Filming "Democracy at work" is a "Threat to Homeland Security" says CHP

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "Public Interest Groups Are 'Homeland Security Threat'...":

"SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug. 31 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Proponents of Proposition 89, which would reduce the role of big money in politics, were warned by a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer yesterday that they could be considered a 'homeland security threat' as they filmed lawmakers and lobbyists wrapping up end of the session deals.

'When did the CHP become a private security force for corporate lobbyists? Prop 89, the campaign finance overhaul, will make the Capitol a public space again,' said Jerry Flanagan of the nonpartisan Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR).

FTCR's public interest news crew, Channel 89, was in the Capitol yesterday filming lawmakers and lobbyists as they exchange favors and campaign contributions in the final days of the legislative session. A CHP officer warned the Channel 89 staff that they could be considered a 'homeland security threat' for filming the democratic process in the Capitol. Shortly after, Channel 89 staff members were stopped as they tried to interview Assembly Speaker Nu�ez outside his office. The CHP called FTCR staff to suggest they were breaking the law.

'Californians pay lawmakers' salaries and pay taxes to keep the Capitol building running. It's only fair that we get a bird's eye view of what they are doing on our property. Channel 89 is still in the Capitol, and the cameras are rolling. Stay tuned for footage at www.Channel89.org ,' said Carmen Balber.

FTCR said the intimidation was triggered by the subject matter of the filming -- fundraisers where lobbyists pay thousands to chat with politicians, and the hallways where those same lobbyists make final hour pitches to lawmakers.

View footage from the Capitol and end-of-session political fundraisers at: http://www.Channel89.org courtesy of the Channel 89 film crew."

Goats and Hussars: A British Harbinger of American Defeat

Chris Floyd:

"Don Rumsfeld is fond of historical analogies when pontificating about Iraq; he particularly favors comparisons to the Nazi era and the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II. Unfortunately, any historian will tell you that Rummy's parallels are invariably false, even ludicrous. So we thought we'd give the beleaguered Pentagon warlord a more accurate and telling analogy to chew on.

Try this one, Don. Imagine that British occupation troops in, say, Hanover, had been forced to abandon a major base, under fire, and retreat into guerrilla operations in the Black Forest - in 1948, three years after the fall of the Nazi regime. And that as soon as the Brits made their undignified bug-out, the base had been devoured by looters while the local, Allies-backed authorities simply melted away and an extremist, virulently anti-Western militia moved into the power vacuum.

What would they have called that, Don? "Measurable progress on the road to democracy?" "Another achieved metric of our highly successful post-war plan?" Or would they have said, back in those more plain-spoken, Harry Truman days, that it was "a major defeat, a humiliating strategic reversal, foreshadowing a far greater disaster?"
[ . . . ]

'British forces evacuated the military headquarters without coordination with the Iraqi forces,' Dhaffar Jabbar, spokesman for the Maysan governor, told Reuters on Thursday, as looters began moving into the camp in the wake of the British withdrawal. A unit of Iraqi government troops mutinied when told to keep order at the base - and instead attacked a military post of their own army. By Friday, the locals had torn the place to pieces, carting away more than $500,000 worth of equipment and fixtures that the British had left behind. After that initial, ineffectual show of force, the Iraqi 'authorities' stepped aside and watched helplessly as the looters taunted them and cheered the 'great victory' over the Western invaders."

Ohio officials prepare to destroy paper ballots from 2004 presidential election

The Raw Story :

"Ohio officials will soon begin destroying the paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election despite objections from voter rights groups.

'Soon after the 2004 presidential election, questions emerged about how votes were tallied in Ohio, a battleground state that delivered the presidency to George W. Bush,' Ian Urbina writes in a story slated for the New York Times.

'Now, following a routine procedure, state officials are preparing to destroy the paper ballots from the election,' writes Urbina.

'Critics say the ballots should be preserved for more study,' the article continues."

I'm sure they need the room to build more Walmarts, or somesuch...

Denmark deals with whistleblowers the US way

Wayne Madsen Report - Home:

"Aug. 30, 2006 -- Final post card from Denmark.

Danish Army Major Frank Grevil was once the only chemical weapons expert in the Danish Intelligence Service (Forsvarets Efterretningstjeneste or 'FE'). That was until he realized the neo-con Danish government -- that governs with the support of the extreme right-wing People's Party (which maintains National Socialist beliefs) -- was making false claims about the chemical weapons threat from Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Grevil decided to do something about it."

