virus to interact with the genetic material of the viral phages, provoking an undesirable new viral infection.

Let’s not forget that the FDA won’t tell us which foods in the food supply contain genetically modified organisms (GMO). Seventy percent of the packaged food on grocery shelves already contains GMO adulterated food. These foods have viral promoter genes woven into the DNA of every cell, a technique used to implant a pesticide toxin into every cell of this fake food (see Fight for Your Health, chapter 15). What happens when the viral phages interact with the viral promoter genes in GMO food? What new virus will be encouraged to form?

Keep in mind that the FDA wants to conduct this experiment on our food supply to protect a small minority, only about 2500 people, who are made seriously ill by this infection each year. The ill are mostly pregnant women, elderly with compromised immunity, and small children. It would be a lot more to the point if the FDA would simply warn such people that eating these foods, due to their poor quality of production, may be dangerous. What the FDA should really do is improve the quality of our food supply, the true source of the problem. Why expose millions of Americans to an unproven ingestion of live viruses for the benefit of so few?

The FDA has failed miserably for the past century to protect the public from the adulteration of our food supply by vested interests. This is just one more insult added to a long list of injuries.

The Tip of an Iceberg

Intralytix has an agenda for the American food supply, as well as for healthcare in general. This recent FDA ruling allows Intralytix and other similar biotech companies to get their foot in a door that should be slammed shut and bolted closed.

The company is also seeking FDA approval for viral sprays to treat foods that could be contaminated with E. coli and Salmonella, which means that similar “trained” viruses could end up in a majority of the protein foods in our food supply.

Intralytix sees financial opportunity. They have already licensed their now FDA-approved viral spray to an undisclosed multi-national company for use around the world. When the CEO of Intralytix, John Vazzara, was recently asked about this partner company, he refused to disclose their name. The grand profit-driven biotech experiment on the health and well being of all Americans is now in full swing.

John Vazzara also owns stock in, as well as provided seed money to start, SteelCloud Inc. (formerly Dunn Computer Corporation). SteelCloud is a defense contractor with lucrative deals with the Department of Defense, recently landing a 3.4 million dollar contract with the Department of Homeland Security.

Congress should investigate the financial ties and backroom dealings that would allow this bizarre food additive approval by the FDA.

Of course, we will need new wonder drugs to combat the new bio-tech produced infections. Americans will stay sick and the sickness-driven bio-tech industry will flourish. The bio-tech industry will make people sick on the front end and treat them on the back end. It’s a win-win situation for profit on illness.

The FDA is Rapidly Becoming a Public Enemy

Experimenting with viruses being added to the food supply is incredibly dangerous and reckless. It is completely impossible for the FDA to guarantee safety in the near term or the long term. Thus, the FDA has made the bureaucratic decision that relative safety is acceptable to them. What right does the FDA have to tamper with the food supply in this manner?

It is quite clear that the Bush agenda has been to promote American biotech companies as the new future for American prosperity. Administrative opinions have trumped science in virtually every situation wherein safety conflicts with profit. The FDA acts to foster profits for biotech companies and the growth of the biotech industry. This is a betrayal of the public trust.

The leaders of the FDA are personally responsible and need to be held accountable. This means Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., temporary head of the FDA and his chief science officer, Scott Gottlieb, M.D. These men are not only obsessed with approving risky drugs for the benefits of Big Pharma, it is now clear that they are willing to allow obvious adulteration of the food supply. They seek to control what we eat, and they are tampering with survival of the human race.

The FDA does not truly know how safe viral phages are to consume on a regular basis. They have no idea of the cumulative effect over the course of a lifetime, especially as more of these viral cocktails are added to the food supply. They have no way to measure how this new type of adulteration in the food supply will interact with the poor digestive/immune health of half the American population, in combination with all the other serious adulterations already approved by the FDA. The FDA lacks due diligence in honoring its mandate to protect the American public.

Boycott Viral Tainted Foods, Support Your Sustainable Farmers

The only hope Americans have is to resurrect the quality of our food supply. Doing so is against the odds, as there are billions of dollars of profit-mongering taking our food supply in the wrong direction. One day Americans will realize that food security is as important to national security as any other topic. It is now crystal clear that we cannot count on the FDA to do the job that Harvey Wiley, M.D., envisioned one-hundred years ago.

Consumers standing in line to buy a luncheon meat sandwich will have no idea if they are ingesting live viruses as part of their meal. While the FDA will require the ingredient to be listed on packages as “bacteriophage preparation,” most consumers will have no idea that means they are ingesting live viruses. Foods bought at deli counters or prepared in restaurants will not need to warn consumers.

How can any responsible parent feed virus-tainted food to their children? The FDA should be forced to revoke this approval. Every American has an obligation to support food security for our nation. Congress must correct the leadership at the FDA and the FDA itself. Americans must quit buying poor quality toxic food. Your greatest ability to change this problem is based entirely on what you purchase.

Get connected to the sustainable family farms in your community. Buy meat that is range raised without antibiotics and synthetic growth hormones. Demand that the food you are eating is labeled with a country of origin. Buy American; buy locally-produced food whenever possible. Support those who truly believe in being the stewards of our land and food for our people and for future generations. These good people are being squashed out of existence by multi-national agribusiness, companies that could truly care less about the quality of our food supply or the security and health of Americans. How you spend your money is your most powerful vote. Vote for those who care.

Byron J. Richards, Founder/Director of Wellness Resources, is a Board-Certified Clinical Nutritionist and nationally-renowned health expert, radio personality, educator, and author.

Richards encourages individuals to take charge of their health, stand up for their health rights, and not blindly succumb to propaganda from the vested-interests who profit from keeping Americans sick. Author of Mastering Leptin and Fight for Your Health, Richards is now joining forces with health freedom leaders in the U.S. and throughout the world. Visit his health blog for up to date happenings. www.truthinwellness.com

As founder of Wellness Resources, Inc. of Minneapolis, MN (since 1985), he has personally developed 75 unique nutraceutical-grade nutritional formulas. www.wellnessresources.com

Charter Member of the International and American Associations of Clinical Nutritionists (IAACN) (since 1991) Richards has presented hundreds of educational classes to health professionals and individuals who want to take charge of their health!

SOURCE: News with Views

Former Skeptics Call for Action on Warming – Bush Silent

2006-09-26T17:03:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, along with Katrina and this summer’s blistering heat waves, the threats posed by global warming have morphed from a far-fetched possibility to a clear and present danger in the minds of voters, scientists, politicians and theologians. Even those who previously scoffed at the notion are true believers now:

* “It is getting hotter, and the icecaps are melting and there is a build-up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. If we are contributing to the destruction of this planet, we need to do something about it,” said Rev. Pat Robertson on a recent broadcast of the “700 Club.” He also added that the recent heat waves had made a “convert” out of him on the issue.1

* “…science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous. As an environmental commentator, I have a long record of opposing alarmism. But based on the data, I’m now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert.” Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution and senior editor of The New Republic.2

* Representative Bob Inglis (R-NC and chairman of the House Science Research subcommittee) says he “pooh-poohed” global warming until a trip to the South Pole in January convinced him otherwise. “I think we should all be concerned. There are more and more Republicans willing to stop laughing at climate change who are ready to get serious about reclaiming their heritage as conservationists.”3

* “I was a certified global warming skeptic…[but] I eventually came to the judgment that I was wrong and global warming was real, largely caused by human activities and profoundly changing the planet on which we live,” admitted Stu Ostro, senior meteorologist and director of weather communications for The Weather Channel.4

* “I used to be skeptical…but now I’m absolutely convinced that the world is spiraling out of control. CO2 is like a brushfire that gets bigger and bigger every year.” Richard Branson, founder of The Virgin Group.5

* A national LA Times/Bloomberg poll conducted in July found that 74 percent of Americans consider “global warming a serious problem” and want the government to do more to solve it.6

The Bush administration's response? Silence. President Bush remains resolutely incurious while the planet heats.

Take Action - sign the petition to put a cap on global warming

SOURCE: Bush Greenwatch

Timber Company Appeals Ruling Restoring Forest Protections

2006-09-26T15:50:00.000-04:00

In Missoula, Montana, I had a chance to look at some timber that was being hauled from a supposed salvage site (a salvage site is where logging companies cut trees deemed by them to be dying or dead) and they each oozed massive amounts of sap. As well, there is much debate as to whether or not salvage logging is good for the health of forests though I doubt that timber companies are seriously concerned with this, by and large. Here's the article:

September 25, 2006 — By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — An Oregon timber company has appealed the reinstatement of protections on 58.5 million acres of roadless areas in national forests, saying it should be able to continue logging trees burned in a 2002 wildfire in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

Silver Creek Timber owner John West said he had no opinion on future logging in roadless areas, but felt he should be allowed finish the salvage project.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Laporte in San Francisco overturned the 2005 Bush administration rule that gave states a chance to seek logging, mining and drilling inside areas of national forests that have been untouched due to their remote and rugged terrain.

In 2001, the Clinton administration barred most logging and other development within roadless areas to protect them as prime fish and wildlife habitat and sources of clean water.

West said the Clinton rule allowed logging after fires.

U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey said the Bush administration was still considering whether to file its own appeal, but noted the government disagreed with a number of the findings, particularly the need to do an environmental impact statement.

Rey added that, so far, six federal judges have ruled on the Clinton roadless rule, three for and three against it, with no end in sight.

"By the time all is said and done there will be enough federal judges who have opined on the roadless rule so we could fill out a major league baseball lineup card and have plenty of judges left over for bench strength," Rey said from Washington.

SOURCE: Environmental News Network

My take on these issues is illustrated by a bit of reading:

Logging causes wild fires

On that HUGE Oregon fire from a couple of years ago

More on arsonists that seem to love timber sales

Why did the Forest Service interfere with efforts to put out that huge AZ fire (the fire that was set by a gov't [BIA] contracted worker)?

ANOTHER "wild" fire that was started by a gov't contracted worker (USFS - Dept. of Agriculture)

Article from a couple of years ago: Officials suspect arson in numerous Western wildfires

Fighting Forests With Fire: A Soldier's Story

Western Fire Ecology Center

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A MEXICAN CUT YOUR PENSION OR HEALTH BENEFITS?

2006-09-25T21:54:00.000-04:00

by Sam Smith

Whenever a new crisis develops in an election year and it's not nature's or the stock market's fault, the odds are pretty good that it's not a crisis.

Witness the sudden discovery of immigrants, a much more comfortable topic for some than Iraq, global warming, globalization, or runaway corporate greed.

The debate, however, has its bizarre aspects. For example, the Texas Rangers, who should know, list their last serious concerns with Mexican terrorists as occurring nearly 100 years ago when "when authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrest Basilio Ramos, Jr. Ramos is carrying a copy of the Plan of San Diego, a revolutionary manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town of San Diego. It calls for the formation of a 'Liberating Army of Races and Peoples,' of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese, to 'free' the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado from United States. Versions of the plan call for the murder of all white citizens over 16 years of age. The goal is an independent republic, which might later seek annexation to Mexico.' Since then things have been pretty quiet, although some guerillas from another continent did considerable damage in 2001 by using the border crossing technique known as "buying airline tickets."

But it's not really about terrorism. It's about finding a scapegoat for America's increasing problems. What America's white elite is doing is just what its southern branch did under segregation: teach non-elite whites to blame their problems on a minority. It worked well then and it seems to be working now.

But those wishing to test the extent of the immigrant problem might want to conduct this quick test:

1. Has a Mexican ever fired or laid you off?

2. Was the plant you worked for until it was sent overseas been bought by Mexicans or is it still owned by the same people you used to work for?

3. Has a Mexican ever cut your pension or health benefits? Outsourced your job to India?

4. How much does Latin America contribute to global warming and its results - such as bigger hurricanes and more tornados - compared with the United States?

5. Was Enron run by Mexicans?

6. Are Mexicans responsible for NSA's spying you?

7. Do you think Mexicans or the pharmaceutical corporations are more responsible for high drug costs?

8. How much of the corruption in Washington has been instigated by the Mexicans?

9. Did the Mexicans' make us invade Iraq?

10. Are the Mexicans responsible for George bush being so dumb?

Chances are most your answers will be in the negative which is a clue to stop spending so much time worrying about immigration and turn your attention to something else.

SOURCE: Undernews

MILITARY ATTEMPTS TO BLAME LAWYER FOR GITMO SUICIDES

2006-09-25T20:46:00.000-04:00

Monday September 25, 2006 11:46 PM

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - An attorney who represents several Guantanamo Bay detainees said the U.S. military is attempting to falsely link him to the suicides of three prisoners at the base to deflect blame for its own actions.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Monday on attorney Clive Stafford Smith's accusation. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has seized some 1,100 pounds of documents, some of which are protected by lawyer-client privilege, in its probe of the June suicides by three detainees, the first to rock the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

``As a matter of routine practice, we do not discuss ongoing NCIS investigations,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Stafford Smith said he learned that interrogators have been questioning his client Mohammed el Gharani on a weekly basis, attempting to lay blame for the suicides at the lawyer's feet.

``His interrogators have repeatedly questioned him about my purported role in the suicides,'' Stafford told the AP.

``The interrogator said I told my clients to kill themselves, and word was passed to the three men who did commit suicide,'' Stafford Smith added.

The suicides stoked condemnation of the detention center, where alleged al-Qaida and Taliban members are held. Lawyers said the suicides were an act of desperation.

SOURCE: Guardian Unlimited

U.S. prosecution of Padilla no slam dunk so far

2006-09-25T08:36:00.000-04:00

By CURT ANDERSON
AP Legal Affairs Writer
Published September 24, 2006, 8:52 AM CDT

MIAMI -- The Bush administration's decision to drop the "enemy combatant" label from alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla and prosecute him on civilian terror charges has not gone smoothly, with even the judge in the case raising questions about sketchy evidence and a vague indictment.

