flashclub.ch

2003-10-03T20:19:00.000+02:00

Website Moves to WWW.FLASHCLUB.CH

The website is being moved to its own webserver and I'm changing the publishing tool to Movable Type. It will take about a week until everything's up and running. Thanks for visiting FLASHCLUB.

2003-05-25T19:11:00.000+02:00

Michael Moore: Superhero or Imposter?

Michael Moore, self-described lefty and populist, NRA member and living in a $1.2 million apartment in Manhattan, has become an icon of the Left and has the Right foaming at the mouth. His movie Bowling for Columbine has reaped highest accoloades and has set a new record for a documentary at the box office. He his one of the most prominent figures that represent the 'alternative' view point of the Bush Administration, as he demonstrated with his remarks at the Oscar's where he called Bush a "fictitious president." He promises a bigger expose of Bush's shady dealings this time with the bin Ladens in his new movie Farenheit 9-11: The Temperature At Which Truth Burns. The question therefore must be asked how truthful are his facts and how much does he really expose the root evil? That is state-sponsored terrorism to legitimize the quest for a new world hegemony and redistribution of resources.

The stories he tells in Bowling for Columbine all seemingly ring true. The viewer's intellectual self-esteem is raised by Moore with little amusing anectodes that show other people's idiocies. For example, like the interview in the bank in Michigan where he asks the bank teller "do you think it is a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank". The claim by some people that the rock group Marilyn Manson inspired the killings he counters with interjections that the killers went bowling before the killings or that Harris' father was employed at Lockheed Martin making WMDs ("So you don't think our kids say to themselves, 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?"). That just as well might have seriously altered their view towards life, or violent video games, he proposes. The same with the hilarious questioning of the rather dim-witted James Nichols (the brother of the convicted Oklahoma City Building bomber) who wasn't aware of Gandhis peaceful revolution and simple responded, "I'm not familiar with that", when asked by Moore about it. All of these examples, when common sense is applied, seem to prove Moore's argument.

The problem with this is that his "facts" on many occassion are outright fabrications, taken out of context, or less serious, staged scenes. To begin with the titel Bowling for Columbine is part of the deception by Moore. As he claims that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went bowling before the massacre. Not so say say the witnesses questioned by the police: they cut the class. The famous bank scene in reality would have happened differently including a background check by the FBI and he couldn't have had collected the rifle he at the Bank. Jan Jacobson, the employee that handled Moore's account had this to say about the "guns at the bank" scene:

"What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period. He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

More of the most glaring inaccuracies in Bowling for Columbine:

• The Lockheed Martin plant does not make WMDs but space rockets such as the Titan and Atlas rockets which are now used to deliver civilian payloads to space.

• Same withe the doctored Willie Horton ad that implied that a black man was falsely accused of murder (he brutalized a couple and raped the woman). View the ad without Moore's video editing. This segment of Bowling for Columbine will reportedly be omitted from the video and dvd release of the movie.

• The seemingly easy gun purchase in Canada where the Canadian consulate has clarified that for purchasing a gun one must present indentification among other things.

• And he twists the numbers where in reality in the U.S. blacks and hispanics are involved in proportionially more homicides compared to their numbers, Moore claims that Canada has the same number of minorities, where in reality the U.S. has more than double that number. He also dismisses studies that have shown a correlation between poverty and crime, neglecting to mention in the process that Canada's social services are much more developed than in the States.

• Another claim introduced by Moore (and backed up by careful video montage) is implying that the NRA held the convention despite what happened in Littleton where in reality they drastically scaled back their meeting in response to the shootings. Only
the annual meetings required by corporate law were held. The video with Heston holding a musket in his hands and holding his "cold, dead hands" speech was from an event from Charlotte, N.C a year later.

• He claims that the Bush Administration has given $245 million to the Taliban before they attacked them. First of all the money wasn't given to the Taliban rulers but was administered through the UN and NGOs for food distribution and infrastructure development; i.e.; purely humanitarian aid. Second of all this leads the viewer on a totally different track opposed from reality, where the war against Afghanistan was planned months before 9/11 and wasn't a reaction to the attacks but rather a justification of the war on terrorism that followed.

Of course not all of his claims are false, but are often taken out of context or grossly oversimplified. The montage of U.S. crimes committed in the Middle East and South America is used as proof for his argument that U.S. culture and mentality are responsible for U.S. foreign policy. Michael Moore's message in the movie is actually against gun control and for culture control:

"Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people. We're the only country that does this, and we do it on an personal level in our neighborhoods and within our families and our schools, and we do it on a global level. The American attitude is that we believe we have a right to just go in and bomb another country. This is where Bush is going right now, right?"

This disregards the wider aspirations of the Bush junta (see the Project for a new American Century or PNAC), and neglects to ask and explore the important questions. One must wonder whether his upcoming movie will shed any light on the Bush and bin Laden connections.

According to what is already known about Farenheit 9-11 it's sounds of more Moorewash. If the connections between the Bush family and the bin Ladens are portayed as a thing of the past ("The director claims he will document on film how the 'senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11.) and the present connection through the Carlyle Group, omitted and seemingly discredited by his "mystery" but in reality insignificant "bin Laden jet escapes from FBI" story, he will in effect whitewash Bush. That is actually the last thing one expects from Moore. He did the same thing, however, in Bowling for Columbine where he states that bin Laden used his "expert CIA training to murder 3000 people", but also doesn't explore still existing links between al Qaeda and the CIA and declares the relationship a thing of the past.

But with Moore it doesn't seem to be about the truth, but about how he can land another hit movie. Michael Moore himself admits his ambivalence toward the truth when pressed by CNN's Lou Dobbs about inaccuracies he responded:

"You know, look, this is a book of political humor. So, I mean, I don't respond to that sort of stuff, you know." "Glaring inaccuracies?" Mr. Dobbs said. "No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"

In conclusion, Michael Moore is a fraud, while an amusing one at times, he deceives the audience into believing it's watching a documentary, and not a "mockumentary" as some have called it. He might touch on some important subjects, for example that "Bush is a crony." But he fails to explore the important issues further and ask the pertinent questions, discrediting legitimate researchers of the alternative view of the war on terrorism in the process.

Sources:

• Bowling Truths: Michael Moore’s mocking
• Bowling for Columbine - Documentary or Fiction?
• Michael Moore, Humbug
• Unmoored From Reality: An ideological con artist is the favorite for an Oscar
• Moore Watch - continously updated reports about Moore's activities
• Michael Moore in his own words

Related:

• The REAL Columbine - complete chronological report of the shooting in Littleton, including witness mentioning additional shooters, that were later silenced.
• The Swiss Report - an armed populace doesn't mean more crime but makes a good militia
• The Oklahoma City Bombing - Were there additional explosive charges and additional bombers?

2003-05-24T21:59:00.000+02:00

Bilderberg Meeting 2003 in Versailles, France

2003 Agenda -- from Bilderberg Press Release:

"The conference will deal mainly with European-American relations and in this context Iraq, The Middle East after Terrorism, Non-Proliferation, The European Convention, Economic Problems."

Participant List:

B - Honorary Chairman - Davignon, Etienne - Vice-Chairman, Societe Generale de Belgique
GB - Honorary Secretary General - Taylor. J Martin - Chairman WH Smith PLC; International advisor, Goldman Sachs International
F - Adler, Alexandre - Editorial counsel, Le Figaro
I - Ambrosetti, Alfredo - Chairman Ambrosetti Group
TR - Babacan, Ali - Minister of Economic Affairs
GR - Bakoyannis, Dora - Mayor of Athens
GB - Balls, Edward - Chief Economic Advisor to the Treasury
P - Balsem?o, Francisco Pinto - Professor of Communication Science, New University, Lisbon; Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
P - Barroso, José M. Dur?o - Prime Minister
TR - Bayar, Mehmet A. - Deputy Chairman of DYP (True Path Party)
A - Becker, Erich - Chairman of the Managing Board and CEO, VA Technologie AG
I - Bendetti, Rodolfo de - Managing Director CIR S.p.A.
I - Bernabè, Franco - Chairman Franco Bernabe & C. S.p.A.
F - Beytout, Nicolas - Editor-in-Chief, Les Echos
KW - Bishara, Ahmad E. - Secretary General of Kuwait's liberal National Democratic Party
CDN - Black, Conrad M. - Chairman, Telegraph Group Limited
INT - Bolkestein, Frits - Internal Markets Commissioner, European Commission
USA - Bolton, John R. - Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security
F - Bon, Michel - Honorary Chairman, France Telecom
F - Bruguière, Jean-Louis - First Vice President, Justice Department
D - Burda, Hubert - Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda Media Holding GmbH & Co.
F - Camus, Phillipe - CEO, European Aeronautics Defence and Space company European Aeronautics Defence and Space company (EADS)
INT - Cary, Anthony J. - Head of Christopher Patten's cabinet, EU. [Patten is European Commissioner for Enlargement]
F - Castries, Henri de - Chairman of the Board, AXA
E - Cebri?n, Juan Luis - CEO, PRISA
B - Claes, Willy - Minister of State [Willy Claes is not now a Belgian Minister but former Belgian Foreign Minister and former Secretary General of NATO 1994-1995 - now disgraced - TG]
GB - Clarke, Kenneth - Member of Parliament, [former Chancellor of the Exchequer]
USA - Collins, Timothy C. - Senior Managing Director and CEO, Ripplewood Holdings LLC
F - Collomb, Bertrand - Chairman and CEO, Lafarge
F - Copé, Jean-François - Secretary of State in charge of relations with Parliament; Government Spokesman
USA - Corzine, Jon S. - Senator (D, New Jersey)
S - Dahlb?ck, Claes - Chairman, Investor AB
GR - David, George A. - Chairman of the Board, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A.
USA - Donilon, Thomas E. - Executive Vice President, Fannie Mae
I - Draghi, Mario - Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International
DK - Eldrup, Anders - CEO, Danish Oil and Gas Corporation
USA - Feldstein, Martin S. - President and CEO, National Bureau of Economic Research
CDN - Fell, Anthony S. - Chairman, RBC Dominion Securities Inc.
USA - Friedman, Thomas L. - Foreign Affairs Columnist, The New York Times
F - Gergorin, Jean-Luis - Executive Vice President, Strategic Coordination, European Aeronautics Defence and Space company (EADS)
USA - Gigot, Paul A. - Editorial page editor, The Wall Street Journal
F - Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry - French President 1974-81; Chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe
N - Gjedrem, Svein - Governor, Central Bank of Norway
IRL - Gleeson, Dermot - Chairman designate, Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c.
GB - Gould, Philip - Public Relations Adviser to Prime Minister Blair
USA - Haass, Richard N. - Director, Office of Policy Planning Staff, State Department
NL - Halberstadt, Victor - Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
CDN - Harper, Stephen - Leader of the Opposition
USA - Hertog, Roger - Vice-Chairman, Alliance Capital Management
NL - Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de - Minister for Foreign Affairs
USA - Hubbard, Allan B. - President, E&A Industries
USA - Hubbard, R. Glenn - Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics and Finance, Columbia University
USA - Johnson, James A. - Vice Chairman, Perseus L.L.C.
USA - Jordan, Jr., Vernon E. - Senior Managing Director, Lazard Freres & Co. L.L.C.
CH - Kielholz, Walter B. - Former Chairman of the Board, Credit Suisse; Executive Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Swiss Re
GB - King, Mervyn A. - Deputy Governor, Bank of England
USA - Kissinger, Henry A. - Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.; Member, Defense Policy Board; Member J.P. Morgan International Council
FIN - Kivinen, Olli - Senior Editor & Columnist, Helsingin Sanomat
NL - Kok, Wim - Former Prime Minister
D - Kopper, Hilmar - Former Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Deutsche Bank AG
USA - Kravis, Henry R. - Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
USA - Kravis, Marie-Joseé - Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
INT - Lamy, Pascal - Trade Commissioner, European Commission
F - Lellouche, Pierre - Vice Chairman, NATO Parliamentary Assembly
F - Lévy-Lang, André - Former Chairman, Paribas
S - Lindh, Anna - Minister for Foreign Affairs
FIN - Lipponen, Paavo - Former Prime Minister; Speaker of the Parliament
DK - Lykketoft, Mogens - Chairman, Social Democrat Party
CDN - MacMillan, Margaret O. - Provost, Trinity College, University of Toronto
RUS - Margelov, Mikhail V. - Chairman, Committee for Foreign Affairs, Council of Federation
F - Montbrial, Thierry de - President, French Institute of International Relations (IFRI)
INT - Monti, Mario - Competition Commissioner, European Commission
USA - Mundie, Craig J. - Chief Technical Officer, Advanced Strategies and Policy, Microsoft Corporation
N - Myklebust, Egil - Chairman, Norsk Hydro ASA
D - Naas, Matthias - Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
NL - Netherlands, H.M. the Queen of the [Queen Beatrix - Royal Dutch Shell]
PL - Olechowski, Andrzej - Leader, Civic Platform
FIN - Ollila, Jorma - Chairman of the Board and CEO, Nokia Corporation
INT - Padoa-Schioppa, Thomasso - Member of the Executive Board, European Central Bank
I - Panara, Marco - Journalist, La Republica
I - Passera, Corrado - Managing Director, Banca IntesaBCI
USA - Perkovich, George - Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
USA - Perle, Richard N. - Member, Defense Policy Board ; Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for Public Policy Research; member Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
B - Philippe, H.R.H. Prince - Crown Prince of Belgium
I - Poli, Roberto - Chairman, Eni S.p.A.
F - Ranque, Denis - Chairman and CEO, Thales Aerospace and Defence
DK - Rasmussen, Anders Fogh - Prime Minister
CDN - Reisman, Heather - President and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.
F - Riboud, Franck - Chairman and CEO, Danone Foods
CH - Ringier, Michael - CEO, Ringier AG
USA - Rockefeller, David - Member, J.P. Morgan International Council
P - Rodrigues, Eduardo Ferro - Leader of the Socialist Party; Member of Parliament
E - Rodriguez Inciarte, Matias - Executive Vice Chairman, Banco Santander Central Hispano
F - Roy, Olivier - Senior Researcher, CNRS
USA - Ruggie, John - Director, Center for Business and Government, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
NL - Ruys, Anthony - Chairman of the Board, Heineken N.V.
TR - Sanberk, ?zdem - Director, Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation
I - Scaroni, Paolo - Managing Director, Enel S.p.A.
D - Sch?uble, Wolfgang - Deputy Parliamentary Leader, CDU/CSU Group
D - Schily, Otto - Minister of the Interior
A - Scholten, Rudolf - Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AG
D - Schrempp, Jurgen E - Chairman of the Board of Management, Daimler Chrysler AG
INT - Schwab, Klaus - President, World Economic Forum
DK - Seidenfaden, Toger - Editor in Chief, Ploitiken
RUS - Shevtsova, Lilia - Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
E - Spain, H.M. the Queen of [King Juan Carlos (see photo) arrived with the queen, but he is not on this list]
USA - Steinberg, James B. - Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution
CDN - Steyn, Mark - Journalist for various publications
IRL - Sutherland, Peter D. - Chairman and Managing Director, Goldman Sachs International; Chairman, BP Amoco
USA - Thornton, John L. - President and CEO, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
F - Trichet, Jean Claude - Governor, Banque de France
GR - Tsoukalis, Loukas - Professor, University of Athens; President Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy
A - Trumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude - Vice Governor, Central Bank of Austria
CH - Vasella, Daniel L. - Chairman and CEO, Novartis AG
NL - Veer, Jeroen van der - President, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company; Vice Chairman of the Committee of Managing Directors of Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies
F - Villin, Philippe - Vice Chairman, Lehman Brothers Europe
NL - Vries, Klaas de - Member of Parliament (Labour); Former Minister of the Interior
FIN - Whalroos, Bj?rn - President and CEO, Sampo plc.
S - Wallenberg, Jacob - Chairman of the Board, Skandinavivska Enskilda Banken
GB - Williams, Gareth - Leader of the House of Lords
GB - Wolf, Martin H. - Associate Editor/Economics Commentator, The Financial Times
USA/INT - Wolfensohn, James D. - President, The World Bank
USA - Wolfowitz, Paul - Deputy Secretary of Defense, US Department of Defense
USA - Zakaria, Fareed - Editor, Newsweek International
USA - Zoellick, Robert - Principal Trade Adviser to the President
D - Zumwinkel, Klaus - Chairman, Deutsche Post Worldnet AG

Rapporteurs

GB - Micklethwait, R. John - United States Editor, The Economist
GB - Rachman, Gideon - Brussels Correspondent, The Economist

Sources:

• Bilderberg conference 2003: Versailles, Paris, France
• Bilderberg 2003 coverage
• History of the Bilderbergers

2003-03-19T19:59:00.000+01:00

The 2nd Persian Gulf War has started

Despite the numerous and blatant lies of the White House for a need for war and without the approval of the UN Security Council, the US and "the coalition of the willing" have started the war against Iraq:

Reuters: Explosions rocking Baghdad, part of 'shock and awe' campaign

"The fighting reported at Basra was believed to involve British special forces and US marines in an operation to prepare landing sites for amphibious craft during an invasion. Other special units were deep inside Iraq on secret operations to prepare landing strips in the desert for airborne troops."

