Space Weapon Test Set for Launch

 

Long-debated military satellite set for launch
NFIRE has sparked years of controversy over missile-watching technology
http://www.msnbc.msn.com:80/id/18248896/

By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
April 22, 2007
The U.S. military is about to launch a small missile-watching satellite after years of quiet preparation — and years of alarming reports from critics about its purpose. The NFIRE satellite is due to be sent into space early Monday from a Virginia launch pad.

To the Defense Department, which owns and will operate the satellite, NFIRE stands for "Near Field Infrared Experiment." That encapsulates the mission's goal of observing the rocket plumes of military missiles to be launched past it later this year. NFIRE will map and characterize the brightness of the rocket plumes to help the Pentagon design future guidance systems for anti-missile weapons now under consideration.

But to its critics, NFIRE could well be spelled “Fire!” — as in, “launch the weapon!” The project has been labeled an irrevocable step toward the weaponization of outer space. The spacecraft's launch atop a commercial Minotaur booster, scheduled for 3:11 a.m. ET from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia's Wallops Island, could light a new fire under the debate.

Just last month, Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency, gave the official view of the NFIRE mission: “We plan to develop space-based sensors to provide a persistent identification and global tracking capability,” he testified to a congressional committee. These are tests of passive tracking satellites, precursors of operational vehicles that could watch for attacks on the United States and its allies. Obering and other program officials insist that nothing on this project relates to interception of such missiles or any other objects.

Two demonstration satellites are to be launched late this year to perform acquisition, tracking and handover tests with live missiles. Prior to those flights, Obering said the NFIRE satellite would “collect high-resolution infrared phenomenology data from boosting targets.”

The explanation is a plausible one, because rocket plumes exist in their true form only in the vacuum of space, and sensors to track them often use wavelengths that are normally blocked by Earth’s atmosphere. To field-test tracking sensors, you have to do it in space — and both Russian and American satellites (and manned spacecraft, such as Russia's Mir space station and the space shuttle) have been experimenting with better and better technology for decades.

Opposing orbits

Critics of U.S. military space activities have an entirely different view. In her latest book, "War in the Heavens," peace activist Helen Caldicott writes: "NFIRE would track and kill missiles … [but] initial NFIRE tests will not include the kill vehicle." Furthermore, she adds, "Obviously if NFIRE and other such systems are deployed, they will provoke countermeasures by powers such as China and Russia" since "it is only a short step from hitting a missile in outer space to hitting an orbiting satellite."

The fuss over the "kill vehicle" peaked three years ago when an earlier version of the spacecraft was in final launch preparation. That object was indeed a component of a ground-launched anti-missile warhead, modified to carry more cameras and fewer maneuvering thrusters.

Caldicott’s book cited a Moscow newspaper for a quotation attributed to an anonymous Pentagon official upset with the NFIRE program. “We’re crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization,” the official was said to have remarked.

Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, insisted to MSNBC.com that the current NFIRE spacecraft is focused entirely on passive plume sensor tests.

"It’s just an experimental use of sensors to get data on rocket plumes," he said by telephone. “We can use that data to design the guidance system of the kinetic energy interceptor,” a high-acceleration anti-missile system that could be based on land or on ships near the border of a potential missile-launching state.

Lehner said the $10 million appropriation requested by Obering was for analysis and design. "There's no plan for prototypes or for construction," he said. Instead, the money would fund comparisons of the mathematical models and previous sensor tests with the actual results from the NFIRE observations.

“We will get data so that in the future we can make decisions from an informed position,” he said. No decisions about future deployments have been made, he insisted, nor would they be made for years to come. For now, this NFIRE mission is the only one planned, he said.

But that’s not the way that NFIRE and similar U.S. programs are being described around the world.

The Russian press has been highly vocal about sounding the alarm, with a classic example published on the newspaper Izvestia's front page on March 29.

"The United States is going to put an anti-missile shield in space – this was announced yesterday by General Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency," correspondent Dmitri Litovkin declared. The reason? “In his opinion, that is the only way of protecting America”.

Obering’s March 27 testimony before the Strategic Forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is readily available (PDF file) and his actual words can be checked. They do not reflect what Litovkin claims they said.

After describing the orbiting sensor tests planned for this year, Obering elaborated on why an operational network of space-based sensors might be valuable. He urged lawmakers to consider deploying such a passive observation network — a network that would have been forbidden by the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty that the current Bush administration withdrew from five years ago. The ABM treaty forbade any space-based components of an anti-missile system, whether or not they were actually related to weapons.

Confusing debate with decision

Obering did talk about actual interceptors in orbit, a concept that has been argued over for decades. In terms of pure practicality, a seemingly insurmountable operational obstacle has been the need for hundreds of fast-moving platforms to cover any possible location anywhere on Earth from which a missile might suddenly rise.

"I believe the performance of the [Ballistic Missile Defense] system could be greatly enhanced by an integrated space-based layer," Obering nevertheless continued, touching on the weapons-in-space issue. “Deployment of such a system must be preceded by significant, national-level debate.” To that end, Obering requested a budget of $10 million for 2008 “to begin concept analysis and preparation for small-scale experiments”.

That is hardly the description of an already-approved imminent deployment of a fleet of battle stations. Nor was it accurately reflected by the reporter for the Novosti news agency, who filed a story on the hearings with the headline, “U.S. missile defense chief argues for missile shield in space.” Novosti claimed that Obering said some elements of the missile defense system should be deployed in space, but what he really said was that the United States needed to debate that issue before making a decision years in the future.

Recognizing the realities

Russian press coverage is not universally garbled. A well-informed retired military officer named Vladimir Dvorkin uses original sources and direct interviews to correctly describe the over-wrought hyping of “U.S. space threats” by Kremlin officials. Dvorkin is one of the rare commentators in Russia recognizing the realities of the situation.

Fortunately, spaceflight is a technological exercise where physics is the ultimate judge of reality. The main fear about NFIRE seems centered on its potential to lead to orbiting satellite-killers, not merely missile-killers. None of these critics seems to have worked through the fundamental engineering of the NFIRE-type sensor system, which depends on tracking an extremely hot rocket plume trailing a powerful intercontinental missile.

Orbiting satellites, on the other hand, are in orbit, following a fixed course through space. Because they don’t emit enormous rocket plumes, they could not possibly be observed — much less attacked — by any weapons systems based on NFIRE-type sensors. They have no “fire,” hence nothing to fear from NFIRE.

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
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Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
http://www.space4peace.org
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http://space4peace.blogspot.com

The World Can Halt Bush’s Crimes By Dumping the Dollar

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

What would be the consequences of a US or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear energy sites?

0212/07 "ICH" -- -- At the 2006 Perdana Global Peace Forum, Australian medical scientist Dr. Helen Caldicott provided an authoritative analysis: [VIDEO] of the devastating impact on human life that would result from the radiation release from such an attack.

Dr. Caldicott described the catastrophic deaths that would result from a conventional attack on nuclear facilities and the long-term increase in cancer deaths from the radiation release.

Should the attack be made with nuclear weapons--as some of Bush’s criminally insane neoconservative advisers advocate--the populations of many countries would suffer for generations from radioactive particles in air, water, and food chains. Deaths would number in the many millions.

Such an attack justified in the name of “American security” and “American hegemony” would constitute the rawest form of evil the world has ever seen, far surpassing in evil the atrocities of the Nazi and Communist regimes.

Dr. Caldicott detailed the horrible long-term consequences for the Iraqi population from the US military’s current use of depleted uranium in explosive ammunition used in Iraq. Caldicott explained that “depleted” does not mean depleted of radiation. She explained that each time such ammunition is used, radioactive particles are released in the air and are absorbed into people’s lungs. We are yet to see the horrific civilian casualty rate of the American invasion--or the true casualty rate among US troops.

Dr. Caldicott expressed bewilderment why the rest of the world does not stand up to the US and force a halt to its crimes against humanity.

One man heard her--Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.

On February 10 at the 43rd Munich Security Conference, President Putin told the world’s assembled political leaders that the US was trying to establish a “uni-polar world,” which he defined as “one single center of power, one single center of force and one single master.”

This goal, Putin said, was a “formula for disaster.”

“The United States,” Putin said, truthfully, “has overstepped its borders in all spheres” and “has imposed itself on other states.”

The Russian leader declared: “We see no kind of restraint--a hyper-inflated use of force.”

To avoid catastrophe, Putin said a reconsideration of the entire existing architecture of global security was necessary.

Putin’s words of truth fell on many deaf ears. US Senator John McCain, America’s most idiotic and dangerous “leader” after Bush and Cheney, equated Putin’s legitimate criticism of the US with “confrontation.”

America’s new puppets--the states of central and Eastern Europe and the secretary general of NATO, no longer a treaty for the defense of Europe but a military force enlisted in America’s quest for empire--lined up with McCain’s argument that Russia was in fundamental conflict “with the core values of Euro-Atlantic democracies.”

Even the BBC’s defense and security correspondent, Rob Watson, jumped on the American propaganda bandwagon, tagging Putin’s speech a revival of the cold war.

No delegate at the security conference stood up to state the obvious fact that it is not Russia that is invading countries under pretexts as false as Hitler’s and setting up weapons systems on foreign soil in order to achieve military hegemony.

The reception given to Putin’s words made it clear to Russia, China, and every country not bribed, threatened or purchased into participation in America’s drive for world hegemony that the US has no interest whatsoever in peace. Intelligent people realize that American claims to be a moral and democratic force are mere pretense behind which hides a policy of military aggression.

The US, Putin said, has gone “from one conflict to another without achieving a fully-fledged solution to any of them.”

Putin has repeatedly stressed Russia’s peaceful intentions and desire to focus on its economy and to avoid a new arms race. In his speech on the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, Putin said: “I am convinced that there is no alternative to our friendship and our fraternity. With our closest neighbors and all countries of the world, Russia is prepared to build a kind of relationship which is not only based on lessons of the past but is also directed into a shared future.”

In his 2006 state of the nation speech, Putin noted that America’s military budget is 25 times larger than Russia’s. He compared the Bush Regime to a wolf who eats whom he wants without listening. Putin is being demonized by US propagandists, because he insists upon Russia being a politically and economically independent state.

The Bush Regime has taken the US outside the boundaries of international law and is acting unilaterally, falsely declaring American military aggression to be “defensive” and in the interests of peace. Much of the world realizes the hypocrisy and danger in the Bush Regime’s justification of the unbridled use of US military power, but no countries except other nuclear powers can challenge American aggression, and then only at the risk of all life on earth.

The solution is nonmilitary challenge.

The Bush Regime’s ability to wage war is dependent upon foreign financing. The Regime’s wars are financed with red ink, which means the hundreds of billions of dollars must be borrowed. As American consumers are spending more than they earn on consumption, the money cannot be borrowed from Americans.

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime’s military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime’s two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the “sole superpower” myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government’s ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America’s will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

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More testing radioactive devices DU devices in the U.S.

 

Marion Fulk, a highly respected Manhattan Project and Livermore atomic scientist, says that depleted uranium "is perfect for killing lots of people." That, in fact, along with contamination of the land, is the purpose of the devices being tested.

If it's news to you, you're not alone. Livermore National Laboratory has been testing radioactive devices – exploding depleted uranium and tritium into the open air – just 50 miles east of San Francisco since 1961. And now the lab has a permit to raise the amount of radioactive material they detonate yearly from 1,000 to 8,000 pounds.

Those who know are spreading the word and calling on the Bay Area to turn out for two meetings next week in protest: the Tracy City Council meeting Tuesday, Feb. 6, 7 p.m., at Tracy City Hall, 325 East 10th St., and the San Joaquin Air Pollution Control District Hearing Board meeting Wednesday, Feb. 7, 10 a.m., at 4800 Enterprise Way in Modesto.

The test site, called Site 300 by the Livermore nuclear weapons lab, is located on 11 square miles in the Altamont Hills between Tracy and Livermore. Like the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, formerly the site of the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory, Site 300 is a Superfund site, one of the most contaminated places in the U.S. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Site 300 "is operated by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) primarily as a high-explosives and materials testing site in support of nuclear weapons research."

Site 300 Manager Jim Lane downplays the danger, saying in the Site 300 Annual Report: "Depleted uranium is used routinely. ... It contains a trace amount of radioactivity. However, it is less than normal daily exposure to the sun."

Marion Fulk, a highly respected Manhattan Project and Livermore atomic scientist, however, says that depleted uranium "is perfect for killing lots of people." That, in fact, along with contamination of the land, is the purpose of the devices being tested.

The tests at Livermore Site 300 use exotic high explosives to detonate weaponized uranium gas in solid metal form. The uranium metal catches fire and burns at more than 3,000 degrees, producing fumes of radioactive gas – or aerosols – that are deadly to all life forms.

Even a microscopic particle of these depleted uranium (DU) – mostly Uranium-238 – aerosols lodged inside a human lung can cause severe health problems, from cancers to diabetes, asthma, birth defects, organ damage, heart failure and auto-immune system diseases. And this radioactive gas travels long distances.

Nine days after the U.S. began its "shock and awe" bombing campaign in Iraq on March 21, 2003, Dr. Chris Busby found DU aerosols in giant high volume air filters in England, 2,500 miles from Baghdad.

The 7 million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area are all endangered by the testing at Livermore Site 300, as are the people and produce of the agriculturally rich Central Valley. In reality, San Francisco and Northern California are under attack by the Livermore nuclear weapons lab.

Since the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District issued Livermore the new permit on Nov. 12, "(t)wo appeals have been filed, one by a housing developer and the other by a resident who lives about five miles from the radioactive blast location, Site 300," writes Washington, D.C., area-based investigative journalist Cathy Garger. A large turnout at the meetings Feb. 6 and 7 will show support for those appeals.

"Lawrence Livermore representatives will not reveal to Tracy residents precisely how many bombs might be 'tested' in a year," writes Garger. "Tracy Press reports that the only reason given by Lawrence Livermore for the eight-fold annual increase in explosives testing is 'national security,' according to air district spokeswoman Kelly Morphy."

Bob Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner, newspaper correspondent and a frequent contributor to various online publications. Now completing a book based on 15 years of nuclear radiation war in Central Asia, he is a former employee of the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant. He can be reached at DUweapons [at] gmail.com. To learn more, read Cathy Garger's story and blog at http://tinyurl.com/32pghh and http://haltdutesting.blogspot.com/. Bay View staff contributed to this report.

PHOTO: Livermore Site 300 1961 radioactive device pictured below.

CAPTION: This photo and the following comment come from the Livermore Laboratory archives: "Hydrodynamic (bomb core) test on a firing table at Site 300, 1961. The bright 'streaking' effect in the photo is likely from shards of pyrophoric metal, such as Uranium 238, hurtling through the air. U-238 is one of the contaminants of concern in the Site 300 Superfund cleanup."

 

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NASA PLANS MOON BASE TO CONTROL PATHWAY TO SPACE

 

At a time when the U.S. faces historic debt, NASA announced last week its intention to establish a permanent base on the Moon by 2024.

In an interview on December 4 from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration said, “We’re going for a base on the Moon.”

The NASA plan is portrayed as the next phase of the space agency’s exploration agenda after space shuttles are retired in 2010. NASA’s ambitious schedule includes a 2009 test of one of the lunar spaceships, a 2014 manned test flight of the new Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) without a Moon landing, and a 2020 flight with a four-astronaut crew that would land on the Moon for a short visit. NASA envisions people living on the Moon for six-month intervals beginning in 2024.

The most likely destination for the permanent base is the Moon's south pole because it's sunlit for three-quarters of the time and has possible resources to mine in areas nearby.

Just to ensure that Congress will support funding for the Moon program, NASA is spreading the operation out to 13 states: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Pratt & Whitney in West Palm Beach, Florida is now working on the engines for a lunar lander. Bechtel is interested in building structures on the Moon for NASA.

Last year, NASA said it would cost $104 billion just to return to the Moon for a first visit, but has declined to give estimates for the total cost of a permanent base. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that NASA’s procurement plan for the Moon lander risks delivering a product that is late, over budget, and short on capability. This is what happened in the case of the International Space Station (ISS) that was originally supposed to cost taxpayers $10 billion; the price has grown to $100 billion and the station is still not complete.

With space-related spending a low priority for most governments around the world, NASA hopes that by calling the Moon base an international post it will be able to recruit partners to help convince their publics and politicians to buy into the new exploration plan. By inviting some “allies” to share in the creation of the Moon base, the U.S. also hopes to absorb energies from countries like Japan that have announced plans of their own to establish Moon colonies.

The idea of a U.S. base on the Moon is nothing new. In a secret study called “A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Outpost” published on June 9, 1959, the military maintained that, “The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the Moon; to develop techniques in Moon-based surveillance of the Earth and space; in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the Moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the Moon…Any military operations on the Moon will be difficult to counter by the enemy because of the difficulty of his reaching the Moon, if our forces are already present and have means of countering a landing or of neutralizing any hostile forces that have landed.”