Trial for Padilla -- a former Chicago gang member once accused of planning to detonate a radioactive bomb -- and two co-defendants was initially scheduled for early September. But it's now off until January and may be delayed further into 2007 if prosecutors file their expected appeal of U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke's dismissal of a crucial charge.

Cooke also has pronounced the U.S. case "weak on facts" and agreed with defense lawyers that prosecutors must provide more details about what crimes the trio may have actually committed instead of relying on sweeping allegations that they were involved in a violent Islamic jihad over a decade on several continents.

In response to one question about identities of any alleged victims, prosecutors listed armed confrontations against the Russian military in Chechnya and Tajikistan, opposing Muslim factions in Afghanistan and Serbian and Croat forces in Bosnia. They also cited violent acts against more moderate Muslim governments around the world.

Many legal experts say that kind of broad evidence won't be good enough for a jury, which must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Padilla and the others committed crimes. And to prove that, prosecutors must have specific violent acts and specific victims, experts say.

"You've got to mount a sufficient body of evidence to support the charges, and that's what's lacking," said Scott Silliman, law professor and executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University. "If he is acquitted, it will be in my judgment a severely embarrassing moment for the government."

The difficulty prosecutors have in defining exactly what Padilla and the others allegedly did is a recurrent issue in terrorism cases where charges are brought before a violent act takes place, said Jeffrey F. Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law.

"Law enforcement often faces the problem of stopping the terrorist before they strike, which means the overt act never happens," Addicott said. "It makes prosecution more difficult, but not impossible."

U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta declined comment on the status of the case, but has in the past expressed confidence in the strength of the government's evidence.

Padilla, a 35-year-old former member of the Latin Disciples gang in Chicago, was arrested by the FBI in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and designated a month later as an "enemy combatant" by President Bush.

He was held by the U.S. military and interrogated without charge or real access to a lawyer for 3 1/2 years, with former Attorney General John Ashcroft famously claiming on television that Padilla was arrested while on an al-Qaida mission to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major city.

With Bush's authority to hold an American like Padilla indefinitely without charge under legal challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court, the administration sidestepped the question last November by dropping the "enemy combatant" label and adding him to an existing Miami case charging alleged members of a North American terrorism support cell. No "dirty bomb" is mentioned in that indictment.

"There is a bit of a pattern in these cases of the government overstating what it can actually prove," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor.

Padilla couldn't be transferred to the U.S. terrorist detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and possibly tried before a military commission there because he is a U.S. citizen. So even if Congress succeeds in rewriting the rules for those commissions, Padilla will get his day in federal court.

The indictment essentially contends that Padilla, who had relocated in the 1990s to South Florida and converted to Islam, was recruited to al-Qaida by Adham Amin Hassoun, a Sunrise computer programmer allegedly active in the jihadist worldwide network. A third defendant, Kifah Wael Jayyousi, is accused of funneling support to terror groups in part through his "Islam Report" newsletter.

In a setback for the government's case, Cooke ruled in August that count one of the indictment, alleging a conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim persons in a foreign country," must be dismissed because it duplicates other charges. Prosecutors are likely to appeal that ruling, which tosses out the only charge carrying a possible life sentence.

Other potential weaknesses in the case against include:

--Padilla's voice is heard on only eight of some 50,000 FBI wiretap recordings and his name is mentioned on about 20 others. His lawyers say violence or jihad is not discussed on any of those recordings, and some of them are between Padilla's mother and Hassoun. Most involve subjects such as Padilla's whereabouts, his marriage and his children, his lawyers say.

--A key piece of physical evidence is a "mujahideen" application Padilla allegedly completed to attend an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Prosecutors say his fingerprints are on it. They have refused to produce a list of anyone who may have been at the camp at the same time or whose forms were found along with that application. They intend to call as a witness Yahya Goba, a convicted 28-year-old member of the so-called "Lackawanna Six" terror cell in upstate New York, who will tell jurors he filled out a similar form but at a later date. Goba could get a reduced prison sentence in return for his cooperation.

--Over government objections, Cooke ordered the Bush administration to turn over medical records from Padilla's long stretch in military custody. Defense lawyers say they will look for instances of possible misconduct during interrogations or use of drugs that might have impaired Padilla in some way.

--A magistrate judge found that Jayyousi's publication of the "Islam Report" may be protected by the First Amendment because it "merely advocated terrorism in general, or jihad at some indefinite time" rather than providing specific instructions or signals for a crime to be committed. Jayyousi is the only defendant to win pretrial release on bail.

Some experts compared the Padilla case to that of former University of South Florida professor Sami al-Arian, who was cleared of terrorism charges after a five-month trial in 2005. That case also involved thousands of telephone and wiretap intercepts but little direct links between al-Arian and particular acts of Palestinian violence overseas.

"If it's not a problem as a matter of law that they are getting people on talk rather than action, it certainly is a problem with juries," said Michael Greenberger, law professor at the University of Maryland. "If all they produce is telephone conversations, they run the risk that they are not going to convince a jury to convict."

SOURCE: Chicago Tribune

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial

2006-09-24T12:17:00.000-04:00

Read the letter in full here (pdf)
David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday September 20, 2006

Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".

In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.

These include the International Policy Network, a thinktank with its HQ in London, and the George C Marshall Institute, which is based in Washington DC. In 2004, the institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

"There is not a robust scientific basis for drawing definitive and objective conclusions about the effect of human influence on future climate," it said.

In the letter, Bob Ward of the Royal Society writes: "At our meeting in July ... you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge."

The letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, adds: "I would be grateful if you could let me know which organisations in the UK and other European countries have been receiving funding so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public."

This is the first time the society has written to a company to challenge its activities. The move reflects mounting concern about the activities of lobby groups that try to undermine the overwhelming scientific evidence that emissions are linked to climate change.

The groups, such as the US Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose senior figures have described global warming as a myth, are expected to launch a renewed campaign ahead of a major new climate change report. The CEI responded to the recent release of Al Gore's climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, with adverts that welcomed increased carbon dioxide pollution.

The latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be published in February, is expected to say that climate change could drive the Earth's temperatures higher than previously predicted.

Mr Ward said: "It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For people to be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."

The Royal Society letter also takes issue with ExxonMobil's own presentation of climate science. It strongly criticises the company's "corporate citizenship reports", which claim that "gaps in the scientific basis" make it very difficult to blame climate change on human activity. The letter says: "These statements are not consistent with the scientific literature. It is very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science in these documents with ExxonMobil's claim to be an industry leader."

Environmentalists regard ExxonMobil as one of the least progressive oil companies because, unlike competitors such as BP and Shell, it has not invested heavily in alternative energy sources.

ExxonMobil said: "We can confirm that recently we received a letter from the Royal Society on the topic of climate change. Amongst other topics our Tomorrow's Energy and Corporate Citizenship reports explain our views openly and honestly on climate change. We would refute any suggestion that our reports are inaccurate or misleading." A spokesman added that ExxonMobil stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.

Recent research has made scientists more confident that recent warming is man-made, a finding endorsed by scientific academies across the world, including in the US, China and Brazil.

The Royal Society's move emerged as Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, warned that the polar ice caps were breaking up at a faster rate than glaciologists thought possible, with profound consequences for global sea levels. Professor Rapley said the change was almost certainly down to global warming. "It's like opening a window and seeing what's going on and the message is that it's worse than we thought," he said.

Guardian Unlimited

US Regime Adopts "Tougher" Stance at Gitmo Gulag

2006-09-24T12:06:00.000-04:00

By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press Writer
Sat Sep 23, 6:32 PM ET

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The military is toughening a new jailhouse for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants to protect guards after a spate of attacks and evidence that detainees have organized themselves into groups to mount uprisings, officials said.

The hardening comes as U.N. human rights investigators are calling for closing the entire detention center on this remote U.S. base. But with the war against terror groups dragging on, commanders say they have no choice in dealing with men deemed enemy combatants.

Events in recent months have made Guantanamo officials extremely wary:

• Detainees lured guards into a cell in the prison's Camp 4 by staging a suicide attempt in May, then attacked with fan blades and broken pieces of fluorescent light fixtures, the military says. Defense attorneys say the clash was sparked when guards tried to search prisoners' Qurans.

• On June 10, three detainees in Camp 1 committed suicide. Navy Rear Adm. Harry Harris, commander of the jail, described it as a coordinated protest action — "not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."

• Guards recently discovered detainees in Camp 1 were dismantling faucets on sinks, removing long, sharp springs and reinforcing them into stabbing weapons, Army Lt. Col. Mike Nicolucci said. Camp 1 has been emptied of detainees while new faucets are installed, with inaccessible springs.

From July 2005 through August, the military recorded 432 assaults by detainees using "cocktails" of bodily excretions thrown at guards, 227 physical assaults and 99 instances of inciting or participating in disturbances or riots.

"What we have come to assess is these detainees — these terrorists — are still fighting a battle," said Army Brig. Gen. Edward A. Leacock, deputy commander of the detention operation. "They're not on the battlefield but ... they're still continuing to fight to this day."

Leacock said hard-core al-Qaida and Taliban detainees have established a hierarchy of "military guys, religious guys ... the muscle guys, and they all have a role inside the camps."

The goal is to coordinate attacks on guards or organize disturbances, Leacock said in an interview with journalists from The Associated Press and three foreign news organizations Wednesday.

"There are people in the camps — we have identified them — that continue to try to foment problems within the camp," Leacock said. "Our effort is trying to preclude them from developing the plans that will cause ... any kind of uprising."

Leacock did not identify the leaders but insisted extra security measures were called for, even before 14 top detainees, including alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, were recently transferred to Guantanamo.

Human rights attorneys contend detainees are treated harshly, including enduring solitary confinement for months. The lawyers also say that among the roughly 460 Guantanamo detainees are men who were swept up by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere who never intended to do the United States harm.

Underscoring the military's toughening stance, a jailhouse in the final stages of construction on a cactus-studded plateau overlooking the Caribbean is being "hardened" into a maximum-security facility. Camp 6 was to have opened in August as a medium-security lockup.

The modifications have pushed back the completion date of the $37.8 million jailhouse, which has a capacity for 220 inmates, to Sept. 30. It will take its first detainees in mid-October, Army Capt. Dan Byer said.

As a medium-security jail, inmates would have had common areas where they could talk and share meals. The eight common areas, with gleaming metal tables and stools, still exist, but will be off limits to detainees under maximum security.

"Anti-jump fencing" is being added to second floor tiers, and a high-tech control room will allow guards to monitor the facility while sitting at computers.

Shower doors have been specially made for the modification. Inmates will be escorted to showers, shut in and escorted back to their cells when they are finished washing. As a medium-security jail, inmates would have been able to walk unescorted across the common area to the showers.

Camp 6 underscores the prison's increasing permanence, standing in stark contrast to the cages that housed detainees when they began arriving in January 2002. Vines now entwine the cages at the abandoned Camp X-ray, standing in knee-deep weeds and grass.

The United States has determined that about 130 of the current detainees are eligible for release or transfer, but the timing will depend on negotiations with their home countries.

"I think what we have here is an orange. What we're doing is squeezing out the juice and what we're left with at the end of the day is pulp that will just stay here," said Navy Capt. Phil Waddingham, lead officer here for the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants.

"We have dangerous men here who should not be allowed back to the battlefield," he said.

Last year, Guantanamo's former warden held talks with "the council," an ad hoc group composed of six detainees aimed at easing prison conditions and conflicts. One of the things they agreed on was having traffic cones placed in hallways during Muslim prayer time, so guards would know not to interrupt praying detainees.

The council has been disbanded amid suspicions it was coordinating resistance efforts. Defense attorneys say some council members have been in solitary confinement for months. Guantanamo officials refuse to discuss individual detainees, but say no one is denied all human contact.

Leacock said that while the prayer cones are still used, the experiment of allowing a detainee negotiating group is definitely over.

"The council of six is no longer in session," he said.

SOURCE: Associated Press

Hacktivismo Releases Torpark

2006-09-24T11:44:00.000-04:00

Hacktivismo Releases Torpark
Posted by jtesta on September 19th, 2006

Torpark keeps Web surfers’ identities private, can run off a USB stick, and scrubs tracks from host computers and browsers.

New York, NY (PRWEB) September 19, 2006 — Hacktivismo, an international group of computer security experts and human rights workers, just released Torpark, an anonymous, fully portable Web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. Torpark comes pre-configured, requires no installation, can run off a USB memory stick, and leaves no tracks behind in the browser or computer. Torpark is a highly modified variant of Portable Firefox, that uses the TOR (The Onion Router) network to anonymize the connection between the user and the website that is being visited.

“We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives,” said Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin. “Torpark continues Hacktivismo’s commitment to expanding privacy rights on the Internet. And the best thing is, it’s free. No one should have to pay for basic human rights, especially the right of privacy.”

Torpark is being released under the GNU General Public License and is dedicated to the Panchen Lama*.

HOW TORPARK WORKS
When a user logs onto the Internet, a unique IP address is assigned to manage the computer’s identity. Each website the user visits can see and log the user’s IP address. Hostile governments and data thieves can easily monitor this interaction to correlate activity and pinpoint a user’s identity.

Torpark causes the IP address seen by the website to change every few minutes to frustrate eavesdropping and mask the requesting source. For example, a user could be surfing the Internet from a home computer in Ghana, and it might appear to websites that the user was coming from a university computer in Germany or any other country with servers in the TOR network.