Evening Standard: The War Has Started

Cruise Missiles, Stealth Jets Lead Attack

Week 7:

• Bush declares victory in Iraq (video) - "There are legal implications to declaring a war officially ended: under the Geneva Conventions, once war is declared over, the victorious army must release prisoners-of-war and halt operations targeting specific leaders...The United States never formally declared war on Iraq."
• Details of the Coalition's use of airpower in Iraq are revealed
• Unfriendly fire - The shooting in Fallujah: Did US troops' own warning shots spook them into killing 13 civilians? - "On CBC Radio One's As It Happens, there's an interview with UPI reporter Mitchell Prothero. He reports on the Iraqi protesters' version of events leading up to U.S. military shooting on the crowd. They say that the final Humvee in a [US] column fired several warning shots over the heads of the crowd. The rest of the column heard the shots and assumed they were under attack, opening fire on the crowd itself." This is a likely scenario.
• The war is over (except for Iraq) - "As Bush prepares to announce an end to hostilities today, more Iraqis are killed by American troops."
• Vilified weapons inspectors may have got it right - "Condoleezza Rice has talked her way into a U-turn"

Week 6:

While some declare victory others can now demonstrate for it...

• American forces reach cease-fire with terror group - "As recently as last week, senior Pentagon officials described the group as a vicious entity that had served as a de facto security organization for the Iraqi government. At the same time, however, supporters of the People's Mujahadeen, including dozens of members of Congress, have portrayed the decision to label the group as terrorist as one that was taken by the Clinton administration largely as a positive gesture to the Iranian government, which regards the People's Mujahadeen as a serious foe."
• 'Even under Saddam pay was better than this' - "The pay was being cut to conform with standards imposed across Iraq by the United States. “This is cruelty,” Vahan Gregor, a civil engineer who used to have his own company, said. “The rate is not even enough to pay for the lift into work. A packet of decent cigarettes costs more than a day’s pay [50p or less]. A packet of nappies is one month! Is this fair? Even under Saddam, it was better than this.”
• Fighting is over but the deaths go on - Guardian investigation reveals mines have killed up to 80 civilians since the conflict ended..Mr Sutton said the Mines Advisory Group had also found evidence of a new type of American cluster bomb dropped outside the city. The BLU 108, he explained, is an anti-armour bomblet with a sensor. When the mother unit is dropped it spews out four smaller units with parachutes. Each of these then slings out four lethal circular discs. "These should be directed toward armour," Mr Sutton said. "But we found them in fields. And 75% of them were unexploded."
• Chemical find 'may be rocket fuel' - "Near the site [close to Baiji] was a low, brown sandstone building that had 150 gas masks of a higher quality that those usually used by Iraqi soldiers. Soldiers at first suspected that the van was a chemical warfare laboratory. Novikov said, however, that "it could be" a rocket fuel mixing station. The initial tests were conducted last week by chemical warfare experts with the 1st Squadron of the 10th Cavalry Regiment. All three of their tests pointed to nerve or blister agents. There have been numerous false reports that coalition forces have turned up chemical or biological weapons in Iraq."
• False alarm? Experts believe positive tests for chemicals were wrong
• Top Iraqi prisoners all denying Saddam had weapons of mass destruction - "High-ranking Iraqi prisoners are uniformly denying Saddam Hussein's government had any weapons of mass destruction before the war, U.S. officials familiar with their interrogations said Tuesday."
• Bechtel ties to bin Laden - "The bin Ladens have a ten-million-dollar stake in the Fremont Group, a San Francisco-based company formerly called Bechtel Investments, which was until 1986 a subsidiary of Bechtel. The Fremont Group’s Web site, which makes no mention of the bin Ladens, notes that “though now independent, Fremont enjoys a close relationship with Bechtel.”
• Anger mounts after U.S. troops kill 13 Iraqis (# 2) - "The shooting outraged local people who, like many other Iraqis, welcomed the removal of Saddam Hussein by U.S.-led forces but now want the American troops to leave. It is likely to fuel anti-American sentiment elsewhere in Iraq."
• US forces 'turn down Sahhaf's surrender overtures'
• Was Tariq Aziz the coalition's mole? - "The information that enabled the coalition forces to target Saddam in the opening hours of the war could only have come from someone like Aziz who had access to Saddam's inner circle."
• Revealed: How the road to war was paved with lies - "Intelligence agencies accuse Bush and Blair of distorting and fabricating evidence in rush to war"
• U.S. seeks to keep Gulf military presence - "Officials are considering moving the air operations center at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, which ran the Iraq air war. One possibility is a shift to the Qatar base, Camp As Sayliyah."
• Saddam link to al-Qaeda in doubt - "British Intelligence officials have expressed doubt that Saddam Hussein established any working relationship with al-Qaeda despite the discovery of documents showing that an “envoy” for Osama bin Laden visited Baghdad in 1998."
• Saddam 'held talks on alliance with al-Qaeda' - "Remarkable though it is, the find is unlikely to be the 'smoking gun' the US and Britain are looking for. Representatives from the Mukhabarat are known to have travelled to Kandahar in the late Nineties to build links with al-Qaeda. Most analysts believe, however, that the ideological differences between the Iraqis and the terrorists were insurmountable. The talks are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad, or holy war."
• Scepticism over Saddam-Osama link - But the report, dressed up as a "world exclusive'', was greeted with scepticism which was compounded by its author, Ingo Gilmore's remarks to the BBC that the "significantly CIA had been through many of these buildings, but they seem to have missed this particular document''.
• Found Iraqi intelligence bogus: Investigative journalist - The American journalist [Wayne Madsen] said that the U.S. let favored journalists to walk freely about some of Iraqi government facilities, such as intelligence headquarters, to find any "shred" of paper that can be used in its smear campaign against Iraq but clamped water-tight security on other facilities, chief among which the oil ministry. "The reason for this is obvious. While the intelligence building can be salted with phony intelligence documents, the Oil Ministry is likely rife with documents showing the links between Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton. "The company signed more than $73 million in contracts with Saddam's government when Cheney was its chief executive officer. The contracts, negotiated with two Halliburton subsidiaries—Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co.—were part of the U.N. oil-for-food program," said Madsen.
• Occupation and Iraqi Intifada: Now the real war starts
• Marine discusses execution-style killing - Covarrubias, a 20-year Marine veteran, said he found the soldier inside a nearby home with the grenade launcher by his side. Covarrubias said he ordered the man to stop and forced him to turn around. "I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head. Twice."
• Reason for war? - "To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy...The Bush administration wanted to make a statement about its determination to fight terrorism. And officials acknowledge that Saddam had all the requirements to make him, from their standpoint, the perfect target." With a 90 billion price-tag this is a costly statement...

Week 5:

• The Turks enter Iraq - A Turkish Special Forces team is caught by U.S. troops in Kurdistan..."They did not come here with a pure heart," says U.S. brigade commander Col. Bill Mayville. "Their objective is to create an environment that can be used by Turkey to send a large peacekeeping force into Kirkuk."
• The 'Apache' farmer's tale - "They asked me to say what you have heard on the TV satellite channels - that I shot down the plane with an old gun, a Brno."
• Photos of highway slaughter at Taji - "Human Shield" returns home with images of carnage
• Pilgrims threaten jihad against American forces - The Shia pilgrimage to Karbala, one of the most potent and symbolic in recent Iraqi history, took on a strident political and martial note yesterday with demands for the establishment of an Islamic state and threats of a jihad against the "American occupiers".
• U.S. planners surprised by strength of Iraqi Shiites - "Complicating matters is that the United States has virtually no diplomatic relationship with Iran, leaving U.S. officials in the dark about the goals and intentions of the government in Tehran. The Iranian government is the patron of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the leading Iraqi Shiite group."
• Why the Mullahs love a revolution - "..American policy makers might do better to consider the history of the region. In particular, the dogged nationalism of the Iraqis that forced imperial Britain's departure in 1932; and, more recently, the events in 1979 after the downfall of the secular regime of the shah of Iran."
• What, no Smoking Gun? (# 2) - "But since the war began, the military and its media have trumpeted one WMD discovery after another that turned out to be a dud. Searches of "sensitive sites" have turned up gas masks, protective suits, antidotes, manuals, white powder, barrels of chemicals, and a cache of mystery shells—but no smoking gun. The military types who could not wait another week for UN inspectors to do their job are now saying their own WMD search will take weeks, maybe months."
• So where are they, Mr Blair? - "So where are they? In case we forget, distracted by the thought of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, looted museums and gathering political chaos, the proclaimed purpose of this war, vainly pursued by Britain and the US through the United Nations, was to disarm Saddam Hussein and to destroy weapons of mass destruction deemed a menace to the entire world."
• Anthrax, chemicals and nerve gas: who is lying? - Growing evidence of deception by Washington
• The Baghdad deal
• The buyout of Baghdad? - Tales of a secret arrangement between the Bushies and the Republican Guard persist
• Something smells about this War
• Missed opportunity? U.S. attack may have ended Saddam surrender attempt - "Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief sought help last week to arrange some kind of a deal between the United States and Saddam"
• What happened to Iraq's army? - "Nobody knows how many thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed -- and the U.S. doesn't seem eager to let reporters find out."
• Volunteers recall bitter memories, betrayal in Iraq - "We were stun-founded when a Yemeni was about to "fire on a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship only to be ordered by an Iraqi officer 'Do not shoot… it is an Iraqi aircraft', he recalled...We were fired at by the town residents [of Nassiriyah], who killed three of us. They just shouted asking us 'why you are here? Did you came to defend Saddam?'" Emad, another volunteer, asserted."
• U.S. troops arrest U.S.-backed Iraqis - "The new Baghdad police chief, on his first day on the job, complained to a U.S. officer that the Free Iraqi Forces, among others, have looted homes in Baghdad and refuse to obey police orders. "They will not respect our men and we need the U.S. soldiers to help us control them," Zabar Abdul Razaq said."
• LA Times deletes key paragraphs from web version of article - "No longer was the US being accused of anything, much less something as serious as "reckless gunfire." On the Web, the British were mad about something the US did, something having to do with "fire."
• Tank captain admits firing on media hotel - "He said he regretted that the tank shot, which hit the 14th and 15th storeys of the hotel, had killed two journalists and wounded three. "I feel bad. My men feel bad," he said. But he insisted that he had not been told that the hotel was filled with foreign journalists and that he had no orders to leave it alone."
• Israel seeks pipeline for Iraqi oil - "The plan envisages the reconstruction of an old pipeline, inactive since the end of the British mandate in Palestine in 1948, when the flow from Iraq's northern oilfields to Palestine was re-directed to Syria. Now, its resurrection would transform economic power in the region, bringing revenue to the new US-dominated Iraq, cutting out Syria and solving Israel's energy crisis at a stroke. It would also create an end less and easily accessible source of cheap Iraqi oil for the US guaranteed by reliable allies other than Saudi Arabia - a keystone of US foreign policy for decades and especially since 11 September 2001."
• How American power girds the globe with a ring of steel - "Having vanquished Saddam Hussein, the Pentagon is planning to establish four US bases in Iraq, according to reports in Washington yesterday. The Iraqi deployment plans fall into the century-old pattern of US foreign bases being built on the back of military victory."
• U.S. plans to keep bases in Iraq - "The four bases they are interested in are said to be the former Saddam International Airport outside Baghdad, Tallil air base near Nasiriyah, in the south, the air base known as H-1 in the western desert, and the Bashur airfield in northern Iraq. H-1, where special forces teams are currently based, sits strategically on the route of the oil pipeline to Jordan."
• Chalabi backs U.S. military presence in Iraq - "The military presence of the United States in Iraq is a necessity until at least the first democratic election is held, and I think this process should take two years," Chalabi said..."
• Iraqi anger boils over: Shiites eye war of liberation from Americans - "The army of "liberation" has already turned into the army of occupation. The Shiites are threatening to fight the Americans, to create their own war of liberation."
• The embedded in Iraq: stenography for the Pentagon - "While this has been the most extensively covered war in history, we ended up with a less-accurate picture of reality. For one thing, the U.S. media relied way too much on the veracity of official sources. The uprising that wasn't Remember, for example, the "Basra uprising" in which U.S. and British military officers claimed the Shiites of southern Iraq had risen up against Saddam Hussein?"
• US should be "embarrassed" over failure to find WMDs: ex-spies -Retired CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern told AFP: "Some of my colleagues are virtually certain that there will be some weapons of mass destruction found, even though they might have to be planted." Not anymore, the world has already turned its attention elsewhere.
• Our oil is for us, Iraqis warn US firms - "...Taleb Ali, editor of economic weekly Iqtissadi, said foreign firms should "provide consultancy services only" and not get involved in production. "We can buy the technical equipment we need and we have inside Iraq and abroad competent people to run the sector," added Ali, whose publication stopped after the start of the US-led invasion of Iraq a month ago."
• Fast food comes to Iraq - "Basra: Fastfood giants Pizza Hut and Burger King have set up their first franchises inside war-torn Iraq, even as many aid convoys waited on the borders for the war to officially end."
• Iraq's debt bomb - "The U.S. is already trying to persuade France, Russia and Germany, along with moderate Arab states, which hold most of Iraq's debt, to ease the country's titanic foreign financial obligations."
• Israel wants strike on Syria while iron's hot - Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Tel Aviv newspaper Maariv: ''We have a long list of issues we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians, and it would be best done through the Americans...'' Nothing has so demonstrated to Arabs their political impotence than Rumsfeld's selection of retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner as Iraq's interim military governor. Now a defense contractor, he helped develop the Arrow missile-defense system for Israel. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Garner visited Israel as guest of the hard-line Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and signed that organization's letter praising Sharon's treatment of Palestinians.
• Oil from Iraq : An Israeli pipedream? - "US efforts to get Iraqi oil to Israel are not surprising. Under a 1975 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the US guaranteed all Israel's oil needs in the event of a crisis. The MoU, which has been quietly renewed every five years, also committed the USA to construct and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel, equivalent to some US$3bn in 2002. Special legislation was enacted to exempt Israel from restrictions on oil exports from the USA. Moreover, the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market, even if that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not available to carry the crude to Israel. All of this adds up to a potentially massive financial commitment. The USA has another reason for supporting Paritzky's project: a land route for Iraqi oil direct to the Mediterranean would lessen US dependence on Gulf oil supplies. Direct access to the world's second-largest oil reserves (with the possibility of expansion through so-far untapped deposits) is an important strategic objective. "
• Russia fires first shots in post-war battle for oil wealth - "Maintaining UN controls would ensure a degree of influence in shaping the post-Saddam era for France and Russia, which were among the main beneficiaries of trade with Saddam and seek to defend their commercial interests."
• U.S. use of Clusters in Baghdad condemned - "Newsday’s reporter provided Human Rights Watch with a photograph he had taken inside a building in what he described as a clearly residential neighborhood well inside Baghdad. Human Rights Watch identified an unexploded cluster submunition in the photograph from either a ground-based Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) or an artillery projectile."
• Explosion in [residential] E. Baghdad - April 2003 (# 2)
• Double standards in reporting casualties
• Ba'athists slip quietly back into control - "The resurrection of the Ba'ath is, in part, acknowledgment of the daunting reality of governing a country as complex and battered as Iraq. Under Saddam membership was mandatory for teachers, police, the army, and senior posts in hospitals, universities, banks and the civil service...That elite - dominated by the Sunni minority which has governed Iraq since the Ottoman empire - remains the major source of local talent for the new US administration."
• Anti-US protest flares in Baghdad after prayers (# 2), (# 3) - "Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established, after the first Friday prayers since U.S. forces took control of the Iraqi capital."
• Exiled Shiite chief: Iraqis should rebel - "To the Iraqi people, U.S. domination is no better than the dictatorship of the ousted brutal regime of Saddam Hussein," al-Saqir told [AP].
• Thoughts of a US stooge have Shiites seething
• J.Pilger: The saving of one little boy must not be a cover for the crime of this war - "As Ali was flown to Kuwait, the Americans were preventing Save The Children from sending a plane with medical supplies into northern Iraq, where 40,000 are desperate. According to the UN, half the population of Iraq has only enough food to last a few weeks."
• Kurds oust Arabs from homes in Kirkuk - "Of all the legacies of Saddam's years of rule, none might be quite so difficult and explosive as his removal of ethnic minorities from oil-rich areas. Years ago, Saddam intensified a long-standing Baghdad policy of Arabization by evicting thousands of Kurds living in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and handing their property over to Arabs from other parts of Iraq."
• Why are the U.S. and Israel threatening Syria? - "They want to "remake" Iraq as a weak, pro-American, "democratic", free enterprise, federal state, which will provide rich pickings for American firms, but will never again be able to challenge American and Israeli interests."
• Eye witness report: The toppling of the statue of Saddam was a staged media event
• Doctored photo from the London Evening Standard - "On 9 April 2003, the London Evening Standard's front page contained a blurry image supposedly showing a throng of Iraqis in Baghdad celebrating the toppling of Saddam Hussein. What we are really looking at is an incredibly ham-fisted attempt at photo manipulation."
• Voices in the Wilderness banned from Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by U.S. Military
• US forces behind anarchy in Iraq: Pak analyst