In 1999, John Young, former Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle astronaut, said that the Moon would also be useful for “planetary defense.”

Recognizing that “control” of the Moon could cause enormous conflict over time, the United Nations created the Moon Treaty in 1979. Much of the Moon Treaty reiterates earlier and internationally-accepted “space law,” particularly the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Article 11 of the treaty maintains, “The Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind.” The treaty also prohibits national appropriation, adding the words “by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” In other words, no military bases and no claims of ownership are allowed. The U.S. never signed the Moon Treaty, and in fact it was only ratified by nine nations.

A 1989 study commissioned by Congress, called "Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years" reports that whoever holds the Moon militarily will control the "earth-Moon gravity well" and thus will essentially control the front gate to the Moon.

Former Nazi Major General Walter Dornberger, who was in charge of the entireV-1 and V-2 missile operation for Hitler’s Germany, testified before the U.S. Congress in 1958 that America's top space priority ought to be to "conquer, occupy, keep, and utilize space between the Earth and the Moon." (Dornberger, along with 1,500 other top Nazi scientists, was smuggled into the U.S. under Operation Paperclip after WW II. He became Vice-President at Bell Aerospace in New York.)

The Moon has one resource that is getting everyone’s attention. It is helium-3, and, say many space enthusiasts, could be used for fusion power back here on Earth. In a 1995 New York Times op-ed, science writer Lawrence Joseph asks the question: “Will the Moon become the Persian Gulf of the 21st Century?” Joseph maintains that the most important technological question of our time will be “which nation will control nuclear fusion?” He ends his piece by saying, “If we ignore the potential of this remarkable fuel, the nation could slip behind the race for control of the global economy, and our destiny beyond.”

One person who is not ignoring helium-3 on the Moon is former astronaut and engineer Harrison Schmitt who has created a corporation to mine the Moon for it. Schmitt, though, is concerned about obstacles to his grand plans. In a 1998 piece for the industry newspaper Space News called “The Moon Treaty: Not a Wise Idea” he writes, “The strong prohibition on ownership of ‘natural resources’ also causes worry….The mandate of an international regime would complicate private commercial efforts…. The Moon Treaty is not needed to further the development and use of lunar resources for the benefit of humankind...including the extraction of lunar helium-3 for terrestrial fusion power.”

Some scientists predict that one metric ton of helium-3 could be worth over $3 billion. Researchers at the Princeton University Plasma Physics Laboratory have estimated that some one million tons of helium-3 could be obtained from the top layer of the Moon.

If all this turns out to be true and scientifically possible, imagine the gold rush to the Moon and the conflict that could follow in years to come. Who would police the Moon, especially when countries like the U.S. refuse to sign the Moon Treaty that restricts “ownership claims”?

The U.S. Space Command's plan, Vision for 2020, says, "Historically, military forces have evolved to protect national interests and investments — both military and economic. During the rise of sea commerce, nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests....Likewise, space forces will emerge to protect military and commercial national interests and investment in the space medium due to their increasing importance."

I have always been convinced that, by creating offensive space weapons systems, one of the major jobs of the Space Command would be to control who can get on and off planet Earth, thus controlling the “shipping lanes” to the Moon and beyond.

There has long been a military connection to NASA’s Moon missions. In early 1994, NASA launched the Deep Space Program Science Experiment, the first of a series of Clementine technology demonstrations jointly sponsored with the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO). The Pentagon announced that data acquired by the spacecraft indicated that there is ice in the bottom of a crater on the Moon, located on the Moon’s south pole — the same venue NASA now envisions as the site for the 2024 permanent base. According to a Pentagon website, “The principal objective of the lunar observatory mission though was to space qualify lightweight sensors and component technologies for the next generation of Department of Defense spacecraft [Star Wars]. The mission used the Moon, a near-Earth asteroid, and the spacecraft’s Interstage Adapter (ISA) as targets to demonstrate sensor performance. As a secondary mission, Clementine returns valuable data of interest to the international civilian scientific sector.”

In the end, the NASA plan to establish permanent bases on the Moon will help the military “control and dominate” access on and off our planet Earth and determine who will extract valuable resources from the Moon in the years ahead.

The taxpayers will be asked to pay the enormously expensive “research and development” costs of this program that in the end will profit the aerospace industry and those corporation like Bechtel that intend to build the bases and extract resources on the Moon.

NASA is not really looking for the “origins of life,” as it tells school children today. Instead, it is laying the groundwork for a new gold rush that will drain our national treasury and enrich the big corporations that now control our government. It is beyond time for the American people to wake up to the shell game underway.

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The Dreamslayers & the Internet

 

By Jim Kirwa

 

Unregulated Capitalism is a continuing crime that has enabled most of what passes for commerce today.

The latest and perhaps most serious attempt to regulate those of us who challenge these behemoths of commerce and industry; is the pending legislation that seeks total control over who can use the world-wide web. If these people have their way, the internet will become a toll-road with diamond lanes for them and the backroads of lengthy delays for the rest of America. If these multi-national interests get what they want, the money will virtually own the right of total control, over what gets downloaded, as well as who can download what.

The ostensible reason for trying to establish this new regulation over the formally free internet, is to hand over the ability to broadcast television images on the web – mainly to yuppies to watch their corrupted media broadcasts of “The their form of news” on private little phone screens. This will be costly for the internet providers but by creating these new rules, the money crowd can both get what they want (and who they want to reach) by taxing everyone else for the costs of that ‘new access’. Of course in that bargain they will eliminate all those truly troublesome sites that insist on reporting what’s really going on in the USA and in the world. All of this is being floated though the houses of congress as an ‘absolutely necessary’ measure to modernize and regulate something that is The-Last-Best-Hope-for-Humankind.

Since there have been nation states in the world, capitalism has largely been what has allowed those states to become viable. However whenever capitalism is treated as a religion—with unfettered access to anything they might want to do—that path has always led directly to disaster. Sometime well back in time The Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters was eliminated: thus discarding the need for any broadcast medium to balance whatever they chose to report. This permanently skewed the ‘playing field’ in favor of those with the money, and direct access to government regulators. This also insured that their piece of the public’s airwaves could not be contaminated by anything that might challenge the views that these captains of media and entertainment wanted to spread. The only avenue still standing that serves to prevent their total control over America is the World Wide Web. So for Congress to punish Americans by crushing public access on the web, and allowing only the most powerful to dictate terms to the rest of us – Congress shall be responsible for killing freedom of speech and information in the USA – if they pass this pending legislation.

Let’s go back, in order to understand what happened to “the public’s right to know.” When the Bill of Rights was written the scope or reach of information technology was not even a dream. But the principle the founders were trying to protect was the right of the public to be informed. The only level playing field on which that is even remotely possible today – is the Internet. ‘Information’ is and has always been POWER. To deny the public access to the information that is needed to make sound and meaningful choices – means that in effect the public will be confined to the current mass media which is wholly owned by the same people that are funding the problems and the crimes that are bringing the world to the brink of global war.

The other aspect in the ‘selling of these new rule changes for the internet’ is that capitalism must remain unfettered and free to do what it does best, which is business. Deregulation of corporate business practices is what unleashed unfettered capitalism, and than in turn bought us The New World Order! If Capital can demand de-regulation of all they choose to do – why then is’ regulation’ such a good idea for a forum that reaches the entire world, and allows that world to respond openly and fully on any subject?

Information or data is only that, if there is no context: and Context is what the web is all about. A story can be told and augmented with video clips, or interactive web sites that can actually provide much clearer images of whatever the topic might be. Precisely because of this capability; and the frequency with which the web has routinely challenged the lies and the completely fabricated excuses of governments around the planet—this is why the “too-powerful” are demanding the regulation of the web. If the public does not DEMAND and end to these continued attempts to silence any criticism of the corrupted pathways of the powerful; then congress can no longer hide behind the lie that they “didn’t know” what they were doing when they took on this question for “new revisions” that would kill what’s left of our resistance to tyranny.

According to those advocating for – “The Internet of the Future,” there is no precedent to show how well this will work because it has not been tried before. That’s a lie. There was an effort in San Francisco that was begun in 1988, to create a “Library of the Future.” This sad story starred the same cast of evil characters, who were seeking to make the kinds of profits now envisioned by those who want to own the web. And it’s all about the telecommunications applications as well as public use.

The story was printed in San Francisco FRONTLINES, in June of 1997. It was called High-Tech Barbarians at the Gates: The Plunder of the San Francisco Public Library. The relevance of that story here is that the entire battle with the current government over privatizing the internet can be seen in our mini-war with the San Francisco Public Library. This involved everything from the criminal misuse and abuse of the public's money – to denial of public access. From the skewing of political and public interests, to specializing particular groups for inclusion or exclusion - based on their individual ability to pay - and all of that had been in the planning stages for ten years prior to the City Librarian’s wet dream of destruction and mega-profits for the same phone companies (then Pacific Bell, now AT&T) that are pushing for the "NEW" telecommunications reform act. That “ACT” will wipe out the public's right to information and anything like an Alternative American Media! (1)

This “NEW Telecommunications Act” is also pivotal in another way. Money and Power are at the root of what most society’s value—and yet both (Money & Power) are dependent on critical information for their growth and their effectiveness. In a representative democracy, so much depends on everyone’s access to events as they happen, and to the extent possible, to knowledge about who pays for whatever is happening – so there must exist at least one place where “the playing field” is nearly level. That place today is the World Wide Web. The Net makes it possible to read and observe events from many different perspectives, and from a great variety of viewpoints. This allows the reader/viewer to decide what to search for, how far they may want to go to discover what they want to know – and on the web now – they can take advantage of as much information as they can process.

If the Telecommunications Act passes, then Multi-national Corporations and this Outlaw government of USA Incorporated shall become the crown rulers of the American form of the Internet. This action would inherently deny or severely cripple any site that publishes anything counter to the government or to the corporate view that those with the bulk of the money and the power now, seek to see dispensed — unchallenged! Currently, for a variety of reasons, the people who own the media now, along with publishing, entertainment and the arts are the same people who own the major controlling interests in much of everything that matters in American business, commerce, and government. It has taken over a hundred years for these changes in ownership and influence to arrive where they are today. Most of the key positions are now held by or are directly controlled by Jews. The Jews are not the only people in power, but many are there now and there can be no real question as to this fact. (2)

What matters in all of this, besides whether or not there is another global war, is that for a society to freely grow and prosper, many diverse people and interests need to be part of whatever is going on anywhere in this country or the world. No one group or cabal of individuals should obtain control over all that any society is trying to do—because that’s unhealthy for the nation as well as the great numbers of those who are not part of the upper classes (without the middle and the lower classes – no society can long survive).

There is one other pivotal point where everything comes together in a representative Republic: that place is in the separation of government from those that government was created to monitor and control. In the US that place was the Congress of the United States (where the laws are made and where “oversight” originates). Yet Congress now freely admits that for the last ten years they have relinquished their oversight responsibilities, when it comes to presidential actions. There is no question that they long ago gave up on regulating corporate interests, monopolies, or anti-trust laws: they just accept the bribes and let those they are supposed to regulate write the legislation for themselves – and then they rubber-stamp it all and move on to the next-big-thing!

But there’s an even more damning connection between money, power and information. That’s national election campaigns. The Supreme Court ruled quite a few years back, that corporations have a right to free speech (as if they were people). Then they added to that insult and made Money a legitimate tool of corporate free speech – so that MONEY could be given in unlimited amounts to campaigns (depending only on how they labeled what they chose to give). As an added bonus, most of that money raised in political campaigns tends to end up either in political bribes to individual politicians, or to the media campaigns which most of the money goes to pay for. This is “the best little investment in America.” Because the dividends that this kind of thoughtful giving yields, is something like at least a thousand to one.

Add to this, the fact that media is central to everything that Americans see, or think, or do – and you begin to see how important this controlling feature is; that there is more than one group controlling all of that information. The reason that all these happy coincidences of power, money and influence took so long to happen was that it took time to stack the courts, and coerce the congress to the extent that it currently will not tolerate anything that smacks of anything negative to do with Israel’s polices, or whatever that country might choose to do, supposedly to defend their country. It should be remembered that not everything that’s good for one country is by definition good for the other.

Besides the USA – Israel is the only other nation that gets away with doing exactly what they please, no UN resolutions matter to them, no international agreements have any standing in their world of global special-ness – in brief Israel has become a law unto itself: and god help anyone who ever challenges that in any way! In America today, there is still AIPAC, the American Israel Lobby which is a lobby for a foreign power, but which is still not registered as such. Congress should also be polled to see how many got what from Israel.

A large number of current officials within the exiting US government also have dual-passports, and had them long before they were appointed to key positions in the US government. People like the head of Homeland Security and key government advisors within the Pentagon and the US Department of State are also in that category. Most Americans might wonder why those positions could not have been filled with Americans citizens exclusively – because as it stands – this seems like a government conflict of interest in action. So The Dreamslayers exist, much as they have always existed; except that now they are about to destroy the internet, the worldwide web – and with it our way of life.(3) That can only happen if you allow business as usual to happen in congress, in the courts or in the administration. Americans used to be thought of as being ‘very creative people’ – isn’t it time that a lot more people began seriously to become “VERY CREATIVE” – in order to protect not just ourselves but the lives and futures of our children and our loved ones as well!

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Deadly Arrogance

By
Randy Atkins

I don’t know what is worse, discovering our country the United States of America is a corporate/government controlled criminal enterprise that’s clearly out of control or that no one in the
world can do anything about it.

With this current administration in office, we are, with every passing second closer to nuclear war. All the pieces are now in place. We have the Bush/Neo-Con takeover of the U.S. government, and their “illegal invasion for control and profit” of the Middle East. We also have the ever insane evangelical Christian fundamentalist’s hypocritical and unquestioning support of the Bush administration, cheering him on in the name of God. They are convinced that Bush is right simply because he publicly says he is a God fearing Christian, and apparently Bush also speaks directly to God. Since the Christian fairy tale promise of heaven on earth after Armageddon, the “born-again” Christian fundamentalists say they have nothing to fear from nuclear annihilation because they will float up in the sky, meet Jesus and be saved.

Now, because of the Bush administrations “first strike winnable nuclear war” policy, and the illegal invasion of two countries that DID NOT attack us, all nuclear weapons states are on optimum nuclear alert.
Now, the word around the camp fire is Dick Cheney ordered the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) to prepare contingency plans for a conventional and tactical nuclear strike in against hundreds of targets in Iran, in the event of a "new 9/11-style attack" on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. The real question is, what “new 9/11-style attack”? Another faults flag operation? After all, smart Americans now knows 9/11 was an inside job.
If a nuclear war should start in Iran it could go massive. Israel has between 200 and 400 illegal nuclear weapons sitting right in the center of the “growing out of control” conflict in the Middle East. No one seems to have an accurate count of Israeli nukes. I wonder why that is?
Other nuclear weapons states may strike the U.S. for fear that if they wait too long they will be next on the U.S. “HIT LIST”?

The United States has and will use “Low Yield Battle Field Nuclear Weapons” or “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator Weapons”. The use of these weapons is a crime against humanity. Anyone using these weapons against any nation is clinically sick and should be locked away in a home for the criminally insane. If any kind of nuclear weapons is used, the fall out will continue to kill life on earth for years just as the nuclear weapons testing of the past has contaminated everything and is still continuing to kill today.

In 1997 the National Cancer Institute released a study showing that just the iodine 131 releases from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing at Nevada had been over 130 million curies, that’s 15 times greater than the Chernobyl accident. The fallout has spread all over the United States poisoning most of the milk supply and this is just one part of the contamination. These tests had been conducted by many countries in the 50s, and 60’s, contaminating everything. Nuclear contamination causes cancer and cancer is now the number one killer surpassing heart diseases.

It’s also clear the United States will go ahead with weaponizing space if we survive the coming nuclear war, including nuclear weapons and nuclear rocket engines for Project Prometheus and the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and its moon. One launch failure and the nuclear contamination could be devastating.
Space is already militarized with satellites for command control of US forces in the air, on land and the sea. Without satellites we couldn’t wage such a horrific war in Iraq on a scale of this magnitude. Other nuclear weapons states like China and Russia have already warned the U.S. that a move to put weapons in space will start a new arms race into the heavens and they will consider it a threat to their national security.
The U.S. will violate the 1967 out space treaty also known as the "non armament" treaty, meaning no WMD in outer space. Of course this is just one of many treaty violations by the Bush administration.
The invasion of Iraq is a NUCLEAR WAR, with the use of depleted uranium creating increased cancers and childhood deformities of all sorts. The effects of DU does not discriminate and is ONE of the largest cover-ups by the pentagon under 9/11. DU will continue to kill forever! It will NOT go away and is coming to a city near you sooner or later in ever increasing doses, because it can travel in the atmosphere.
Most of the American people don’t have a clue of the new nuclear nightmare because the main press is owned and operated by corporations that make Nuclear weapons and profit from other weapons used in Iraq and soon Iran, North Korea and Syria, nor do they care anyway, it seems. They just don’t believe its’ happening.
Today diplomats from all around the world are terrified of the new nuclear danger brought on by this arrogant Neo CON Bush administration. The buildup of the military around the world for this “war of terrorism” for economic and strategic conquest has not increased stability for the world or the economy as the press keeps printing but undermines it.