What he did was give documents to reporters detailing how the claims were bogus. What he's gotten for his troubles is a prison sentence.

Another of Madsen's reports tells a rather shocking story of how far Denmark has fallen under it's current ruling neocons.

"Three sole peace demonstrators maintain a lonely vigil outside the Parliament (Folketing) building in Copenhagen. They are protesting the first aggressive military action Denmark has taken in 150 years -- its joining with the United States in the military occupation of Iraq. "

CIA bomb used in Bali: Bashir

This isn't the first time I've read about something like this...

World - smh.com.au:

"The Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has claimed that the CIA was involved in the 2002 Bali bombings.

Bashir, who was convicted and jailed for having prior knowledge of the attacks which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, was released from prison in June after serving nearly two years.

On ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent last night, Bashir said the device that killed most people in the attack was a CIA 'micro-nuclear' bomb.

'So the bomb that killed so many Australians, it was an American bomb. It wasn't the bomb made by Amrozi and his friends,' he said. Amrozi, Ali Ghufron and Imam Samudra are awaiting execution for their part in the plot."

Bush Goes Retro to Avoid Prosecution

www.antiwar.com: by Paul Craig Roberts:

"On Aug. 23, the BBC reported that Amnesty International has brought war crimes charges against Israel for deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure as an 'integral part' of Israel's strategy in its recent invasion of Lebanon.

Israel claims that its aggression was 'self-defense' to dislodge Hezbollah from southern Lebanon. Yet, Israel bombed residential communities all over Lebanon, even Christian communities in the north in which no Hezbollah could possibly have been present.

United Nations spokesman Jean Fabre reported that Israel's attack on civilian infrastructure annihilated Lebanon's development: 'Fifteen years of work have been wiped out in a month.'

Israel maintains that this massive destruction was unintended 'collateral damage.'

President Bush maintains that Israel has 'a right to protect itself' by destroying Lebanon.

Bush blocked the attempt to stop Israel's aggression and is, thereby, equally responsible for the war crimes. Indeed, a number of reports claim that Bush instigated the Israeli aggression against Lebanon.

Bush has other war crime problems. Benjamin Ferencz, a chief prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, recently said that President Bush should be tried as a war criminal side-by-side with Saddam Hussein for starting aggressive wars, Hussein for his 1990 invasion of Kuwait and Bush for his 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Under the Nuremberg standard, Bush is definitely a war criminal. The U.S. Supreme Court also exposed Bush to war crimes charges under both the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Geneva Conventions when the Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld against the Bush administration's military tribunals and inhumane treatment of detainees.

President Bush and his attorney general agree that under existing laws and treaties Bush is a war criminal together with many members of his government. To make his war crimes legal after the fact, Bush has instructed the Justice (sic) Department to draft changes to the War Crimes Act and to U.S. treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

One of Bush's changes would deny protection of the Geneva Conventions to anyone in any American court.

Bush's other change would protect from prosecution any U.S. government official or military personnel guilty of violating Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Article 3 prohibits 'at any time and in any place whatsoever outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.' As civil libertarian Nat Hentoff observes, this change would also undo Sen. John McCain's amendment against torture.

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says that Bush's changes 'immunize past crimes.'

Under the U.S. Constitution and U.S. legal tradition, retroactive law is impermissible. "

Is this Bush's secret bunker?

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports:

"Mount Weather is not hard to find. From the White House, we take Route 66 west until it meets Highway 50. Fifty miles later, we turn off on Route 601, a small two-lane rural feeder that snakes up a ridge. That road seems to be going nowhere until suddenly, at the crest, we come into a clearing, bounded by two lines of tall, shiny, razor-wired fencing, marked with faded signs that say: "US Property. No Trespassing." Behind sits a grouping of white aluminium sheds and a few cars.
[ . . . ]
Residents on the mountain did not need to read the newspapers to discern that something was going on there. Joe Davitt, a retired civil servant who lives in a small A-frame house a mile or so away, told me that on September 11 2001 his wife was returning home from Florida. At the bottom of the hill, he says, she was stopped by state troopers, who asked for identification. At the facility itself, he says, 'The Mount Weather guards were not only armed, they had their guns in firing position.' John Staelin, a member of the Clarke County Board of Supervisors, says that on September 11, the county's 911 line received a call from an agitated local woman. 'She said, 'I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but the whole mountain opened up and Air Force One flew in and it closed right up. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.' So they said, 'Yes, ma'am.' '"

US Hospitality to Foreign Journalists

Wayne Madsen Report - Home: reporting from abroad

August 28, 2006

"Information visas (I-Visa) -- a Bush administration method for controlling the foreign media's coverage of the United States.