Week 4:

The oil, liberation, and the Iraqi people

• Were the Russians blogging for Saddam? - "It offered detailed predictions about coalition troop movements many hours or even days in advance. It also quoted "intercepted" U.S. radio traffic, toted casualties on both sides and - with what perhaps its raison detre, the rest conceivably nothing but necessary ballast - provided strategic advice to the Iraqi military."
• US admits Mosul killings - "A US commander has admitted that American troops did shoot and kill a number of Iraqis during a protest in the northern city of Mosul."
• Embedded photographer:"I saw Marines kill civilians" - Distraught soldiers were saying: 'I ain't prepared for this, I didn't come here to shoot civilians.' The colonel countered that the Iraqis were using inhabitants to kill marines, that 'soldiers were being disguised as civilians, and that ambulances were perpetrating terrorist attacks.'
• Many Iraqis turn anger toward the U.S.
• Rioters stab L.A. Times reporter
• In bombed neighborhoods, everyone 'wants to kill Americans'
• Tests rule out suspect bio-labs
• The smoking gun’s charred trail: Coalition may have destroyed papers on weapons — and given itself an excuse
• Abu Abbas: Unfinished business - "Even Israel allowed him in and out of Gaza a few years ago as it accepted that he had given up violence and was supporting the Oslo peace process."
• Key people for post-conflict Iraq
• U.S. concentrating forces near Syrian border
• So who really did save Private Jessica? - "Doctors at al-Nasiriyah general hospital said that the airborne assault had met no resistance and was carried out a day after all the Iraqi forces and Baath leadership had fled the city."
• People in Basra contest official view of siege - "There was nothing resembling a popular uprising against the Iraqi militiamen who controlled this city during its 13-day siege by British forces."
• Pro-Saddam gangs challenge marines' control of Tikrit
• Shiite authority declares Jihad against occupiers
• Library books, letters and priceless documents are set ablaze in final chapter of the sacking of Baghdad - "I saw the looters. One of them cursed me when I tried to reclaim a book of Islamic law from a boy of no more than 10. Amid the ashes of Iraqi history, I found a file blowing in the wind outside: pages of handwritten letters between the court of Sharif Hussein of Mecca, who started the Arab revolt against the Turks for Lawrence of Arabia, and the Ottoman rulers of Baghdad. And the Americans did nothing. All over the filthy yard they blew, letters of recommendation to the courts of Arabia, demands for ammunition for troops, reports on the theft of camels and attacks on pilgrims, all in delicate hand-written Arabic script. I was holding in my hands the last Baghdad vestiges of Iraq's written history. But for Iraq, this is Year Zero; with the destruction of the antiquities in the Museum of Archaeology on Saturday and the burning of the National Archives and then the Koranic library, the cultural identity of Iraq is being erased. Why? Who set these fires? For what insane purpose is this heritage being destroyed? "
• At least 10 killed in Mosul shooting, US denies accusations it is to blame - eyewitnesses confirm earlier reports of US soldiers shooting at crowd to protect al-Juburi
• Troops fire on protesters: report - "US troops opened fire on a crowd hostile to the new pro-US governor [Mashaan al-Juburi] in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul today, killing at least 10 people and injuring as many as 100, witnesses and doctors said."
• US bans media from protests
• Marine's bullet-riddled helmet was prank
• Iraqis say Lynch raid faced no resistance
• Arab press worried about Syria - "Syria itself is not the only country to see the hand of Israel behind the threats, while other Arab dailies fear they could be part of a domino effect aimed at the wider Islamic world."
• U.S. also denies Iraqi oil to Lebanon
• US backtracks on chemical find - "US marines overnight reported finding five cannisters with a substance testing positive for chemical agents, but backed off a claim of finding 278 suspect artillery shells."
• US rejects Iraq DU clean-up - The US says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium (DU) weapons it is using in Iraq.
• Three weeks on, and still no water. Now doctors fear an epidemic - "Doctors in Iraq's second city, Basra, warned yesterday of an epidemic as a majority of the 1.3 million residents were still without safe drinking water three weeks after the war began...There is huge resentment in Basra against the British forces because of the lack of water and electricity. Residents also blame them for failing to control the looters."
• Disappointed Marines learn stay in Baghdad may be indefinite
• Pentagon sees end of combat
• America targeted 14,000 sites. So where are the weapons of mass destruction? - "As Susan Wright, a disarmament expert at the University of Michigan, said last week: "This could be the first war in history that was justified largely by an illusion." Even The Wall Street Journal, one of the administration's biggest cheerleaders, has warned of the "widespread scepticism" the White House can expect if it does not make significant, and undisputed, discoveries of forbidden weapons."
• Profile: Ahmed Chalabi - "A Shia Muslim born in 1945 to a wealthy banking family, Mr Chalabi left Iraq in 1956 and has lived mainly in the USA and London ever since, except for a period in the mid-1990's when he tried to organise an uprising in the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq."
• Iraq’s Liberation Front attempts to assassinate Chalabi - "A number of armed people belonging to the nascent National Front For The Liberation of Iraq (NFLI) tried Friday, April 11, to assassinate Ahmad Chalabi, one of the prominent exile leaders and head of the Iraqi National Council (INC)...The front further rebuffed other prominent Iraqi exiles such as Nezar al-Khazrgi, Nuri Abdul Razek, Mahdi Hafez, Adham al-Samra’I and their “ilk, as well as CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and Mossad (Israeli Intelligence) agents.”
• CIA candidate to lead Iraq assassinated - "Nizar Khazraji, a prominent Iraqi general who defected to the West, was assassinated Monday on his way to attend a U.S.-called meeting of opposition groups in the southern city of Nassiriya."
• Has anyone in U.S. read history of Iraq? - "With the powerful unifying glue of a Saddam Hussein removed, the various and diverse ethnic groups, with their inclusive political agendas are certain to clash. Washington's backing of certain Iraqi opposition groups, imposing their version of a democratic Iraq, while propping up discredited elements of the Iraqi opposition has created deep unease in the region."
• Resentment on streets of Baghdad - "They say they came here to liberate us. We have paid a heavy price for the removal of Saddam Hussein, so the Americans should go now..." Many believe that there will be a prominent role for the Iraqi National Congress, an organisation made up of Iraqi exiles, many of whom opposed Saddam Hussein from abroad. But on the streets of Baghdad there is little support for the INC. "Why should we be governed by people who have got rich in London and New York?" said one. "We must have someone who comes from Iraq and who has suffered with us."
• Myths about Israel, Iran-Iraq War, Saddam debunked by veteran journalist
• A civilisation torn to pieces - "But "liberation" has already turned into occupation. Faced by a crowd of angry Iraqis in Firdos Square demanding a new Iraqi government "for our protection and security and peace", US Marines, who should have been providing that protection, stood shoulder to shoulder facing them, guns at the ready. The reality, which the Americans and, of course, Mr Rumsfeld fail to understand is that under Saddam Hussein, the poor and deprived were always the Shia Muslims, the middle classes always the Sunnis, just as Saddam himself was a Sunni. So it is the Sunnis who are now suffering plunder at the hands of the Shia."
• US Forces encourage looting - "I was just 300 meters away when the guards where murdered. Then they shot the building entrance to pieces, and their Arabic translators in the tanks told people to run for grabs inside the building. Rumours spread rapidly and the house was cleaned out. Moments later tanks broke down the doors to the Justice Department, residing in the neighbouring building, and looting was carried on to there."
• Pentagon was told of risk to museums
• Muslims save Baghdad's Jewish community centre from looters - "We are defending the synagogue like all houses on the street and we will not let anyone touch it," said [Christian] Edward Benham, a 19-year-old computer science student.
• 'Our heritage is finished': Looters destroyed what war did not - "Some Iraqis, however, question the allocation of U.S. forces around the capital. They note a whole company of Marines, along with at least a half-dozen amphibious assault vehicles, has been assigned to guard the Oil Ministry, while many other ministries -- including trade, information, planning, health and education -- remain unprotected. "Why just the oil ministry?" Jaf asked. "Is it because they just want our oil?" U.S. military officials said the Marines have been guarding other sensitive installations, including the Interior Ministry and the Irrigation Ministry, and have stepped up patrols of commonly looted areas, dispatching troops in small convoys of Humvees to deter and apprehend thieves. But during a lengthy drive though the capital today, such patrols could only be seen in two wealthy neighborhoods."
• Scandal-hit US firm wins key contracts - "An Observer reporter who contacted the firm's [DynCorp] US headquarters purporting to be a potential police recruit for Iraq was told it was hoping to 'get people on the ground in two to four weeks'. The recruiter told the reporter he could expect a salary of $80,000plus 'hazard bonuses'."
• Ultimate Insiders - "This unilateral war and the ouster of Saddam have given the hawks and their commercial allies carte blanche in Iraq. And the company with perhaps the sleekest and most effective of all the inside tracks, a company that is fairly panting with anticipation over oil and reconstruction contracts worth scores of billions of dollars, is of course the Bechtel Group of San Francisco."
• Firms that gave to Bush get contracts
• Carving up the new Iraq - The neo-conservatives and the military involved
• Carving up the new Iraq (cont.) - The power-brokers, think-tanks, businesses, defence players and Arabs involved
• Inspections required to end sanctions, UN says
• Flashback: Déjà vu in Afghanistan - "The UN reports Taliban and al-Qaida on the offensive, Afghan women remain veiled, and the country in a dangerous mess. Declaring victory in Afghanistan may have been premature."
• Revealed: Russia spied on Blair for Saddam - no doubt the Russians wanted Saddam to stay in power, after all they have a 8 billion dollar debt to collect that won't be honored by the new Iraqi regime
• Fight will go on until destructive weapons are found, Bush says - there we have it, a perpetual war as advertised by Bush before: how do you find something that doesn't exist?
• Saturday, April 12: And the lootings, death, and rape continue: 16:45 GMT: "A mob ransacked a psychiatric hospital in northern Baghdad for 36 hours this week, AFP reports. Two patients unable to swallow water without assistance died of thirst and four women patients were raped, medical staff told the agency."
• [Arab] media fury at Iraq anarchy - "British and American forces are blamed for the breakdown of law and order and there is even a suggestion things were better under the old regime."
• Baghdad protests over looting - Hundreds of Iraqis have been demonstrating in the centre of Baghdad demanding urgent action to combat the wave of lawlessness that has swept the city: "Medical equipment such as heart monitors and incubators have been stolen and even the laboratories ransacked - centrifuges and microscopes smashed."
• Pillagers Strip Iraqi Museum of Its Treasure - " The National Museum of Iraq recorded a history of civilizations that began to flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000 years ago. But once American troops entered Baghdad in sufficient force to topple Saddam Hussein's government this week, it took only 48 hours for the museum to be destroyed, with at least 170,000 artifacts carried away by looters."
• BBC under fire over chaos reports - reporting the negative stories gets you a governmental reprimand (if you're the BBC) or you get shot at (as happened to al Jazeera in Afghanistan and now in Iraq)
• Shopkeeper killed - "US soldiers have shot and killed a Baghdad shopkeeper defending his business with a Kalashnikov assault rifle against looters. When US soldiers approached the area, the looters told them that the shopkeeper was a member of Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen paramilitary force."
• Iraqi officer tells of war chaos - Iraqi officer explains why no repeat of Stalingrad occured: "He said the Republican Guards did not want to engage in street fighting in Baghdad, despite allied forces being convinced they would make a last stand there, since the Iraqi soldiers' families were there and then "everything (can be) broken that's yours, so if I fight in my city, every building is mine ... those are our families, our babies. If you want to fight, you should fight out of (away from) your home."
• Robert Fisk: Baghdad: the day after - "The Americans may think they have "liberated" Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves – they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty – seem to have a different idea of what liberation means. American control of the city is, at best, tenuous – a fact underlined after several marines were killed last night by a suicide bomber close to the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down on Wednesday, in the most staged photo-opportunity since Iwo Jima."
• Robert Fisk: A day that began with shellfire ended with a once-oppressed people walking like giants - And the people of Baghdad performed this same deadly ritual yesterday, forgetting that they – or their parents – had behaved in identical fashion when the Arab Socialist Baath Party destroyed the previous dictatorship of Iraq's generals and princes. Forgetting, too, that the "liberators" were a new and alien and all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race nor religion to unite them with Iraq. "You'll see the celebrations and we will be happy Saddam has gone," one of them said to me. "But we will then want to rid ourselves of the Americans and we will want to keep our oil and there will be resistance and then they will call us "terrorists".
• What about Private Lori? - "They [Jessica Lynch and Lori Piestewa] were roommates at Fort Bliss military base in Texas; tentmates in the Gulf... Lori Piestewa, 23, was killed, with the gruesome distinction of being the first native American in the US army to be killed in combat and the only American servicewoman to die in this war."
• British-appointed Basra chief exposed as former Ba'athist
• Battle near Syrian border designed to protect Israel - the provocations of Syria are designed to provoke a reaction that gives reason for an invasion
• U.S. cuts Iraqi oil supply to Syria - Western intelligence sources said U.S.-led coalition forces shut off the oil pump outside the northern city of Kirkuk on Tuesday. The Kirkuk facility was pumping about 250,000 barrels of oil via a pipeline to the Syrian port of Banyas, Middle East Newsline reported. "It's a major move by the United States and will have a significant affect on Syria," a senior intelligence source said. "The Syrians are very upset." (to cut a country's life line could be construed as a declaration of war)
• Hawks in U.S. eyeing Syria as next target (# 2) - "One intelligence source with good access to Pentagon civilian authorities said that Rumsfeld last week ordered the drawing up of contingency plans for a possible invasion of Syria and that Defense undersecretary Douglas Feith is working on a policy paper highlighting how Syria's support of terrorist groups is a threat to the region."
• Regimes who worry that they will be next
• US warns Syria over Iraq - here we go again: accuse a country of having supposedly WMDs, or harboring Saddam or Al Qaeda loyalists and invade if they don't have them or won't give them up
• Foxa Americana - "The world according to Fox: America always helps oppressed people wherever they are, to free them of their shackles. America has no economic interests; no cynical, instrumentalist realpolitik guides it. America is good and only has moral interests."
• Arab and Muslim media reactions to the fall of Baghdad
• Agency wages media battle: Team makes sure war message is unified, positive - "So controlled is the administration's message that officials from Bush on down often use identical anecdotes to make their points, for example about Hussein's brutality. But the White House sometimes has been unable to provide details or documentation to back up those stories, and some human-rights activists have expressed skepticism about them."
• Soldiers face mortality in burying Iraqis
• Dyncorp rent-a-cops may head to post-Saddam Iraq - "Is the US military privatizing its missions to avoid public controversy or to avoid embarrassment - to hide body bags from the media and shield the military from public opinion?"
• Unsettled: Victory in the war is not victory in the argument about the war
• Iraqis have paid the blood price for a fraudulent war - "Even Israel's invading troops were feted by south Lebanese Shi'ites in 1982 - only to be driven out by the Shi'ite Hizbullah resistance 18 years later...In reality, the course of the conflict has strengthened the case against a war supposedly launched to rid Iraq of "weapons of mass destruction" - but which has now morphed into a crusade for regime change as evidence for the original pretext has so embarrassingly not materialised."
• Activists focus on 'anti-occupation'
• Fairly easy Iraq War proves antiwar arguments - "George W Bush told an audience in Cincinnati in October 2002 “there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone”. While the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) suggested that Hussein posed little more than a potential threat...The antiwar community was largely stating what has proven obvious. The Bush administration was fixated on toppling the Saddam regime not because it posed and immanent threat and not because it allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction but for posterity, ideology and, yes, oil."
• US troops' anguish: Killing outmatched foes And this country it was claimed posed a threat to the world
• Report from Baghdad: US Army Commander in Iraq says city not yet liberated - "Some people gave the general the "thumbs up" sign, and shouted, "Thank you..." Other people, mostly young Iraqi men, glared angrily at the long line of Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvee Jeeps rumbling past them. "
• Baghdad turns 'ugly'; US forces try to maintain order, control
• Despite cheering crowds, Army unit sees urban combat in Baghdad
• Privatization in disguise - "On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "probably...longer than that." And by the time the Iraqi people have a say in choosing a government, the key economic decisions about their country's future will have been made by their occupiers"
• Details given on contract Halliburton was awarded
• Brussels to investigate US contracts in Iraq
• Congressman questions Iraq work given to Halliburton subsidiary without competition
• As regime crumbles, battle for oil begins - "Those inclined to suspect an American conspiracy have pointed out that a unit of Halliburton, the energy corporation formerly headed by Mr Cheney, landed a £600 million contract last month for initial repairs to the oil fields."
• US alternative to Saddam has criminal record
• CIA report slams Pentagon's favorite Iraqi - "In a classified report distributed widely within the U.S. government, the CIA argues that Chalabi, a favorite of Pentagon civilian officials, and Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim, the leader of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, have little popular support among Iraqis on the ground."
• Marines discover huge cache of suicide bomb vests in a school
• Marines to impose Baghdad curfew - "I feel like I'm in Beirut, Lebanon, waiting for the suicide bombers," said Army Lt Col Philip DeCamp. "We know they're holed up on the other side of the river and scattered around the city."
• Eyewitness: "The marines shot anything they considered a threat"
• After the battle, scenes from hell on the highway
• US says flag incident was a 'coincidence' - "As the biggest statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down "spontaneously" in front of the world's media, the Stars and Stripes which flew on the Pentagon on 11 September was at hand to be draped over its face."
• 'Statue crowd egged me on' says marine - "Cpl Chin said the plan had always been to only keep the US flag up for a few seconds." This looks like a psyop stunt to create the connection in people's mind between 911 and Saddam Hussein, especially so since Cpl Chin says he was ordered to briefly put up the 911 flag even if the military is keen not to present themselves as occupiers and have forbidden flying the flag.
• American flag flap: Stars and Stripes on Saddam’s doomed statue strikes a sensitive chord - I was just trying my best to get the chain around his neck and put the flag on his head," Chin told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America. "Pretty much at the moment I was just doing what I was told to do by my commanding officer," he said.
• Live From Baghdad, Sights and Sounds of History - "As usual throughout the coverage of the war, now just three weeks old, pictures spoke louder than words -- but not necessarily more truthfully. Baghdad and the Hussein regime seemed to have fallen with the statue, but CBS viewers knew that, only a mile away, in the eastern part of the city, U.S. troops were exchanging fire with Iraqis loyal to Hussein..."
• Don't be fooled by joyous scenes, says refugee "Scenes of joyous Baghdad residents welcoming United States soldiers gave a misleading impression of how Iraqis felt about the US, an Iraqi refugee said today. "The next chapter is going to be a conflict between the Iraqi people and the invaders, the pro-American regime in Iraq," Dr Reben told reporters."
• Snap judgments: Did iconic images from Baghdad reveal more about the media than Iraq? - "Yesterday's coverage of the ''jubilation'' also had a self-conscious and forced quality, as if the media were too eager to capture ''liberation'' for its daily news cycle. Whenever the cameras pulled back, they revealed a relatively small crowd at the statue. And yet many news anchors quickly shed their objectivity to celebrate the event. ''If you don't have goose bumps now,'' gushed Fox News anchor David Asman, ''you will never have them in your life.'' ''It was the mother of all photo ops,'' says Norman Solomon, coauthor of ''Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You.'' Solomon saw yesterday's focus on the statue as an ''example of the tremendously subjective character of the media coverage in this war. . . . What was notable was how few Iraqis were there. It was almost like a lethargic pep rally. There was scarcely a pompom in evidence. Despite the best of efforts, it had a kind of low-budget staged quality as though a movie was being shot but they couldn't get any extras.''
• Shock and awe: About that dead statue...The pictures showing only few Iraqis involved with statue pulling, most of them being Shiites, and perhaps as has been suggested some "undercover" FIFs (Free Iraqi Forces).
• US friendly Iraqi leaders lynched (# 2) - "Former Iraqi general Nizar Al-Khazaraji and Islamic scholar Majid Al-Khoi’i have both been executed by Iraqi residents of Najaf, according to five independent Iraqi witnesses to the incident who spoke to Arab News. The two potential Iraqi leaders of the city, who were supported by the US, “were chopped into pieces with swords and knives inside the Ali Mosque this morning by Iraqis who accused them of being American stooges,” one of the witnesses said. Another said that a US Special Forces Soldier, who had been acting as their body guard, was also killed in the incident. Al-Khoi'i's death has since been confirmed by his family in London."
• Embedded in a new world order - "It is vital that the questions that were posed about the chemical weapons and terrorism justifications for going to war continue to be asked and that the politicians, intelligence chiefs and military planners who made the case be held accountable."
• TV images stir anger, shock and warnings of backlash - "What some in the United States considered Iraqi liberation was viewed in the Arab world as the culmination of U.S. aggression and hypocrisy."
• Iraqis turn on fedayeen - "As the fedayeen suspect looked on in the back of the vehicle, his face was etched with shock and bewilderment. The British had saved his life."