The new nuclear nightmare is the number one issue facing all life on Earth. Albert Einstein said “The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has made more urgent the necessity of solving an old one”. That “old problem” continues and will persist for a long time to come it seems. Who can stand up to this insanity and demand nuclear disarmament before it is too late to save the planet? I believe only the masses can, but I also believe it will never happen because the corporate controlled media whores is the problem and deliberately ignores the very issues that can decimate the world! Of course the “powers that be” understand this and took measures to control the media to cover up these crimes a long time ago.

In the event of even a limited nuclear exchange the living may envy the dead, and few could end their own life no matter how sick they become from nuclear contamination. The victims will fight to live the most horrible existence until their last dying breath.
It’s just a matter of time now. Nuclear war has been on earth since 1945 and has been increasing in intensity every year since and there is no where to run and no where to hide.

Randy Atkins
www.ArsenalofHypocrisy.com

Free to copy and send out

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TERRORISM IS TERRORISM!

 

The Christian Science Monitor tries to redefine the definition of terrorism.
No where does it mention the United States acts of terrorism!
See video: http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/terrorism/frameset.html
Clearly the United States is the largest terrorist state in the world and by our own definition.
The US Department of Defense defines terrorism as: "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
Is this not what the United States is doing to Iraq? Divide and Conquer!
You don’t have to look hard to find articles that explain it. http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=22797&s2=25
Israel is the second largest terrorist state http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=22797&s2=25
The United States Government refuses to admit terrorist acts that we use around the globe with this fake “Global War On Terror” ( GWOT ) against militarily weaker peoples and countries. This is sold to Americans by the shovel load through the main stream press that sells our terrorism as the “advancement of democracy” to “protect the American people” All designed to fool the American public into believing our terrorism is necessary when in actuality it is calculated plot for economic and strategic conquest. Terrorism has always been used to support military spending throughout our American history.

On Feb. 27, 1947, "President Truman met with Congressional leaders in the White House. Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was present at the meeting, and Truman had him tell the Congressmen what was at stake. Acheson spoke for ten minutes, informing the legislators that nothing less than the survival of the whole of Western civilization was in the balance at that moment; he worked in references to ancient Athens, Rome, and the course of Western civilization and freedom since those times. The Congressmen were silent for a few moments, and then, at last. Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, a prominent Republican who had come to support an active foreign policy, spoke up. All this might be true, Vandenberg said, but, if the President wishes to sell his program to the American people, he would have to 'scare hell out of the country'. It was at that moment that the Cold War began in earnest for the United States." This is one of the most revealing statements in American history. This is the smoking gun which proves that the federal government used a teerror campaign to frighten the American peoplee into supporting four decades of Cold War spending on armaments that cost Americans $5 TRILLION.
Here is the list by the Congress of some of the Countries “terrorized” or have been “engaged” by the US Military in the last 50 years:
Taiwan Straits, Quemoy Matsu Island , Congo, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Korea, Cambodia, Thailand (in direct support of Cambodia Operation), Operation Eagle Pull-Evacuation of Cambodia, Operation Frequent Wind-Evacuation of Vietnam, Mayaguez Operation, Operation Urgent Fury-Grenada, Lebanon, Germany (West Berlin), Austria, Korea, Japan, Italy, Trieste, Germany (except West Berlin), Austria, Asiatic Pacific, Korean Service Medal (Army, Navy, Air Force), Berlin, Libyan Operation El Dorado Canyo, Persian Gulf Operation Earnest Will, Panama Operation Just Cause, Somalia-United Shield-Operation Restore Hope, Haiti-Operation Uphold Democracy, Operation Southern Watch (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Gulf of Omen W. Of 62' E. Long, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan), El Salvador, Bosnia-Operation Joint Endeavor, Operation Joint Guard, Operation Vigilant Sentinel, Operation Northern Watch, Operation Maritime Intercept, Operation Joint Forge (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Operation Desert Thunder, Operation Desert Fox, Thailand Military Operation, Cuban Military Operation, Iranian, Yemen Indian Ocean Operation, Lebanon, Libyan Expedition, Panama - (pre and post invasion) Liberia (Operation Sharp Edge) Rwanda (Operation Distant Runner), Vietnam Service Medal, Iraq Operation Desert Storm/Operation Desert Shield, Combat Action Ribbon, Korean Service, Kosovo Campaign Medal (Allied Force),, Joint Guardian, Allied Harbor Sustain Hope/Shining Hope, Nobel Anvil, Kosovo Task Force Hawk, Kosovo Task Force Saber, Kosovo Task Force Falcon, Kosovo Task force Hunter, Kosovo Air Campaign, Kosovo Defense Campaign, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran.
Some of these countries are repeated, but the dates of action are different. That means that we have repeatedly returned to some countries for new “engagements” or “terrorist acts” like we are now doing in Iraq and Iran. Terrorism has always been used to support military spending throughout American history.
As you can see Terrorism is Terrorism! By this list the United States has been very busy with our "Military Might" (Military Industrial Complex) and (Secret Operations) that have been in the forefront of U.S. Foreign Policy (Terrorism) over the last 50 years.
Definitions of Terrorism on the Web:

• is defined by the US Department of Defense as "the unlawful use of -- or threatened use of -- force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/alqaeda/glossary.htm

l
• This seems to be exactly what the United States is doing in Iraq!


• The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp

• This is exactly what the Bush Administration is now doing to Iraq!

• use of terror, especially the systematic use of terror by the government or other authority against particular persons or groups; a method of opposing a government internally or externally through the use of terror
www.imuna.org/c2c/app_a.html

• This is case documented and used by: CIA, MOSSAD, MI6 and others!

• Any act including, but not limited to, the use of force or violence and/or threat thereof of any person or group(s) of persons whether acting alone or on behalf of, or in connection with, any organization(s) or government(s) committed for political, religions, ideological or similar purposes, including the intention to influence any government and/or to put the public or any section of the public in fear.
www.ecis.org/finance/paisdefin.htm

• This is exactly what the Bush NeoCONS are doing with our US foreign policy to weaker countries and to the American People!

• Acts of murder and destruction deliberately directed against civilians or military in non-military situations.
www.jafi.org.il/education/hasbara/glossary.html

• Used by the intelligent agency’s throughout the Viet Nam war and South America! Now in Iraq and covert op’s in Iran.

• The systematic use of terror, the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear for bringing about political change
wps.prenhall.com/chet_langan_preparing_1/0,9681,1613226-content,00.html
• This is now what the US and Israel is staging through out the Middle East.

• Terrorist activities are illegal and involve the use of coercion including the use of force, intended to intimidate or coerce, and committed in support of political or social objectives.
www.austin.cc.tx.us/audit/Glossary/LetterT.htm

• This is US foreign policy!

• a psychological strategy of war for gaining political ends by deliberately creating a well-founded climate of fear among the civilian population. Such a strategy may be used by an occupying army on the occupied population. Many terrorist acts, especially against an occupying military or against illegal occupants are acts of war or resistance, and not terrorism.
www.naiadonline.ca/book/01Glossary.htm

• Could it be any clearer of what we are doing in Iraq and soon to be in Iran!

• the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

• This is exactly what the US Government and Media are doing to Americans!

• Terrorism is a controversial and subjective term with multiple definitions. One definition means a violent action targeting civilians exclusively. Another definition is the use or threatened use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, economic, religious, or ideological goal. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism

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Police use terrorist tactics against Eustace Mullins

 

Date: Tuesday, 13 June 2006, 7:27 p.m.
THE CONTRACT MURDER OF EUSTACE MULLINS
By Eustace Mullins

For more than five years, I have been battling to stay alive in the
State in which I live. My adversary has not been the mafia, but the
Commonwealth of Virginia. The occasion was my publishing the
American-Christian Messenger, founded in 1972, in the summer of '72
issue, titled the Red State of Virginia.
I revealed for the first time that the famed Byrd machine, which
maintained iron control over the people of Virginia for many years,
was actually the Rothschild-Byrd Machine.
In December, 1893, Tom Martin, a railroad lawyer representing Jacob
Schiff of Kuhn Loeb and Company, the American branch of the House
of Rothschild, ran for the U.S. Senate from Virginia. He was
predicted to lose against the popular Fitzhugh Lee, but Kuhn Loeb
bought ten members of the Democratic Caucus of the Virginia
Assembly for the sum of one thousand dollars each. They then
switched their votes from Lee to Martin, who won the Senate seat.
Two young men from Martinsburg, VA are launching their careers at
that time. They were long time friends, Harry Byrd and Lewis
Lichtenstein Strauss. Strauss joined Kuhn, Loeb and Company and
with his financial backing, Byrd went into the Martin Organization,
which later became the Byrd Machine, with Rothschild backing. After
many years of total dictatorial rule in Virginia, Byrd finally
died. Strauss pushed his son to replace him, and the Byrd Machine
continued with his son Harry Jr. It was continuing now and was
always known as the Byrd Machine, but although to those in the
know, it was always the Byrd-Rothschild Machine.
When Byrd Jr. decided to run as an Independent, Strauss mailed
flyers to every voter in the State of Virginia, notifying them that
he supported Byrd Jr. as an Independent.
Speaking of this strange alliance, over WRNL, Richmond, VA. Feb.
10, 1949, Colonel Frances Pickens Miller said "Virginia has not
been functioning normally as a free society because of the
Political Clique that has controlled the Commonwealth during the
past half century."
Byrd referred to Byrd's lieutenant, a man never elected to any
Office, E.R. Combs, State Chairman of the Compensation Board, who
set the pay for every Byrd henchman who held every Office in
the State, which was modeled after the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union, which Byrd had used as a model in setting up his own
totalitarian State bureaucracy in Virginia. Miller then had to move
to North Carolina after making this speech. There has been no
opposition to the Rothschild-Byrd Machine since 1949, in Virginia.
This continues the absolutist tradition in Virginia, which began as
huge Estates, owned by men like King Carter and the Byrd's. From
its inception, it has been the very rich and masses of peasants.
Its Capitol, Richmond, VA is referred to as FIC, referring to three
groups which have always held power there. F is for Freemasons, I
is for the State of Israel and C for Communism. All three flags
have on occasions flown over the State Capitol in Richmond. There
is no Virginia flag, as Virginia is the last thing in the minds of
the Virginia legislature, as corrupt today as it was in 1893 when
its bribed members voted Tom Martin into the U.S. Senate.
When we think of the wonderful people we have had in this State,
Washington, Jefferson and so many others, we wonder how we came to
this sorry pass? The truth is, Virginians haven't changed that
much. We have been deleteriously influenced by changing mores, and
changing times. The people in my area, Staunton, VA, have not
changed that much, but their morals have been loosened that much.
The pressures around them have changed. It is as deep sea diving,
we have gone beyond our depths, and we are now trying to change to
adapt to the pressures of a lower depth. If indeed we are in the
lower depths, we must recognize our situation and adapt to the
lower depths.
The rise of the Byrd-Rothschild rule in Virginia does not mean that
we must ignore the changes of history. The fact is that the
Byrd-Rothschild group thrust Virginia onto the stage of world
history. Kuhn Loeb, which bought Virginia for the Rothschilds, also
bought Tom Martin. They long for Communist rule of the entire
world.
Schiff financed the Rockefeller oil empire, the Harriman railway
empire, and many others. Primarily, he was responsible for
fostering the Rothschild money system on the entire world, by
passing the Federal Reserve System in the U.S., and creating the
greatest financial empire in the history of the world, which the
Rothschild’s passed in Congress, by using their tool Woodrow Wilson
and getting it through Congress with the help of Virginian, Carter
Glass, because Wilson was so despised by Congress, he had no chance
of getting the Bill passed, Glass came to the rescue and became the
pillar of the new money monopoly. He is remembered today for his
work in fastening the tentacles of the Wall Street Rothschild
octopus fatally into the American government.
So Richmond's Importance in the rise of Communism is noted. Not
only did Woodrow Wilson become the champion of world terrorists,
but he condemned the 20th century to be remembered eternally as the
century of terrorism, all the work of one man. I am still hated
today in Richmond today for my ground breaking expose of the
Communist empire and its use of the Federal Reserve System to
create the Communist world empire, which finally collapsed only
because it was a fake system, as its fake Federal Reserve origin.
Wilson supported and defended the Communist Dictatorship to his
dying day, and is remembered still for his status as a hero of the
Soviet Union. He bailed out the collapsing Bolshevik government by
embezzling $100 million of the Special War Fund which Congress had
voted him to defend the U.S. in WW-1, and which saved Communism
when he sent it to the Soviet Union with his compliments. This gift
is rarely mentioned in histories of the time.
I mentioned this unknown chapter of history in a lawsuit filed
against the Commonwealth of Virginia January 30, 2006 in Federal
Court, which they are now trying to dismiss with prejudice. This
case must be heard in the remembering of history as it actually
happened.
I had filed this suit in trying to defend myself against the
furious vendetta which the Rothschild-Byrd organization had
launched against me, which had languished for five years. It was
caused by a series of strokes and heart attacks brought on by the
stress in my work.
The Rothschild-Byrd machine seized on this opening as I was in a
series of nursing homes trying to regain my health, and during this
period my Virginia Drivers License had expired without my
knowledge. The alert bureaucrats seized on this opening and began
to harass me daily to renew the license. As I had been driving for
72 years without incident in this State, I expected no problem with
this routine renewal, but the Rothschild-Byrd organization seized
upon this opening and denied my renewal.
Over the next 5 years, I took the test 82 times. Each time I was
told that I failed the written test, which denied me the driving
test. I continued to drive to medial appointments and offices,
realizing that I was in extreme danger.
I then filed a $900 million damage suit against Commonwealth of
Virginia in the Federal District Court of the United States in
Harrisonburg, Virginia, charging violations of Federal laws against
age discrimination, but not mentioning the Rothschild-Byrd terrorist
organization.
Having no response to my lawsuit from the Commonwealth, I waited 20
days and filed the usual Motion for Default Judgment This got
immediate attention and they launched an all-out campaign against
me. On April 3, I went to the store to pick up medicine. When I
returned, I noticed a number of local police cars in my vicinity.
As I turned onto my street, I was surrounded by many squad cars. I
counted 25, which was very unusual, as rarely would more than 2
cars answer the most serious call. The size of this terrorist
attack was to panic me into making a run for it, which would have
been fatal to me in this terrorist assault.
I stopped immediately and the Officers began yelling orders to me,
many of them conflicting with each other. The Officers then wrote
me a number of tickets, including the usual "Expired Driving
Permit". This was the notorious driving license scam.
Some years ago, someone had come up with the idea that the State
should hold all Titles to vehicles, mailing a Certificate of Title
to the 'owners'. This created a legal fiction that the State owned
the vehicles. Drivers were thus driving a State owned vehicle,
mandating drivers must have a license to drive a State vehicle,
which was false.
The State reaped many millions with its drivers license scam, and
began issuing heavy fines for not having a State license. Writing
the tickets, the Officers warned me that I could not drive a few
feet to park in front of my home. I was near collapse from the
shock of this assault, having had a number of strokes and heart
attacks at the age of 83. I later found out that this was a police
murder raid which the attackers were certain I could not survive.
A few minutes later, I collapsed on the steps to my front door and
suffered a massive coronary occlusion which shut down my heart and
nervous system. I fell down a flight of concrete steps, inflicting
many abrasions and broken bones. A neighbor saw me fall and rushed
over to take me to the emergency room where I remained for many
hours. This was my first intimation of the murder plot against me.
I was never intended to survive this assault.
I left the State to recuperate from this attack and remained away
for some weeks. I had returned the tickets because I had filed a
lawsuit on drivers licensing in Federal Court. On January 30.
I returned home in late May. On Sunday morning, June 3, I was
awakened by armed Police, who began to shout at me to produce any
weapons I had. I replied that I had no weapons. They then cuffed me
for the first time and dragged me in my pajamas to a police car and
taken to jail. The charge was failing to appear in Court, a
standard charge for assaults on citizens.
A TV set produced a Magistrate who set the date for my sentencing,
July 28, 2006. I was then told I could go and had to walk up a
steep hill back to my home, stumbling on my flimsy slippers. I
realized this was the second police murder raid on me, in my home.
The demands that I tell police what weapons I had was designed to
force me to produce weapons and be shot down at once as a crazed
writer in a battle with police. I had known of many such cases. An
old friend, Bill Cooper, a prominent anti-Communist writer, had
recently been shot down under the same circumstances.
For 18 years after my fathers death, I cared for my invalid mother
and my handicapped sister in their home. During this time, they
were constantly harassed by police because of my well known
anti-Communist writings. After they passed away, the police had
only me to harass and they never let up on their surveillance of
me.
At that time, I had not learned of the longtime association of the
Rothschild-Byrd machine and its Communist work, which would have
explained their antipathy to me. I and my relatives had been
assigned to the blacklist of the Richmond Taliban, fanatical
Communist zealots who are determined to attack anyone who
criticized Communism, and which inspired the two Staunton Police
murder raids on my Staunton home.
These murder raids on an anti-Communist were reminiscent of other
terrorist acts in Recent history, the Waco holocaust, in which an
entire Christian congregation was burned alive in their Texas
church, the only time this has happened in the history of America,
not a single protest was heard from any minister, which of course
would be bad for business.
Then the Ruby Ridge massacre in Idaho, in which Randy Weaver living
in a mountain shanty, was charged with 'failure to appear', then
attacked in his home by a Swat Team of FBI assassins, and the most
famous assassin, Lon Horuichi of the FBI, then shot his wife in the
head as she was holding their baby in her arms. No one has ever
been charged with these murders.
I have grounds for a class action suit in the police murder raids
on my home, and also with conspiracy to murder by a political
organization, which would make a very interesting civil rights
case.
I cannot charge the Rothschild-Byrd party with these crimes because
it is composed of two units, the Virginia Democratic Party, known
as the Scalawags since they were organized by the occupation troops
in 1865, and the Virginia Republican Party, known as the
Carpetbaggers, formed on the same date. Since I as the Plaintiff
cannot charge these criminal groups under their correct names, it
will be difficult to obtain indictments against them. President
Bush constantly warns us of the terror, but neglects to tell us
that they are government agents.
The grand climax of the murder plot against Eustace Mullins will
come next month, when he is sentenced to a long term for his crime
of failure to appear in Court. He will then become one of those
mysterious 'suicides' which routinely occur in remote Southern
Jails where a person is imprisoned on a minor traffic charge. The
deed is carried out by The resident hit man, who is always present
in the infamous Southern dungeons as a feature of the ongoing
Occupation since 1865.
The State of Virginia is now permanently branded as the FCI State?
F for freemasonry,
I for Israel,
C for Communism.
June 13, 2006

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Miami “terror” arrests—a government provocation

By Bill Van Auken
24 June 2006

There are many incongruities surrounding the arrest of seven men from the impoverished Liberty City neighborhood of Miami on charges of conspiracy to “wage war on the United States” that suggest it, like so many previous “terrorist plots” announced by the Bush administration, is a government-inspired provocation mounted for reactionary political ends.