It is important to note that the data passing from the user’s computer into the TOR network is encrypted. Therefore, the user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot see the information that is passing through the Torpark browser, such as the websites visited, or posts the user might have made to a forum. The ISP can only see an encrypted connection to the TOR network.

However, users must understand that there are limitations to the anonymity. Torpark anonymizes the user’s connection but not the data. Data traveling between the client and the TOR network is encrypted, but the data between the TOR network and websites is unencrypted. Therefore, the user should not use his/her username or password on websites that do not offer a secure login and session (noted by a golden padlock at the bottom of the Torpark browser screen).

DOWNLOAD TORPARK
http://torpark.nfshost.com/download.html

ABOUT HACKTIVISMO
http://www.hacktivismo.com
Hacktivismo is a group of international hackers, human rights workers, artists and others who seek to further the goals of human rights through technology. They operate under the aegis of the CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc). Hacktivismo is committed to developing technologies in support of the highest standards of human rights.

ABOUT THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDc_communications
The CULT OF THE DEAD COW (cDc) is the most influential hacking group in the world. The cDc alumni reads like a Who’s Who of hacking and includes a former U.S. presidential advisor on Internet security, among others. The group is further distinguished by publishing the longest running e-zine on the Internet [est. 1984, stretching the limits of the First Amendment, and fighting anyone or any government that aspires to limit free speech.

* ABOUT THE PANCHEN LAMA
http://www.savetibet.org/news/positionpapers/panchenlama.php
The Panchen Lama is often referred to as the world’s youngest political prisoner. In May 1995, agents of the Chinese government kidnapped the six-year-old Panchen Lama and his parents. They have not been seen or heard from since, despite repeated calls from the United Nations and international human rights organizations. Chinese officials claim that the Panchen Lama is being held in “protective custody”. Six months after the abduction, China installed its handpicked version of the Panchen Lama. The boy is forced to act as a mouthpiece for Chinese policy in Tibet, and is referred to as “the fake” by Tibetans.

SOURCE: Hacktivismo

Canadian Oil Co Announces Drilling Success in Cuba

2006-09-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

At this point, anything that would make GW squirm is alright by me:

Pebercan Announces Drilling Success in Cuba and Management Reorganization
Friday, September 22, 2006

Pebercan (TSX:PBC) is an independent group specializing in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in Cuba, and is listed (PBC) on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company also has a subsidiary (Pebermat) that specializes in drilling services.

Highlights

• Santa Cruz 302 well (STC 302) a success
• Gross daily production at Block 7 approaches 21,000 barrels per day; Pebercan’s share: 11,500 barrels per day
• Management reorganization

Continued increase in production
Prior to hook-up of the new well (STC 302, see below), total production for Block 7 is now approximately 21,000 b/d, of which Pebercan’s share is 11,500 b/d(before taxes). This represents a 42% increase in daily production over the same period in 2005.On September 7, the Company finished drilling on STC 302, reaching a total depth of 3,671 metres (–1,650 metres vertical depth) with a recognized reservoir length of 297 metres.

This well was tested using an 18-mm choke with a 3,000 bopd stabilized production. The success of this new drilling will ensure a significant increase in new production.

Furthermore, the wells currently being drilled (STC 201, STC 104, Seboruco 150, Seboruco 14 and Canasi 10), as well as two extra wells that will be drilled at Santa Cruz before year-end, should serve to
achieve the Company’s objective as planned of a 15,000 b/d share of gross production by the end of 2006 – a 60% increase over 2005.

On-shore exploration block
The Company is currently in discussion with the Cuban authorities regarding its intention to renew – under the terms of a changed contract – some of the mining interests it originally held as part of the non ring fence contract for production sharing, namely in Blocks 12, 13, 15 and Varadero Profundo. A definite decision regarding this request could possibly be made in late 2006/early 2007.

Management reorganization
On September 14, the Board of Directors appointed Mr. Christophe Ranger as CEO, in succession to Frédéric Boulet. Mr. Boulet, whose work on developing reserves, increasing production and improving the Company’s results was acclaimed by the Chairman of the Board on behalf of the Company, now wishes to devote his time to developing industrial activities as a shareholder. He will continue to serve as director of the Company and will be available to carry out any mandate that the President might wish to assign
him.

Mr. Christophe Ranger will carry out the CEO’s duties on an interim basis until a new candidate with experience in the oil industry has been selected through the recruitment process currently underway. Moreover, Mr. Gilles Frachon was appointed CFO and corporate secretary in replacement of Mr. Marc Sengès who has left the Company to accept a new position outside of the group.

Finally, following the departure of Mr. Didier Lechartier, the Board of Directors has accepted the appointment as a member of the Board of Directors of the Company of Mr. Michel Campioni. He will act as representative of Établissements Maurel & Prom SA,. Legal notes – forward-looking statements The forward-looking statements contained in this news release involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, as well as other factors that could cause the Company's actual results, returns and realizations to differ materially from the future results, returns or realizations expressed or assumed by these forward-looking statements. Under no circumstances is the Company obliged to update or change these forward-looking statements on the basis of new information or future events, or for any other reason, and specifically disclaims any obligation in this regard. Additional important information concerning risks and uncertainties is provided in the Company’s most recent annual and interim reports, and in other documents that have been filed with the appropriate Canadian regulating authorities.

For more information about PEBERCAN, visit the OilVoice Oil & Gas Directory http://www.oilvoice.com/m/OID.asp

SOURCE: Oil Voice

Limbaugh Admits to Republican Voter Deception, Blames Democrats

2006-09-23T14:23:00.000-04:00

On his radio show yesterday, comedian Rush Limbaugh encouraged Republican efforts to deliberately disenfranchise voters.

"I mean, you take a look at the average Democrat voter registration drive, you can take for every hundred thousand voters they register, the cumulative IQ would probably be less than a pencil eraser. So when it comes time for the election, half of them can be fooled in saying, "No, it's not Election Day. It's tomorrow, Wednesday." And they show up on Wednesday to vote when the polls are closed, and the Democrats claim a trick has been played on them. That's how stupid some of their voters are."

Limbaugh then pointed out a specific example of a ‘successful’ campaign to deny registered Democrats the right to vote:

"You think I'm lying? That happened. Republicans did a dirty trick and sent a flier out a week early and said due to unfortunate circumstances, certain precincts, Election Day will be held on Wednesday, blah, blah, blah, blah. Democrats heard about it, this is such a dirty trick. They were worried because they knew it would work, because half their voters are stupid idiots! They have to be when you look at the way they vote."

Right-wing voter suppression campaigns are nothing new. People For the American Way Foundation’s latest report, The New Face of Jim Crow: Voter Suppression in America, highlights methods of intimidation and deception such as this, plus budding legislative proposals that would keep eligible voters, many of them African- American, from the polls. Supporters of these proposals claim they are to bringing “integrity” to the process, but can the Right really be trusted to bring “integrity” to election reform while Mr. Limbaugh brags about the ease with which his friends work to suppress the vote?

One would hope that Mr. Limbaugh would feel compelled to report such egregious violations of the law to the proper authorities. In the alternative, now that Mr. Limbaugh has indicated his knowledge of, or complicity in, voter fraud, perhaps the feds should pay him a visit.

SOURCE: Right Wing Watch

Probe into 'Bin Laden death' leak

2006-09-23T13:35:00.000-04:00

President Jacques Chirac has ordered an inquiry into the leak of a French secret service memo claiming that Osama Bin Laden had died.

Mr Chirac told reporters he was surprised the memo had been leaked, and refused to comment on the claim itself.

A French newspaper quoted a document as saying the Saudi secret services were convinced the al-Qaeda leader had died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August.

Officials in Pakistan and the US said they could not confirm the account.

Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taleban government there was overthrown by US-backed forces in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Since then, US and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding in the lawless border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

His last videotaped message was released in late 2004, but several audio tapes have been released this year - the last at the end of June, in which Bin Laden praised Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an American air strike.

Internal organs paralysed

In its report, French regional daily L'Est Republicain said it had obtained a copy of a DGSE foreign intelligence service report dated 21 September.

"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," it read.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."

Mr Chirac said: "I am surprised that a confidential memo from the secret services has been published, therefore I've ordered the defence minister to start an inquiry.

"As far as the information itself is concerned, it's not confirmed in any way. Therefore I have no comment at all."

The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said it was not aware of any similar reports on the internet.

"We've seen nothing from any al-Qaeda messaging or other indicators that would point to the death of Osama Bin Laden," director Ben Venzke told the Associated Press news agency.

SOURCE: BBC

Keeping the border safe for defense-contractor profits

2006-09-22T16:01:00.000-04:00

by Floyd J. McKay

In these parts, cheek-by-jowl with the Canadian border, a few hardy survivalists dig in against an attack of black helicopters manned by foreigners working for the United Nations in cooperation with the sneaky Canadians.

Here in sophisticated Bellingham, we call them cranks.

But wait, they may be right after all, and they seem to have encouragement from that most revered of institutions, the Department of Homeland Security, not to mention the White House.

I speak of the Secure Border Initiative Net (SBInet in gov-speak), which has our major defense contractors drooling at the easy money ahead. A contract for $2.5 billion will be awarded to one of the big defense consortiums later this month — and that will lead to more, and more, and after a while it could turn into real money.

SBInet is a system of whiz-bang electronic surveillance all along the border, with thousands of sensors triggering remote-control cameras monitored by bored security personnel; unmanned aircraft and high-altitude balloons may figure into the picture.

Imagine the surprise of an ordinary Canadian black bear, peeing in the woods, as bears are wont to do, only to find she has triggered an alarm and is now on live television! Call in the choppers.

Electronic surveillance is not new to our borders — forms of it have been used for years, with modest success at best. Smugglers have always found a way, and doubtless will with the SBInet as well. As long as there are addicts on both sides of our borders, drugs will continue to flow both north and south. Illegal immigrants as well.

We will spend billions more to gain a marginal advance in border protection.

If you wonder who benefits and who is really pushing this system, turn your Web browser to any financial publication or defense contractor. Homeland Security is the new gold standard in the field.

Since it was created from the merger of 22 agencies in 2003, DHS has nearly tripled its annual procurement spending, to $10 billion in 2005. A bipartisan congressional investigation called many of the contracts wasteful and mismanaged.

But the agency will continue to award big contracts, as Americans buy into any gimcrack that will make them feel safer. Democrats will be as wasteful as Republicans have been, because no one dares turn down any proposal related to security.

"U.S. border security looks like another rainmaker for the big defense contractor," says Barron's. "Many of the technologies that make you a successful aerospace contractor would also make you a successful homeland-security contractor," the aerospace industry's trade association told a McClatchy Newspapers reporter.

One of the "technologies" already at work is lobbying Congress — a skill the defense industry has refined to an art. And, yes, Boeing is in the race, and Washington politicos may be expected to push for it to be selected.

Defense contractors need wars or rumors of wars to deliver dividends to investors and keep executives in high clover, and, with the Iraq war perhaps the last "shock and awe" for a while at least, it is the rumors of war (i.e., terrorism and its prospect) that will drive the industry. As Republicans ramp up the fear of terror and hapless Democrats strive to prove they can be as tough, there is no end in sight.

A motley band of al-Qaida and wannabes is doing to the United States what the Reagan administration did to the Soviet Union, goading us into pouring more and more money into arms and armies, which in the case of the Soviet Union resulted in its bankruptcy and dissolution.

That won't happen here, of course; we are too rich and too united a nation.

But we pour billions into war and rumors of war at significant cost to other massive needs, ranging from education to health care to infrastructure.

Set aside such "liberal feel-good" ideas as day care for working mothers and health clinics for poor people and just look at "bricks and mortar," always a favorite of conservatives. America needs $1.6 trillion just to fix failing bridges, tunnels, dams and water systems, the American Society of Civil Engineers warns. We fall behind daily, as we ramp up the fancy cameras along the Canadian border.

Infrastructure projects are more job-intensive than defense, and the jobs are in every small town and region, unlike concentrated defense jobs. Bricks and mortar, not guns; we already have more arms than the rest of the world combined. Can't we be governed by common sense, not fear?

SOURCE

Govt Will Appeal FOIA Ruling on NRO Budget Docs

2006-09-22T15:26:00.000-04:00

The U.S. Department of Justice said (pdf) that it will seek to overturn a federal court ruling requiring the National Reconnaissance Office to process a request from the Federation of American Scientists for release of NRO budget documents.

In a July 24, 2006 decision (pdf), Judge Reggie B. Walton had ruled that the NRO's refusal to process the FAS Freedom of Information Act request was unlawful.

Judge Walton ordered the intelligence agency to move forward with the request, which was limited to unclassified budget records. The NRO promptly advised FAS that it would comply with the order.

But instead, the Justice Department indicated on September 20 that it would challenge the decision in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.

The action is consistent with the Bush Administration's restrictive Freedom of Information Act policy, which encourages agencies to withhold information whenever possible and promises to support them when they do.

"When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions," Attorney General John Ashcroft told executive branch agencies in the October 12, 2001 policy.

In other FOIA news, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved bipartisan legislation sponsored by Senators Cornyn and Leahy that would make certain procedural improvements in the FOIA.

Senator Leahy itemized the proposed changes in a September 21 news release.

While the Cornyn-Leahy changes would be welcome, none of them could substitute for an official commitment to open government or a rational disclosure policy.

Nor would they dissuade the Justice Department from working to overturn judicial decisions in favor of FOIA plaintiffs like that of Judge Walton.

SOURCE

Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism

2006-09-22T14:54:00.000-04:00

By Robert Parry
September 22, 2006

Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.

Now, George W. Bush has picked up the mantle from his father for protecting the 90-year-old Pinochet from ever facing justice for the murder of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt, who were killed by a car bomb on Sept. 21, 1976, as Letelier drove down Massachusetts Avenue.