You're a foreign journalist and you want to visit the United States to cover a story. If you think it is as easy as hopping on an airplane, even if you are a citizen or resident of a visa-waiver country, guess again. Journalists wishing to travel to the United States -- whether they are with print, television, radio, or Internet media -- must first obtain an "I-Visa" from the U.S. embassy or selected consulates responsible for their jurisdictions. Freelance journalists who are not under contract to a U.S.-recognized media organization need not apply.

Journalists must fill out a detailed application in which they are required to outline what story they are writing about and they must personally visit the U.S. embassy and consulate for 'administrative processing, biometric collection and a personal interview.' Biometric processing at the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen entails having one's thumb electronically scanned. Journalists visiting some U.S. diplomatic missions for the interview cannot bring in electronic devices (cell phones, PDAs, laptops ) [or] backpacks, suitcases and attach�cases.' At certain missions, U.S. embassy security personnel refuse to store such items during the interview process. Others confiscate cell phones and tag them for pick up after the interview process (needless to say, the interview process might last a bit longer if the local U.S. spooks decide to examine the journalist's cell phone call list and perform certain 'modifications.' At the Madrid embassy, the only bags that are permitted inside the compound are those having medical purposes, such as insulin kits.

Journalists must also provide their addresses in the United States and the names and addresses of those who they will be interviewing. So much for freedom of the press and the protection of journalists' sources."

And then there's the matter of what cronies you have to pay off to get this iVisa.

Right now, it is fortunate that most countries are not reciprocating against U.S. journalists in kind. In fact, there are very few countries that require special visas for journalists. The United States and a few tin horn dictatorships are among the few countries that restrict admittance and travel for foreign journalists. Israel severely restricts media access to the West Bank and Gaza. On the other hand, Cuba provides freer access for foreign journalists than does the United States. It is just that a vocal jingoistic minority in southern Florida and their lickspittles in the Bush administration don't want any American journalists to witness for themselves the relative freedom for foreign journalists to report from Cuba. Ask Cuban authorities the total lack of restrictions on journalists reporting on and photographing conditions inside the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay from their side of the fence and then consider the draconian restrictions places on U.S. and foreign journalists inside the U.S. military concentration camp.

If the Republicans and neo-cons are not run out of Washington soon, the situation for American journalists abroad may change dramatically. And the public's right to know will be the major casualty in such an event.

Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams

The Seattle Times:

By Chuck McCutcheon

Newhouse News Service

WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.

'When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation,' said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation 'D' for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

'I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm,' said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs."

Russian Dumping of Dollars Accelerates

The Iguana has an interesting thought.

Cosmic Iguana:
DOW JONES:

Russians abandoned the dollar at an unprecedented rate in the first half of this year, the news agency RIA Novosti reported Central Bank deputy chairman Alexei Ulyukayev as saying Friday.

Ulyukayev told a press conference - to which foreign press weren't invited - that dollar assets held by the population had fallen by $5.1 billion in the first half of this year - three times the rate seen in the corresponding period in 2005.

'This pace can hardly increase any further,' Ulyukayev said... [*]

Countries holding significant dollar investments have long faced a dilemma. They know that their dollars are worth half of what they were 5 years ago and are depreciating fast, but they know if they dump them all at once it will start a run on the bank that will render their stockpile worthless and risk total economic collapse.

Instead they have been divesting steadily and as the article notes 'won't result in any kind of collapse'. Cool. The only loser is the American people. In 2001 dollars gas would still be $1.69 a gallon, and houses are still affordable."

"Famous" Lincoln Quote is Bogus

Have you heard folk say that anyone who speaks out against the war is a traitor, and Lincoln said anyone who did that should be hanged?

The Factcheck.org folk run down the truth.

Raw Story:

Misquoting Lincoln

Bush supporters falsely quote Lincoln as advocating arresting, exiling or hanging members of Congress who damage military morale in wartime.