None of the claims made by the government and repeated uncritically by the media concerning the arrest of these young working-class men can be accepted as good coin. Both the flimsiness of the criminal indictment and the lurid headlines surrounding it mark this event as an escalation in the anti-democratic conspiracies of the Bush administration.

There is every indication that this latest purported terrorist threat—described by some media outlets as “even bigger than September 11”—was manufactured by the FBI, which used an undercover agent posing as a terrorist mastermind to entrap those targeted for arrest.

While the Justice Department declared that the arrests had foiled a plot to blow up the tallest building in the US, the Sears Tower in Chicago, authorities in that city assured its residents that there had never been any threat to the structure.

The four-count indictment presented by the Justice Department in a Miami federal court on Friday contains not a single indication of an overt criminal act or even the means to carry one out. The brief 11-page document consists almost entirely of alleged statements made by the defendants to the FBI informant, referred to in quotes throughout the indictment as “the al Qaeda representative.”

The government chose to consummate its entrapment plan by unleashing dozens of combat-equipped federal agents, dressed in olive drab fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, on the predominantly African-American Liberty City neighborhood, one of the poorest in the country. Liberty City was the scene of riots that broke out in 1980 after the acquittal of white police officers for the beating death of a black motorist.

On Thursday, the government’s paramilitary squads confronted residents with pictures of the accused, demanding to know their whereabouts. The seven defendants are representative of the impoverished working class population of Miami, including Haitian immigrants.

It appears they were targeted by the FBI because they had formed a religious group, calling themselves the “Seas of David,” which reportedly incorporated elements of Christianity and Islam. One of their crimes, according to the FBI’s deputy director, John Pistole, was that the Seas of David “did not believe the United States government had legal authority over them.”

According to some residents of the neighborhood, the group lived together in the warehouse that was raided by the FBI, using it for religious worship and as a base of operations for a construction business.

Elements of the federal indictment are so self-incriminating as to border on the ludicrous. Among the charges are that the defendants “swore an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda.” Who administered this oath? The “al Qaeda representative,” AKA, the paid informant of the FBI.

Aside from this “loyalty oath” solicited by the FBI, only one of the seven defendants is accused of any overt act, outside of driving the FBI informant to meetings.

The only action with which this one individual is charged—all else is words—is taking pictures of the FBI headquarters in Miami. Who supplied the camera? The “al Qaeda representative”—i.e., the FBI agent provocateur.

The indictment further charges two of the accused with driving “with the ‘al Qaeda representative’” to a store in Dade County, Florida to purchase a memory chip for a digital camera to be used for taking reconnaissance photographs of the FBI building. The document does not say who paid for the chip, but there is hardly room for doubt.

In one of the more curious sections of the indictment, one of the accused, Narseal Batiste, is accused of asking the FBI informant to provide various items for his group, including footwear, for which he provided a “list of shoe sizes.” Apparently the FBI delivered the shoes.

Pistole, the FBI deputy director, admitted that the supposed plots to blow up buildings had been “more aspirational than operational.” In the raids carried out by the FBI squads, no weapons and no explosive substances were found.

“We preempted their plot,” declared Pistole. But the indictment and the facts of the case indicate that the alleged plot would never have existed had the government not planned and instigated it in the first place.

At a Washington press conference, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales acknowledged that the alleged plot had posed no actual danger. He claimed this was because the authorities had intervened “in its earliest stages.”

So “early” was the preemption that officials associated with the supposed targets of the plot dismissed the government’s indictment. Barbara Carley, the managing director of the Sears Tower, told the press, “Federal and local authorities continue to tell us they’ve never found evidence of a credible terrorism threat against Sears Tower that’s ever gone beyond just talk.”

Her remarks were echoed by Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline, who said, “There never was any credible threat to the Sears Tower at all.”

In his press conference, Attorney General Gonzales asserted that the Miami group represented a “new brand of terrorism” created by “the convergence of globalization and technology.”

What these words mean is anyone’s guess. There is no indication that those charged, who were living in a warehouse in the poorest city in America, had access to any technology, and their supposed contact to the wider world was an informer planted by the FBI. The suggestion that the seven men were a “home-grown” terrorist group inspired by contact with Al Qaeda elements over the Internet is supported neither by evidence nor the charges contained in the government’s own indictment.

R. Alexander Acosta, the United States attorney in South Florida, told the media that the defendants had “lived in the United States for most of their lives, but developed a hatred of America.” This is presented as though it constituted evidence of a crime.

It is hardly surprising for someone living in Liberty City to hate the poverty and oppression that prevail there, or for Haitian immigrants to despise the imprisonment and repression that Washington metes out to those attempting to escape the brutal conditions imposed by US imperialism upon their homeland.

What is highly noteworthy is that the federal government decided to intervene in this situation to concoct a phony Al Qaeda connection and trumped up “terror plot.”

What is the government’s motive in manufacturing such a plot? Whose interests are served? Under conditions in which the majority of the American people have turned against the Iraq war and support the withdrawal of American troops, the Bush administration is desperately attempting to once again link its neo-colonial venture in Iraq with a supposed “global war on terror” waged to defend the American people against another 9/11.

To sustain such a fiction, fresh evidence of terrorist threats is periodically required. And it has been forthcoming on a regular basis. Every several months another “conspiracy” is unveiled, invariably involving an FBI informant and hapless individuals ensnared in a plot orchestrated by the government.

Until now, these “sting” operations have been targeted at Muslim immigrants. Last month, for example, Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Siraj in New York City was found guilty of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in a “plot” that the evidence indicated was based entirely on suggestions from an FBI informant. The FBI agent provocateur taunted the defendant with photographs of Abu Ghraib torture victims and demanded to know how, as a Muslim, he could fail to take action.

Similarly, in Albany, New York two years ago, the FBI recruited a Pakistani immigrant, promising him leniency on minor fraud charges, to ensnare two other immigrants in a fictitious scheme to help a non-existent person buy a weapon for a fake terrorist plot.

These provocations and conspiracies are symptomatic of a government that is both ruthless and desperate. Confronting a population that is increasingly hostile to its political agenda of reaction at home and war abroad, it is driven to manufacture an endless series of terrorist threats aimed at disorienting and intimidating public opinion.

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The new Iron Curtain

What's that shadow in your mind,
and how long has it been there?

By John Kaminski

The Iron Curtain was a phrase commonly used in the 1950s to describe
the post-World War Two partitioning of Europe. The sinister label was
used to convey the lockstep conformity of thought and action demanded
by the old Soviet Union of the hapless Eastern European nations it
controlled.

Today, the Iron Curtain is electronic, and engulfs the whole world. Its
totalitarian terror apparatus is entirely conceptual, and has been
implanted in the minds of every person on this planet by what at first
seems to be a totally by chance arrangement of a seemingly infinite
variety of commercial media. But upon deeper inspection, a chilling
pattern emerges, that is perhaps best reflected by the overall loss of
intellectual capacity in the United States during the past half
century.

Once a vibrant and intelligent society, the USA is now a lockstep
fascist state that justifies torture and preemptive war because it
inadvertently robotized itself using the combination of political
manipulation backed by the raw power of movies, television and
newspapers. The unending search for profit at any cost turned the
beacon of liberty into the mad master of horror in search of a twisted
comfort it can never achieve, and as a consequence, America continues
to turn the world into rubble on a daily basis.

But perhaps the robotizing has not been inadvertent. In the bevy of
recent media revelations from Harvard about Israel?s control of the
U.S. as well as an increased mainstream media presence about the
obvious inside job crimes connected to 9/11, the majority of the
American people continue to prove they will willingly ignore the
horrible crimes being committed by their so-called leaders at the
expense of not only the rest of the world ? but also themselves.

And for what? Security? All honest and decent humans have always known
you can't have real security without faith in some higher hope. Yet the
men who control these activities in today's world do not lead us toward
real security. They lead us toward false hope and terrible deeds
questing for plunder and power. Some may say this is the way it has
always been, but the healthier among us ? who are all currently running
for our lives ? know that the way to permanent peace lies through an
understanding of the other, and that security has never been
established through the use of raw power, but only through mutual
understanding and empathy.

The actual use of raw power guarantees only hatred and incessant
revolution to follow.

We may not live this life for ourselves. Both Jesus and Milton Friedman
have uttered these words. It is obvious to real human beings.

But it is not obvious to mass media, nor to neocon politicians, who
play on our fears and reward us with graft. And blood. Lots of blood.
It is a profitable substance. Just ask the pharmaceutical industry. And
while you're at it, before you slip into that final coma from which you
may not emerge, ask yourself what impact the stuff doctors are putting
into your veins has had on your life, the disintegration of your
formerly happy country, and the condition of the whole world.

A lot like the impact mass media have had, wouldn't you say?

Then other pieces of the puzzle begin to coalesce.

1. The Soviet Union and its horrific gulags (60 million dead) were
originally a Jewish enterprise, funded by bankers from New York and
executed by Jews from Brooklyn. Somewhere there's a famous quote that
"Communism is Judaism."

2. The creation of the so-called Jewish homeland in Israel was a
subtext (if not the real reason) of both World Wars One and Two. The
USA was taken over by international Jewish financiers in 1913, and has
not regained its financial freedom since. The Balfour Declaration
during WW1 committed Britain to the establishment of a Jewish
Palestine. The state of Israel was formed out of the rubble of WW2,
although the actual Jewish Holocaust religion would not be established
until the middle-1960s, after the Kennedy assassination was engineered
by a Jewish mobster working closely with the Mossad.

3. The ideological guides for the current Bush adminstration, Perle and
Wolfowitz, who wrote PNAC, are high-level Israeli agents. So is U.S.
Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff. As was Pentagon finance
chief Rabbi Dov Zakheim. I trust I do not need to go on to you about
principal 9/11 players, from Larry Silverstein to Tommy Franks, who are
also Jewish.

4. The foundation of Western capitalism, ostensibly when William
Paterson founded the Bank of England in 1694, rests on the abilities
and formulas of Jewish bankers from Holland. The actual rise of the
worldwide British Empire coincides with when Jews took over the
finances and made the City of London the power center of the world.
Rothschild banks have handled the coffers of the Catholic church for
many years. The flag of Israel, as you may now, is based on the
Rothschild model. A story is circulating that the mother of a recent
former pope, the Polish one, was Jewish.

5. Media ownership in the United States and throughout the Western
corporatized world are EXCLUSIVELY Jewish. And so with the the biggest
media power center of all, Hollywood. The impact of movies on the world
throughout the 20th century has defined the social aspects of ALL of
human civilization. People you thought were good Americans, like Judy
Garland and Billy Graham, were Jewish. And participating in something
so huge, some experiment so audacious, that I won?t even attempt to
explain to you because you wouldn?t believe it if you heard it.

Anyway, these are just five things. Try to compile a list of shadowy
traits to match this for any other group. Then explain to me how a
certain people can cohere for 5,000 years without their own state, yet
survive and prosper century after century while the countries they live
in decay and die.

Explain that to me, please.

You won?t be able to, of course. One of the reasons you can?t is
because you were brought up in an educational system that concealed
these facts, that presented you with a history of the world that
doesn?t talk about these things, that doesn?t give you the real
history.

Try to understand what?s going on through psychiatry, and you will
discover it is a Jewish science. The National Education Association, to
which all public school teachers must belong, is a Jewish organization.

WW1 President Woodrow Wilson?s involvement in the robbery of Germany
and creation of a two-tiered educational system in the United States,
one for the privileged rich, and the other for us worker bees, for
example. And people wonder how today?s torture-happy USA rooters
devolved into lesser beings from their formerly happy pioneer spirit?
Wilson?s top advisor, Colonel House, was Jewish. WW2 President
Roosevelt?s top advisor, Bernard Baruch, was Jewish.

Currently, the Jewish state known as Israel gets $3 billion per year it
has never been required to repay (although $15 billion including
commercial tangents is more accurate) from U.S. citizens. This is both
robbery and slavery. Israel is putting up a wall around its enslaved
indiginents and calling them terrorists. The practice seems destined
for the United States as well.

As one commentator described it: ?Israel is not a country. Israel is
the crime syndicate for the people who run the world.?

A life built on blood inevitably means a horribly bloody death awaits
those who choose to travel that path.

And this is the current fate all Americans face, provided to us not so
free of charge by that same shadowy, no longer hard to identify group
that has done the same things to other people in other countries in
other times.

See the shadow in the sky sometime soon before you die. Identify it
clearly before it?s too late. It is the only hope any of us has.

It?s the new Iron Curtain.

 

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida
whose Internet essays are seen on hundreds of websites around the
world. These have been collected into three anthologies, the latest of
which is titled ?Recipe for Extinction.? See
http://www.johnkaminski.com/

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Experts Claim Official 9/11 Story is a Hoax + 9/11 Times Square action

Experts Claim Official 9/11 Story is a Hoax + 9/11 Times Square action
Tuesday Jan. 31 below at bottom.