Six years ago, near the end of the Clinton administration, an FBI team reviewed new evidence that had become available in the case and recommended the indictment of Pinochet. But the final decision was left to the incoming Bush administration, which has failed to act while also withholding relevant documents from Chilean investigators.

“Every day it is clearer that Pinochet ordered my brother’s death,” human rights lawyer Fabiola Letelier told the New York Times. “But for a proper and complete investigation to take place we need access to the appropriate records and evidence.” [NYT, Sept. 21, 2006]

By frustrating the Chilean investigation, the Bush administration also is protecting former President George H.W. Bush against possibly being implicated in this act of terrorism, conceivably as an accessory after the fact for diverting suspicion away from Pinochet.

The Letelier-Moffitt murder is considered the worst act of state-sponsored terrorism in the history of Washington, D.C. At minimum, George H.W. Bush’s CIA operated with extraordinary incompetence and negligence in failing to act on explicit warnings about the assassination plot.

Thirty-Year Tale

The case dates back to 1976 when the elder George Bush was running the CIA and right-wing military dictatorships – many with close CIA ties – were striking out at political adversaries through a cross-border assassination project known as Operation Condor.

At the time, one of the most eloquent voices making the case against Pinochet’s regime was Orlando Letelier, who was living in exile and operating out of a liberal think tank in Washington, the Institute for Policy Studies.

Earlier in their government careers, when Letelier was briefly defense minister in the leftist government of Salvador Allende, Pinochet had been Letelier’s subordinate. In 1973, after Pinochet took power in a military coup that killed Allende, Pinochet imprisoned Letelier at a desolate concentration camp on Dawson Island off Chile’s south Pacific coast. International pressure won Letelier release a year later.

By 1976, however, Pinochet was chafing under Letelier’s criticism of the regime’s human rights record. Letelier was doubly infuriating to Pinochet because Letelier was regarded as a man of intellect and charm, even impressing CIA officers who observed him as “a personable, socially pleasant man” and “a reasonable, mature democrat,” according to CIA biographical sketches.

Pinochet fumed to U.S. officials, including to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, that Letelier was spreading lies and causing trouble with the U.S. Congress. Soon, Pinochet was plotting with Manuel Contreras, chief of Chile’s feared DINA secret service, on how to silence Letelier for good.

By summer 1976, Bush’s CIA was hearing a lot about Operation Condor from South American sources who had attended a second organizational conference of Southern Cone intelligence services.

These CIA sources reported that the military regimes were preparing “to engage in ‘executive action’ outside the territory of member countries.” In intelligence circles, “executive action” is a euphemism for assassination.

On July 30, 1976, a CIA official briefed State Department officials about these “disturbing developments in [Condor’s] operational attitudes.” The information was passed to Kissinger in a “secret” report on August 3, 1976.

The 14-page report from Assistant Secretary of State Harry Shlaudeman said the military regimes were “joining forces to eradicate ‘subversion,’ a word which increasingly translates into non-violent dissent from the left and center left.” [See Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File.]

Targeting Letelier

While information about the larger Condor strategy was spreading through the upper levels of the Ford administration, Pinochet and Contreras were putting in motion an audacious plan to eliminate Orlando Letelier in his safe haven in Washington, D.C.

In July 1976, two DINA operatives – Michael Townley and Armando Fernandez Larios – went to Paraguay where DINA had arranged for them to get false passports and visas for a trip to the United States.

Townley and Larios were using the false names Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral and a cover story claiming they were investigating suspected leftists working for Chile’s state copper company in New York.

Townley and Fernandez said their project had been cleared with the CIA’s station chief in Santiago. A senior Paraguayan official, Conrado Pappalardo, urged U.S. Ambassador George Landau to cooperate, citing a direct appeal from Pinochet in support of the mission. Supposedly, the Paraguayan government claimed, the two Chileans were to meet with Bush’s CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters.

An alarmed Landau recognized that the visa request was highly unusual, since such operations were normally coordinated with the CIA station in the host country and were cleared with CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Though granting the visas, Landau took the precaution of sending an urgent cable to Walters and photostatic copies of the fake passports to the CIA. Landau said he received an urgent cable back signed by CIA Director Bush, reporting that Walters, who was in the process of retiring, was out of town.

When Walters returned a few days later, he cabled Landau that he had “nothing to do with this” mission. Landau immediately canceled the visas.

Landau also alerted senior State Department officials. In one cable, Landau said the “Paraguayan caper” had “troublesome aspects” and recommended that the two Chileans be barred from entering the United States.

“If there is still time, and if there is a possibility of turning off this harebrained scheme,” assistant secretary Shlaudeman wrote in reply, “you are authorized to go back [to Paraguayan officials] to urge that the Chileans be persuaded not – repeat not – to travel.”

But the Ford administration dithered over delivering a formal demarche demanding that Pinochet’s government cease and desist in its cross-border assassinations. Though a plan for warning Santiago was developed, the State Department could not agree how to carry it out without offending the prickly Pinochet.

Bush’s CIA

It also remains unclear what – if anything – Bush’s CIA did after learning about the “Paraguayan caper.”

Normal protocol would have required senior CIA officials to ask their Chilean counterparts about the supposed trip to Langley. However, even with the declassification of more records in recent years, that question has never been fully answered.

The CIA also demonstrated little curiosity over the Aug. 22, 1976, arrival of two other Chilean operatives using Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral, the phony names that were intended to hide the identity of the two operatives in the earlier plot.

When these two different operatives arrived in Washington, they made a point of having the Chilean Embassy notify Walters’s office at CIA.

“It is quite beyond belief that the CIA is so lax in its counterespionage functions that it would simply have ignored a clandestine operation by a foreign intelligence service in Washington, D.C., or elsewhere in the United States,” wrote John Dinges and Saul Landau in their 1980 book, Assassination on Embassy Row. “It is equally implausible that Bush, Walters, Landau and other officials were unaware of the chain of international assassinations that had been attributed to DINA.”

Apparently, DINA dispatched the second pair of operatives, using the phony names, to show that the initial contacts for visas in Paraguay were not threatening. In other words, the Chilean government had the replacement team of Williams and Romeral go through the motions of a trip to Washington with the intent to visit Walters to dispel any American suspicions or to spread confusion among suspicious U.S. officials.

But it’s still unclear whether Bush’s CIA contacted Pinochet’s government about its mysterious behavior and, if not, why not.

The Bomb Plot

As for the Letelier assassination, DINA was soon plotting another way to carry out the killing.

In late August 1976, DINA dispatched a preliminary team of one man and one woman to do surveillance on Letelier as he moved around Washington. Then, Townley was sent under a different alias to carry out the murder.

After arriving in New York on Sept. 9, Townley connected with Cuban National Movement leader Guillermo Novo in Union City, N.J., and then headed to Washington. Townley assembled a remote-controlled bomb that used pieces bought at Radio Shack and Sears.

On Sept. 18, joined by Cuban extremists Virgilio Paz and Dionisio Suarez, Townley went to Letelier home in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington. The assassination team attached the bomb underneath Letelier’s Chevrolet Chevelle.

Three days later, on the morning of Sept. 21, Paz and Suarez followed Letelier as he drove to work with two associates, Ronni Moffitt and her husband Michael.

As the Chevelle proceeded down Massachusetts Avenue, through an area known as Embassy Row because many of the city’s embassies line the street, the assassins detonated the bomb.

The blast ripped off Letelier’s legs and punctured a hole in Ronni Moffitt’s jugular vein. She drowned in her own blood at the scene; Letelier died after being taken to George Washington University Hospital. Michael Moffitt survived.

At the time, the attack represented the worst act of international terrorism on U.S. soil and remains the most notorious terror attack sponsored by a foreign government inside the United States.

Adding to the potential for scandal, the terrorism had been carried out by a regime that was an ostensible ally of the United States, one that had gained power with the help of the Nixon administration and the CIA.

Though initially treated in the press as a murder mystery, the facts behind the Letelier bombing threatened to unleash a major political scandal at just the wrong time for President Gerald Ford’s election campaign.

Bush at Risk

George H.W. Bush’s reputation was also at risk. As authors Dinges and Landau noted in Assassination on Embassy Row, “the CIA reaction was peculiar” after the cable from Ambassador Landau arrived disclosing a covert Chilean intelligence operation and asking Deputy Director Walters if he had a meeting scheduled with the DINA agents.

“Landau expected Walters to take quick action in the event that the Chilean mission did not have CIA clearance. Yet a week passed during which the assassination team could well have had time to carry out their original plan to go directly from Paraguay to Washington to kill Letelier. Walters and Bush conferred during that week about the matter.”

“One thing is clear,” Dinges and Landau wrote, “DINA chief Manuel Contreras would have called off the assassination mission if the CIA or State Department had expressed their displeasure to the Chilean government. An intelligence officer familiar with the case said that any warning would have been sufficient to cause the assassination to be scuttled. Whatever Walters and Bush did – if anything – the DINA mission proceeded.”

Within hours of the bombing, Letelier’s associates accused the Pinochet regime, citing its hatred of Letelier and its record for brutality. The Chilean government, however, heatedly denied any responsibility.

That night, at a dinner at the Jordanian Embassy, Sen. James Abourezk, a South Dakota Democrat, spotted Bush and approached the CIA director. Abourezk said he was a friend of Letelier’s and beseeched Bush to use the CIA “to find the bastards who killed him.”

Abourezk said Bush responded: “I’ll see what I can do. We are not without assets in Chile.” [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

A problem, however, was that one of the CIA’s best-placed assets – DINA chief Manuel Contreras – would turn out to be the mastermind of the assassination.

Wiley Gilstrap, the CIA’s Santiago station chief, did approach Contreras with questions about the Letelier bombing and wired back to Langley Contreras’s assurance that the Chilean government wasn’t involved.

Following the strategy of public misdirection already used in hundreds of “disappearances,” Contreras pointed the finger at the Chilean Left. Contreras suggested that leftists had killed Letelier to turn him into a martyr.

Evidence of Lying

The Ford administration, of course, had plenty of evidence that Contreras was lying.

Like a quarter century later, when the U.S. government immediately recognized al-Qaeda’s hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington because U.S. officials knew about Osama bin Laden’s intentions, there were signs everywhere in September 1976 that DINA had been plotting some kind of attack inside the United States.

If anything, the Letelier assassination should have been even easier to solve since the Pinochet government had flashed its intention to mount a suspicious operation inside the United States by involving the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay and the deputy director of the CIA. Bush’s CIA even had in its files a photograph of the leader of the terrorist squad, Michael Townley.

“The CIA had substantive evidence to show that Contreras was lying,” research Peter Kornbluh wrote in The Pinochet File. “The Agency had concrete knowledge that DINA had murdered other political opponents abroad, using the same modus operandi as the Letelier case. The Agency had substantive intelligence on Condor, and Chile’s involvement in planning murders of political opponents in Europe.”

Rather than fulfilling his promise to Abourezk to “see what I can do,” Bush ignored leads that would have taken him into a confrontation with Pinochet.

Any publicity might have opened up the Ford administration to another round of political damage for coddling a terrorist regime. The CIA either didn’t put the pieces together or chose to avoid the obvious conclusions that the evidence presented.

Indeed, the CIA didn’t seem to want any information that might implicate the Pinochet regime. On Oct. 6, a CIA informant in Chile went to the CIA station in Santiago and relayed an account of Pinochet denouncing Letelier.

The informant said the dictator had called Letelier’s criticism of the government “unacceptable.” The source “believes that the Chilean Government is directly involved in Letelier’s death and feels that investigation into the incident will so indicate,” the CIA field report said.

But Bush’s CIA chose to accept Contreras’s denials and even began leaking information that pointed away from the real killers.

Newsweek’s Periscope reported in the magazine’s Oct. 11, 1976, issue that “the Chilean secret police were not involved. …. The [Central Intelligence] agency reached its decision because the bomb was too crude to be the work of experts and because the murder, coming while Chile’s rulers were wooing U.S. support, could only damage the Santiago regime.” Similar stories ran in other newspapers.

Breaking the Case

Despite the lack of help from Washington, the FBI’s legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Robert Scherrer, began putting the puzzle together only a week after the Letelier bombing.

Relying on a source in the Argentine military, Scherrer reported to his superiors that the assassination was likely the work of Operation Condor, the assassination project organized by the Chilean government.

“It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the recent assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C., may have been carried out as a third phase of Operation Condor,” Scherrer wrote, referring to acts of assassination.

On Nov. 1, 1976, the day before the presidential election, the Washington Post became another vehicle for trumpeting Pinochet’s innocence.

“Operatives of the present Chilean military Junta did not take part in Letelier’s killing,” the Post wrote, citing CIA officials. “CIA Director Bush expressed this view in a conversation late last week with Secretary of State Kissinger.”

Despite these false claims of innocence about Pinochet and his regime, Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Ford to win the presidency on Nov. 2.

Over the next two years, federal investigators would crack the case, successfully bringing charges against Townley and several other conspirators. But prosecutor Eugene Propper told me that the CIA didn’t volunteer the crucial information about the Paraguayan gambit or supply the photo of the chief assassin, Townley.

“Nothing the agency gave us helped us break this case,” Propper said.

Regarding the Letelier murder, neither Bush nor Walters was ever pressed to provide a full explanation of their activities.

When I submitted questions to Bush in 1988 – while he was Vice President and I was a Newsweek correspondent preparing a story on his year as CIA director – Bush’s chief of staff Craig Fuller responded, saying “the Vice President generally does not comment on issues related to the time he was at the Central Intelligence Agency and he will have no comment on the specific issues raised in your letter.”