August 25, 2006

Modified: August 25, 2006

Summary

Supporters of President Bush and the war in Iraq often quote Abraham Lincoln as saying members of Congress who act to damage military morale in wartime "are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged."

Republican candidate Diana Irey used the "quote" recently in her campaign against Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, and it has appeared thousands of times on the Internet, in newspaper articles and letters to the editor, and in Republican speeches.

But Lincoln never said that. The conservative author who touched off the misquotation frenzy, J. Michael Waller, concedes that the words are his, not Lincoln's. Waller says he never meant to put quote marks around them, and blames an editor for the mistake and the failure to correct it. We also note other serious historical errors in the Waller article containing the bogus quote.
[ . . . ]
The sentence she attributed to Lincoln is the brainchild of J. Michael Waller, a conservative scholar who wrote an article for Insight magazine that appeared Dec. 23, 2003 under the headline, "Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason." He started his article with the quote, adding, "that's what President Abraham Lincoln said during the War Between the States."

In fact there's no evidence of Lincoln ever advocating hanging members of Congress at all. We searched The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, but the phrase "exiled or hanged" simply doesn't appear there, let alone the entire quote.

There's more.

Iran's Nuclear "Threat"

Juan Cole: "August 25, 2006

'Folks, We Are Being Set Up Again!'

Here is what the professionals are saying about the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy report on Iran that slams US intelligence professionals for poor intelligence on Iran: The report demonstrates that these Republicans have poor intelligence . . . on Iran. What follows is summaries of things I've seen from other experts but I can't identify them without permission.."

It is being said that the staffer who headed the report is Frederick Fleitz, who was a special assistant to John Bolton when Bolton was undersecretary of state for proliferation issues. Fleitz was sent to the unemployment line when Condi wisely exiled Bolton to the United Nations, where there is a long history of ill-tempered despots who like to bang their shoes on the podium. So this report is the long arm of Bolton popping up in Congress. It is Neoconservative propaganda.

I repeat what I have said before, which is that John Bolton is just an ill-tempered lawyer who has no special expertise in nuclear issues or in Iran, and aside from an ability to scare the bejesus out of young gofers who bring him coffee and to thunderously denounce on cue any world leader on whom he is sicced, he has no particular qualifications for his job.

Nor do the Republican congressmen know anything special about Iran's nuclear energy program. They certainly know much less than the CIA agents who work on it full time, some of whom know Persian and have actually done . . . intelligence work.
[ . . . ]

>The only thing that the IAEA knows for sure is that Iran has a peaceful nuclear energy research program. Such a program is not the same as a weapons program, and it is perfectly legal under the Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran, unlike Israel, has actually signed.

The report allegedly vastly exaggerates the range of Iran's missiles and also exaggerates the number of its longer-range ones, and seems to think that Iran already has the Shahab-4, which it does not. It also doesn't seem to realize that Iran can't send missiles on other countries without receiving them back. Israel has more and longer-range missiles than Iran, and can quickly equip them with real nuclear warheads, not the imaginary variety in Fleitz's fevered brain.

Folks, we are being set up again.

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute. This article is extracted from Juan Cole's website.

U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Targeted For Suggesting New Independent 9/11 Investigation

Lone Star Iconoclast Online:

"Army: Doubting Official 9/11 Story Is ‘Disloyal To The United States’

SFC DONALD BUSHWELL (left) received the Purple Heat for injuries sustained on the battlefields of Iraq.

FT. SAM HOUSTON, Texas — Forty-one-year-old Sergeant First Class Donald Buswell is a hero. Having served over 19 years in the United States Army, Buswell has seen a lot of terrain. On April 15, 2004, he was injured in a rocket attack while serving a tour in Iraq. For this, SFC Buswell was given a Purple Heart. And until recently, Buswell was an Intelligence Analyst stationed at Ft. Sam Houston, Texas.
[ . . . ]
According to unnamed military sources contacted by The Iconoclast, SFC Buswell 'used his Government issued email account to send messages disloyal to the United States …' Because of these statements, SFC Buswell could soon find himself dishonorably discharged, court marshaled, or worse."

What he did was answer an email with a suggestion that another 911 investigation might be warranted.

What?

Somehow I don't seem to have heard about this last week...


United Press International - NewsTrack:

"Hawaii UFO looked like a wayward missile

HILO, Hawaii, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- No one Thursday was claiming ownership of a tubular flying object that buzzed a Hawaii airport this week and looked a lot like a missile.