Address:http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2006/1/emw339303.htm

January 30, 2006
Global News & Press Release Distribution
Experts Claim Official 9/11 Story is a Hoax

Scholars for 9/11 Truth call for verification and publication by an
international consortium.
Duluth, MN (PRWEB) January 30, 2006 -- A group of distinguished
experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne
Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have
concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts
about what really happened on 9/11.
They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars
for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own
research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about
critical events in New York and Washington, D.C.
These experts suggest these events may have been orchestrated by
elements within the administration to manipulate Americans into
supporting policies at home and abroad they would never have condoned
absent "another Pearl Harbor."
They believe that this White House is incapable of investigating
itself and hope the possibility that Congress might hold an
unaccountable administration accountable is not merely naive or wishful
thinking.
They are encouraging news services around the world to secure
scientific advice by taking advantage of university resources to verify
or to falsify their discoveries. Extraordinary situations, they believe,
require extraordinary measures.
If this were done, they contend, one of the great hoaxes of history
would stand naked before the eyes of the world and its perpetrators
would be clearly exposed, which may be the only hope for saving this
nation from ever greater abuse.
They hope this might include The New York Times, which, in their
opinion, has repeatedly failed to exercise the leadership expecedt from
our nation's newspaper of record by a series of inexplicable lapses. It
has failed to vigorously investigate tainted elections, lies leading to
the war in Iraq, or illegal NSA spying on the American people, major
unconstitutional events. In their view, The Times might compensate for
its loss of stature by helping to reveal the truth about one of the
great turning-point events of modern history.
Stunning as it may be to acknowledge, they observe, the government
has brought but one indictment against anyone and, to the best of their
knowledge, has not even reprimanded anyone for incompetence or
dereliction of duty. The official conspiracy theory--that nineteen Arab
hijackers under control of one man in the wilds of Afghanistan brought
this about--is unsupportable by the evidential data, which they have
studied.
They even believe there are good reasons for suspecting that video
tapes officially attributed to Osama bin Laden are not genuine.
They have found the government's own investigiation to be severely
flawed. The 9/11 Commission, designated to investigate the attack, was
directed by Philip Zelikow, part of the Bush transition team in the NSA
sector and the co-author of a book with Condoleezza Rice. A Bush
supporter and director of national security affairs, he could hardly be
expected to conduct an objective and impartial investigation.
They have discovered that The 9/11 Commission Report is replete
with omissions, distortions, and factual errors, which David Ray Griffin
has documented in his book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions. The official report, for example, entirely ignores the
collapse of WTC7, a 47-story building, which was hit by no airplanes,
was only damaged by a few small fires, and fell seven hours after the
attack.
Here are some of the kinds of considerations that these experts and
scholar find profoundly troubling:
* In the history of structural engineering, steel-frame high-rise
buildings have never been brought down due to fires either before or
since 9/11, so how can fires have brought down three in one day? How is
this possible?
* The BBC has reported that at least five of the nineteen alleged
"hijackers" have turned up alive and well living in Saudi Arabia, yet
according to the FBI, they were among those killed in the attacks. How
is this possible?
* Frank DeMartini, a project manager for the WTC, said the buildings
were designed with load redistribution capabilities to withstand the
impact of airliners, whose effects would be like " puncturing
mosquito netting with a pencil." Yet they completely collapsed. How is
this possible?
* Since the melting point of steel is about 2,700*F, the temperature
of jet fuel fires does not exceed 1,800*F under optimal conditions, and
UL certified the steel used to 2,000*F for six hours, the buildings
cannot have collapsed due to heat from the fires. How is this possible?
* Flight 77, which allegedly hit the building, left the radar screen
in the vicinity of the Ohio/Kentucky border, only to "reappear" in very
close proximity to the Pentagon shortly before impact. How is this
possible?
* Foreign "terrorists" who were clever enough to coordinate
hijacking four commercial airliners seemingly did not know that the
least damage to the Pentagon would be done by hitting its west wing. How
is this possible?
* Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, in an underground
bunker at the White House, watched Vice President Cheney castigate a
young officer for asking, as the plane drew closer and closer to the
Pentagon, "Do the orders still stand?" The order cannot have been to
shoot it down, but must have been the opposite. How is this possible?
* A former Inspector General for the Air Force has observed that
Flight 93, which allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania, should have left
debris scattered over an area less than the size of a city block; but it
is scattered over an area of about eight square miles. How is this
possible?
* A tape recording of interviews with air traffic controllers on duty
on 9/11 was deliberately crushed, cut into very small pieces, and
distributed in assorted places to insure its total destruction. How is
this possible?
* The Pentagon conducted a training exercise called "MASCAL"
simulating the crash of a Boeing 757 into the building on 24 October
2000, and yet Condoleezza Rice, among others, has repeatedly asserted
that "no one ever imagined" a domestic airplane could be used as a
weapon. How is this possible?
Their own physics research has established that only controlled
demolitions are consistent with the near-gravity speed of fall and
virtually symmetrical collapse of all three of the WTC buildings. While
turning concrete into very fine dust, they fell straight-down into their
own footprints.
These experts and scholars have found themselves obliged to conclude
that the 9/11 atrocity represents an instance of the approach--which has
been identified by Karl Rove, the President's closest adviser--of
"creating our own reality."

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US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

 

By Adam Brookes
BBC Pentagon correspondent

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

The document says information is "critical to military success"

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.

From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.

The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it.

Information Operations Roadmap
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Download the reader here

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

The document says that information is "critical to military success". Computer and telecommunications networks are of vital operational importance.

Propaganda

The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

The wide-reaching document was signed off by Donald Rumsfeld

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.

"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

Credibility problem

Public awareness of the US military's information operations is low, but it's growing - thanks to some operational clumsiness.

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone. It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system

Late last year, it emerged that the Pentagon had paid a private company, the Lincoln Group, to plant hundreds of stories in Iraqi newspapers. The stories - all supportive of US policy - were written by military personnel and then placed in Iraqi publications.

And websites that appeared to be information sites on the politics of Africa and the Balkans were found to be run by the Pentagon.

But the true extent of the Pentagon's information operations, how they work, who they're aimed at, and at what point they turn from informing the public to influencing populations, is far from clear.

The roadmap, however, gives a flavour of what the US military is up to - and the grand scale on which it's thinking.

It reveals that Psyops personnel "support" the American government's international broadcasting. It singles out TV Marti - a station which broadcasts to Cuba - as receiving such support.

It recommends that a global website be established that supports America's strategic objectives. But no American diplomats here, thank you. The website would use content from "third parties with greater credibility to foreign audiences than US officials".

It also recommends that Psyops personnel should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.

'Fight the net'

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

US digital ambition

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Consider that for a moment.

The US military seeks the capability to knock out every telephone, every networked computer, every radar system on the planet.

Are these plans the pipe dreams of self-aggrandising bureaucrats? Or are they real?

The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

And that the scale and grandeur of the digital revolution is matched only by the US military's ambitions for it.

 

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Hello Gestapo!

House Report 109-333 - USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005

What BushCo wants, according to the fine print (Sec. 605) of the new PATRIOT Act,
is a permanent Praetorian Guard, or Cheka, or Gestapo. It's all too easy to come up with
apt historical analogies--but not with any from this nation's history.

"A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed
Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the
United States committed in their presence" (what is "an offense against the United
States?), "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they
have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or
is committing such felony" (what are "reasonable grounds"?).

I'm not making this up. See the text and URL below.

What will it take to get the press to notice this?

MCM

House Report 109-333 - USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2005

SEC. 605. THE UNIFORMED DIVISION, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE.

(a) In General- Chapter 203 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after section 3056 the following:

Sec. 3056A. Powers, authorities, and duties of United States Secret Service Uniformed Division

(a) There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division'. Subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall perform such duties as the Director, United States Secret Service, may prescribe in connection with the protection of the following:

(1) The White House in the District of Columbia.

(2) Any building in which Presidential offices are located.

(3) The Treasury Building and grounds.

(4) The President, the Vice President (or other officer next in the order of succession to the Office of President), the President-elect, the Vice President-elect, and their immediate families.

(5) Foreign diplomatic missions located in the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia.

(6) The temporary official residence of the Vice President and grounds in the District of Columbia.

(7) Foreign diplomatic missions located in metropolitan areas (other than the District of Columbia) in the United States where there are located twenty or more such missions headed by full-time officers, except that such protection shall be provided only--

(A) on the basis of extraordinary protective need;

(B) upon request of an affected metropolitan area; and

(C) when the extraordinary protective need arises at or in association with a visit to--

 

(i) a permanent mission to, or an observer mission invited to participate in the work of, an international organization of which the United States is a member; or

 

(ii) an international organization of which the United States is a member;

except that such protection may also be provided for motorcades and at other places associated with any such visit and may be extended at places of temporary domicile in connection with any such visit.

 

(8) Foreign consular and diplomatic missions located in such areas in the United States, its territories and possessions, as the President, on a case-by-case basis, may direct.

 

(9) Visits of foreign government officials to metropolitan areas (other than the District of Columbia) where there are located twenty or more consular or diplomatic missions staffed by accredited personnel, including protection for motorcades and at other places associated with such visits when such officials are in the United States to conduct official business with the United States Government.

 

(10) Former Presidents and their spouses, as provided in section 3056(a)(3) of title 18.

 

(11) An event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance.

 

(12) Major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general Presidential election, the spouses of such candidates, as provided in section 3056(a)(7) of title 18.

 

(13) Visiting heads of foreign states or foreign governments.

(b)(1) Under the direction of the Director of the Secret Service, members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division are authorized to--

 

(A) carry firearms;

(B) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony; and

 

(C) perform such other functions and duties as are authorized by law.

(2) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall possess privileges and powers similar to those of the members of the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia.

(c) Members of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division shall be furnished with uniforms and other necessary equipment.

(d) In carrying out the functions pursuant to paragraphs (7) and (9) of subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security may utilize, with their consent, on a reimbursable basis, the services, personnel, equipment, and facilities of State and local governments, and is authorized to reimburse such State and local governments for the utilization of such services, personnel, equipment, and facilities. The Secretary of Homeland Security may carry out the functions pursuant to paragraphs (7) and (9) of subsection (a) by contract. The authority of this subsection may be transferred by the President to the Secretary of State. In carrying out any duty under paragraphs (7) and (9) of subsection (a), the Secretary of State is authorized to utilize any authority available to the Secretary under title II of the State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956.'.

(b) Amendment to Table of Sections- The table of sections at the beginning of chapter 203 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating to section 3056 the following new item:

3056A. Powers, authorities, and duties of United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.

(c) Conforming Repeal to Effectuate Transfer- Chapter 3 of title 3, United States Code, is repealed.

(d) Conforming Amendments to Laws Affecting District of Columbia- (1) Section 1537(d) of title 31, United States Code, is amended--

 

(A) by striking and the Executive Protective Service' and inserting and the Secret Service Uniformed Division'; and

 

(B) by striking their protective duties' and all that follows and inserting their protective duties under sections 3056 and 3056A of title 18.'

(2) Section 204(e) of the State Department Basic Authorities Act (sec. 6--1304(e), D.C. Official Code) is amended by striking section 202 of title 3, United States Code, or section 3056' and inserting sections 3056 or 3056A'.

(3) Section 214(a) of the State Department Basic Authorities Act (sec. 6--1313(a), D.C. Official Code) is amended by striking sections 202(8) and 208 of title 3' and inserting section 3056A(a)(7) and (d) of title 18'.

(e) Additional Conforming Amendments-

 

(1) Title 12, United States Code, section 3414, Special procedures', is amended by striking 3 U.S.C. 202' in subsection (a)(1)(B) and inserting 18 U.S.C. 3056A'.

 

(2) The State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956 is amended--

 

(A) in the first sentence of section 37(c) (22 U.S.C. 2709(c)), by striking section 202 of title 3, United States Code, or section 3056 of title 18, United States Code' and inserting section 3056 or 3056A of title 18, United States Code';

 

(B) in section 204(e) (22 U.S.C. 4304(e)), by striking section 202 of title 3, United States Code, or section 3056 of title 18, United States Code' and inserting section 3056 or 3056A of title 18, United States Code'; and

 

(C) in section 214(a) (22 U.S.C. 4314(a)), by striking sections 202(7) and 208 of title 3, United States Code' and inserting subsections (a)(7) and (d) of section 3056A of title 18, United States Code'.

 

(3) Section 8D(a)(1)(F) of the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) is amended by striking section 202 of title 3' and inserting section 3056A of title 18'.

 

(4) Section 8I(a)(1)(E) of the Inspector General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) is amended by striking section 202 of title 3' and inserting section 3056A of title 18'.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THOMAS Home | Contact | Accessibility | Legal | FirstGov

America has never had a federal police force, but hidden in the new "Patriot" Act is language that creates just such a beast.

SEC. 605. THE UNIFORMED DIVISION, UNITED STATES SECRET SERVICE.

There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division'.

The Secret Service, Uniformed Division will not operate solely in DC, but anywhere former Presidents travel, or foreign dignitaries, or even "as the President, on a case-by-case basis, may direct." #8

A federal police force, directed by the President. Is this not the Gestapo all over again?

If the new "Patriot" Act passes, the new SSUD federal police can show up at:

(11) An event designated.. as a special event of national significance.

(12) Major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates and, within 120 days of the general Presidential electionŠ

A federal goon squad on hand to arrest any 'disruptors' during the next Presidential ElectionŠ how can you look in the mirror and tell yourself that there's hope for 2008? Or is that just an excuse to continue doing nothing right now?

Note: This bill comes up in two weeks, to date only myself and Kurt Nimmo have written about it. I've written Democracy Now, CommonDreams, etcŠ nobody wants to touch it.

Please do what you can to break this story
....
http://www.benfrank.net/blog/

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite.
If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.
- Molly Ivins

I sent this to my list on 1/12/06.
Chris
Bush to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as "disruptors"

http://www.bushflash.com

Bush wants to create the new criminal of "disruptor" who can be jailed
for the crime of "disruptive behavior." A "little-noticed provision" in
the latest version of the Patriot Act will empower Secret Service to
charge protesters with a new crime of "disrupting major events
including political conventions and the Olympics."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/
AR2005121201448.html

Secret Service would also be empowered to charge persons with
"breaching security" and to charge for "entering a restricted area"
which is "where the President or other person protected by the Secret
Service is or will be temporarily visiting." In short, be sure to stay
in those wired, fenced containments or free speech zones.

Read More, here... Because the linked version contains more hyperlinks.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/11/212726/954
Bush to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as "disruptors"
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/11/212726/954
by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Wed Jan 11, 2006 at 07:27:26 PM PDT

Bush wants to create the new criminal of "disruptor" who can be jailed for the crime of "disruptive behavior." A "little-noticed provision" in the latest version of the Patriot Act will empower Secret Service to charge protesters with a new crime of "disrupting major events including political conventions and the Olympics." Secret Service would also be empowered to charge persons with "breaching security" and to charge for "entering a restricted area" which is "where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting." In short, be sure to stay in those wired, fenced containments or free speech zones.

Who is the "disruptor"? Bush Team history tells us the disruptor is an American citizen with the audacity to attend Bush events wearing a T-shirt that criticizes Bush; or a member of civil rights, environmental, anti-war or counter-recruiting groups who protest Bush policies; or a person who invades Bush's bubble by criticizing his policies. A disruptor is also a person who interferes in someone else's activity, such as interrupting Bush when he is speaking at a press conference or during an interview.

What are the parameters of the crime of "disruptive behavior"? The dictionary defines "disruptive" as "characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination." The American Medical Association defines disruptive behavior as a "style of interaction" with people that interferes with patient care, and can include behavior such as "foul language; rude, loud or offensive comments; and intimidation of patients and family members."
What are the rules of engagement for "disruptors"? Some Bush Team history of their treatment of disruptors provide some clues on how this administration will treat disruptors in the future.

(1) People perceived as disruptors may be preemptively ejected from events before engaging in any disruptive conduct.
In the beginning of this war against disruptors, Americans were ejected from taxpayer funded events where Bush was speaking. At first the events were campaign rallies during the election, and then the disruptor ejectment policy was expanded to include Bush's post election campaign-style events on public policy issues on his agenda, such as informing the public on medicare reform and the like. If people drove to the event in a car with a bumper sticker that criticized Bush's policies or wore T-shirts with similar criticism, they were disruptors who could be ejected from the taxpayer event even before they engaged in any disruptive behavior. White House press secretary McClellan defended such ejectments as a proper preemptive strike against persons who may disrupt an event: "If we think people are coming to the event to disrupt it, obviously, they're going to be asked to leave."

(2) Bush Team may check its vast array of databanks to cull out those persons who it deems having "disruptor" potential and then blacklist those persons from events.
The White House even has a list of persons it deems could be "disruptive" to an eventand then blacklists those persons from attending taxpayer funded events where Bush speaks. Sounds like Bush not only has the power to unilaterally designate people as "enemy combatants" in the global "war on terror," but to unilaterally designate Americans as "disruptive" in the domestic war against free speech.

(3) The use of surveillance, monitoring and legal actions against disruptors.
Bush's war against disruptors was then elevated to surveillance, monitoring, and legal actions against disruptor organizations. The FBI conducts political surveillance and obtains intelligence filed in its database on Bush administration critics , such as civil rights groups (e.g., ACLU), antiwar protest groups (e.g., United for Peace and Justice) and environmental groups (e.g., Greenpeace).

This surveillance of American citizens exercising their constitutional rights has been done under the pretext of counterterrorism activities surrounding protests of the Iraq war and the Republican National Convention. The FBI maintains it does not have the intent to monitor political activities and that its surveillance and intelligence gathering is "intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech."
Surveillance of potential disruptors then graduated to legal actions as a preemptive strike against potential disruptive behavior at public events. In addition to monitoring and surveillance of legal groups and legal activities, the FBI issued subpoenas for members to appear before grand juries based on the FBI's "intent" to prevent "disruptive convention protests." The Justice Dept. opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records of Internet messages posted by Bushs critics. And, the Justice Dept. even indicted Greenpeace for a protest that was so lame the federal judge threw out the case.

So now the Patriot Act, which was argued before enactment as a measure to fight foreign terrorists, is being amended to make clear that it also applies to American citizens who have the audacity to disrupt President Bush wherever his bubble may travel. If this provision is enacted into law, then Bush will have a law upon which to expand the type of people who constitute disruptors and the type of activities that constitute disruptive activities. And, then throw them all in jail.
Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse
Tags: Patriot Act, domestic spying, civil liberties, George W. Bush, Recommended, propaganda (all tags)

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SECURITY EXPORT TO BE JOB # 1

Ford Motor Company announced today that it will be cutting as many as 30,000 jobs and will shut down 14 factories as a result of continuing losses.