Newsweek editors subsequently decided not to publish any story about Bush’s year at the CIA though he was then running for President and citing his CIA experience as an important element of his resumé. Walters also rebuffed interview requests on the Letelier topic prior to his death on Feb. 10, 2002, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

In 1995, after the Pinochet dictatorship had ended, DINA chief Contreras was convicted in Chile for the Letelier assassination and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Contreras began implicating Pinochet in the Letelier murder and other acts of terrorism, saying Pinochet knew and approved all of Contreras’s actions.

As for Pinochet, Bush didn’t appear to hold a grudge against this foreign leader who had sponsored a terrorist attack under the nose of the U.S. government at a time when Bush was chief of U.S. intelligence.

In 1998, when Pinochet was detained in Great Britain on an extradition request from Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who was pursuing Pinochet for his role in killing Spanish citizens, one of the world leaders who rallied to Pinochet’s defense was George H.W. Bush, then the former President of the United States.

Bush called the case against Pinochet “a travesty of justice” and urged that Pinochet be sent home to Chile “as soon as possible,” a position ultimately endorsed by the British courts.

Now, eight years later, the baton of the Letelier-Moffitt-murder cover-up has passed to a new Bush generation, with George W. Bush now protecting Pinochet from prosecution and sparing the Bush Family possible exposure as hypocrites on terrorism.

SOURCE

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Free anonymous browsing

2006-09-22T14:49:00.000-04:00

By Kelly Fiveash

A modified version of Mozilla Firefox that lets users browse the web anonymously has been released.

The Torpark browser can be stored on and run from a flash USB memory stick, which can effectively turn a PC into an anonymous terminal.

Hacktivismo - an eclectic bunch of lawyers, artists, hackers and human rights activists - has created the modified portable web browser.

On its website the group claims to be "committed to developing technologies in support of the highest standards of human rights."

Explaining the motivation behind Torpack, Hacktivismo founder Oxblood Ruffin said: "We live in a time where acquisition technologies are cherry picking and collating every aspect of our online lives - so it seems that it's a browser attempting to redress that supposed imbalance."

No installation is required to run Torpark but the two folders generated from its free download website have to stay together for the browser to run.

Working in conjunction with The Onion Router (TOR) network, the tool anonymises a user's connection through encryption and constantly changing net addresses. This makes it incredibly difficult for ISPs to track an individuals web-related activity and location.

The Torpark website details instructions on what limitations to expect if using the browser, as surfing the net anonymously has several drawbacks including a slower browsing speed and individual websites not storing a users login details.

Torpark is being released under the GNU General Public License and is dedicated "to the Panchen Lama". ®

SOURCE

IAEA: U.S. Report on Iran 'Dishonest'

2006-09-20T17:11:00.000-04:00

IAEA Complains of 'Outrageous' Inaccuracies in U.S. House Committee Report on Iran
By GEORGE JAHN

VIENNA, Austria Sep 14, 2006 (AP)— A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has said.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday outside a 35-nation board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the report is false in saying Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site, when it has in fact produced material only in small quantities that is far below the level that can be used in nuclear arms.

The letter, which was first reported on by The Washington Post, also says the report erroneously says that IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei removed a senior nuclear inspector from the team investigating Iran's nuclear program "for concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct weapons."

In fact, the inspector was sidelined on Tehran's request, and the Islamic republic had a right to ask for a replacement under agreements that govern all states relationships with the agency, said the letter, calling the report's version "incorrect and misleading."

"In addition," says the letter, "the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for 'not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program.'"

Dated Aug. 12, the letter was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, a senior director of the Vienna-based agency.

An IAEA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the letter, said it was written "to set the record straight."

Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the House committee, confirmed they had received the letter and said the chairman had referred it to Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. Rush Hold, D-N.J. They will review it and issue a formal response if necessary, he said.

"All IAEA complains about is a photo caption. If you read the report, it's very clear that what it is saying is that Iran is working to develop the capability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, not that they have done so," Ware said. "They use a string of adjectives, while not pointing to any substantive criticism of the report. There are areas where we would disagree with them. A disagreement does not make what we say erroneous."

The dispute was reminiscent of the clashes between the IAEA and Washington over whether Saddam Hussein was trying to make weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms. American arguments that Saddam had such covert arms programs were given as the chief reason for invading Iraq and toppling Saddam.

ElBaradei's criticism of the U.S. standpoint on Iraq and subsequent perceptions that he was soft on Iran in his staff's investigation of suspicions Tehran's nuclear activities may be a cover for a weapons program led to a failed attempt last year by Washington to prevent his re-election.

SOURCE

Ten anti-Castro "journalists" in South Florida on US government payroll

2006-09-20T17:04:00.000-04:00

By Luciana Bohne
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Sep 15, 2006, 00:48

During the Mercosur summit in Argentina, WJAN-TV South Florida reporter, Manuel Cao, asked Cuban President Fidel Castro why his government didn't allow a prominent doctor and dissident to leave the country. Quick as lightning, Castro shot back, "Who pays you?"

Now we find that Cao's paymaster was the US government: he received $10,400 in payments so far this year. Cao is one among 10 South Florida journalists to have been found accepting money in exchange for touting propaganda intended to undermine the Cuban government via Radio and TV Marti (both bankrolled by the US government to the tune of $37 million to broadcast anti-Cuban propaganda from the States onto Cuban soil).

The news mercenaries' covert employer was exposed by documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Three were fired from El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister paper of the Miami Herald: columnist Pablo Alfonso, staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio and freelancer Olga Connor.

Pablo Alfonso, who wrote an opinion column, received $175,000 since 2001.

Perusing Alfonso's columns in Spanish, I found them to be concerned with trivial and titillating gossip of possible interest only to resentful exiles. The columns whispered about an alleged dairy farm, maintained solely for private catering to Castro's taste for the freshest strawberry yogurt and camembert cheeses.

Other fluff items included speculations on the "secrecy" -- perhaps nepotism -- surrounding the professional activities of Castro's tribe of grandchildren (all apparently respectably employed in Cuba or abroad in various non-subversive scientific fields).

Another provocation to outrage included Castro's alleged failure to effect a promised "energy revolution" because a power outage of four hours had crippled three provinces in June. My hunch is that Castro's "energy revolution" might have been referring to the one promised by ongoing off-shore, deep-sea explorations for oil and gas effected through an agreement with an Indian oil exploration company.

The most ironic of Alfonso's silly charges was the one stating that the newspaper, Granma, acted as a stenographer for Raul Castro's recent "declarations" and "interviews," upon assuming leadership of the Cuban nation, absent the convalescing Fidel Castro.

Of the bribed journalists mentioned by the US national media this morning (11 September 2006) -- the names of all 10 were reported by the Miami Herald. El Nuevo Herald's Olga Connor, a freelance journalist, received $71,000 from the US Office of Cuba Broadcasting since 2001; Nuevo Herald staff reporter Wilfredo Cancio Isla received $15,000 for the same period. Additional US news mercenaries were opinion page editor for Diario Las Americas Helen Aguirre Ferre and reporter/columnist Ariel Remos.

What struck me about this news coverage, however, was the absence of detailed coverage for Carlos Alberto Montaner, surely one of the most world-prominent of the Miami 10. A militant anti-Castroist, sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment by the Cuban revolutionary government in 1960 for "conspiring against the power of the state," Montaner has lived two-thirds of his life in exile. Now residing in Spain, he's founder and president of the Unión Liberal Cubana (Cuban Liberal Union). In Spain, he writes for ABC (the former mouthpiece for Francisco Franco, the Falangist Spanish dictator). An admiring website claimed that "his syndicated column is read by six million readers. His opinions make politician[s] in Spain and Latin America tremble. . . . He maintains his position as one of the regions most respected journalists."

Perhaps, but now he'll have to maintain it in the face of this recent exposure of his being in the pay of the US government. When he claims that Fidel Castro's "cancer will deliver justice," as he does in his columns, the alleged cancer's war on Fidel might suggest that it is diagnosed by a close collaborator of the US government. If Caracas indeed "will shiver with Castro's death," as Montaner predicts, readers might wonder with whom this drivel of wishful thinking is intended to curry favor. "The [Cuban]army's loyalty ends with Fidel's life" makes you wonder if another Bay of Pigs US debacle fueled by anti-revolutionary, out-of-touch, diehards in exile is in the offing -- or if the myth of a military coup is the result of too many years of mojito drinking, coupled with frustrated hopes among US-supported Cuban exiles' intriguers and illusionists.

"Democracy can arrive on the island via a pact with reformists," Montaner opines. Which "reformists"? The former Cuban estate landlords and clients of US multi-national exploiters in Miami? Or the "reformists" generated and proliferated by the $10 million initiative to foment "dissidence" in Cuba by the US Special Interests Office in Havana?

Actually, Cuban government officials have been arguing for decades that Montaner is far from a liberal paladin of human rights and democracy. They say that he's very close to known international terrorists such as Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people. He's an agent of the CIA, the Cubans insist. He has ties to the NGO, Reporters without Borders, which, last year, admitted it is financed by the CIA.

Reporters without Borders mounted a campaign in 2002 characterizing the trial and imprisonment in Cuba of more than two dozen journalists, among 75 "dissidents," as a violation of human rights. The Cuban government insisted that the accused were mercenary agitators paid by the US to pose as "independent journalists." As Granma reported, "none of them even passed through a journalism faculty or school of journalism and never wrote a single line of journalism."

Now whom are we to believe, in this matter of human-rights violations by Cuba? The Cuban officials or the purveyors of democracy in the "free press" paid for by the US government -- not exactly distinguished by its regard for truth?

SOURCE

ANOTHER Judge Replaced in Saddam's Trial

2006-09-20T14:37:00.000-04:00

Judge expels Saddam from court, defense walk out
By Ahmed Rasheed and Ibon Villelabeitia

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A new judge expelled a defiant Saddam Hussein from his genocide trial on Wednesday and defense lawyers stormed off in protest after the government sacked the chief judge, throwing the month-old case into turmoil.

The Iraqi government removed judge Abdullah al-Amiri overnight saying he had abandoned his neutrality for stating last week that Saddam was "not a dictator." International legal groups and the U.N. said it eroded the court's legitimacy.

"Take him out of the courtroom," the new judge, Mohammed al-Ureybi, told guards after Saddam launched a tirade and refused to sit down. Saddam accused the new judge of being the son of a government spy before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"Your father was a security agent!" Saddam said. "I knew him. He had an operation here," he added, gesturing at his own abdomen.

"I challenge you to prove that to the public," the judge said dismissively as Saddam was being escorted out.

The U.S.-backed tribunal is trying Saddam, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali," and five others for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in the 1988 Anfal campaign against Kurds. Saddam and Majeed also face the graver charge of genocide. All could be hanged if convicted.

Wadood Fawzi, a lawyer for Saddam and Majeed, said government pressure was keeping counsel from performing its job.

"The sacking of the judge confirmed our fears that this court lacks the conditions to hold a fair trial," Fawzi said.

"If you wish to leave, that's fine. Then go," the judge said. The defense lawyers filed out of the courtroom.

Ureybi ordered the defendants to be represented by court-appointed lawyers and continued proceedings. After listening to five witnesses recount how their villages were attacked with chemical weapons, he adjourned the court until September 25.

Saddam's six co-defendants remained in the marble courtroom.

"LACK OF INDEPENDENCE"

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters the decision to sack Amiri was made by the cabinet in accordance with the Iraqi High Criminal Court Law, which allows the government to transfer judges from the court for "any reason."

But legal rights groups said Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's decision to replace the judge a month after the case opened hurt its legitimacy. Some legal analysts say sectarian passions makes it impossible to give Saddam a fair trial.

"(It) confirms the lack of (legal) guarantees and the lack of independence of that court," Leandro Despouy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers told the U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.

Richard Dicker, who has been observing the court for Human Rights Watch, said: "The transfer effectively sends a chilling message to all judges: toe the line or risk removal."

In an earlier trial this year, the chief judge quit in protest at government interference. That first case, for killings in a Shi'ite village in the 1980s, was marred by repeated interruptions including hunger strikes by Saddam and defense boycotts. A verdict is expected next month.

The Iraqi High Criminal Court was set up by U.S. forces but is now run by Iraqis with American advisers. Its first two cases have centred on crimes against Shi'ites and Kurds, oppressed under Saddam's Sunni-led rule but empowered after his fall.

The Anfal trial is intended to turn the page on one of the darkest chapters of Saddam's rule. Prosecutors say 180,000 villagers were killed in the 1988 campaign against Kurdish militants, including thousands poisoned by chemical gas.

A team of U.S.-led forensic experts has worked for years unearthing mass graves to assist prosecutors with evidence.

Last week, prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon demanded the judge resign for being too soft, saying he had let Saddam make political speeches and threaten witnesses. Saddam had threatened in court to "crush the heads" of his accusers.

SOURCE

This is at least the fourth judge in said trial. More here

"We Are Conducting Military Operations Inside Iran Right Now."

2006-09-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

Just now on CNN, Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) said, “We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming.”

Gardiner, who taught at the U.S. Army’s National War College, has previously suggested that U.S. forces were already on the ground in Iran. Today he added several additional new points:

1) The House Committee on Emerging Threats recently called on State and Defense Department officials to testify on whether U.S. forces were in Iran. The officials didn’t come to the hearing.

2) “We have learned from Time magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment. That is a major step.”

3) “The plan has gone to the White House. That’s not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House, that means we’ve gone to a different state.”

More here.

Deja vu!

Banned spy novel published on net

2006-09-19T10:20:00.000-04:00

Ex-MI6 officer defies UK government on blog
By Kieren McCarthy

Sacked spy Richard Tomlinson has defied the UK's secret services by posting the first chapter of his spy novel online.