Week 3:

The war from the Iraqi side

• Much lies outside control of allies
• Journalists snub Straw and Spanish premier - "One Spanish journalist had asked Mr Straw's counterpart Ana Palacio about reports US forces had declared the Palestine Hotel - where most foreign reporters were staying - a military target 48 hours prior to the blast that killed Jose Couso and Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk."
• Marines hold nuclear site - the embedded reporter is talking about "hidden" underground" facilities, giving the impression that UN Inspectors weren't aware of them, when in fact the opposite is true
• Experts:US "discovery" of nuclear materials already known
• U.S. Nuke Find Claim in Iraq Critiqued (# 2) - "American troops who suggested they uncovered evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq unwittingly may have stumbled across known stocks of low-grade uranium, officials said Thursday. They said the U.S. troops may have broken U.N. seals meant to keep control of the radioactive material."
• Arabs shocked, relieved at Baghdad's fall - "Whatever I'm seeing is very painful because although Saddam Hussein was a dictator, he represented some kind of Arab national resistance to the foreign invaders — the Americans and the British," Fakhro said."
• Gulf War Syndrome II - "When Rokke [former director of the Army's depleted uranium (DU) project] sees images of soldiers and civilians driving past burning Iraqi trucks that have been destroyed by tank fire, or soldiers or civilians inspecting buildings destroyed by missiles, and these people are not wearing respirators, he says they all risk radiation poisoning, which can have lifelong consequences."
• Jordanian FM denies reports on restarting Iraq oil pipeline - "The Infrastructure Ministry source said Paritzky believes restarting the pipeline could reduce Israel's fuel costs by 25 percent and turn Haifa into "the Rotterdam of the Middle East."
• Israel eyes Iraqi oil - "There has been no official comment yet from Jordan, but any suggestion that Israel might benefit from the fall of Saddam Hussein is likely to enrage many people in Arab countries."
• Hurt and disillusioned, some Arab fighters go home - "I was sleeping behind mounds of sand and firing from Kalashnikovs on helicopters. It was craziness," [Salaam, 24 years old] said.
• Shoot the morons, then the journalists? (# 2) - depicts the arrogance of some U.S. soldiers
• U.S. Tells Iran, Syria, N. Korea 'Learn from Iraq'
• Iraq war planned long in advance; banned arms not the priority: Blix
• US-backed militia terrorises town - "The Iraqi Coalition of National Unity (ICNU), which appeared in the city last week riding on US special forces vehicles, has taken to looting and terrorising their neighbourhood with impunity, according to most residents."
• Reporters Without Borders accuses US military of deliberately firing at journalists - Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three journalists.
• Manipulations of a Pentagon mouthpiece: 'Key messages' replace the truth
• Syria now top US target for 'regime change' - In December, Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, said: "We are certain that Iraq has recently moved chemical or biological weapons into Syria."
• Hoon warns of more pre-emptive strikes
• U.S. begins the process of 'regime change'
• U.S. tests indicate Iraq substances not banned arms - chemical agents allegedly found by the 101st Airborne Division once again turned out to be a fabrication
• US 'not targeting Iran or Syria' - meaning the US *is* targeting Iran and Syria
• Fate of 'Chemical Ali' remains in question - "This morning, British officers said they found Majeed's body...By this evening, however, British forces said they believed Majeed might have survived the attack."
• Myths and misconceptions about the war in Iraq (# 2)
• Video of US air assault on Baghdad on Tuesday morning - An A-10 is repeatedly seen deploying countermeasures, and F-18s can be distinguished, including a strange-looking explosion in front of the Iraqi Planning Ministry building
• Chemical hypocrites - As it struggles to justify its invasion, the US is getting ready to use banned weapons in Iraq - "The chemical weapons convention, promoted by George W's father and ratified by the US in 1997, insists that "each state party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare". Teargas, pepper spray and other incapacitants may be legally used on your own territory for the purposes of policing. They may not be used in another country to control or defeat the enemy."
• A vet watches rerun of a bad war
• "Smoking gun" WMD site in Iraq turns out to contain pesticide
• Here's the war according to CNN
• Murdoch's war on truth in war reporting
• Some allied claims fall short in Iraq war
• The real war: Now it starts - according to Esra Naamas, a representative of "Women for a Free Iraq", all Saddam loyalists, ranging in the thousands should be executed after the war
• Pictures of an A-10 "Warthog" damaged in Iraq
• Numbers and estimates from Iraq from US and British military sources
• Numbers and estimates from Iraq from Russian military Intel sources
• Baghdad in 2003 recalls Beirut in 1982 - "Pictures of US troops swooping on Baghdad to hold it in vise and force Saddam to capitulate spurs memories of the Israeli forces heading to Beirut to eject PLO chief Yasser Arafat."
• In this war, victory could be worse than defeat
• Viewing the war as a lesson to the world
• John Pilger: We see too much. We know too much. That's our best defence
• U.S. finds no WMDs in Iraq - thank you very much we knew that all along
• Video of the aftermath of the friendly fire attack on the convoy Jon Simpsons was travelling with
• U.S. Invasion Begins 'Mysterious' Time for Baghdad Residents - "Joining their ranks were men in civilian clothes carrying guns, some appearing to be in their mid-teens. In one square, men with the Fedaan tribe raised their red flag over a sandbagged position, suggesting the government had called on tribes from the countryside to aid the city's defense."
• Baghdad battle may be nightmare scenario - "I am not afraid to die..., I am doing this for my country" said Thamer Mekki, a 16-year-old in blue jeans and a T-shirt who says he learned how to shoot a gun at 14.
• Iran says bodies found in Basra are its troops (# 2)
• Republican Guard poses puzzle - ''We haven't seen the volume of equipment they have,'' said Lieutenant Christopher Pike, intelligence officer for Third Brigade.
• The mood changes as the marine invasion gains momentum - "The 10th [Brigade of the Medina Division] all ran away to Baghdad," said Mohamed.
• Reports of airport assault [were] premature (# 2) - That is why CNN only had a doctored picture for their frontpage. Robert Fisk: "And there were no Americans, no armour, not a soul around the runways of the airport..."
• Saddam's Stalingrad strategy - "True catastrophe only befell the German invaders when Stalin unleashed the massive armies he had pulled out of Nazi Panzer traps by timely retreats during the previous summer's fighting in the southern Russian steppe to close in like steel jaws on the vulnerable, over-extended supply lines and flanks of the Sixth Army."
• 'Rolling' victory key to U.S. endgame - "The Bush administration has devised a strategy to declare victory in Iraq even if Saddam Hussein or key lieutenants remain at large and fighting continues in parts of the country, officials said yesterday."
• Euphrates chemical tests said negative
• Pentagon defends use of civilian clothes - "Alleging war crimes, Bush administration officials complained bitterly last week that Iraqi paramilitary forces dressed as civilians..."
• US forces use schools for cover - "The decision to locate the special forces in a residential area appears to run counter to US policy. The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, recently criticised Iraq for placing key military units and weaponry in and around mosques, hospitals and schools in both Baghdad and Basra."
• Iraq promises 'unconventional' attack
• Western journalists beaten, starved by Americans - "Their ordeal at the hands of the Americans is in stark contrast to that received by Newsday journalists in Baghdad..."
• Shia cleric denies Fatwa not to resist invasion (# 2)
• CNN was right on target in guessing war's start date
• After Saddam, trouble for Iraqi Christians? - an Iraqi Catholic explains Christians' fears about the next Iraqi regime
• Some worry U.S. may bend facts for policy - Intelligence: analysts pressured to spin reports to support White House position, veterans say.
• Detecting disinformation, without radar - "Remember the following first rule of disinformation analysis: truth is specific, lie is vague. Always look for palpable details in reporting and if the picture is not in focus, there must be reasons for it."
• The minute it's made up, you'll hear about it
• Myers: No 'siege' planned for Baghdad
• US heavy-handedness baffles British
• 'We have either a good surprise for you or a bad surprise...' - photographer Molly Bingham's account of her kidnapping in Baghdad
• The message coming from our families in Baghdad - "Tony Blair says this is a war to liberate the Iraqi people. As an Iraqi Kurd whose family and people have been bombarded continuously in Baghdad for the last 14 days, I beg to differ."
• White House downplaying weapons of mass destruction - Bush has shifted emphasis of war to liberation of Iraqis