Ford, now hires about 123,000 workers in North America and lost $5.5 billion in those operations in 2005.

General Motors Corporation last year decided to close all or part of 12 plants and 30,000 jobs in the U.S. by 2008.

With China's recent introduction of a car selling for $10,000 in the U.S., Ford and GM have hit the wall. They have been building big SUV's in recent years and now that gas prices are rising dramatically their sales are dropping significantly. The workers on the China car are making $3.50 an hour compared to the good wages and benefits at the unionized auto plants in the U.S.

Television manufacturing in China pays workers there about 50 cents an hour. Thus TV manufacturing is virtually non-existent in the U.S. any more. On and on the story goes......

Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld has a "strategy guy" by the name of Thomas Barnett. Barnett's job is to teach "military transformation" to high level Pentagon officers and CIA operatives. I've seen Barnett on C-SPAN several times during the past year saying that we are not going to have industrial jobs in the U.S. anymore. The big corporations will move overseas where production costs can be significantly lowered.

America's role in corporate globalization will be "security export" says Barnett. We will build the weapons systems and send our children into "endless war" in order to protect the profits of the corporate elite. Under corporate globalization, Barnett says, there are places called "the non-integrating gap" that have not yet submitted to the authority of the new world order. The job of the U.S. will be to go into the "non-integrating gap" and make sure these countries comply with the dictates of corporate globalization.

Barnett has identified the gap as the Middle East (where we fight in Iraq today), Central Asia (where we are now building six permanent bases in Afghanistan), Africa (where Barnett says the U.S. will be fighting for oil 20 years from now), and Latin America (where you have Venezuela and others not carrying the water for big business).

Barnett says that the U.S. won't do international treaties anymore because they would limit the ability of the Pentagon to do preemptive first-strike attack on any country that is not complying with corporate globalization.

What does this mean for social spending back home? As the job base dries up in the U.S. so will the tax base at the local-state-federal levels. There will increasingly be cuts in social programs. Education will be cut and privatized so that only the children of the rich can afford, without incurring massive debt, a college education. Thus the only real job prospects for many young people will be in the military - endless warriors. Thus the Pentagon's statement that there will be no need for a draft. When the military is the only job around legions of poor and working class kids will have few other options.

This is the not-so-bright picture that the corporate dominated government of the U.S. is creating for us. It will become a reality if we don't begin to protest now against this re-introduction of feudalism. We must fight to have a fair tax system in the U.S. that does not let the rich, powerful, and corporate elite get away with not paying taxes. We must fight for public education and affordable college options for our kids. We must fight to create new jobs in manufacturing sustainable technologies like solar, wind power and public mass transit systems. We must fight for health care for all. And we must escalate our educational work and action now, before it becomes too late.


Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 729-0517
globalnet@mindspring.com
http://www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Our blog)

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Zionism in Boston

Richard Hugus

January 18, 2006

With few people being aware of it, the state of Israel has established key outposts in Boston, Massachusetts. It is customary for other countries to maintain embassies and consulates in large cities in the US, but in Boston, Israel, in addition to its consulate, and on top of its Anti-Defamation League and its Combined Jewish Philanthropies, also has two unique, nationally known organizations working especially for its interests. They are CAMERA - the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America - and the David Project Center for Jewish Leadership.

There is no listing on CAMERA's web site of the individuals involved in it, and no address is given other than a Boston post office box. CAMERA describes itself as "a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East."(1) "Accurate and balanced," as the terms are used here, means pro-Israel and anti-Arab. For example, recent articles up on CAMERA's web site attack authors who have seen fit to "malign" the mortally stricken Ariel Sharon for his involvement in the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Shatila. CAMERA is an organization of thought police for Israel which comes down with both feet on any publication that contradicts Zionist dogma. Public butchers like Ariel Sharon are in need of vigilant propagandists because their crimes are so obvious. This is also the case for Israel as a whole, with its murdering of Palestinian children, its constant land confiscation, its uprooting of olive trees, its stealing of resources, its program of slow genocide.

Is there any other nation on earth that has such structures built into US society? Do the French, for example, have people watching everything that's printed about France, and jump on anyone who's "anti-French"? Burundi and Paraguay have about the same population size as Israel (about 6 million). Would we expect these countries to have as much sway over what is said about it in US journals as Israel does? Yet Israel somehow has the ability and the resources to do this.

The second outpost, the David Project, has a web site which also lists a Boston post office box, and names one Charles Jacobs as its president. The site says that "by promoting a fair and honest understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the David Project leads the ideological effort against the forces intent on defaming, weakening and destroying the Jewish State."(2) Examples of "fair and honest" reporting of the Arab side of the "Arab-Israeli conflict" are non-existent on this web site. In its "Campus support" section, the David Project declares that it "serves as a resource for pro-Israel campus activism." So, we see again that "fair and honest" simply means "pro-Israel."

The David Project's first major action was blocking an endowment for a chair in Islamic Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. The Project's "Director of Campus Strategy," Rachel Fish, based this 2003 smear campaign on the fact that the money for the endowment was to come from the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, whose Zayed Center, according to the Project, "promoted anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic writings and lectures." Did the David Project Director of Campus Strategy, in the interest of fairness and balance, raise any questions about the endowment of the chair of Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard, occupied by torture advocate Alan Dershowitz? No. The Project couldn't even come up with an obvious human rights issue like Pentagon funding for weapons research at MIT. It attacked funding for a chair in Islamic studies because it did not want students of Islam to have either a voice or respectability at Harvard or in the Boston area.

After successfully blocking the Harvard endowment, the David Project went on in late 2004 to produce the movie "Columbia Unbecoming" which targets Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University's Department of Middle East studies for allegedly intimidating pro-Israel students. M. Junaid Alam, current editor of Lefthook, describes one of the Columbia students who made charges against Massad: a "student who was a lead organizer for the film, Ariel Beery, boasts an impressive resume: he served as a spokesman for the Israeli military, is the head of the on-campus Zionist group, and is also an agent and informer for Daniel Pipes' notorious CampusWatch.org website, where students are encouraged to 'report' their professors' political views if they are deemed insufficiently servile to the conservative party line."(3) A total of eleven articles by Ariel Beery appear on Daniel Pipes' witch-hunting "Campus Watch," an organization which says it is devoted to "monitoring Middle East studies on campus."(4) Like Campus Watch, the David Project claims that it "serves as a resource for pro-Israel campus activism." But, as Alam points out, such advocacy is in conflict with its claim elsewhere to fairness and honesty. Among other obvious biases in "Columbia Unbecoming," Massad is given no chance for a rebuttal. The movie has been called a right wing attack on academic freedom and the 1st Amendment right to free speech. But it's more than that. It's an attack on the fact that Zionist oppression of Palestine is real. The right wing attack on Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado is much the same - an apparent assault on academic freedom is really an assault on an articulation of the fact of US crimes of genocide. It's an assault on the truth waged for ideological ends.

A film crew from the David Project didn't just happen to be strolling through the Columbia Campus and witness alleged abuse of Israeli students. The production of "Columbia Unbecoming" has every appearance of having been planned in advance, from Zionist activist "victims" to dissemination of a finished product which the David Project disingenuously claims it never meant for public viewing. Israel is clearly aware that it is losing the propaganda battle on US campuses. Since it is unable to match its opponents argument for argument, it instead attacks their integrity.

In other cases, Zionists attempt to protect Israel by posing as the strongest advocates for "peace." One example is the Israel Project, based in Washington and Jerusalem. The Israel Project commissioned a study which found that . . .

"Never in the modern history of the Jewish state has there been more outspoken public opposition on the ELITE college campuses to the basic principles and tenets of Israel. To be brutally frank, if current trends are not averted, America's core commitment to and alliance with Israel may not survive."

The researcher recommended the following response:

"The only way for Israel to create sympathy is to be the side working hardest for peace. The best case for Israel is to demonstrate that she is willing to go twice as far as her neighbors to establish peace."(5)

The strategy that devolves from this is to co-opt peace and justice organizations on college campuses with the message of Israel's benevolence, while the David Project's strategy is to simply attack individuals and organizations who might be in a position to counter such propaganda.

The David Project's newest cause is to block the continued construction of a mosque being built by the Islamic Society of Boston in Roxbury. The mosque is 85% completed. The David Project opposes the mosque because of "Saudi Arabia funding hatred of infidels, Christians, [and] Jews, in American mosques", and says that "various individuals who have been affiliated and directly involved with the Islamic Society of Boston ('ISB') have defended acts of terrorism, and have publicly engaged in the worst sort of anti-Semitic and other hate speech."(6,7)

Of course, the accusations are part of wider Israeli and US government attacks on Arabs and Muslims being carried out directly, and with open brutality, in Palestine and Iraq. The David Project's defamation of the Islamic Society of Boston was created by people opposed to Muslims as Muslims, for purely political ends.

Given the history of US genocide in Iraq over the past 15 years, and the fact that the dominant religion in the US is Christianity, one could make a good case that Christians are heavily involved in terrorism. Yet it would be unthinkable to oppose the construction of an Episcopal Church in Boston. Would a Catholic church be opposed because certain priests had been found to be pedophiles? Would a synagogue be opposed because of support among rabbis for a foreign state founded on genocide against the Palestinian people? But somehow people find it legitimate to say that a mosque might be connected to "terrorists" and therefore should not be built. What country in the Arab world has caused as much mayhem, murder, and suffering in recent world history as the US? Yet the dominant culture in the US feels it is in a position to question Arabs.

In the past year, the David Project joined forces in the anti-mosque effort with, among others, former CNN reporter Steve Emerson, who made the ridiculous 1994 "documentary" Terrorists Among Us: Jihad In America. The Islamic Society of Boston has filed a libel suit against Emerson, the David Project, the right wing Boston Herald, Fox News, Dennis Hale, and others for mounting an intentional smear campaign for the purpose of preventing the mosque from being completed. Dennis Hale, a Boston College professor, is president of the Judeo-Christian Alliance, an initiative of the David Project. From the umbrella of the David Project, he heads a front group called "Citizens for Peace and Tolerance."(8)

Boston has a recent history of persecution of supporters of Palestine. The well-known Boston activist Amer Jubran is one example. In 2000 Jubran was arrested at a legal protest of an "Israel Independence Day" celebration in Brookline, a city adjacent to Boston. The Brookline police were paid $10,600 by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Israeli Consulate to cover the event. The Brookline police who arrested Jubran were in contact with the Israeli Consulate prior to the arrest. The charges were either invented or pre-arranged. It is important to remember here that the Israeli Consulate represents a foreign government. It is not appropriate for a police force in a US city to be employed by, advised by, or report to, a foreign government. Blindness to this issue is part of US politics from Boston to the national level in Washington, where Israel and AIPAC get away with what would be called gross political interference, infiltration, bribery, and espionage if it were any other country. Others have commented on Israel's status as a 51st state, but Connecticut or New Hampshire would not be able to bend politics in Massachusetts in this way, and all of these states together would not be able to match Israel's power in Washington. It might be more accurate to say that Israel is a meta-state, a state above others, which takes from and manipulates the US polity as it sees fit.

In November 2002 Amer Jubran was arrested again, this time without any charges at all, two days after leading a march organized by the New England Committee to Defend Palestine. He was ultimately harassed out of the country by court proceedings under the Department of Homeland Security. At that time, mass arrests of Arab and Muslim immigrants were being motivated nationwide by Justice Department Zionists John Ashcroft and Michael Chertoff. Without question, Boston Zionists were behind the order to have Jubran "removed," just as he was earlier in Brookline. The judge in the case, Leonard Shapiro, had the gall to declare that the two-year, million dollar investigation of Jubran was about alleged immigration issues and was not a political trial.

A second example is Jaoudat Abouazza, another Palestinian who, for his attempts to organize a protest of a June 2002 "Israel Independence Day" celebration in Boston Common, was arrested on phony charges by Cambridge police, subjected to torture in the Bristol County Jail (involuntary extraction of four teeth without anaesthesia), and ultimately deported to Canada. Abouazza's treatment was meant to send a message to the Arab American community in Boston to stay off the streets. This was during the time of Sharon's "Operation Defensive Shield" in Palestine, which had brought many Arab Americans to the streets in protest. Abouazza was betrayed in his court case by the head of the Boston ACLU, who personally visited him in jail, saw the evidence of his torture, and did nothing about it. With few exceptions the liberal legal establishment turned its back on the Homeland Security attacks on Arabs and Muslims, both in Boston and the country as a whole.

A final example is Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner. In October 2005, speaking at a rally for the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, Turner pointed out the irony of people supporting voting rights in the US while the US provides generous funding to Israel, which openly deprives Palestinians of voting rights. Turner was immediately called on the carpet for this by a local newspaper, The Jewish Advocate, and by the New England Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In a letter responding to the ADL, Turner said, "a great injustice is being perpetrated against the Palestinians. I believe that all human beings of conscience have a responsibility to speak out and demand an end of our federal government's support of its perpetuation." He included a postscript to his letter, stating flatly: "you have no right to label someone as prejudiced or Anti Semitic because you disagree with their views on Israel's treatment of the Palestinians." This sentiment expresses the feelings of many, many people concerned about the oppression of Palestine who are fed up with being intimidated by this one cheap argument over and over again when they express this concern.

Chuck Turner is a very popular and well-liked African American leader in Boston. The ADL has a special record of conflict with African American leaders who cross the line by criticizing Israel as he did. The ADL mounted a notorious attack on Amiri Baraka for his October 2001 poem, "Somebody Blew Up America", which asked a hundred questions about who may have been involved in 9/11, and which did not exclude Israel. In the poem Baraka asks, "Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion /And cracking they sides at the notion."(9)

In October 2002, Baraka responded to the ADL smear campaign against him by reminding readers that in the 1960's Stokeley Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was denounced by the ADL for calling Zionism "the enemy of humanity." Baraka reminded readers of ADL accusations of "Black anti-Semitism" leveled at the Black liberation movement when it criticized Israel's support for Apartheid South Africa. He recalled ADL's position against affirmative action. He also recalled the AIPAC/ADL campaign against the Congresswoman from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney.(10)

Others have documented the ADL's spying on and collecting dossiers not only on black liberation and anti-Apartheid groups but the American Indian Movement, Central America solidarity groups, Pacifica, ACT UP, Arab Americans, and supporters of Palestine. In an article in The Village Voice in 1993 Robert I. Friedman points out that right wing hate groups were not the ADL's first concern: he quotes an ADL official who stated that "the real danger to Jews is posed not by the right -- but by a coalition of leftists, blacks, and Arabs, who in his view threaten the fabric of democracy in America, as well as the state of Israel."(11)

Zionists in the US have a long history of working in the civil rights movement or with groups on the Left as long as they kept Israel out of the discussion. Israel was not discussed during the days of rage against the Vietnam war. Nor during the wars in Central America. Nor during the beginning of the devastation of Iraq in 1991. Israel is explicitly not discussed today from the stage of rallies hosted by the national peace organization, United for Peace with Justice. Until they were exposed in 1993, and perhaps afterward, spies for the ADL actively infiltrated Left and Arab American organizations in order to collect intelligence and to report people to both local authorities and to foreign governments, like South Africa and Israel. In one or two cases, activists who the ADL informed on were killed. Today the ADL's main business is to ally with causes for social justice to make sure that the people who work in these causes either avoid or stay "on message" when it comes to the question of human rights violations in Israel - a monstrosity not to be discussed.

The ADL today has a law enforcement training program for police in cities all over the US. In April, 2004 the ADL held a training session for Boston area campus police on "responding to hate crimes and also instances when activism and expression become intimidation, harassment, and threats."(12) Note the special attention to "activism." Boston police have also had tête-à-têtes with Israeli police. In one meeting, said Boston Police Chief James Hussey, the Israeli police "were able to share with our intelligence people and some of the people out in the streets the issues that they deal with," (13) Another program was set up in 2002 by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs to send US police to Israel.(14) Because its alleged security failures on 9/11, an Israeli was called in to handle security at Boston's Logan Airport, his main qualification being Israel's supposed special knowledge of the ways of terrorists.

The ADL claims to work in support of civil rights for everyone. It has sponsored "No Place for Hate Programs" in cities and towns throughout the United States. But under cover of a slogan which no one would think to oppose (who is for hate?), it is ironically doing just what it says it's against: promoting hatred of a defined minority group - Arabs and Muslims in the US - and ultimately defending racist Israel as it attempts to get rid of the same people in Palestine. The ADL program should be titled, "No Place For Hate, Unless You're Arab." The final irony is that the protesters against defamation are themselves the defamers. The David Project, for example, is not for fairness and honesty; it's out to make Arab Americans look bad, and to stop them from having a voice. What a convenient setup: define criticism of Israel as hate speech, outlaw hate speech, and thereby outlaw criticism of Israel. In fact, defense of Israel becomes a righteous cause. ADL agitation in this area is a direct service to another country. Town boards voting to become "No Place For Hate" communities are unaware that the ADL is a political action organization serving some very ugly Zionist interests.