The ex-MI6 officer was fired in 1995 after four years in the foreign arm of British secret intelligence and spent a year in a maximum security prison for publishing a book about his time in the organisation. But he has fought back against what he claims is intimidation by his old employees with the publication of chapter one of The Golden Chain on his blog.

Tomlinson had his house and boat in France raided earlier this year after MI6 claimed he was responsible for releasing a list of alleged active MI6 agents on the internet. Even though Tomlinson now links to the list from his blog, he swears he wasn't behind the list. Since the raid, he has fought with the UK government, including MI6 and Special Branch, for the return of his possessions, publishing copies of emails and letters sent to him over the matter online.

Recently, the UK authorities confirmed that they were retaining ownership of his possessions because he had "made a number of references to writing a novel or book to be based in whole or in part on information falling within the terms of the Order". That order was the terms of Tomlinson's release and he was effectively accused of breaking the Official Secrets Act a second time. Tomlinson's response has been to publish the first chapter of his book on his blog, presumably with the threat of releasing further chapters until his possessions are returned.

The online battle has been going on since March this year, when Tomlinson discovered blogging and set about trying to force MI6 to respond to his endless requests for his sacking to be reviewed by a tribunal.

He soon gained the ire of MI6 chief John Scarlett by accusing him of having blood on his hands thanks to his part in the production of the now-discredited Iraq war dossiers. Tomlinson also threatened to expose what he knew, including the names of MI6 agents, online. His house was raided and in August his Typepad blog was shut down at the request of Special Branch. Tomlinson opened up a Blogger account immediately afterwards with the title " Tomlinson v MI6 (it's back!)".

Tomlinson gained some notoriety in 1998 when he published The Big Breach, an account of his time with MI6. He made the book available online from a server in Russia, and then used the defence created by another famous SIS book, Spycatcher by Peter Wright, to argue that the book should be published in the UK since all the harm that could be done by its publication had already happened. The book is now readily available. Tomlinson also found notoriety, if not credibility, in his claim that MI6 may have been behind the death of Princess Diana.®

Related links:

Chapter One of The Golden Chain
Tomlinson's blog
Tomlinson's old blog
The Big Breach

Mirror of this blog
Mirror of old Typepad blog
MI6 Directory
MI6 Official Site

Treasury Solicitor make threats about my novel
Reply from Pink on missing legal papers
Missing legal papers..
Police investigating me for writing a novel...
Reply from police about my complaint to the IPCC

Archives
August 2006
September 2006

U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000

2006-09-18T14:06:00.000-04:00

Published on Sunday, September 17, 2006 by the Associated Press
U.S. War Prisons Legal Vacuum for 14,000
by Patrick Quinn

In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.

Disclosures of torture and long-term arbitrary detentions have won rebuke from leading voices including the U.N. secretary-general and the U.S. Supreme Court. But the bitterest words come from inside the system, the size of several major U.S. penitentiaries.

"It was hard to believe I'd get out," Baghdad shopkeeper Amjad Qassim al-Aliyawi told The Associated Press after his release — without charge — last month. "I lived with the Americans for one year and eight months as if I was living in hell."

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

Defenders of the system, which has only grown since soldiers' photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked the world, say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action.

Every U.S. detainee in Iraq "is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces," said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.

But dozens of ex-detainees, government ministers, lawmakers, human rights activists, lawyers and scholars in Iraq, Afghanistan and the United States said the detention system often is unjust and hurts the war on terror by inflaming anti-Americanism in Iraq and elsewhere.

Building for the Long Term

Reports of extreme physical and mental abuse, symbolized by the notorious Abu Ghraib prison photos of 2004, have abated as the Pentagon has rejected torture-like treatment of the inmates. Most recently, on Sept. 6, the Pentagon issued a new interrogation manual banning forced nakedness, hooding, stress positions and other abusive techniques.

The same day, President Bush said the CIA's secret outposts in the prison network had been emptied, and 14 terror suspects from them sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to face trial in military tribunals. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the tribunal system, however, and the White House and Congress are now wrestling over the legal structure of such trials.

Living conditions for detainees may be improving as well. The U.S. military cites the toilets of Bagram, Afghanistan: In a cavernous old building at that air base, hundreds of detainees in their communal cages now have indoor plumbing and privacy screens, instead of exposed chamber pots.

Whatever the progress, small or significant, grim realities persist.

Human rights groups count dozens of detainee deaths for which no one has been punished or that were never explained. The secret prisons — unknown in number and location — remain available for future detainees. The new manual banning torture doesn't cover CIA interrogators. And thousands of people still languish in a limbo, deprived of one of common law's oldest rights, habeas corpus, the right to know why you are imprisoned.

"If you, God forbid, are an innocent Afghan who gets sold down the river by some warlord rival, you can end up at Bagram and you have absolutely no way of clearing your name," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch in New York. "You can't have a lawyer present evidence, or do anything organized to get yourself out of there."

The U.S. government has contended it can hold detainees until the "war on terror" ends — as it determines.

"I don't think we've gotten to the question of how long," said retired admiral John D. Hutson, former top lawyer for the U.S. Navy. "When we get up to 'forever,' I think it will be tested" in court, he said.

The Navy is planning long-term at Guantanamo. This fall it expects to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing more temporary camps.

In Iraq, Army jailers are a step ahead. Last month they opened a $60-million, state-of-the-art detention center at Camp Cropper, near Baghdad's airport. The Army oversees about 13,000 prisoners in Iraq at Cropper, Camp Bucca in the southern desert, and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Neither prisoners of war nor criminal defendants, they are just "security detainees" held "for imperative reasons of security," spokesman Curry said, using language from an annex to a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing the U.S. presence here.

Questions of Law, Sovereignty

President Bush laid out the U.S. position in a speech Sept. 6.

"These are enemy combatants who are waging war on our nation," he said. "We have a right under the laws of war, and we have an obligation to the American people, to detain these enemies and stop them from rejoining the battle."

But others say there's no need to hold these thousands outside of the rules for prisoners of war established by the Geneva Conventions.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared last March that the extent of arbitrary detention here is "not consistent with provisions of international law governing internment on imperative reasons of security."

Meanwhile, officials of Nouri al-Maliki's 4-month-old Iraqi government say the U.S. detention system violates Iraq's national rights.

"As long as sovereignty has transferred to Iraqi hands, the Americans have no right to detain any Iraqi person," said Fadhil al-Sharaa, an aide to the prime minister. "The detention should be conducted only with the permission of the Iraqi judiciary."

At the Justice Ministry, Deputy Minister Busho Ibrahim told AP it has been "a daily request" that the detainees be brought under Iraqi authority.

There's no guarantee the Americans' 13,000 detainees would fare better under control of the Iraqi government, which U.N. officials say holds 15,000 prisoners.

But little has changed because of these requests. When the Americans formally turned over Abu Ghraib prison to Iraqi control on Sept. 2, it was empty but its 3,000 prisoners remained in U.S. custody, shifted to Camp Cropper.

Life in Custody

The cases of U.S.-detained Iraqis are reviewed by a committee of U.S. military and Iraqi government officials. The panel recommends criminal charges against some, release for others. As of Sept. 9, the Central Criminal Court of Iraq had put 1,445 on trial, convicting 1,252. In the last week of August, for example, 38 were sentenced on charges ranging from illegal weapons possession to murder, for the shooting of a U.S. Marine.

Almost 18,700 have been released since June 2004, the U.S. command says, not including many more who were held and then freed by local military units and never shipped to major prisons.

Some who were released, no longer considered a threat, later joined or rejoined the insurgency.

The review process is too slow, say U.N. officials. Until they are released, often families don't know where their men are — the prisoners are usually men — or even whether they're in American hands.

Ex-detainee Mouayad Yasin Hassan, 31, seized in April 2004 as a suspected Sunni Muslim insurgent, said he wasn't allowed to obtain a lawyer or contact his family during 13 months at Abu Ghraib and Bucca, where he was interrogated incessantly. When he asked why he was in prison, he said, the answer was, "We keep you for security reasons."

Another released prisoner, Waleed Abdul Karim, 26, recounted how his guards would wield their absolute authority.

"Tell us about the ones who attack Americans in your neighborhood," he quoted an interrogator as saying, "or I will keep you in prison for another 50 years."

As with others, Karim's confinement may simply have strengthened support for the anti-U.S. resistance. "I will hate Americans for the rest of my life," he said.

As bleak and hidden as the Iraq lockups are, the Afghan situation is even less known. Accounts of abuse and deaths emerged in 2002-2004, but if Abu Ghraib-like photos from Bagram exist, none have leaked out. The U.S. military is believed holding about 500 detainees — most Afghans, but also apparently Arabs, Pakistanis and Central Asians.

The United States plans to cede control of its Afghan detainees by early next year, five years after invading Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaida's base and bring down the Taliban government. Meanwhile, the prisoners of Bagram exist in a legal vacuum like that elsewhere in the U.S. detention network.

"There's been a silence about Bagram, and much less political discussion about it," said Richard Bennett, chief U.N. human rights officer in Afghanistan.

Freed detainees tell how in cages of 16 inmates they are forbidden to speak to each other. They wear the same orange jumpsuits and shaven heads as the terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, but lack even the scant legal rights granted inmates at that Cuba base. In some cases, they have been held without charge for three to four years, rights workers say.

Guantanamo received its first prisoners from Afghanistan — chained, wearing blacked-out goggles — in January 2002. A total of 770 detainees were sent there. Its population today of Afghans, Arabs and others, stands at 455.

Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, only 10 of the Guantanamo inmates have been charged with crimes. Charges are expected against 14 other al-Qaida suspects flown in to Guantanamo from secret prisons on Sept. 4.

Plans for their trials are on hold, however, because of a Supreme Court ruling in June against the Bush administration's plan for military tribunals.

The court held the tribunals were not authorized by the U.S. Congress and violated the Geneva Conventions by abrogating prisoners' rights. In a sometimes contentious debate, the White House and Congress are trying to agree on a new, acceptable trial plan.

Since the court decision, and after four years of confusing claims that terrorist suspects were so-called "unlawful combatants" unprotected by international law, the Bush administration has taken steps recognizing that the Geneva Conventions' legal and human rights do extend to imprisoned al-Qaida militants. At the same time, however, the new White House proposal on tribunals retains such controversial features as denying defendants access to some evidence against them.

In his Sept. 6 speech, Bush acknowledged for the first time the existence of the CIA's secret prisons, believed established at military bases or safehouses in such places as Egypt, Indonesia and eastern Europe. That network, uncovered by journalists, had been condemned by U.N. authorities and investigated by the Council of Europe.

The clandestine jails are now empty, Bush announced, but will remain a future option for CIA detentions and interrogation.

Louise Arbour, U.N. human rights chief, is urging Bush to abolish the CIA prisons altogether, as ripe for "abusive conduct." The CIA's techniques for extracting information from prisoners still remain secret, she noted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government's willingness to resort to "extraordinary rendition," transferring suspects to other nations where they might be tortured, appears unchanged.

Prosecutions and Memories

The exposure of sadistic abuse, torture and death at Abu Ghraib two years ago touched off a flood of courts-martial of mostly lower-ranking U.S. soldiers. Overall, about 800 investigations of alleged detainee mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to action against more than 250 service personnel, including 89 convicted at courts-martial, U.S. diplomats told the United Nations in May.

Critics protest that penalties have been too soft and too little has been done, particularly in tracing inhumane interrogation methods from the far-flung islands of the overseas prison system back to policies set by high-ranking officials.

In only 14 of 34 cases has anyone been punished for the confirmed or suspected killings of detainees, the New York-based Human Rights First reports. The stiffest sentence in a torture-related death has been five months in jail. The group reported last February that in almost half of 98 detainee deaths, the cause was either never announced or reported as undetermined.

Looking back, the United States overreacted in its treatment of detainees after Sept. 11, said Anne-Marie Slaughter, a noted American scholar of international law.

It was understandable, the Princeton University dean said, but now "we have to restore a balance between security and rights that is consistent with who we are and consistent with our security needs."

Otherwise, she said, "history will look back and say that we took a dangerous and deeply wrong turn."

Back here in Baghdad, at the Alawi bus station, a gritty, noisy hub far from the meeting rooms of Washington and Geneva, women gather with fading hopes whenever a new prisoner release is announced.

As she watched one recent day for a bus from distant Camp Bucca, one mother wept and told her story.

"The Americans arrested my son, my brother and his friend," said Zahraa Alyat, 42. "The Americans arrested them October 16, 2005. They left together and I don't know anything about them."

The bus pulled up. A few dozen men stepped off, some blindfolded, some bound, none with any luggage, none with familiar faces.

As the distraught women straggled away once more, one ex-prisoner, 18-year-old Bilal Kadhim Muhssin, spotted U.S. troops nearby.

"Americans," he muttered in fear. "Oh, my God, don't say that name," and he bolted for a city bus, and freedom.

SOURCE

Big Brother is shouting at you

2006-09-18T13:51:00.000-04:00

Big Brother is not only watching you - now he's barking orders too. Britain's first 'talking' CCTV cameras have arrived, publicly berating bad behaviour and shaming offenders into acting more responsibly.

The system allows control room operators who spot any anti-social acts - from dropping litter to late-night brawls - to send out a verbal warning: 'We are watching you'.

Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success. Jack Bonner, who manages the system, said: 'It is one hell of a deterrent. It's one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it's quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong.

'Most people are so ashamed and embarrassed at being caught they quickly slink off without further trouble.

'There was one incident when two men started fighting outside a nightclub. One of the control room operators warned them over the loudspeakers and they looked up, startled, stopped fighting and scarpered in opposite directions.