Week 2:

• The proof: marketplace deaths were caused by a US missile - Investigations by the Independent show that it was a Raytheon-manufactured missile that hit the market first blamed on the Iraqis
• Saddam's greater game
• Al Jazeera: It's just as fair as CNN.
• We don't understand Iraqis, admits US officer
• Brits worry about Iraqi surprise (# 2) -"...but there is concern that much of the 'heavy fighting' across the front stated by U.S. military spokesman may be against decoy Iraqi gun sites and dug-in tanks. "There is some mystery," said British Broadcast Corp reporter Gavin Hewitt in Iraq, "of whether the Medina Division is actually there, or in Baghdad or Karbala."
• Marines get intimate glimpse of enemy at deserted camp - some insight in Iraqi battlefield conditions. However, it must be pointed out that finding Iraqi gasmasks and antidote for nerve agents is obviously no proof of actually possessing those agents. All armed forces prepare themselve for such contingencies
• Iraqi Vice President: Coalition might 'plant' barred arms
• 'I never want to hear that sound again' (of the A-10's 30mm Avenger cannon) - "Coloured smoke signs were sent up to indicate that they were friendly troops but it didn't stop the attack. The planes came back a second time..."
• Comment: It will end in disaster - the US and British governments have dragged us into a mess that will last for years - some predictions about the likely outcome of the invasion in Iraq
• Faked front-page photograph published by the L.A. Times
• Special search operations yield no banned weapons - "...U.S. forces have tested 10 of their best intelligence leads, four that first day and another half-dozen since, without result."
• Marketing experts say war is a tough sell - Slogans strive for image of quick, clean war - By and large, the Bush administration has done that, he said, distilling a huge geopolitical conflict with multiple underlying political causes down to a simple message of "freeing 23 million Iraqis."
• The reality of war - "It wasn't supposed to be like this; the Shia in the South were supposed to hail the allies as liberators; the Iraqi army was supposed to stand and be wiped out; Baghdad was supposed to fall within days. But Saddam learnt a bitter lesson in 1991, and he wasn't about to repeat the same mistakes."
• US missile hit Kuwaiti shopping mall (login: flashclub password: flashclub)
• US turns sights on Syria and Iran - as called for by the PNAC
• U.S. & coalition casualties
• War Watch: Claims and counter claims made during the media war over Iraq - US & Coalition propaganda blunders exposed
• BBC chiefs stress need to attribute war sources - "We're getting more truth out of Baghdad than the Pentagon at the moment. Not because Baghdad is putting out pure and morally correct information but because they're less savvy about it, I think."
• Through Middle Eastern eyes - "They are covering this war in much the same way that they covered the intifada - the Palestine-Israeli war, which is to say the glorification of martyrs, which is to say a kind of a blood pornography...."
• 15 stories they've already bungled
• Eliminating truth: the development of war propaganda
• Mainstream media’s sanitized war coverage helps mask carnage
• How the warriors have learned to control news
• Blair and Bush admit that war in Iraq could now last for months (# 2), (# 3) - General William Wallace: "The enemy we're fighting is different from the one we'd war-gamed against." They should have let retired general Van Riper make his moves and learn from them, but military brass seems unable to grasp new concepts
• Flashback: Rumsfeld sees quick victory in Iraq
• Jubilation turns to hate as aid arrives
• They are fighting for their independence, not Saddam - "Almost 86 years ago to the day, the British commander Lieutenant General Stanley Maude issued a proclamation to the people of Baghdad, whose city his forces had just occupied. "Our armies," he declared, "do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, but as liberators." Within three years, 10,000 had died in a national Iraqi uprising against the British rulers..."

Week 1:

Civilians always suffer most during war, even if it's for their "liberation" it seems

• Differing TV images feed Arab, US views
• What you aren't being told about Iraq
• Related: The lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq
• Most of the people are happy to see us - "All along the road, for many kilometres, Iraqi civilians and soldiers waved, blew kisses and gave the thumbs up to passing marine vehicles." Embedded journalist out of touch with reality and unaware that the thumbs up is the middle eastern equivalent of giving someone the finger
• Basra: Why they are not cheering - "A coming together often happens to a people under siege, and a siege is what the Iraqis are now experiencing."
• Flashback: Iraq war games rigged (# 2) - "A phrase I heard over and over was: 'That would never have happened,'" [retired Lieutenant General] Van Riper [playing Saddam] recalls.
• Alleged chemical weapons plant was discovered 12 years ago
• FAIR: Lack of skepticism leads to poor reporting on Iraq weapons claims
• Pentagon denies claims chemical weapons factory found
• Pictures of US POWs (video) and KIA (video) - captured near Nasiriya as 12 soldiers were reported missing - the interview of the 5 POWs shown on al Jazeera is in violation of the Geneva Convention same as the US media's showcase of Iraqi POWs not to mention US double standards on Guantánamo Bay's "unlawful enemy combatants"
• 'Liberated' Iraqis question US motives (# 2) - report from the same town where celebrating Iraqis were shown
• Marines fighting in Umm Qasr - Battle footage from Umm Qasr
• No Scuds fired by Iraqis - "Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference that the Iraqis have not fired any Scuds and that U.S. forces searching airfields in the far western desert of Iraq have uncovered no missiles or launchers."
• Pentagon says no Scuds fired - "U.S. and Kuwaiti sources initially reported all the missiles as Scuds, but the Pentagon later said it believes they were al Samouds or some other type of missile."

Weblogs:
The Command Post
Warblogging
No War Blog
Back to Iraq 2.0
Live from Kuwait - A Civilian War Diary
qHate - Kuwaiti blogging on Iraq War
L.T. Smash - Live From the Sandbox

Media / Resources:
Reuters Raw Video - unedited video feeds from Reuters
BBC: Iraq Latest: At-a-glance
Guardian: Interactive Iraq War Report
BBC: Reporters' Log: War in Iraq
Russian Military Intel: Iraq War
Telepolis-Irak-Konflikt

2003-03-08T18:57:00.000+01:00

Wise Words by Libertarian Republican Ron Paul

On the war in Iraq: I think this will be a gift for Osama bin Laden. He will be the beneficiary of it. He hates Saddam Hussein. He has a better chance of getting one of his men [in power] after we cause a lot of disruption over there. And besides, his recruiting operation is going to get a real boost. We are going to prove to many Muslims around the world exactly what he has been telling them all along, that we are over there to dominate, to control, and to get the oil. I think we have fallen into that trap.

On the Patriot Act and Homeland Security: [They] have the basic problem of really undermining privacy, which I think is the essence of our liberty. If you don’t have privacy, you don’t have much freedom left. The part that [also] really bothers me was the process. We did not even have real access to the bill[s] before the vote. I have a general rule, since I’m not a so-called loyalist. As a member of the party, I feel like there is some allegiance that I have to give. So I give it on the procedural votes, the parliamentary votes. Two times I went against the Republican Party on procedural votes: They were the PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security.

I would not support the rule because I thought the method was so atrocious. The bills were not available. Things were switched around. They kept the House open until 5:00 a.m. in order to avoid a two-thirds vote. I don’t think we ever really had the final version of the PATRIOT Act before the bill was debated. And the other one became available two hours before. Then the difficulty in reading it was overwhelming. We had passed it once in the House. It was 52 pages. When it came back it was 484 pages. It was very hard to read, written in a lot of legalese. It was just a matter of making technical changes in the code and changing the Privacy Act. If somebody tells you ‘Oh, I had the bill, I just read it, and it doesn’t sound that bad' – they wouldn’t know what they had read! They took it out of the realm of real debate and serious thought, and just politicized it.

They were in a rush, and I don’t think it would have stood the light of day. When the Homeland Security bill went back to the Senate they had the one key vote on whether or not they might be able to amend this bill. But that would have ruined it. That would have delayed it until next year. This was too serious. But they didn’t know what was in there. It was all politics. It looks like we did something before the election, but by not delaying it and not allowing too much debate, it also did not let [the public] find out about exempting corporations from liability for vaccine shots, [etc.]. The list of the details is pretty long. Overall, it is just the elimination of the rule of law and allowing the government to do things that they aren’t supposed to do. If they [want to spy on us], they should be getting very difficult to obtain search warrants. But it’s open game now. I see the PATRIOT Act as making it easier to get search warrants and Homeland Security making it like they don’t even need them anymore.

On truth in politics: I think the only thing we can do is reveal the truth. Politicians aren’t very good at doing that, they are demagogues. So I really haven’t gotten into the right profession to deliver truth. As long as we believe that we are being subjected to terrorist attacks because we are good and honest and free and prosperous nothing much will come of our foreign policy.

An Anti-War Republican!

Also see:

Sorry, Mr. Franklin, “We’re All Democrats Now”
Official Web Site of US Rep. Ron Paul

2003-02-22T23:03:00.000+01:00

13 Myths About the Case for War Against Iraq

New flyer under development by the guys from www.13myths.org:

Myth 1: Removing Saddam Will Prevent 9/11 Repeat
Myth 2: Powell Presented Strong Evidence
Myth 3: Saddam May Soon Threaten US
Myth 4: Experts 'Discover' Prohibited Missile
Myth 5: Bin Laden Tape Proves Iraq Connection
Myth 6: Iraq Still Has Large Nuclear Program
Myth 7: If US Pulls Out Now, It Looks Bad
Myth 8: A Cheap, Easy War
Myth 9: Wartime Press is Free and Unbiased
Myth 10: Goal is to Free Iraqis, Not to Grab Oil
Myth 11: War Solves the Energy Crisis
Myth 12: UN Commitments Don't Really Matter
Myth 13: Protesting a War is Unpatriotic

2003-02-16T19:22:00.000+01:00

Millions March Against War in Iraq

The biggest demonstrations worldwide since the Vietnam War; and in Switzerland the biggest in two decades

The biggest demonstration since the Cold War; 40'000 protestors gathered in the Swiss Capital Bern.

Millions of demonstrators all over the world yesterday showed the U.S. government and its UK lapdog their opposition to the planned war in Iraq and exposed the US Administration's real motive behind the war (no blood for oil) to the TV cameras of the world.

The Washington Post was caught spinning the millions of demonstrators (up to 11.5 million people by independent reports) into a "thousands worldwide". The figure of "millions of people" was however mentioned in most US mass media as it was impossible to ignore. Some right-wing websites showed their true colors labeling peace protesters in Germany "Hitlers children".

A small group of people, however, can't or won't distinguish between opposition to Bush's policies or the war in Iraq and anti-Americanism. People burning flags obviously don't understand the finer points, and often are the same ones discrediting legitimate peace protests with violence (see the WEF '03 after-demo in Bern that ended with somebody getting shot with a flare gun). It is the same kind of infantile behaviour currently being displayed by US talk show hosts, etc., taking cheap shots at the French being wussies in war, because they have different ideas about the war in Iraq. It doesn't help at all insulting someones national pride, by for example burning their flag. This is primarily what US commentators find to criticize the pro-peace demonstrations, disregarding the few cranks who call all those demonstrators "hippie communists" or "Hitler's children".

These demonstrations show that the world is longing for peace and in effect portray an unwillingess by large part of the world population to accept Bush's declared decade-long "War on Terrorism", especially now as in the case of Iraq there have been no proven links to international terrorism and the suspected mastermind of the first WTC bombing was offered by the Iraqis for extradition but the US declined. And the supposed links to al-Qaeida mentioned by Blair and the Bush Administration just don't hold up to scrutiny. The issue of WMD I won't touch here, let it be suffice to say that if Iraq really has WMDs, a war is no way to disarm those weapons without them being used. After all, that has been and still is the purpose of such weapons, i.e., they are a deterrence, such as in MAD (mutually assured destruction in the cold war).

The overall game-plan for Iraq and Saudi-Arabia and US policy for expansion of the US hegemony over the Middle East, as a stepping-stone to totall world dominance has already been defined in 1992 by then undersecretary of defense for policy Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney, and the new strategy followed by President Bush is based on their recommendations for US world domination. The peace demonstrations can hardly change this reality, and threfore, can't stop the war. But public opinion against war does make it necessary to gain approval by the populace through new evidence presented (the new "Bin Laden" tape didn't help much telling the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam, neither do the missiles reaching over the mandated maximum range of 150 km) or some kind of terror event that will scare people into the war.

Berne, Switzerland: 40'000 say no blood for oil!
switzerland.indymedia.org

Some pictures from F-15 in Bern can be found here:
F-15 in Bern

Thousands join anti-war protest in Bern:
www.swissinfo.org

2003-01-21T18:21:00.000+01:00

What happened to voxnyc.com?