The David Project's president, Charles Jacobs, is also on the Board of Directors of another organization, with headquarters on Tremont Street in downtown Boston - the American Anti-Slavery Group. On the internet the organization is known as "iAbolish.com." The American Anti-Slavery Group says that it works "to abolish modern-day slavery around the world, focusing primarily on systems of chattel slavery in Sudan and Mauritania."(15) The American Anti-Slavery Group's connection to Israel seems to be that it provides a platform for Charles Jacobs to criticize Arabs in Sudan, and Arabs in general (an important part of the Zionist project) as roundabout support for Israel. For Zionism to work, and for Israel to be seen as a legitimate state, the Arab world must be seen as second class, connected to terrorism, and fatally opposed to decent western values. In the case of the Columbia campus, the Boston mosque, and Sudan, Jacobs uses the same subterfuge as the ADL: Zionism under the cover of civil rights. Students should be treated fairly, terrorism should not be involved in faith, and slavery is an abomination, so listen to the rest of our message - Israel is a struggling democracy, a David fighting Goliath in modern times, and anyone who says otherwise is really a hater of Jewish people.

In a 2003 article for MIT's Thistle, Aimée Smith covers a talk on Sudan given by Charles Jacobs. She quotes the reaction of a female Muslim student attendee who described the talk at length:

"Dr. Jacobs' talk expressed blatantly racist and anti-Islamic views. In fact, I have never seen Islamophobia exuded so blatantly at a public forum at MIT, nor such racist views aired at a panel discussion on human rights. Dr. Jacobs' topic was child slavery in Sudan and he started off by speaking about the Arab Muslims in Sudan's north conducting their interpretation of a jihad against the Black Christians in the south. He then offered a theory on why the situation wasn't receiving sufficient international attention. It was because a white race wasn't the perpetrator of this crime. The West tends to get more agitated about a human rights issue, he argued, when they feel that they are somehow responsible for it."

"White people, he continued, tend to be more concerned in general about human rights abuses than others. Waving his arm around the room, he said, 'see, most of you at this event are white people.'"

"After this Dr. Jacobs forgot about Sudan entirely and set into the Muslim world with gusto. He named a few Islamic countries and began elaborating on human rights abuses there. Now, ever since that ill-fated day two years ago, I (and many other Muslims) have been trying to come to terms with the bitter reality that it is becoming increasingly acceptable to publicly make negative, sweeping statements about Islam. According to Dr. Jacobs, however, it has become 'taboo' in the West to criticize Islam and the Muslims. Well, he sure smashed his imagined taboos to bits. The way he went on, it was clear he believed that human rights abuses occur only in Muslim countries - he didn't cite the example of a single non-Muslim country. At about this point I got so disgusted that I had to walk out, along with another Muslim student...I suppose Dr. Jacobs thought that being non-white, we were just bored of all this human rights talk."(16)

Coincidentally, Thistle columnist Aimée Smith was arrested twice at MIT for her "activism" on campus - once for leafleting and once for talking back to a cop. The first arrest was in June 2004, just two months after the ADL campus training session. Ms. Smith was well known on the MIT campus as an activist for Palestine. Both arrests were ultimately thrown out of court.

An added incentive to the American Anti-Slavery Group campaign against Arabs in Sudan is its ability, by making it look like Arabs are attacking Africans in Sudan, to divide African Americans from Arabs in the US. Not clearly understood by many people is the fact that both parties in the Sudan dispute are dark-skinned, that the slavery which does exist in Sudan is of a much different kind that that in the US in the 18th and 19th century, and that it is a problem exacerbated by US interference and agitation in that country in the first place. Furthermore, neither Zionists nor the US are anywhere near having the moral standing to criticize Sudan, considering their behavior in their own countries, and in the rest of the world. The US simply does not have humanitarian goals in the world, despite its rhetoric. However, African Americans are obviously sensitive to the issue of slavery, and have been recruited by the Anti-Slavery Group. In August 2004, for example, the actor Danny Glover was arrested in front of the Sudan embassy in Washington, D.C. as an Anti-Slavery Group supporter. Most likely without their knowing it, African Americans, and alleged Sudanese victims, have lent support to what is at bottom a far-removed Zionist cause.

The American Anti-Slavery Group, already inside the US power structure, garners additional approval from that structure by lending support to US government efforts to divide Sudan in order to gain access to oil supplies in Darfur. In the 1990's, Jimmy Carter remarked that "the people in Sudan want to resolve the conflict. The biggest obstacle is US government policy. The US is committed to overthrowing the government in Khartoum. Any sort of peace effort is aborted, basically by policies of the United States...Instead of working for peace in Sudan, the US government has basically promoted a continuation of the war." (17)

Israel benefits from Zionist spin on the story of slavery in Sudan by being able to point to this spin and say, "Why pick on us?" Writing for the Palestine Solidarity Review Fall 2005 issue, Shemon Salam says of the US-based campaign to divest from Sudan,

"a sincere divestment campaign would have to function on a principled basis of being against colonialism, empire (which would include the Israeli and U.S. regime) and racism; something which Zionists cannot but fail to do considering the basic tenants of Zionism are in direct contradiction with anti-racism and anti-imperialism. Having a historical record of collaboration with Nazism, Fascism, and U.S. empire, Zionism has proven itself no friend to these democratic principles . . . "(18)

In short, Zionists choose to exploit Sudan in order to set themselves up as the winners in a competition of greater and lesser racists.

Finally, the position of Dr. Steven Steinlight as executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Group should be noted.(19) A former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, Dr. Steinlight shines a light on what is called in Israel "the demographic problem" but in this case as it relates to the United States. In an unbelievably racist October 2001 essay, "The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography," Steinlight says that it's time for the Jewish community of America to "stop censoring ourselves" and openly deal with the threat posed to Jewish power if US immigration policy allows a bunch of Arabs, Mexicans and Third World peoples to cross the border. The threat? - an insufficient understanding, on their part, of Jewish history.

In Steinlight's own words:

"Will a country in which enormous demographic and cultural change, fueled by unceasing large-scale non-European immigration, remain one in which Jewish life will continue to flourish as nowhere else in the history of the Diaspora? In an America in which people of color form the plurality, as has already happened in California, most with little or no historical experience with or knowledge of Jews, will Jewish sensitivities continue to enjoy extraordinarily high levels of deference and will Jewish interests continue to receive special protection? Does it matter that the majority non-European immigrants have no historical experience of the Holocaust or knowledge of the persecution of Jews over the ages and see Jews only as the most privileged and powerful of white Americans? Is it important that Latinos, who know us almost entirely as employers for the menial low-wage cash services they perform for us (such a blowing the leaves from our lawns in Beverly Hills or doing our laundry in Short Hills), will soon form one quarter of the nation's population?"

As for Muslims:

"Far more potentially perilous, does it matter to Jews and for American support for Israel when the Jewish State arguably faces existential peril that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States? That undoubtedly at some point in the next 20 years Muslims will outnumber Jews, and that Muslims with an "Islamic agenda" are growing active politically through a widespread network of national organizations?"

Asians are also a problem:

"For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Jewish community is thus in a position where it will be able to divide and conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas. But the day will surely come when an effective Asian-American alliance will actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese, and the rest closer together."

Steinlight tops off his paranoid rant by suggesting that Latinos may be conspiring in a "reconquista" or re-conquering of the US Southwest - yet another threat to Jewish power. For a good education in Zionist racism, Steinlight's essay can be found at the web site of the Center for Immigration Studies.(20) Probably because of his obviousness, Steinlight is not listed in the "Who We Are" section of the American Anti-Slavery's "iAbolish" website.

Denunciations of and divestment from Sudan have become part of polite political discourse from University administrations to the halls of Congress thanks to organizations like the American Anti-Slavery Group. In April 2004 Harvard University made a decision to divest from a company called PetroChina because of its involvement with Sudan. But divestment from companies that do business with Israel is quite another matter. In 2004, when the Somerville, Massachusetts Board of Aldermen was asked to divest town funds connected to Israel, it was called an attack on Jewish people, a case of anti-Semitism. The Israeli Consul General - that is, a representative of a foreign government from the Israeli consulate in Boston - was called in. ADL also got involved, and the divestment resolution finally failed. Its failure was not due to right wing Zionism. It was due to progressive liberalism. The first Alderman to speak against the divestment resolution did so not on the basis that Israel had to be supported, but on the basis of an argument that to be fair the Board needed to hear "both sides of the story." This argument could not be opposed by decent folk - progressives and liberals would be horrified at being called unfair. For the sake of fairness, the resolution was tabled, Zionists were invited in, and being "fair" to a racist state won the day. Liberalism became the means for an attack on the truth that the history of Zionism in Palestine is a history of genocide. The right couldn't have dreamed of a better subterfuge than the one the left obligingly handed them.

In fact, there is a right and wrong. In the case of Zionist oppression of the Palestinians, ideas like "hearing both sides, appreciating complexity, understanding competing rights, showing tolerance, having fairness and balance" are all code words which provide a cover for the weak to sell out the oppressed. They do so because of their fear of the oppressor. The words are a cover for the ignoring of an ugly, ongoing crime. They're also a cover for what even a small child could see is the truth of the matter - a child especially, because she hasn't been inundated with a lifetime of sugar-coated, official-sounding lies.

Where is Zion? Originally it was an actual place - a mountain in Al Quds, or Jerusalem. Then it became a mythical promised land. To African slaves in the US it was a future with freedom from bondage, and a Christian heaven. To Rastafarians, it is a place in Africa to which they will return. But Zion as a promised land has also been co-opted by thieves like the European colonial settlers in North America, who thought the land they stole from indigenous nations was given to them through "manifest destiny." To the European colonial settlers in Palestine, hijacking the Hebrew myth, Zion was the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, stolen from another indigenous people. The flag set up by these settlers to create a state on the land they stole has two blue lines. These lines symbolize yet another, more ambitious Zion, occupying all the land between the Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq.

The only Zion colonial imperialists have really managed to create is a place in people's minds where truth is defined by might, the motives of might are presented in fine Enlightenment language as velvet lies, and those they oppress and steal from suffer almost without recognition. Such is the case of Iraq and Afghanistan and a multitude of other countries at the hand of the US, and of Palestine at the hand of Israel. The US and Israel are the same thing; both got where they are through lying. When it comes down to it, their Zion turns out to be a totalitarian state founded on the corruption of terms like "equality, civil rights, peace, and tolerance."

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Sickness in the static

You know they lied to you,
but you?re too scared to admit it

 

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

 

You know of course that any time a news gathering organization veers
into character assassination of rivals, that's a sure sign of someone
deliberately providing disinformation, right? And then you observe that
virtually all the news gathering organizations you know do exactly
that! They scorch everyone who doesn't share their exact view of
things. So what can you do but scratch your head and wonder what's
really going on?

I have a rule about these spitting contests that I try to follow
scrupulously. If you respond to unjust slander, you're conceding that
the disinformation attempt has been a success. Of course you have to
respond to legitimate criticism in a forthright way. That's how you
grow.

But lately on prominent cybervenues I have been accused of being Naval
Intelligence (apparently because I once served very inauspiciously as a
clerk on a ship in the Navy), being anti-Semitic (because I don't
accept preposterous media lies just because they have been codified
into unjust laws prohibiting free speech), and especially of being
"racist and xenophobic" by a shallow European radio host who fawned
over me for months before turning on me, and now fancies himself the
world leader of the 9/11 skeptics movement.

This last guy was a real piece of work. After I furnished him with
numerous sources, other guests for his show, and I personally spent
hours on his show repeating my one-trick pony routine (9/11 was a
colossal deception engineered by the highest levels of the U.S.
government and is the key to all the other murderous hoaxes that have
followed), he suddenly turns on me and calls me "racist and xenophobic"
for my constant pinpointing of Israel and the Jewish community as the
prime reasons for the systematic eradication of genuine freedom in
America and the world.

I meant to mention that to Cinque on WHCR The Voice of Harlem last
Sunday. I'm a regular guest there, and also on Digital Underground,
another all-black radio show based in New York City. Black political
consciousness is so far advanced past white political consciousness in
America, perhaps because African-Americans have had two centuries to
analyze the hypocrisy and oppression that America spews out in real
terms to those who don't share the inside track to an easy life.

As far as being xenophobic, he also could have caught my basic message
? which I repeated on his show so many times ? on Sahar TV in Teheran,
twice recently. In both Harlem and Iran I bellowed the same consistent
message as both reporters tried to inveigle me into the intricacies of
U.S. Congressional politics and its endlessly convoluted scandals.

It doesn't matter who gets elected president or to Congress, I told
them. Whomever that might be, America's foreign and domestic policies
will not change one iota. We will not stop making wars out of nothing,
because that's what we've always done.

Politics in America has become a cesspool of fiat currency fueling
blackmail and bribery, and that's how the world runs, and that's how it
has always run ? but now, it's out of control, and threatening
everything that lives.

In our desire for the good life, we have forfeited our right to any
life at all. How's that for the shrewd trade recently made by the
vaunted beacon of liberty American people.

You won't get back even part of what you thought you had without a
serious revolution. And yet an appalling silence continues to grip
America. Even as their pathological leaders in Washington, Tel Aviv and
London set the sights of their nuclear warheads toward anyone who won't
knuckle under to their bullying threats, Americans race on toward their
self-deluded appointment with trying to ignore the complete destruction
of the planet.

Which is just what I got from this European radio host: He threatened
me. He said, "You have to get your stuff off Rense (the popular radio
show and website) OR I'M GONNA TAKE YOU DOWN! We have to get these UFO
nuts OUT of MY 9/11 movement!"

I respond to threats with permanent silence.

Several other radio wannabes have done basically the same thing to me.
It really makes me mistrust all of them.

But sticking to my spitting contest rule, I let all these curiosities
fly past me, because if you try to field them, you end up in an endless
distraction, and accomplish nothing (as I learned in the past from both
the peace movement and the 9/11 no-plane movement). And I believe in
sticking to the more important things. I prefer tangible issues to
flaky personalities.

And number one out of all this, in this staticky barrage of conspiracy
shrillness, is to see the disconnect between people and the truth. The
facts are there ? why isn't the public responding to them?

Veteran 9/11 researcher Jake Stansbury offered one theory on the
problem. His experience of burning 9/11 videos and handing them out to
his friends resulted in people telling him they didn't believe the
information he provided because they hadn't seen it confirmed on
television. Jake wrote:

This phenomenon seems to reflect a disturbing reality that most people
refuse to believe anything not "officially" reported! "Denial" really
doesn't seem powerful enough in and of itself to be causing this, given
that such a multitude of seemingly obvious facts belie the official
stories.

Frustrated and a bit angry, I remembered a term that seems to explain
this suicidal phenomenon. I also remembered your essay, "A Night At The
Opera" where you say "We're lost in the music, and cannot hear the
words".

Our greatest enemy at this point in time and history seems to be a
psychological phenomenon known as "cognitive dissonance". Recognizing
this, I now struggle to see some means of overcoming it, with great
frustration and no real answers. Although I'm sure you are familiar
with it, I offer you some information on this disease below.

The link Jake forwarded to me explained:

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the
discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or
believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs
when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary
for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. Neighbour (1992)
makes the generation of appropriate dissonance into a major feature of
tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows how to drive this kind of
intellectual wedge between learners' current beliefs and "reality".

Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go
"over the top", leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:

1. If someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what
they already think they know particularly if they are committed to that
prior knowledge they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl
Rogers recognized this. Accommodation is more difficult than
Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.

2. Counter-intuitively, perhaps if learning something has been
difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less
likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless,
pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been
"had", or "conned".

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/dissonance.htm

So there is the reason the people of America won?t see what is staring
them in the face. They?re simply too stupid to admit they?ve been
duped, even though their survival depends on it.

I was reminded of the real cost ? and the real danger ? of this disease
in conversations recently with two of the best reporters on the
still-free Internet: Kurt Nimmo and Greg Szymanski.

Both expressed to me a deep frustration that so much valid information
has been put forth into the public arena, and still no inroads toward
justice have been made at all in the mainstream political sphere.

Each (Google them) spoke of threats they?d received from anonymous
voices in the night, and of coercive attempts to frighten them into
silence.

As David Ray Griffin noted last summer about 9/11, ?Controlled
demolition can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.?

The lies that followed ? anthrax, Afghanistan, Iraq, the levees ? are
all predicated on the government telling the truth about 9/11, which
has not, so all those other explanations are necessarily also lies.

Yet the American public, surely shamed by its sick support for colossal
crimes against humanity, remains silently glued to poisoned airwaves
that offer only tempestuous titillation that cover up the sound we all
try to ignore ? the sound of people dying over lies we fail to
challenge.

And that is the real sickness in the static.

Back to Top

The Other Big Brother

The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far.

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering." The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. "It was tongue-in-street political theater," Parkin says.

But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

CIFA's activities are the latest in a series of disclosures about secret government programs that spy on Americans in the name of national security. In December, the ACLU obtained documents showing the FBI had investigated several activist groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, supposedly in an effort to discover possible ecoterror connections. At the same time, the White House has spent weeks in damage-control mode, defending the controversial program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone conversations of U.S. persons suspected of terror links, without obtaining warrants.