'This isn't about keeping tabs on people, it's about making the streets safer for the law-abiding majority and helping to change the attitudes of those who cause trouble. It challenges unacceptable behaviour and makes people think twice.'

The Mail on Sunday watched as a cyclist riding through a pedestrian area was ordered to stop.

'Would the young man on the bike please get off and walk as he is riding in a pedestrian area,' came the command.

The surprised youth stopped, and looked about. A look of horror spread across his face as he realised the voice was referring to him.

He dismounted and wheeled his bike through the crowded streets, as instructed.

Law-abiding shopper Karen Margery, 40, was shocked to hear the speakers spring into action as she walked past them.

Afterwards she said: 'It's quite scary to realise that your every move could be monitored - it really is like Big Brother.

'But Middlesbrough does have a big problem with anti-social behaviour, so it is very reassuring.'

The scheme has been introduced by Middlesbrough mayor Ray Mallon, a former police superintendent who was dubbed Robocop for pioneering the zero-tolerance approach to crime.

He believes the talking cameras will dramatically cut not just anti-social behaviour, but violent crime, too.

And if the city centre scheme proves a success, it will be extended into residential areas.

The control room operators have been given strict guidelines about what commands they can give. Yelling 'Oi you, stop that', is not permitted.

Instead, their instructions make the following suggestions: 'Warning - you are being monitored by CCTV - Warning - you are in an alcohol-free zone, please refrain from drinking'; and Warning - your behaviour is being monitored by CCTV. It is being recorded and the police are attending.'

Mr Bonner said: 'We always make the requests polite, and if the offender obeys, the operator adds 'thank you'. We think that's a nice finishing touch.

'It would appear that the offenders are the only ones who find the audio cameras intrusive. The vast majority of people welcome these cameras.

'Put it this way, we never have requests to remove them.'

But civil rights campaigners have argued that the talking cameras are no 'magic bullet', in the fight against crime.

Liberty spokesman Doug Jewell said: 'None of us likes litterbugs or yobs playing up on a Saturday night, but talking CCTV cameras are no substitute for police officers on the beat.'

SOURCE

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor

2006-09-18T13:15:00.000-04:00

Leo Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor

by Shadia B. Drury

There is a certain irony in the fact that the chief guru of the neoconservatives is a thinker who regarded religion merely as a political tool intended for the masses but not for the superior few. Leo Strauss, the German Jewish émigré who taught at the University of Chicago almost until his death in 1973, did not dissent from Marx’s view that religion is the opium of the people; but he believed that the people need their opium. He therefore taught that those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit.

Not all the neoconservatives have read Strauss. And those who have rarely understand him, for he was a very secretive thinker who expressed his ideas with utmost circumspection. But there is one thing that he made very clear: liberal secular society is untenable. Religion is necessary to provide political society with moral order and stability. Of course, this is a highly questionable claim. History makes it abundantly clear that religion has been a most destabilizing force in politics—a source of conflict, strife, and endless wars. But neoconservatives dogmatically accept the view of religion as a panacea for everything that ails America.

Using religion as a political tool has two equally unsavory consequences. First, when religious beliefs become the guide for public policy, the social virtues of tolerance, freedom, and plurality are undermined, if they are not extinguished altogether. Second, the use of religion as a political tool encourages the cultivation of an elite of liars and frauds who exempt themselves from the rules they apply to the rest of humanity. And this is a recipe for tyranny, not freedom or democracy.

There have always been those who deluded themselves into thinking that they were akin to gods who are entitled to rule over ordinary mortals. But no one has described this mentality more brilliantly than Dostoevsky, when he created the figure of the Grand Inquisitor. In his short story of the same title, Dostoevsky imagined that Jesus has returned to face a decadent and corrupt Church. As head of the Church, the Grand Inquisitor condemns Jesus to death, but not before having a long and interesting conversation with the condemned man. Jesus naively clings to the belief that what man needs above all else is freedom from the oppressive yoke of the Mosaic law, so that he can choose between good and evil freely according to the dictates of his conscience. But the Inquisitor explains to him that truth and freedom are the sources of humanity’s greatest anguish and that people will never be free because “they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious.” He declares that people can be happy only if they surrender their freedom and bow before miracle, mystery, and authority. Only then can people live and die peacefully, “and beyond the grave, they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity.” The Inquisitor explains that the “deception will be our suffering, for we shall be forced to lie.” But in the end, “they will marvel at us and look on us as gods.”

To say that Strauss’s elitism surpasses that of the Grand Inquisitor is an understatement. Undeniably, there are strong similarities. Like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought that society must be governed by a pious elite (George Bush the second and the Christian fundamentalists who support him fit this role perfectly). Like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought of religion as a pious fraud (something that would alarm the Christian fundamentalists who are allied with the neoconservatives). And even though Strauss was sympathetic to Judaism, he nevertheless described it as a “heroic delusion” and a “noble dream.” Like the Grand Inquisitor, he thought that it was better for human beings to be victims of this noble delusion than to “wallow” in the “sordid” truth. And like the Grand Inquisitor, Strauss thought that the superior few should shoulder the burden of truth and in so doing, protect humanity from the “terror and hopelessness of life.”

All the similarities between Strauss and the Grand Inquisitor notwithstanding, the Straussian position surpasses the Grand Inquisitor in its delusional elitism as well as in its misanthropy. This shows that while one need not be a religious thinker to be misanthropic, religion is an excellent vehicle for implementing misanthropic policies in public life.

The Grand Inquisitor presents his ruling elite as suffering under the burden of truth for the sake of humanity. So, despite his rejection of Christ, the Grand Inquisitor is modeled on the Christian conception of a suffering God who bears the burden for humanity. In contrast, Strauss represents his ruling elite as pagan gods who are full of laughter. Instead of being grim and mournful like the Grand Inquisitor, they are intoxicated, erotic, and gay. And they are certainly not too concerned about the happiness of mere mortals. They have little pity or compassion for them. On the contrary, the pain, suffering, and tragedies of the mortals provide them with entertainment.

The Trojan wars and similar tragic atrocities were festivals for the gods, intended for their pleasure and amusement. Nietzsche thought that only when suffering is witnessed by gods did it become meaningful and heroic. Soaring high, Strauss discovered that there are no gods to witness human suffering; and finding the job vacant, he recruited his acolytes.

Strauss thought that the best way for ordinary human beings to raise themselves above the beasts is to be utterly devoted to their nation and willing to sacrifice their lives for it. He recommended a rabid nationalism and a militant society modelled on Sparta. He thought that this was the best hope for a nation to be secure against her external enemies as well as the internal threat of decadence, sloth, and pleasure. A policy of perpetual war against a threatening enemy is the best way to ward off political decay. And if the enemy cannot be found, then it must be invented.

For example, Saddam Hussein was an insignificant tyrant in a faraway land without the military power to threaten America. And he wasn’t allied with the Islamic fundamentalists who attacked the World Trade Center in 2001. But the neoconservatives who control the White House managed to inflate the threat to gargantuan proportions and launched the nation into a needless war. Even though they are not hardcore Straussians, neoconservatives share Strauss’s view that wealth, freedom, and prosperity make people soft, pampered, and depraved. And, like Strauss, they think of war as an antidote to moral decadence and depravity. And this should make us wonder if they purposely launched the nation into a needless war because they were convinced of the salutary effects of war as such.

There is a strong asceticism at the heart of the neoconservative ideology that explains why it appeals to the Christian Right. Neoconservatism dovetails nicely with the views that humanity is too wicked to be free; too much pleasure is sinful; and suffering is good because it makes man cry out to God for redemption. With the neoconservatives and the Christian Right in power, Americans can forget about the pursuit of happiness and look forward to perpetual war, death, and catastrophe. And in the midst of all the human carnage and calamity that such policies are bound to bring, the Olympian laughter of the Straussian gods will be heard by those who have ears to hear it. In short, the Straussian elite makes the Grand Inquisitor look compassionate and humane in comparison.

The fact that so many of the most powerful men in America are self-proclaimed disciples of Leo Strauss is rather troublesome. For example, Abram Shulsky, the director of the Office of Special Plans, which was created by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was a student of Strauss. Shulsky was responsible for finding intelligence that would help to make the case for war in Iraq. We know now that the intelligence was false and misleading. Shulsky tells us that he learned from Strauss that “deception is the norm in political life.”10 But deception cannot be the norm in public life without subverting democracy and robbing people of the opportunity to deliberate freely in light of the facts.

Another important Straussian close to the Bush administration is William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and chairman of the Project for the New American Century, in which the neoconservative foreign policy is clearly outlined. Kristol wrote his thesis on Machiavelliæa theorist who was much admired by Strauss for everything except his lack of subtlety. Strauss endorsed Machiavellian tactics in politicsænot just lies and the manipulation of public opinion but every manner of unscrupulous conduct necessary to keep the masses in a state of heightened alert, afraid for their lives and their families and therefore willing to do whatever was deemed necessary for the security of the nation. For Strauss as for Machiavelli, only the constant threat of a common enemy could save a people from becoming soft, pampered, and depraved. Strauss would have admired the ingenuity of a color code intended to inform Americans of the looming threats and present dangers, which in turn makes them more than willing to trade their liberty for a modicum of security.

Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense and assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney, is also a self-proclaimed follower of Strauss. Like many of Strauss’s students, he is animated by a sense of missionæa mission to save America from her secular liberal decadence. And what better solution is there to secular liberal sloth than a war effort? I am inclined to give these powerful students of Strauss the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they have no idea of the sinister depths to which Strauss’s political thought descends. And I think that by revealing aspects of Strauss’s dark philosophy, I may dissuade some of them from following Strauss too blindly into the abyss.

Notes
1. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor with Related Chapters from The Brothers Karamazov, Constance Garnett, trans. (New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1948). I am very suspicious of this interpretation of the message of Jesus. See my new book, Terror and Civilization: (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
2. Ibid., p. 30.
3. Ibid., p. 40.
4. Ibid., p. 31.
5. Ibid., p. 30.
6. Leo Strauss, “Why We Remain Jews: Can Jewish Faith and History Still Speak to Us?” in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker, Kenneth L. Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski, eds. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), p. 61.
7. Ibid., p. 61.
8. Leo Strauss, Philosophy And Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, Fred Baumann, trans. (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), p. 18.
9. Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: Essays and Lectures, Thomas L. Pangle, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 107–08.
10. Gary J. Schmitt and Abram N. Shulsky, “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (by Which We Do Not Mean Nous),” in Kenneth L. Deutsch and John A. Murley (eds.), Leo Strauss, the Straussians, and the American Regime (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 410.
Shadia B. Drury is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice at the University of Regina, where she is professor of philosophy and political science. Her most recent book is Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche (Palgrave MacMillan, 2004).

Items authored by Shadia B. Drury

Books

Terror and Civilization book release

Leo Strauss and the American Right

Alexandre Kojève: The Roots of Postmodern Politics

The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss

Recent Essays on Leo Strauss and the Neoconservatives

"The making of a Straussian

""Noble Lies and Perpetual War"

"Saving America"

"Film: "Hijacking Catastrophe"

Selected Articles

Gurus of the Right
Shadia Drury examines Saul Bellow's Ravelstein from the Literary Review of Canada

"Leo Strauss"
From Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Alexandre Kojève"
From A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory

Reply to my Critics
From The Vital Nexus

Fun with Microsoft's Terra Server

2006-09-17T17:15:00.000-04:00

Check it out. Here are a few shots of intereste:

Dugway Proving Grounds (for a little history on this area click here)

Rachel, Nevada - nearest town to Area 51 (note the area that will not come through - those circles are NOT silos...those circles are thousands of feet across - I have flown over this area and it is exactly as shown - click here for info)

Barstow, California (note the similar visual readouts to Area 51 - there happens to be a bombing range in the region of these circles)

Offut AFB (more stuff blocked out - to the west) - on Offut, or USSTRATCOM)

Snowflake, AZ (home to militias, methamphetamine production, and the location of the story Fire in the Sky)

Similar structures as near Barstow and Rachel (this time near Bend, Oregon)

Region of Spahn Ranch, home of the Manson family (is that a nearby military installation? - note the items resembling those near Area 51)

THE FOLLOWING LINKS ARE TO VIEWS AROUND AREA 51:

Somewhere between Death Valley and Area 51 (what the hell is it? If you have the time, the deserts are the best places to look for things)

Hmmm...

More of the same

A little further east

Climate Change Goes to Court

2006-09-16T19:19:00.000-04:00

By Eli Kintisch
ScienceNOW Daily News
31 August 2006

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should limit greenhouse gases emitted from cars, a coalition of 12 states, a number of cities, and several nonprofit organizations said today in filings for a landmark Supreme Court case on climate change. The case, Massachusetts v. EPA, is expected to be heard later this year or early 2007.

The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set emission standards for substances that could "reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." It does so for the components of smog but not for C02 and other greenhouse gases. Led by the state of Massachusetts, the petitioners cite scientific studies linking these emissions to wide-ranging impacts including droughts and flooding along the U.S. coasts. Those effects on climate, they argue, should impel the agency to regulate greenhouse emissions.

"The federal government is shirking its responsibility to enforce the law," said Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly in a conference call with reporters today. And the science of climate impacts, say a group of climate researchers in a friend-of-the-court brief, are "clearly sufficient to support a finding of 'reasonable anticipation' " of the risks of greenhouse gases.

EPA, which prevailed last year in a federal appeals court, says the health impacts of climate change are uncertain and that it's difficult to separate the effects of human activity from natural cycles. Those uncertainties, compounded by the need to abide by U.S. obligations under several international agreements, explain why EPA has avoided tackling greenhouse gases, it says. The agency's arguments must be filed by 5 October.