UPDATED 10/06/03

I followed up on Yun Ye's (the alias of the one person behind Ultimate Search) over-taking of voxnyc.com and in the process acquired an insight into the lucrative world of domain brokering, where millions are made, but the Internet is spammed with useless advertisements for online casinos, insurance, etc. in the process. Those ads are sold through advertising services, who then sell those pay-per-click ads on "stolen" domain names (Ultimate Search alone has about 50'000 generating six-figures per day). It is a never-ending money stream for those few involved in a business, that can only be described as the e-mail spammers equivalent for the world wide web.

The problem exists because ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is written in such a mushy way, that it can be interpreted as legalizing any transfer of a domain name that once belonged to somebody else:

"The most that Complainant asserts is that Respondent has a pattern of registering domain names that once belonged to other parties and this is not an actionable offense under the UDRP."

They key word is once, as domains are often grabbed during the changing of the hosting provider or renewal of registration. Disregarding the webmasters who don't renew their registration in time because of various reaons, this on-going practice should be regulated by the ICANN.

I contacted different advertisers on the defunct voxnyc.com website and all of those that answered buy their advertising space from findwhat.com, which is affiliated with Ultimate Search. I tried to contact Yun Ye by e-mail or by phone about buying back voxnyc.com. It must make too much money, so he won't sell it, because I never got a reply. Congrats Vox, you must have had quite the traffic to voxnyc.com!

For the last couple of days voxnyc.com seemed to be having DNS problems and now the new domain owner (namesecure.com) shows a standard webpage by Ultimate Search, a Hong Kong based domain brokering firm. Two scenarios are possible: The domain expired and "Ultimate Search" registered it automatically with their automated scripts checking for expired whois records. Or, the domain has been fraudently transferred to a new domain owner, e.g. through forged owner documents, as happened before with sex.com as a prominent example.

For once, however, it looks like the government is not involved in censoring a critical voice on the Internet. It rather seems to be a case of corporate greed, as the business model of domain brokering includes using the hits meant for the original hijacked website as capital. So stop giving hits to them by visiting voxync.com, and update your links to www.voxfux.com!

An anonymous source wrote the following at memes.org:

voxnyc.com down will move to voxfux.com
" Netsol/verisign/(nsa) has refused to accept payments for the voxnyc.com website. I will move all the contents from voxnyc to voxfux which is still registered. Voxnyc is currently disputed and it seems there is no chance that I will be able able to gain control of it soon. It's been a very frustrating battle with netsol. Thanks."

Netsol and some other domain-name registrars have very poor security in place for handling domain name transfers, so it seems that Netsol is the facilitator, and Ultimate Search the domain-grabbing thief. Other people had the same experience, two famous examples are The Poetry Society that won the battle for their domain name out of court without a penny paid thanks to the publicity the story got (lots of polite e-mails to Ultimate Search asking to restore true ownership/purpose to voxnyc.com hopefully would do the same in this case) and PriceWaterHouseCoppers lost their claim to pwc.com to Ultimate search in court.

So the best strategy seems to be to contact the new owners directly as Netsol doesn't feel responsible as their statement to another ex domain owner shows: "...it now will be up to the new person with the domain to decide whether or not they feel like giving it up."

Contact information for the perps:

Ultimate Search
DNS Support (dns@ultsearch.com)
+852 2537 9677
GPO Box 7862
Central
Hong Kong

The email reply they gave in the past when contacted by legitimate domain owner:

Yes, he could email us asking for it back, and provide his contact information so we know how to transfer the domain. Also, we've received several emails from people accusing us of stealing the domain, while all we did was register a domain that appeared abandoned at the time. We'd appreciate it if he could put some kind of disclaimer on his site making it clear that we did not steal the domain and we gave the domain back free of charge.

Regards,
Ultimate Search, Inc.

So there might be a chance that vox gets his domain name back after all, in the meantime update your links and visit www.libertythink.com/vox.htm for updates about the situation.

Link to the new voxfux website:

www.voxfux.com

Mirrors of voxnyc.com:

Cryptome VOXNYC Mirror
Lightscion VOXNYC Mirror

Download voxnyc.com archive (5.83MB)

2002-12-30T22:54:00.000+01:00

How Stupid Are You America?

...Wake Up

President Bush's intelligence or lack thereof has been questioned even in the US mainstream media, and especially so in the British papers like the Guardian. The "misunderestimated" President denies having dyslexia, so there's no excuse there. There has been some speculation on whether his problem to intelligently articulate himself stems from a low I.Q. or brain damage possibly through chronic cocaine consumption.

That is all of minor importance, however, because this man, stupid he may or may not be, makes decisions that are not his own but he acts for vested oil interests, the very same who made him President: "But it was former Vice-President Gore who had told the American people that if they chose Mr Bush to lead the country, he will be unable to do anything about oil prices, because he will be a hostage to the big oil industry interests."

Now Bush and his entourage, with the help of America's fathers and sons in the military, is securing one of the largest oil reserves of the world for American oil companies (the Iraqi opposition government in exile has made it clear that oil contracts will be renegotiated after the war), making sure American SUVs got enough cheap gasoline to guzzle, and most importantly not letting all that nice military hardware, which makes the USA the superpower that it is and runs only on oil, go to waste. Because it has been established by oil experts, that "at the current rate there would be only enough oil to sustain the planet for another 35 years under the best of scenarios." Control over Iraqi oil reserves therefore means control over who gets the rest of the world's oil.

Bush says its not a war against Arab states but it's exactly that: It's that the Muslims don't have the control over their own oil. (By 2010, Muslim nations could control 60 percent of the world`s oil production and, more importantly, 95 percent of the world`s oil exports.)

The real question is: Why are the American people so complacent to all of this and don't act out more as they have been? To the abolishing of civil liberties, the robbing of their pension funds by the government, the stripping of environmental protections, the turning of the USA into a world dictator?

Is it simply that the American people have been conditioned to accept and not to question what the government and the big media tells them? Are Americans still in enough shock because of 9/11 (and the Anthrax scare, sniper madness, etc.) not to get any idea that something's wrong, that the USA is turning into another Nazi Germany?

These factors definitely play into it because the American people have been sold hook line and sinker into the whole 'War on Terrorism' story, just as the world has been sold for decades on the 'War on Drugs'. But, thankfully today with the help of the internet information goes around much quicker and krooks get exposed sooner.

For people who have watched the education system in the US and also in Western Europe develop it seems clear why the American people have been so easily duped. They have been programmed no less, not using a too strong a word, for a push-button mentality.

For instance, in today's teacher's literature one learns the following:

'Conditioned Reflex Therapy' by Andrew Salte: "We are meat in which habits have taken up residence. We are a result of the way other people have acted to us. . . . Where there is a conditioned reflex, there is no will. Our will power is dependent on our previously learned reflexes." (P. 49)

William E. Martin’s Rediscovering the Mind of the Child: "A science of behavior emphasizes the importance of environmental manipulation and scheduling and thus the mechanization and routinization of experience. Similarly, it stresses performance in the individual. Doing something, doing it efficiently, doing it automatically - these are the goals. It is the mechanization of man .... The result is the triumph of technology: a push button world with well-trained button-pushers.” (P. 120)

This writer had the following experience: "Your Intrepid Correspondent was talking in a high school to a class of seniors about the career of Adolf Hitler, but there was a problem. I wasn’t discussing Hitler the way I was supposed to. For instance, I was explaining that Hitler was of course a far leftist, a Socialist, a National Socialist, that he believed in total government and therefore that he and the Communists were natural allies, an affinity that found expression in the Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact.

The immensely curious and fascinating thing about the confrontation was that these seniors could not understand what I was saying, not even enough to disagree. They never did figure out whether I was a good guy or not. They responded not to the ideas I was voicing but to the names I spoke. Whenever I mentioned Hitler, they booed. When I mentioned FDR, they applauded.

I realized that the names were buttons. They had been trained, not educated, to respond when those buttons were pushed. They responded not to the ideas I was voicing but to the names I spoke. Whenever I mentioned Hitler, they booed. When I mentioned FDR, they applauded. I realized that the names were buttons. They had been trained, not educated, to respond when those buttons were pushed."

And in 'All Our Children Learning' the author states his views, probably respectable because he's a professor, on the goals of education: "The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students." (P. 160)

All these excerpts are taken from Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's 'the Deliberate Dumbing Down of America' .

The result of education where no longer knowledge is taught but ideologies and political correctness (schoolbooks are flubbing facts; texts filled with errors and political correctness), is that people turn into mandated sheeples and leap on any chance not to have to be one, that is to have someone to blame and criticize especially if it's politically correct for once and even the President hates Saddam and muslim extremists. So one finds a lot of message boards where Americans voice their opinions as such: "Let's get this over with, bomb Iraq back to the stone age, and the Saudis with them, those *%*" raghead hijackers."

This is exactly the mentality required for the gunner to shoot people coming running from a mosque in this AC-130 infrared targeting video from Afghanistan. There's no excuse for not asking questions. Who am I fighting this war for and why? Do those people really have to die so I can have cheap gasoline and watch some sanitized war videos on CNN?

The German people were for generations blamed for what they let Hitler do. There was no excuse, they should have spoken out and some have. But will you? Because if you don't inform yourself and then act and stand up to this oppression then surely you will be blamed for not having done anything. Nazi history will be repeated this time in the USA first, and then the same NWO paradigm will be imposed on us opposite the big pond next (it has already started in Great Britain and Germany), if you don't stand up to it and put and end to it. Remember, we are many, they are few.

Related articles / sources:

The Deliberate Destruction of America's Education System: Worldnet Daily
Brave New Schools: A New Way of Thinking Brave New Schools
Public Schools: Manufacturing Center For Mindless, Immoral Slaves
America in a Trance (Or America the Stupid)

Video of aussie interviewer asking people on the street questions such as: "What countries are in the Axis of Evil": "I know Germany is one of them. I'm not sure about the others." Or "Where was the Berlin Wall?" Man on the street: "Believe me I know the answer to that question but I'm thinking..........is it Israel?"

Censorship starts out with little things always in order to see how the public reacts. Little things like John Lennon's 'Imagine' and now the banned list includes a whole range of songs: www.geocities.com/are_americans_stupid/banned_songs.html.

This cartoon clip brilliantly illustrates the world view created by the mass media, where public enemies remain in the public consciousness only as long as it's needed to start a war. Check the video above where a pedestrian doesn't remember Bin Laden by name, only that there was something about a guy with a diaper-head. Gosh!
markfiore.com/animation/remember.html.

2002-12-30T21:35:00.000+01:00

Two years ago a project set up by the men who now surround George W Bush said what America needed was "a new Pearl Harbor". Its published aims have, alarmingly, come true by John Pilger

"The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American "defeat" in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a "peace dividend" following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime..."

"On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives..."

"In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists"."

Read the article

Further excellent articles by John Pilger:

The myths and propaganda used to 'justify' war against Saddam aim only to distract attention from Bush and Blair's real prize: Iraq's rich reserves of oil.

John Pilger writes on the "secret" war which has seen a 300 per cent increase in bombing raids on Iraq.

Related articles:

U.S. Bombing Watch: When was the last time the U.S. Bombed Iraq?

9/11: Another Pearl Harbor?

2002-11-13T19:28:00.000+01:00

Even Celebrities Get It

Kevin Spacey, with his statements against Bush's war against Iraq and the absence of any debate about domestic (economic) issues, is the latest one in a row of Hollywood celebrities who came out to criticize the policies of the White House.

Spacey, who worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign, vented his frustration about the current situation during a party to launch a Web site on Monday:

"Republicans "left the impression that if you questioned whether [an invasion] is a good idea or not, you're unpatriotic. If we did what [Bush] is talking about doing, we'd go down a road from which we would never recover and which would start a chain reaction around the world. I live in the hope that it won't happen."

Woody Harrelson voiced his opinion in an article in the Guardian aptly titled "I'm an American tired of American lies": "The warmongers who stole the White House … have hijacked a nation's grief and turned it into a perpetual war on any nonwhite country they choose to describe as terrorist."

Sean Penn wrote an open letter to President Bush in a $56,000 ad in The Washington Post, warning against attacking a sovereign nation.

Even if it's just a handful of opinion-makers (for some) who wake up to what's going on and get it across to the public there might be some good coming from this. If it's only that the common Joe begins to ask himself, "hey, my favorite actor is against Bush, why is that?"

2002-11-08T18:45:00.000+01:00

The Face of Modern Ballot Tampering

You can't vote them out if....
You never voted them in.

Faun Otter analyzes the introduction of virtual ballot tampering: "The lack of any exit polling on November 5 has been oddly ignored by the media. Those pesky tracking polls leading up to the elections have been explained away by a ‘late surge to the Republicans’ caused by.... hmmmm, how about sun spot activity? With no exit polls, there was no other feedback to conflict with the "official" results, this allowed the Diebold touch screen machines to change the way election fraud is carried out."

Read the whole story at www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm

Jason Kitcat from www.free-project.org concludes about electronic voting systems: "From my experience of designing and developing GNU.FREE over the past three years it has become clear that creating an Internet Voting system sufficiently secure, reliable and anonymous is extremely difficult, if not impossible. As Bruce Schneier points out "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers."
He further says, "I've come to the realization that electronic voting of any type -- even if it's open source -- is a terrible, terrible idea. Very often, technology provides the smokescreen to allow people to steal votes. If you look at the actual voting process, the risks are humongous."

2002-11-05T20:38:00.000+01:00

Steal This Book

Abbie Hoffman’s long out of print Yippie classic published in 1970 is a timeless handbook for revolution and offers an interesting view on how life was like in America in the 60s. It is now free to download and distribute.

Abbie Hoffman's FBI file: FOIA: Abbot Hoffman

2002-11-03T11:27:00.000+01:00

Surveillance is Good for You, Honest

Transport For London, the city's mass-transit provider, has started a poster campaign (featuring the all-seeying eye of Horus) to drive the point home that CCTV cameras on London buses reduce crime (government statistics). The underlying message is that the public needs surveillance to feel safe. However, critics have argued that the number of violent crimes nonetheless has grown. At the most, the only good public surveillance does is it displaces crime to less surveilled areas if criminals don't take cameras "out of service" by wearing a baseball cap or hood. Also, CCTVs main use is after-the-fact, i.e., trying to identify the (unmasked) perp after the crime has happened.

One step at a time people's rights are taken away, until we can't speak out against them anymore, until the freedom to disagree with the government is gone. Today we are only monitored, what's the next step going to be? At least in Great Britain it is admitted that Big Brother is watching you, even if it's given the spin that it's for the people's own good.

Big Brother is watching: Not in 1984 but in 2002 The website that brought attention to the poster

Guide to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) destruction This is to be viewed as proof-of-concept, not condoning vandalism

ISee - No Surveillance Map The Institute for Applied Autonomy has provided a route-planer to avoid cameras (for Manhattan only as of yet). They state: "CCTV isn't much of a threat to terrorists. While CCTV systems can help police reconstruct events after an incident, CCTV is not terribly effective either in preventing attacks or in identifying suspects. As a result, terrorists spend remarkably little time worrying about the locations of surveillance cameras."