Last Thursday, Cheney called the program "vital" to the country's defense against Al Qaeda. "Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not," he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. But as the new information about CIFA shows, the scope of the U.S. government's spying on Americans may be far more extensive than the public realizes.

It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's dragnet. Details about the program, including its size and budget, are classified. In December, NBC News obtained a 400-page compilation of reports that detailed a portion of TALON's surveillance efforts. It showed the unit had collected information on nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including one at a Quaker meetinghouse in Lake Worth, Fla., and a Students Against War demonstration at a military recruiting fair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Pentagon spokesman declined to say why a private company like Halliburton would be deserving of CIFA's protection. But in the past, Defense Department officials have said that the "force protection" mission includes military contractors since soldiers and Defense employees work closely with them and therefore could be in danger.

CIFA researchers apparently cast a wide net and had a number of surveillance methods—both secretive and mundane—at their disposal. An internal CIFA PowerPoint slide presentation recently obtained by William Arkin, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who writes widely about military affairs, gives some idea how the group operated. The presentation, which Arkin provided to NEWSWEEK, shows that CIFA analysts had access to law-enforcement reports and sensitive military and U.S. intelligence documents. (The group's motto appears at the bottom of each PowerPoint slide: "Counterintelligence 'to the Edge'.") But the organization also gleaned data from "open source Internet monitoring." In other words, they surfed the Web.

That may have been how the Pentagon came to be so interested in a small gathering outside Halliburton. On June 23, 2004, a few days before the Halliburton protest, an ad for the event appeared on houston.indymedia.org, a Web site for lefty Texas activists. "Stop the war profiteers," read the posting. "Bring out the kids, relatives, Dick Cheney, and your favorite corporate pigs at the trough as we will provide food for free."

Four months later, on Oct. 25, the TALON team reported another possible threat to national security. The source: a Miami antiwar Web page. "Website advertises protest planned at local military recruitment facility," the internal report warns. The database entry refers to plans by a south Florida group called the Broward Anti-War Coalition to protest outside a strip-mall recruiting office in Lauderhill, Fla. The TALON entry lists the upcoming protest as a "credible" threat. As it turned out, the entire event consisted of 15 to 20 activists waving a giant BUSH LIED sign. No one was arrested. "It's very interesting that the U.S. military sees a domestic peace group as a threat," says Paul Lefrak, a librarian who organized the protest.

Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring, and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to buy "identity masking" software that would allow the agency to create phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences Corp. (The firm declined to comment.)

Pentagon officials have broadly defended CIFA as a legitimate response to the domestic terror threat. But at the same time, they acknowledge that an internal Pentagon review has found that CIFA's database contained some information that may have violated regulations. The department is not allowed to retain information about U.S. citizens for more than 90 days—unless they are "reasonably believed" to have some link to terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence. There was information that was "improperly stored," says a Pentagon spokesman who was authorized to talk about the program (but not to give his name). "It was an oversight." In a memo last week, obtained by NEWSWEEK, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered CIFA to purge such information from its files—and directed that all Defense Department intelligence personnel receive "refresher training" on department policies.

That's not likely to stop the questions. Last week Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee pushed for an inquiry into CIFA's activities and who it's watching. "This is a significant Pandora's box [Pentagon officials] don't want opened," says Arkin. "What we're looking at is hints of what they're doing." As far as the Pentagon is concerned, that means we've already seen too much.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek/?rf=snwnewsletter

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Conquest, Blood and Money...

by Randy Atkins

Now that it’s safe to bet that world military expenditures in 2005 will exceed one trillion dollars (that’s one with 12 zeros or $1,000,000,000,000) and possibly even more with Black Budgets, the world is sure to grow increasingly more chaotic . Small poor countries feel more threatened than ever by neighboring countries with bigger weapons. Some of these countries spend more on military and weapons than on health care, education, and other social services combined. The United States government's military spending accounts for almost 50% of the world’s total military spending, more than all other countries combined. The United States’ largest national export is weapons, and the weapons corporations sell to anyone anywhere that has cash. Weapons Corporations, like International Money Lenders, have no allegiance to their own countries. Eighty percent of their weapons are sold to non-democratic regimes around the world. In many cases these US-made weapons are used on American soldiers in subsequent conflicts. The United States is not the only one in the weapons game. Russia, China, Europe and other countries are also selling weapons to the highest bidder and in many cases sell to both sides of a conflict.

The U.S. government is exporting what the Pentagon calls “security” around the World and is, at any given time, training soldiers in over 70 countries. One of the best known of these training programs is the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Soldiers in these US training programs come from warring countries and countries with the most horrific human rights abuses on record, including Indonesia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Congo, Columbia, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other countries inside what Thomas Barnett, author of “The Pentagon’s New Map” calls THE GAP. Thomas Barnett goes on to say that the US is selling security in the “GAP” and the "GAP" is measured in” billable hours.” “Security” is the new buzz word for the “military industrial complex” and has increased 80% since the fall of the Soviet Union, making war a big money-maker for the multi-national corporations. This has been dubbed "a permanent war economy." Barnett says that if you give him any pissed-off 18-, or 19-year-old American kid who likes to play video games, he will show you the soldier of tomorrow.

In 2002 James Glaser stumbled across the VFW web page section for eligibility and, to his surprise, found 67 places on the globe where America has been at war in some way since after WW II. Antiwar.com and Lew Rockwell state that we have engaged the enemy 23 times since 1945, but the Congress of the United States put that number at 67.

Here is the list as written in the VFW site:

Taiwan Straits

Quemoy Matsu Island

Congo

Laos

Vietnam

Cuba

Dominican Republic

Korea

Cambodia

Thailand (in direct support of Cambodia Operation)

Operation Eagle Pull-Evacuation of Cambodia

Operation Frequent Wind-Evacuation of Vietnam

Mayaguez Operation

Operation Urgent Fury-Grenada

Lebanon

Germany (West Berlin)

Austria

Korea

Japan

Italy

Trieste

Germany (except West Berlin)

Austria

Asiatic Pacific

Korean Service Medal (Army, Navy, Air Force)

Berlin

Libyan Operation El Dorado Canyo

Persian Gulf Operation Earnest Will

Panama Operation Just Cause

Somalia-United Shield-Operation Restore Hope

Haiti-Operation Uphold Democracy

Operation Southern Watch (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Gulf of Omen W. Of 62' E. Long, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan)

El Salvador

Bosnia-Operation Joint Endeavor

Operation Joint Guard

Operation Vigilant Sentinel

Operation Northern Watch

Operation Maritime Intercept

Operation Joint Forge (Bosnia-Herzegovina)

Operation Desert Thunder

Operation Desert Fox

Thailand Military Operation

Cuban Military Operation

Iranian, Yemen Indian Ocean Operation

Lebanon, Libyan Expedition

Panama - (pre and post invasion)

Liberia (Operation Sharp Edge)

Rwanda (Operation Distant Runner)

Vietnam Service Medal

Iraq Operation Desert Storm/Operation Desert Shield

Combat Action Ribbon, Korean Service,

Kosovo Campaign Medal (Allied Force),

Joint Guardian, Allied Harbor Sustain Hope/Shining Hope

Nobel Anvil, Kosovo Task Force Hawk

Kosovo Task Force Saber

Kosovo Task Force Falcon

Kosovo Task force Hunter

Kosovo Air Campaign

Kosovo Defense Campaign.

Some of these countries are repeated, but the dates of action are different. That means that we have repeatedly returned to some countries for new engagements much like we are now doing in Iraq. As you can see by this list, America has been very busy in the last 50 years and our "Military Might" (Military Industrial Complex) has been in the forefront of U.S. Foreign Policy. Today the United States has over 700 military out posts outside the U.S.

The USAF had dropped 1.5 million tons of bombs on Laos and 150,000 tons of bombs on Viet Nam. More recently, the U.S. bombings, military invasions of forgiven countries, and the U.N. sanctions (mainly maintained by the U.S.) are responsible for the high level of deaths and violence due to sanctions. Such actions caused the deaths of over 1.5 million Iraqis; about 50% of these deaths were Iraqi children less than 5 years old. Of course, this number will continue to grow because of the use of Depleted Uranium munitions. DU was also used in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

Over 10,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Afghanistan. The United States reports that it flew over 110,000 air sorties against Iraq, dropping to date over 100,000 tons of conventional bombs, nearly seven times the equivalent of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Of this bombardment, 93% consists of free-falling bombs, most dropped from over 30,000 feet and indiscriminately killing millions of civilians. At least 7% of the bombs in Iraq had satellite guided systems; more than 25% missed their targets. Most of the targets were civilian facilities. In 2004, it’s been estimated that the United States fired 2,500 tons of depleted uranium munitions on Iraq with the radio-active equivalent of thousands of Nagasaki bombs with a half-life of 4.5 BILLION years. Data from William Blum’s book Rogue State, supplemented by casualty data from various sources, estimates that between 10 million to 16 million deaths were directly and indirectly related to United States’ hegemony sense after WWII.

Researchers estimate that since 1945 at least 50 US and Russian nuclear weapons have been lost and remain at bottom of the sea, called broken arrows from subs, ships and planes. The US alone officially lists 11 nuclear bombs lost and never recovered in accidents. Around the world thousands of incidents of nuclear plants, nuclear facilities, bombers, subs and ships are on record, but due to government and business secrecy, it is difficult to determine with certainty the extent of some events documented by government and non-government sources.

Due to nuclear testing starting from 1945, 1,025 nuclear detonations, including five upper-atmosphere tests called ‘operation starfish,’ I believe have added to today’s global warming problem. Nuclear power plants for nuclear weapons production and energy around the world are contaminating massive amounts of water and land affecting the gene pool of plants and animals. Cancer is now the leading cause of death. Cancer clinics are over flowing and the uninsured in America are simply denied treatment and left to die a horrible death.

 

Currently, the total U.S. nuclear stockpile is estimated to consist of almost 20,000 nuclear warheads, including almost 3,000 reserve strategic and tactical warheads, which are not attached to delivery vehicles. The United States is also deploying very dangerous space based weapons systems for world domination that has moved the arms race into the heavens.

The current Russian nuclear stockpile is estimated at 19,500 nuclear warheads. Unlike the United States, Russia possesses these reserves at least in part because dismantling the warheads has proven prohibitively expensive. And unlike the United States, Russia continues to produce limited numbers of new nuclear warheads, largely because its warheads are designed to have a far shorter operational lifespan and, therefore, must be replaced more frequently. China at present has 2,350 nuclear warheads. Thousands of these US, Russian, and Chinese nuclear warheads remain on hair-trigger alert. Many of these weapons systems are outdated and controlled by failing computer systems.

It’s now very clear that US aggression over the last 50 years is economic and strategic conquest pure and simple, as Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book “The Grand Chessboard” so well put it. Sadly, the United States has, to my estimate, dropped over 100,000,000 (million) tons of bombs on foreign lands over the last 50 years killing millions and millions of civilians that want nothing to do with this madness. What will it take for these weapons systems to be completely dismantled and for the world to come to its senses, a nuclear war if we survive, or a serious accident? Who is responsible for this ever increasing mess, the corporate media, the military industrial complex? Are the leaders of these countries or the world elitist who control them responsible? We may not have all the answers to the above questions now, but one thing is certain; at this rate the human race will pay the ultimate price sooner rather than later.

Randy Atkins
www.ArsenalofHypocrisy.com

Foot notes:
U.S. Bombing Watch
Data from William Blum Rouge State
Federation of American Scientist, Fast-Facts
U.S. Government info / Resources
The Independent
Awakened Woman E-Magazine
Pamela Bockley-O’Brian
Arms Control Association
International war crime tribunal
Allen Lutins
Zbigniew Brzezinski “The Grand Chessboard”
Wikipedia

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National Security Agency mounted massive spy op on Baltimore peace group, documents show

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/National_Security_Agency_spied_on_Baltimore_0110.html

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.

According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department.

The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities.

The NSA, established in 1952 by President Truman, is the largest and most secret of U.S. intelligence agencies. Headquartered between Baltimore and Washington, DC, the agency has two principal functions: to protect U.S. government communications and intercept foreign transmissions. However, the NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations" without explicit written permission from the Attorney General.

The revelation that a Baltimore peace group was spied upon comes in the wake of a news reports that the agency has also been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and raises new questions about the legality of NSA activities. The agency did not immediately return a request for comment.

The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq. The Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests.

Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland.

According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found.

NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs.

An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'"

On the day of the demonstration three protesters were cited for "disturbances on government property" and released. A federal judge eventually dismissed the case before trial.

Two of those demonstrators, Max Obuszewiski and Ellen Barfield, are still scheduled for trial in Baltimore federal court Jan. 25. The defendants have filed a motion for discovery and included the letter from the NSA acknowledging spying on the Pledge. The prosecutor has refused to release this information as part of discovery. The defendants plan to argue that the information is necessary for their defense.

"The NSA confirmed, because of a FOIA request I filed, that indeed it has files on peace and justice groups," Obuszewiski said. "However, the Agency is refusing to release the information unless I pay $1,915. What might be in these files?"

A second NSA document on the letterhead of the National Security Agency Police and authored by NSA Police Major Michael E. Talbert is dated Oct. 3, 2004. It is an action plan for the "threat of a demonstration hosted by a group known as Pledge of Resistance - Baltimore." They note the demonstration is part of the "Keep Space for Peace Week." The NSA action plan includes plans for four days, but six activities being planned by the NSA before the day of the demonstration have been redacted.

Extensive plans are described for the day of the Oct. 4, 2004 demonstration. The letter shows that the NSA planned to have their Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team on site, an officer with a shotgun, an increase in the number of officers, mobile units monitoring the highway and parking lot, roving patrols on bicycles in various areas, four K9 handlers, agents to provide counter-surveillance, aerial observations by the Anne Arundel, Maryland police and photography/video surveillance of the activities.

"The NSA Weapons of Mass Destruction Rapid Response Team will have a limited staffing on hand to support the event," Talbert's memo reads. "...Anne Arundel County Police will be requested to provide aerial observations."

"Shocking appalling and unnecessary," is how the Chair of the DC Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild Demonstration Support Committee Mark Goldstone describes the NSA actions. Goldstone, who often represents activists who engage in non-violent civil disobedience, is not counsel in this litigation. "This surveillance is completely unrelated to even an expansive definition of 'national security.'"

Maria Allwine, a protester arrested Oct. 4, 2004, recently described the events in an interview on Democracy Rising.

"The NSA must be spying on us from the federal post office right across a small street from the AFSC," Allwine said. "It's the only place that gives them enough of a view to see our cars/license plate numbers."

Allwine also discussed how the Pledge has been infiltrated. She described a March 20, 2003 demonstration in downtown Baltimore where "a provocateur (whom we had identified at our planning meeting the previous night) joined us. We'd never seen him before. . . during the die-in at the federal courthouse, he was taunting the police in a violent manner. We had to quiet him down, he then disappeared and we never saw him again - and, of course, he wasn't arrested with the other 49 of us."

The monitoring is ongoing. Allwine says that at demonstrations the police "have had cookies and drinks set up for us (we don't partake!) and tell us they knew we were coming."

Goldstone says the impact of NSA surveillance is worrisome.

"People should not be afraid to speak out, and unfortunately evidence of domestic spying tends to chill people's interest in speaking out- thus chilling and limiting our precious First Amendment rights," he told RAW STORY. "Nothing that the Pledge does, either by their public advocacy against the war or their non-violent civil disobedience/resistance to war can be plausibly seen as a threat to United States national security, as the group is pledged to non-violence and non-property destruction guidelines."

David Rocah, a staff attorney with the Maryland ACLU, adds, "There is obviously a well-founded concern of law enforcement monitoring of First Amendment activities. The ACLU and others have exposed such activities all over the country resulting in law suits."

Goldstone says Congress must rein in the NSA.

"Congress must investigate this, and get a handle on the issue of domestic spying by the NSA and other agencies against people exercising political speech," he said.

Kevin Zeese is director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

 

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NEW STUDY SUGGESTS ECONOMIC COST OF IRAQ WAR

MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUSLY RECOGNIZED

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2006/1/5/11510/30624

A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.

The study expands on traditional budgetary estimates by including costs such as lifetime disability and health care for the over16,000 injured, one fifth of whom have serious brain or spinal injuries. It then goes on to analyze the costs to the economy, including the economic value of lives lost and the impact of factors such as higher oil prices that can be partly attributed to the conflict in Iraq. The paper also calculates the impact on the economy if a proportion of the money spent on the Iraq war were spent in other ways, including on investments in the United States

“Shortly before the war, when Administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, Administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers,” points out Professor Stiglitz. “But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey’s numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs.”

The Allied Social Sciences Association meeting is attended by the nation’s leading economists and social scientists. It is sponsored jointly by the American Economic Association and the Economists for Peace and Security.

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