The states' arguments are "cogent," as they directly address what standards the agency should use in deciding what to regulate, says David Hodas, a professor at Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Delaware. But he says "it's hard to predict" what the court will do. In 2000, for example, the nine justices surprised experts by stopping the Food and Drug Administration from regulating nicotine in tobacco.

SOURCE

Relevant links:

Global Warming = Drowning Bears

Methane Belches in Lakes Supercharge Global Warming, Study Says

Report links global warming, storms

The Evidence for Global Warming

Bush: "I'm Solving Global Warming"

US has warmest summer since the Dust Bowl era

Just A Thought

2006-09-16T13:40:00.000-04:00

What if no one ever got news on the latest D.C. legislation taking away their rights (that can't be done anyway unless you have already ceded your rights to D.C. - a right is not granted)? I think two things would happen, at least.

One is that millions and millions of people would act free and the other, more importantly, is that when a band of government thugs came to take you away for SPEAKING your mind, the outrage experienced by yourself and those close to you would be the APPROPRIATE outrage, untempered by the advance knowledge that what you were doing was somehow wrong, as if those in the capitol have shown themselves to be worthy keepers of morality. Such righteous outrage might be harder to manage by the police state than what we have now.

It's just a thought...

Check THIS Out

2006-09-16T12:55:00.000-04:00

The SHAC 7 are 6 animal rights activists and the organization Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (SHAC USA) who were convicted on March 12, 2006, under the controversial Federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The Act punishes anyone who "physically disrupts" an animal enterprise. The charges stem from these activists' alleged participation in an international campaign to close the notorious product testing lab Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Specifically, these activists are alleged to have operated a website that reported on and expressed ideological support for protest activity against Huntingdon and its business affiliates. For this they are charged with "terrorism" and face an aggregate of 23 years in Federal Prison.

More here.

Even in Winter, Arctic Ice Melting

2006-09-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle

Even in Winter, Arctic Ice Melting: Alarmed Scientists Warn that Polar Thawing Threatens Wildlife and is 'Strongest Evidence Yet of Global Warming' in Region
by Jane Kay

The vast expanses of ice floating in the Arctic Sea are melting in winter as well as in the summer, likely because of global warming, NASA scientists said Wednesday.

"This is the strongest evidence yet of global warming in the Arctic,'' said Josefino Comiso, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

And if the ice continued to melt at the current rate, Comiso said, it could have profound effects on all life in the Arctic and other consequences around the world.

Particularly hard hit would be the polar bears, which live on the ice, he said. Sea ice also provides oxygen-rich cold water needed for the growth of phytoplankton. A decline in the number of the tiny plants could have a cascading effect on the food supply of fish and crustaceans, seals and the other marine mammals.

The size of this summer's Arctic ice won't be known for a few weeks because it usually reaches its smallest size the third week of September. Last year, scientists found that polar ice twice the size of Texas had melted since NASA started compiling satellite data 27 years ago. Scientists said there could be no ice left in the Arctic in the summer by the end of the century.

Until 2005, the wintertime sea ice -- which is thick and multilayered -- had been relatively stable. In the summer, the ice is thinner, more mobile and melts at the edges every spring before freezing up again in the autumn.

In the last two winters -- 2005 and 2006 -- the size of the sea ice was 6 percent smaller than average, the data show. The sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere covers nearly 10 million square miles in the winter. The melting -- most of it occurring in the eastern Arctic near the North Pole -- correlates with a rise in the ocean's surface water temperature.

The melting period is growing by 15 days each decade, meaning less time for ice to grow back, experts said.

When Comiso saw the decline of winter sea ice in 2005, he said, "it was only one year, and I didn't think it was so serious.''

However, based on NASA data, his computer simulations and two years of melting ice, "this has a very large chance of continuing," he said.

Already a greater number of polar bears have been showing up in Inuit communities in the Arctic, apparently searching for food, said NASA researcher Claire Parkinson.

The bears use the sea ice to hunt seals and other marine mammals. "When the ice retreats, they have to come on the land. Normally, when they're on the land, they're not eating,'' she said.

The bears come on land more often now, she said, because they're probably hungrier and afraid of being stranded on a retreating floe, she said.

Parkinson and Ian Stirling, a biologist in the Canadian Wildlife Service, published a study in the journal Arctic this month showing that the polar bear population is shrinking, even though there have been more sightings. Instead, the Hudson Bay population has declined from 1,200 bears in 1989 to 950 bears in 2004, and the weight of adult females has dropped. None of the 18 other populations in the Arctic has grown, either, she said.

It's not impossible that the sea ice could recover in coming years, Parkinson said.

"The possibility is there that the Arctic will recover, but that is not as likely as that it will continue to decrease,'' she said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act and is conducting studies in the North Slope of Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic.

The loss of Arctic sea ice has global effects, scientists say.

Sea ice is made of frozen ocean water, and when it melts, it doesn't raise the ocean's level as do melting glaciers and ice sheets. But less sea ice means a smaller area of ice to reflect radiation away from Earth, and the dark, open water absorbs heat. Both phenomena could accelerate the world's warming, scientists say.

"We're seeing an overall pattern of global warming,'' said Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which joined NASA scientists in a telephone news conference Wednesday.

Ice core borings in Antarctica have produced a record of historic carbon dioxide concentrations over the last 600,000 years. The borings show that the levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, are at their highest ever because of the burning of fossil fuels, Serreze said.

Serreze said he was surprised to see a new lake, or polynya, the size of Maryland, opening up in the sea ice north of the Beaufort Sea.

In 20 years of looking at sea ice, he has never seen anything like it.

"If you asked me five years ago if it was human activity (causing global warming) versus natural variability, I was a fence-sitter,'' Serreze said.

"The magnitude of the changes is starting to rise above the noise of natural variability. There is a continuing trend. What we see in the Arctic is part of a much larger picture. We hate to say, 'We told you so.' But we told you so.''

Copyright © 2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Stockholm Syndrome

2006-09-14T09:47:00.000-04:00

This is a fairly poignant item on a social dynamic I don't think we hear enough on:

Why Chicks Love Patriarchy

While reading about these gangs of radical fundamentalist Kashmiri women who sport around raiding restaurants, ratting out teen "snuggling couples" to their parents, bitching at oenophiles, and calling for more stringent adherence to some psycho-puritanical version of Islam, the words Stockholm syndrome began dancing the limbo in my obstreperal lobe. A couple of perspicacious patriarchy-blamers recently alluded to the popular brainwashing phenomenon in some discussion or other, and ever since then I've been contemplating it in relation to the seemingly baffling paradox of women's complicity in our own oppression.

I cannot lie; Stockholm syndrome is my all-time favorite syndrome. It's from the 70's, like I am, so it has no small nostalgic kitsch appeal. Plus, it's complicated enough to explain why the aforementioned sorely oppressed women, in a move many would consider counterintuitive, would whiz through town crying "More oppression! More oppression!", yet is simple enough that even a spinster aunt can understand it.

Stockholm Syndrome Refresher Course: Captive fears captor because captor wields life-or-death power over captive. Captive sucks up to captor as survival mechanism. Captor responds to sucking up by slight loosening of metaphorical thumbscrews. Captive's extreme duress morphs original sucking-up into true emotional bond. Thereafter captor kicks captive's ass occasionally, as reminder of who's wearing the pants. [see also Wikipedia]

We've seen the term applied to battered wives, yes, but generally such cases describe a psychological attatchment to a single abuser. The idea of Stockholm syndrome as the global explanation for women's fervent and irrational attatchment, en masse, to the much more nebulous ideology of male dominance, makes so much sense to me that there's probably something wrong with it. But how else to explain these squads of veiled vice patrols hot-rodding around Kashmir giving hell to swinging singles? Or, for that matter, how else to account for women who sing paeans of joy to their "empowering" boob jobs? Or even, as Jeffreys suggests, how to account for women who rag on their daughters to sit with their knees together?

Why, in other words, would women voluntarily sign themselves up for this crap, cling to it maniacally, insist that it is "right" or "natural" or even "fun," unless they had come to identify dysfunctionally with their oppressor?

Stockholm syndrome is, like, the definition of patriarchy.

Meanwhile, back in Kashmir, maybe the veiled morality vigilantes should mosey on over to the Line of Control in Mendhar, where male cops are feeling up women villagers whenever they leave the house, the fucktards.

SOURCE

Also see Deride and Conquer

Junk Culture Killing Childhood

2006-09-13T12:07:00.000-04:00

Published on Tuesday, September 12, 2006 by Reuters
Junk Culture Killing Childhood: Experts
by Kate Kelland

LONDON - Britain's children are being poisoned by a "junk culture" of processed food, computer games and over-competitive education, an influential group of authors and experts warned on Tuesday.

In an open letter to the Daily Telegraph, 110 teachers, psychologists and children's authors -- including the internationally acclaimed Philip Pullman and Penelope Leach, a leading childcare expert -- called on the government to act now to prevent childhood being killed off altogether.

Forced "to act and dress like mini-adults", children are becoming increasingly depressed and experiencing growing levels of behavioral and developmental problems, they said.

"Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust as full-grown adults can, to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change," the letter said.

"They need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives."

The letter was circulated by Sue Palmer, an ex-head teacher and author of a book entitled "Toxic Childhood", and Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at the Research Center for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University in London.

"Children's development is being drastically affected by the kind of world they are brought up in," Palmer told the Daily Telegraph. "It is shocking."

"A child's physical and psychological growth cannot be accelerated. It changes in biological time, not at electrical speed. Childhood is not a race."

The experts condemned Britain's increasingly "target-driven" education system and urged the government to recognize children's need for more time and space to develop, demanding an urgent public debate on child-rearing in the 21st century.

Award-winning children's author Michael Morpurgo, who also signed the letter, said there was a "drip, drip, drip effect" of academic pressure and marketing which was killing childhood.

"It's gradually soaking like a poison into the culture," he told BBC radio. "There is less room for reading, for dreaming, for music, for drama, for art, and simply for playing."

SOURCE

McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory of human evolution

2006-09-13T08:49:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from on-line documents in which McKenna discusses his theory

From an interview with Terence McKenna in High Times magazine:

HT: From your writings I have gleaned that you subscribe to the notion that psilocybin mushrooms are a species of high intelligence -- that they arrived on this planet as spores that migrated through outer space, and are attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. In a more holistic perspective, how do you see this notion fitting into the context of Francis Crick's theory of directed panspermia, the hypothesis that all life on this planet and its directed evolution has been seeded, or perhaps fertilized, by spores designed by a higher intelligence?

TM: As I understand the Crick theory of panspermia, it's a theory of how life spread through the universe. What I was suggesting -- and I don't believe it as strongly as you imply -- is that intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have come here in this spore-bearing life form. This is a more radical version of the panspermia theory of Crick and Ponampurama. In fact I think that theory will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred years if people do biology they will think it quite silly that people once thought that spores could not be blown from one star system to another by cosmic radiation pressure. As far as the role of the psilocybin mushroom, or its relationship to us and to intelligence, this is something that we need to consider. It really isn't important that I claim that it's an extraterrestrial, what we need is a body of people claiming this, or a body of people denying it, because what we're talking about is the experience of the mushroom. Few people are in a position to judge its extraterrestrial potential, because few people in the orthodox sciences have ever experienced the full spectrum of psychedelic effects that are unleashed. One cannot find out whether or not there's an extraterrestrial intelligence inside the mushroom unless one is willing to take the mushroom.

HT: You have a unique theory about the role that psilocybin mushrooms play in the process of human evolution. Can you tell us about this?

TM: Whether the mushrooms came from outer space or not, the presence of psychedelic substances in the diet of early human beings created a number of changes in our evolutionary situation. When a person takes small amounts of psilocybin visual acuity improves. They can actually see slightly better, and this means that animals allowing psilocybin into their food chain would have increased hunting success, which means increased food supply, which means increased reproductive success, which is the name of the game in evolution. It is the organism that manages to propagate itself numerically that is successful. The presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack-hunting primates caused the individuals that were ingesting the psilocybin to have increased visual acuity. At slightly higher doses of psilocybin there is sexual arousal, erection, and everything that goes under the term arousal of the central nervous system. Again, a factor which would increase reproductive success is reinforced.

HT: Isn't it true that psilocybin inhibits orgasm?

TM: Not at the doses I'm talking about. At a psychedelic dose it might, but at just slightly above the "you can feel it" dose, it acts as a stimulant. Sexual arousal means paying attention, it means jumpiness, it indicates a certain energy level in the organism. And then, of course, at still higher doses psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision. It is as though it is an enzyme which stimulates eyesight, sexual interest, and imagination. And the three of these going together produce language-using primates. Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic organization out of primitive protohuman animals. It can be seen as a kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst.

HT: There is a lot of current interest in the ancient art of sound technology. In a recent article you said that in certain states of consciousness you're able to create a kind of visual resonance and manipulate a "topological manifold" using sound vibrations. Can you tell us more about this technique, its ethnic origins, and potential applications?

TM: Yes, it has to do with shamanism that is based on the use of DMT in plants. DMT is a near- or pseudo-neurotransmitter, that when ingested and allowed to come to rest in the synapses of the brain, allows one to see sound, so that one can use the voice to produce, not musical compositions, but pictoral and visual compositions. This, to my mind, indicates that we're on the cusp of some kind of evolutionary transition in the language-forming area, we are going to go from a language that is heard, to a language that is seen, through a shift in interior processing. The language will still be made of sound, but it will be processed as the carrier of the visual impression. This is actually being done by shamans in the Amazon. The songs they sing sound as they do in order to look a certain way. They are not musical compositions as we're used to thinking of them. They are pictoral art created by audio signals.

There is much more here.