2002-11-02T15:04:00.000+01:00

Senator Wellstone Died in Plane Crash

Senator Wellstone's plane crashed two miles from the airport, and all eight passengers (including his wife and daughter) were killed. Wellstone was "the little guy who takes on the big guys". He was a staunch opponent of Bush's policies and voted against the Homeland Security Departement, and in favor of an independent 9/11 investigation. He also was the only Democratic senator running for re-election to vote against granting President George W. Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq.

A lot of critical minds have speculated that Wellstone was killed to tip the Senate balance. Others, less critical have attributed the accident to the forces of nature. It is however interesting to see what key role Wellstone's death plays to get Bush what he wants; the majority in the Senate. The Democrats traditionally had the majority in the Senate, when there was a Republican president and vice versa. Now, the Republicans are planning to control Congress. We know that there was a movement to try to oust Wellstone with massive amounts of mysterious money; nobody knows where it came from (that means there's no money trail, but look at who benefits).

Some facts that indicate an assasination:

* He died one day before the deadline of naming a replacement candidate ended, that means that Wellstone's name could have been put on the ballot and would have received a lot of sympathy votes.
* Weather reports as well as a local pilot commented on the weather as totally different as to what as been desribed by the media as icy and snowy conditions.
* Sabotage has been completely rejected as a possible cause of the crash
* The replacement Democrat Mondale has decided against using planes and now travels only by bus
* Conflicting statements about whether the plane was equipped with a voice recorder
* Wellstone avoided an apparent assassination attempt in Colombia two years ago.
* Wellstone witness sees flash of light near tail of plane. (Possible use of EMP weapons to disable the plane's electronic system)
* "They had just radioed in that they were coming in for a landing. They were only about 7 miles out. They gave no indication of any problem...and then... they lost all control and all communications in his plane instantly, without warning during a landing approach." www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0210/S00206.htm
* Wellstone's sons uninvited Dick Cheney from the memorial service which is needless to say highly unusual.

Senator Wellstone's death is very convienient for a lot of people, Republicans aren't the only one who could possibly gain from it. Wellstone wasn't in line with his fellow Democrats on many issues. What made certain people fear this man was his uncompromising stand among corruptibles.

2002-10-20T12:56:00.000+02:00

How to ZAP a Camera: Using Lasers to Temporarily Neutralize Camera Sensors

Inexpensive laser pointers can be used to temporarily blind video cameras. Michael Naimark: "The question `if a camera's aimed at me can I not be in the image?' became a haunting obsession. The answer is yes."

www.naimark.net/projects/zap/howto.html

2002-10-19T22:00:00.000+02:00

Web Sites Blackout over Spanish Monitoring Law

Spanish websites have shut down in great numbers displaying only a black screen in protest of new laws intended to regulate, i.e., to censor online content. The law, which became effective on October 12th mandates that web sites must register with a central government authority as well as the respective ISP, who are obliged to monitor sites for "illegal" content. Failure to comply with the law results in fines of up to 600'000 Euro.

"Law of Information Society Services and Electronic Commerce": LEY 34/2002, de 11 de julio, de servicios de la sociedad de la información y de comercio electrónico

The web sites listed here are showing their solidarity with the opposers of the Spanish LSSI: Cierres de webs españoles motivados por la LSSI

2002-10-19T21:18:00.000+02:00

Stop Censorship and Repression in "Democratic" Germany

Police should be required by law to identify themselves, as they are public servants after all and it is proven to deter police abuse: "For years the German Police made 'wanted' posters as this above for criminals, even for political activists, and hang them around on plenty of public places. As protest against the repression from the German police at a demo on the 1st of May early this year some Antifa groups made a special version from these hated 'wanted' posters. Now several Antifa militants around Germany have problems with the German Police. Internet providers are orderd to remove this poster from websites."

www.antifa.de German language site | translate w/ Babelfish

www.antifa.net

2002-10-06T19:38:00.000+02:00

Alex Jones: 9/11 - The Road to Tyranny

Alex Jones raises important points about the US government's connection to the first attack on the WTC in 1993 and the Oklahoma City Building bombing and factually concludes that 9/11 was also an inside job.

Description from the video documentary:

"THE ROAD TO TYRANNY EXPOSES:

* HOW DOZENS OF FBI AND DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENTS WERE THREATENED WITH ARREST BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IF THEY GOT IN THE WAY OF AL-QAEDA OPERATIONS
* HOW THE CIA TRAINED, FUNDED AND PROTECTED BIN LADEN
* THAT IMPEACHMENT LAWYER DAVID SCHIPPERS WARNED CONGRESS AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OF THE IMPENDING TERRORISTS ATTACKS .
* HOW THE RECENTLY DECLASSIFIED TOP-SECRET NORTHWOODS DOCUMENT WRITTEN BY THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF LAID OUT PLANS TO BOMB WASHINGTON AND TO HIJACK AIRPLANES AS A PRETEXT FOR WAR
* BILL CLINTON'S INVOLVEMENT IN THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING AND HOW IT WAS CARRIED OUT BY INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES TO BE BLAMED ON THE RIGHT-WING
* HOW THE FBI ORDERED THEIR INFORMANTS TO COOK THE BOMB AND TRAIN THE DRIVERS IN THE FIRST WORLD TRADE CENTER ATTACK IN 1993
* FBI TRAINING MANUALS THAT ARE BEING GIVEN TO POLICE DEPARTMENTS THAT STATE THAT CHRISTIANS, GUN OWNERS, AND "THOSE WHO MAKE FREQUENT REFERENCES TO THE US CONSTITUTION" ARE TERRORISTS
* THE UNFOLDING CASHLESS SOCIETY BIOMETRIC CONTROL-GRID
* THE GOVERNMENT NEEDED A CRISIS TO CONVINCE THE PEOPLE TO WILLINGLY GIVE UP THEIR LIBERTY IN EXCHANGE FOR SAFETY.

..NOW THE PAINFUL FACTS ARE IN. THE DARK FORCES OF GLOBAL GOVERNMENT ARE FUNDING, TRAINING AND PROTECTING TERRORIST NETWORKS WORLDWIDE.
.....911 THE ROAD TO TYRANNY DOCUMENTS THE RUTHLESS HISTORY OF GOVERNMENTS ORCHESTRATING TERRORIST ATTACKS AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE TO SCARE THEM INTO TOTAL SUBMISSION.
.....IN THIS BRUTAL EXPOSE YOU WILL WITNESS THE BIRTH OF A GLOBAL POLICE STATE THAT SURPASSES ORWELL'S NIGHTMARE VISION.
.....IT'S ALL HERE: THE HISTORY OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED TERRORISM, THE MODERN IMPLEMENTATION OF FEAR-BASED CONTROL AND, MOST FRIGHTENING OF ALL, THE NEW WORLD ORDER'S FUTURE PLANS.
.....THIS IS ONE FILM YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO IGNORE. THE FUTURE OF FREE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE IS AT STAKE.

BIG BROTHER IS AFRAID OF THIS DOCUMENTARY!!!"

Download the video (35.5MB) here

Or you can watch it (requires Real Player) streamed

2002-10-06T18:58:00.000+02:00

Answers from Straightdope.com

* Has a guy been stuck in the Paris airport since 1988 for lack of the right papers?
* Where are all the baby pigeons?
* If I hadn't killed 52 flies as a child, how many descendants would they have had by now?
* What was the Mexicans' version of the Alamo attack?
* Is the world more dangerous now than when we were kids?
* Do CDs have a life expectancy of 10 years?
* Why don't birds on wires get electrocuted?
* How did cheese originate?
* What's up with the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal?

2002-09-28T15:33:00.000+02:00

The MAD Panic: FBI Kept Files on Mad Magazine

The FBI suspected the satirical magazine of spreading subversive or even communistic slogans because of such parodies as the Draft Dodgers (Bufiles 62-106572-X3 to X9) where Mad Magazine offered a test of military unsuitability, if one scored high it was recommend to apply for an official Draft Dodger's Card at FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's address. That was not the only time the editors of Mad Magazine mad fun of him.
Perls such as this can be found among the agents' communication: A M.A. Jones writes in disgust how the magazine "at one time presented the horror of a war to readers". The FBI investigated from 1957 until 1971, creating 36 separate files. Today, Mad Magazine is owned by the media giant Time-Warner, which means that a reoccurence of such defiance is rather unlikely...

The FBI Bufiles

2002-09-28T14:37:00.000+02:00

9/11: Another Pearl Harbor?

Pearl Harbor and the attacks of 9/11 were both attacks that surprised and shocked the United States and people worldwide, and they both gave the U.S. a pretext and support by the people to enter into war. Both events, so goes the U.S. government's line, happened because of intelligence failures. After sixty years the truth is slowly emerging how President Roosevelt and his staff tried to force Japan into a war with the US. The facts cannot be denied any longer as the FOIA documents are now open to the public in which Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, a U.S. Naval officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence in October 7, 1940 calls for eight provocations against Japan that would lead it to attack the U.S.

Read the FOIA documents here: The McCollum Memo

Freedom of Information Act Files Prove FDR Had Foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor

Another untruth still propagated today is that only the Purple, the Japanes diplomatic cipher had been cracked. The fact of the matter is that JN-25, the Japanese Navy's Cipher was completely broken in December 1940 as admitted by the NSA in 1994.

As Robert B. Stinnett reports in the Honolulu Advertiser: "Japanese leaders failed in basic security precautions. At least 1,000 Japanese military and diplomatic radio messages per day were intercepted by monitoring stations operated by the U.S. and her Allies, and the message contents were summarized for the White House. The intercept summaries were clear: Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7, 1941, by Japanese forces advancing through the Central and North Pacific Oceans. On November 27 and 28, 1941, Admiral Kimmel and General Short were ordered to remain in a defensive posture for "the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act." The order came directly from President Roosevelt." (Pictured on the right is how the Japanese saw FDR).

A recently discovered Japanese midget submarine a few miles from Pearl Harbor sunk by the USS Ward about an hour before the attack started shows how early the U.S. High Command must have been alerted to the impending Japanese surprise attack but orders were giving to not forward that information. As was reported: "It's the shot that started World War II between the Americans and the Japanese," said John Wiltshire, director of Hawaii Undersea Research."

Of course, the congressional Pearl Harbor committee concluded in its 1946 report that U.S. officials had information that could have prevented the attacks but that an "intelligence failure" occurred. However, with all the new information available today it is clear that President Roosevelt and others not only knew that the Pearl Harbor attack was going to happen but were instrumental in making it happen.
In 1940 FRD ordered the fleet to the exposed and vulnerable Pearl Harbor, under protest by its commander Admiral Richardson "that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack." Admiral Richardson twice disobeyed orders to move his fleet there and "he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941."

The exposed location of Pearl Harbor was demonstrated in 1938 when "Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born airstrike from the USS Saratoga successfully against Pearl Harbor in another exercise."

Today, as history repeats itself, the congressional probe starts with the probably flawed assumption that it was an intelligence failure. That excludes any treasoneous act on part of the government like what happened at Pearl Harbor. That means that any such investigation can only come up with the wrong conclusion.

The U.S. Office of Information and other agencies published war propaganda posters before and after the Pearl Harbor attack, to make it clear to the masses how evil the Japanese are, and what might be expected of them. Just what happened before 9/11: The conditioning of the U.S. public to immediately conclude that Bin Laden's terrorist network was responsible.

As a famous saying goes: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

More propaganda videos: Propaganda Video Gallery

An extensive write-up about U.S. government treason: Pearl Harbor - Mother of All Conspiracies ¦ Cached

2002-09-28T11:40:00.000+02:00

How Big Money Spooks Buy the Alternative Media

The CIA has a pretty tight grip on liberal/alternative media like FAIR, Counterspin, Mother Jones, The Nation, and Alternet among others. Also named are Noam Chomsky, Jeff Cohen, and Phil Donahue. The influence is applied through the Ford Foundation (a CIA front) and other establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation, who fund the big alternative news outlets. It is of course much easier to control the opposition if you created them or provide all their monetary needs.

Read the whole report: Alternative Media Censorship: Sponsored by CIA's Ford Foundation?

2002-09-23T18:39:00.000+02:00

Coalition Casualties in the US War on "Terrorism"

jihadunspun.net writes: "This report is not to be misconstrued as an official casualty count as it shows only figures reported in the 40 daily news sources Jihad Unspun monitors however it should be noted that the totals concluded here are significantly higher than those presented by the media within North America. Although we can not conclude with 100% accuracy the validity of any news item, this report begins to show a broader picture of casualties as reported throughout the globe and helps us to put into perspective the human cost of this war."
"Source material has been gathered from mainstream and uncensored news sources. Only those reports that could be verified in more than one source are included here. When casualties or kills were listed as “several soldiers wounded” they were excluded. As the counts come only from those that actually found there (sic) way into the press, we expect the actually figures to be as much as three times higher that those listed here."

"It should be noted that this research began after Operation Enduring Freedom in the mountains of Afghanistan and therefore is not a complete accounting from the beginning of the Afghan invasion."

US Military Deaths: 867
US Military Injured: 537
Total US & Coalition Deaths: 968
Total US & Coalition Injured: 676

"This (sic) conclusion that can be drawn from this report is that the deaths of both US and Coalition soldiers are significantly higher than the public is being made aware of and therefore the willingness to continue the America war effort to new theatres such as Iraq is being orchestrated under false pretenses."

www.jihadunspun.net/articles/08212002-Casualty.Report/casualty03.html

2002-09-18T22:16:00.000+02:00

Al-Qaeda Sources Report Terrorist Mastermind Ramzi Capture Story is a Hoax

Ramzi, or somebody remotely looking like him, was captured a year after 911 and at the same time General Musharraf was in Washington. The pictures presented to the public showed a blindfolded man:

"His brother said that there was no resemblance in the photograph. He also stated that the family has learned through credible sources that Ramzi is safe and he was not among those who were arrested in Karachi."

Might have been that the poor fellow they arrested had a name too similar to the suspected terrorist.

"Later, a spokesman of the foreign office also confirmed that it was not hundred percent certain that the person arrested from Karachi was Ramzi bin Al-Shibah. He however said that according to the intelligence available about the suspects, the arrested person was known as Ramzi Al-Shibah."

Just another of the numerous fake evidence manufactured by the US government in support of the War on Terrorism? As long as the government has somebody to present as boogeyman.

Balochistan Post: Ramzi's "Capture" Appears To Be A Hoax

Pro-Qaeda Site Denies Key Sept. 11 Suspect Captured

2002-09-17T21:28:00.000+02:00

Weather Control in the 21st Century

Weather modifications programs are used around the world, recently by the Russians to combat the smog problem in Moscow because of wood fires. That was accomplished by turning on ionizers on Moscows roof tops, causing rain. The russians are selling this technology worldwide. A russian government-owned firm offers their weather modification services including thunderstorms and even cyclons. An article in The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, November 13, 1997, page A19 writes:

Malaysia to Battle Smog With Cyclones, by Chen May Yee, Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal

"KULA LUMPUR -- Malaysia's war on smog is about to get a new twist. The government wants to create man-made cyclones to scrub away the haze that has plagued Malaysia since July. 'We will use special technology to create an artificial cyclone to clean the air', said Datuk Law Hieng Ding, minister for science, technology and the environment. The plan calls for the use of new Russian technology to create cyclones -- the giant storms also known as typhoons and hurricanes -- to cause torrential rains, washing the smoke out of the air. The Malaysian cabinet and the finance minister have approved the plan, Datuk Law said. A Malaysian company, BioCure Sdn. Bhd., will sign a memorandum of understanding soon with a government-owned Russian party to produce the cyclone. "Datuk Law declined to disclose the size of the cyclone to be generated, or the mechanism. 'The details I don't have', he said. He did say, though, that the cyclone generated would be 'quite strong'. Datuk Law also declined to disclose the price of creating the cyclone."

Another Russian firm called "Elate Intelligent Technologies, Inc.," sells their services by the slogan, "Weather Made to Order". The commercial Director of Elate, Igor Pirogoff, stated that "Elate is capable of fine-tuning the weather patterns over a 200 square mile area for as little as $200 U.S. per day".

Fixing the Weather investigated the weather mod programs and the military's use of this technology as much as can be gathered from the public domain. It is however save to say, that military technology is at least 10 years ahead of any commercial application thereof:

"A Ph.D. polymer researcher who wishes to remain anonymous told this reporter that if HAARP's frequency output is matched to Earth's magnetic field, its tightly-beamed energy could be imparted to molecules "artificially introduced into this region." This highly reactive state could then "promote polymerization and the formation of new compounds," he explained.

This means that weather control is theoretically possible, and HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) provides the technology for it. The article also outlines the enormous capacity of HAARP:

"HAARP's U.S. Air Force and Navy sponsors claim that their transmitter will eventually be able to produce 3.6 million watts of radio frequency power. But on page 185 of an October, 1991 "Technical Memorandum 195" outlining projected HAARP tests, there is a call by the ionospheric effects division of the U.S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory for HAARP to reach a peak power output of 100 billion watts. Commercial radio stations commonly broadcast at 50,000 watts."

The writer of the article also speculates that the latest "crazy" weather might have been some test run or exercise by HAARP, i.e., the military:

"Whatever the reasons, this winter (1999, ed.) has produced some of the wackiest weather ever seen over the United States. Usually a hot weather phenomenon, dozens of wintertime tornadoes have struck Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama this year. On February 11-12, temperatures in Chicago, Dayton, Charleston, Indianapolis and other cities ricocheted between the low seventies and the twenties, with overnight snow falling in some of those cities basking in sunlight during the day.
While temperature records are normally broken by no more than a tenth of a degree....Department of Energy researchers Alan Schroeder and David Bassett note that 15 weather-related disasters in the U.S. since 1992 have cost $70 billion in damages and several hundred deaths from floods, heat waves, hurricanes, blizzards and hail storms."

There exists a UN convention against the use of "earthquakes, tidal waves, and changes in climate and in weather patterns" by the military from the 70s. The technology has conceivably well advanced beyond what was available then.

Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques

Subtract 20 years and this article by the US Air Force is right on: Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025

2002-09-13T18:45:00.000+02:00

Handbook of Terror

"In the year since the September 11 attacks, few more chilling documents have emerged than "Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants," a how-to terrorism manual that investigators believe has been used by followers of Osama bin Laden...The terrorism manual was placed into evidence last year by prosecutors during the federal trial of four men accused of involvement in the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html

2002-09-11T22:41:00.000+02:00

9/11 Redux: Anniversary of Treason

The Propaganda Matrix.com writes:
"The top 20 smoking guns proving the US government had prior knowledge and engineered the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001."

www.propagandamatrix.com/911_redux.html

Insightmag.com writes:
"...a young Palestinian, seemed captivated as he stared out the window across Brooklyn toward the lower downtown area of Manhattan.
"Do you see those two buildings?" he asked while pointing toward the World Trade Center. "They won't be standing there next week." It was noon, Sept. 6, 2001.

Prior Knowledge of Sept. 11 Not Just Urban Legend

In 1996 the FBI was pulled off the Bin Laden connection and it was ignored until 911. Clinton and Bush have both kept the FBI to get too close to actually prevent the attacks and/or finding out too much about the Bin Laden/al-Quaida stooges.

The leaked documents that show that the FBI had been called off

2002-09-01T20:44:00.000+02:00

25 Most Censored News Stories of 2001-2002

The media research group Project Censored at Sonoma State University annually releases a list of the most underreported news stories.

# 1 FCC Moves To Privatize Airwaves
# 2 New Trade Treaty Seeks to Privatize Global Social Services
# 3 United States' Policies in Colombia Support Mass Murder
#4 Bush Administration Hampered FBI Investigation into Bin Laden Family Before 9/11
# 5 U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water System
# 6 U.S. Government Pushing Nuclear Revival
# 7 Corporations Promote HMO Model for School Districts
# 8 NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities in U.S. and Abroad
#9 U.S. Faces National Housing Crisis
#10 CIA Double Deals In Macedonia
#11 Bush Appoints Former Criminals to Key Government Roles
#12 NAFTA's Chapter 11 Overrides Public Protection Laws of Countries
# 13 Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford Lied to the American Public about East Timor
# 14 New Laws Restrict Access to Abortions in U.S.
#15 Bush's Energy Plan Threatens Environment and Public Health
# 16 CIA Kidnaps Suspects for Overseas Torture and Execution
# 17 Corporate Media Ignores Key Issues of the Anti-Globalization Protests
#18 World's Coral Reefs Dying
# 19 American Companies Exploit the Congo
# 20 Novartis' Gene Research Endangers Global Plant Life
# 21 Large U.S Temp Company Undermines Union Jobs and Mistreats Workers
# 22 Fish Farms Threaten Health of Consumers and Aquatic Habitats
#23 Horses Face Lives of Unnecessary Abuse for Drug Company Profits
#24 Wal-Mart Takes Union Busting to the State Level
#25 Federal Government Bails Out Failing Private Prisons

Read more: Most Censored News Stories of 2001-2002

2002-08-18T22:38:00.000+02:00

HOAX: No conspiracy but a hungry shark

The picture is supposed to be real. It shows a member of the Navy during a military exercise narrowingly escaping some sharp teeth. This definitely redefines having a bad day at work.

UPDATE: As it turned out this picture is a fake (it still looks funny though): National Geographic has done a nice article exposing it. NG also writes that "Sharks jump out of the water—a behavior known as "breaching"—when they hunt seals. The shark uses an explosive surprise attack to snatch the seal before it can swim away, resulting in the shark throwing itself into the air."

National Geographic: Shark "Photo of the Year" Is E-Mail Hoax

2002-08-18T21:45:00.000+02:00

Top 10 pieces of 9-11 evidence - NOT

1. Mohamed Atta's Luggage
2. Ziad Jarrah's Letter to his Girlfriend
3. The Letter from the Ringleader
4. The Magic Passport
5. Ziad Jarrah's Passport Photo
6. DIY Arab Hijacker Kits left in Cars
7. DIY Arab Hijacker Kits left elsewhere
8. Arabs Starting Fights Next to Cars full of DIY Arab Hijacker Kits
9. Copies of the Koran left in Strip Clubs
10. Ziad Jarrah builds a replica of a Boeing cockpit in his apartment

Read more...

2002-08-18T20:10:00.000+02:00

Kids first to be chipped

In the last couple of weeks the U.S. media has paid a lot of attention to child kidnapping cases, giving the impression that the numbers have increased. Statistics, however, tell a different story. What seems to be at play here is Hegelian Dialectic by which a problem is created, causing the public to demand a solution. Therefore, by defining the nature of the problem, one can predict the possible solution in advance, the solution being what was planned all along. That's how controlled change is accomplished.

Read how the "problem" is created in the public's mind and how technology makes the "solution" possible: The nation knows their names

The child abductions are in reality lower this year: "The number has fallen steadily from a peak of 200-300 cases a year during the 1980s. This year, for all the sensational media coverage, the figure is lower than usual."
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=319683

The result of this propaganda is parents actually demanding their children to be microchipped:
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/03/uk.implant/index.html

2002-08-18T11:37:00.000+02:00

Seismic event: The final moments of Flight 93

A sonic boom was registered by "an obscure seismic station in southern Pennsylvania" at 9:22 on September 11th putting a jet fighter in the immediate vicinity of Flight 93 despite statements to the contrary by the U.S. government.
We were told that the Pentagon was "unaware" that Flight 93 had been hijacked, (Newsday, 9/23/2001) and that there were NO FIGHTERS in the vicinity when the plane went down. In fact, the FAA had informed NORAD that Flight 93 had been hijacked at 9:16, almost an hour before. (CNN, 9/16/2001)
There's no smoking gun beside the now established fact that there was a supersonic plane nearby, but everything points to Flight 93 being shot down.

Read the Article by Robb Magley...

There also was the report of air traffic controllers that "an F-16 fighter closely pursued hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 until it crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania...". What, however, isn't mentioned in the article is that the FAA has to alert NORAD to any hijacked plane. And any plane in the air that day, after the first plane hit the South Tower, was a potentially hijacked plane, especially if it has gone off the scheduled flight path.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com

And the definite website "that explores different theories of Flight 93's crash"
http://www.flight93crash.com/ If that doesn't work try the following link:
http://www.geocities.com/flight93crash/

A rich compendium of information about Flight 93:
http://www.geocities.com/united_airlines_flight_93

2002-08-18T11:23:00.000+02:00

Evidence withheld by feds: Firefighters reached the crash zone in the South Tower

UPDATE 03/23/03
The Complete Firefighters' WTC Tape from 9/11

Radio transmissions between firefighters of the New York Fire Department that were recently played to relatives, but are not open to the public, prove that firefighters reached the impact zone and were trying to put out the fire. It disproves statements to the effect of a raging, insanely hot fire melting/disforming the steel structures of the Tower causing it to disintegrate.
The article reads "firefighters reached the crash zone on the 78th floor, where they went to the aid of grievously injured people trapped in a sprawl of destruction. While the Times article raises as many questions as it answers, it points to a reason for the secrecy: Once they got there, the article says, they had a coherent plan for putting out the fires they could see and helping victims who survived."

Read about it here: Crucial WTC Evidence Withheld by Feds

What made the WTC collapse? Wag the WTC - The Story Of The Government and The WTC Conspiracy Cover-up

In addition to these leaked radio transmissions there are numerous reports by eyewitnesses who report seeing or hearing bombs going off before the collapse. A noted expert in demolition and explosives, Van Romero who is vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, had this to say about the collapse:
"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." Later, he had a change of heart and retracted this statement.

2002-08-07T18:08:00.000+02:00

Internet Censorship: One of the first sites to succumb to government censorship after 911....

'Wake Up America - Alternative News' is still online thanks to the Internet Archive at www.archive.org.
The website was a favorite of pentagon.mil and other friendly agencies visitors until its demise. The archived version can be found here hardtruth.topcities.com/wake_up_america.html

2002-08-04T17:24:00.000+02:00

George Orwell: Totalitarianism today

Orwell's FBI File
http://foia.fbi.gov/orwell.htm

1984
ftp://ftp.mirrors.wiretapped.net/pub/security/info/books/george-orwell--1984.txt

Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
http://www.gutenberg.net.au/0100011.txt

Article: Nineteen Eighty Four is Now
1984 is Now

George W. Bush Channels George Orwell
Bush's Ripping Off Orwell's Ideas

2002-08-04T17:03:00.000+02:00

Operation Northwoods

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) prove that state-sponsored terrorism was endorsed by the U.S. government in the past. How far-fetched is it to suspect that this kind of activity hasn't ceased?
http://www.stormtronic.co.uk/9-11/NorthwoodsMemo.pdf

"New book on NSA sheds light on secrets - U.S. terror plan called Cuba invasion pretext"
http://www.infowars.com

"Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962"
The National Security Archive

2002-07-30T20:40:00.000+02:00

1980s Intelligence sharing with Iraq revisited

www.fas.org writes:
"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday blamed American defectors to Russia for the difficulty of locating and
eliminating Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, arguing that the spies' disclosures had been provided to Iraq and used
to support its denial and deception activities. But he neglected to mention that for years Iraq enjoyed more a direct
source of U.S. intelligence information.

According to Secretary Rumsfeld, "The Iraqis have benefited from American spies defecting to the Soviet Union or
Russia and providing information as to how we do things, and then they proliferate that information on how another
country can best achieve denial and deception and avoid having the location, precise location, actionable locations
of things [i.e., weapons of mass destruction] known."
See: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul2002/t07292002_t0729sd.html

But former CIA analyst Allen Thomson observed that the record indicates a much less roundabout source for Iraqi
access to such U.S. intelligence information, namely the U.S. government itself. On May 28, 1984, President Reagan
issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 141 on "Responding to Escalation in Iran-Iraq War" which
authorized intelligence sharing with the Government of Iraq in order to forestall an Iranian victory. (That Directive
remains classified.) In 1986, the scope of intelligence sharing with Iraq was expanded twice, according to a
Senate Intelligence Committee report. The consequences of that arrangement were suggested by Sen. Tom Harkin
in a November 7, 1991 floor statement. "The secret intelligence sharing operation with Iraq was not only a highly
questionable and possibly illegal operation, but also may have jeopardized American lives and our national interests,"
Sen. Harkin said. "The photo reconnaissance, highly sensitive electronic eavesdropping and narrative texts provided to
Saddam, may not only have helped him in Iraq's war against Iran but also in the recent gulf war. Saddam Hussein may
have discovered the value of underground land lines as opposed to radio communications after he was given our
intelligence information."

"Further, after the Persian Gulf war, our intelligence community was surprised at the extent of Iraq's nuclear program. One
reason Saddam may have hidden his nuclear program so effectively from detection was because of his knowledge of our
satellite photos. What also concerns me about that operation is that we spend millions of dollars keeping secrets from the
Soviets and then we give it to Saddam who sells them to the Soviets," said Sen. Harkin. See Harkin's statement here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1991_cr/s911107-gates.htm

The latter point, of course, contrasts directly with Secretary Rumsfeld's allegation that the Soviets or Russians had
forwarded such information to Saddam. "The Iraqis are deceiving U.S. spy satellites and fooling Pentagon intelligence
analysts thanks to techniques they learned from U.S. military intelligence officers during the eight-year war between
Iran and Iraq," reported Tim Weiner, then of the Philadelphia Inquirer, back in 1991. See his article "Iraq Uses
Techniques in Spying Against Its Former Tutor, the U.S.," with commentary by Jonathan Pollard, of all people, here:
http://www.jonathanpollard.org/1991/020591.htm"

2002-07-29T18:59:00.000+02:00

Military blunders of World War I repeated in Iraq

"The American planners clearly had not read the history of World War I when British Gen. Sir Charles Townshend, commanding two Indian Army divisions, marched on Baghdad to seize the capital of what was then Mesopotamia and kick out the Turkish army. Townshend was repulsed and fell back on the city of Kut, where the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers meet. After a bloody siege during which Townshend's troops ate their horses, the Turks prevailed and Townshend surrendered..."http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020722-75587646.htm

2002-07-28T16:44:00.000+02:00

The Global Strategic Threat

"We're going to have something in the way of a major nuclear event in this country," Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest man in the world, told stockholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. just 11 weeks ago. "It will happen. Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years ... it's virtually a certainty."
What does Warren Buffett, whose major business is insurance, know that you don't know?