Officials at the Pohakuloa Training Area told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that there were no military exercises involving missiles taking place when the object was spotted Tuesday over the Hilo Airport on the Big Island.

Witnesses told the newspaper the silver object was silver and emitted a vapor trail; however it had no apparent fins or markings on it.

One man told the newspaper, 'The noise was super loud.'

The object didn't seem to threaten any air traffic around the airport, the report said.

Hawaii officials said the FBI and Transportation Security Administration were looking into the matter."

This is not to be confused (I assume) with a regular meteor shower like this one, which prompted folk in the Hebrides to think there was a plane crash.

Biologists discover giant oysters in San Francisco Bay

(Odd that this is not in the San Francisco media...which is where this one showed up last year, about acres of tiny Asian oysters blanketing the San Pablo Bay in the north of San Francisco Bay.)

LA Daily News:

Biologists discover giant oysters in bay
Associated Press

FREMONT - Biologists have discovered giant invasive oysters that could threaten efforts to restore native oyster species in San Francisco Bay.

Government staffers and volunteers removed 256 of the exotic mollusks last week after searching the mudflats between the Dumbarton Bridge and the San Leandro Marina, biologists said.

Scientists have not identified the species, which grow up to 9 inches long and in a variety of shapes. They don't know how the exotic oysters got here or how they could affect the bay if their population expands.

Biologists are concerned the monster oysters could take over the best habitat and form reefs unsuitable for local fish and invertebrates. They could also threaten the bay's native Olympia oyster, Ostrea conchaphila, which usually grow no more than 2 inches long.

'We're really concerned about these nonnative oysters out-competing the native oysters,' said Abe Doherty at the California State Coastal Conservancy.

A big empty shell of an exotic oyster first turned up more than two years ago near the eastern end of the Dumbarton Bridge."

The largest covert operation in UK history

Guess where it was?

This may be interesting to those who claim that "Conspiracies cannot happen—large groups of people just can't keep a secret for long." How about 3000 people for 60 years?


Guardian Unlimited Books — William Boyd:

"...And so British Security Coordination came into being.

BSC was set up by a Canadian entrepreneur called William Stephenson, working on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Services (SIS). An office was opened in the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan with the discreet compliance of Roosevelt and J Edgar Hoover of the FBI. But nobody on the American side of the fence knew what BSC's full agenda was nor, indeed, what would be the massive scale of its operations. What eventually occurred as 1940 became 1941 was that BSC became a huge secret agency of nationwide news manipulation and black propaganda. Pro-British and anti-German stories were planted in American newspapers and broadcast on American radio stations, and simultaneously a campaign of harassment and denigration was set in motion against those organisations perceived to be pro-Nazi or virulently isolationist (such as the notoriously anti-British America First Committee - it had more than a million paid-up members).

Stephenson called his methods "political warfare", but the remarkable fact about BSC was that no one had ever tried to achieve such a level of "spin", as we would call it today, on such a vast and pervasive scale in another country. The aim was to change the minds of an entire population: to make the people of America think that joining the war in Europe was a "good thing" and thereby free Roosevelt to act without fear of censure from Congress or at the polls in an election.

BSC's media reach was extensive: it included such eminent American columnists as Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, and influenced coverage in newspapers such as the Herald Tribune, the New York Post and the Baltimore Sun. BSC effectively ran its own radio station, WRUL, and a press agency, the Overseas News Agency (ONA), feeding stories to the media as they required from foreign datelines to disguise their provenance. WRUL would broadcast a story from ONA and it thus became a US "source" suitable for further dissemination, even though it had arrived there via BSC agents. It would then be legitimately picked up by other radio stations and newspapers, and relayed to listeners and readers as fact. The story would spread exponentially and nobody suspected this was all emanating from three floors of the Rockefeller Centre. BSC took enormous pains to ensure its propaganda was circulated and consumed as bona fide news reporting. To this degree its operations were 100% successful: they were never rumbled.

Nobody really knows how many people ended up working for BSC - as agents or sub-agents or sub-sub-agents - although I have seen the figure mentioned of up to 3,000. Certainly at the height of its operations in late 1941 there were many hundreds of agents and many hundreds of fellow travellers (enough finally to stir the suspicions of Hoover, for one). Three thousand British agents spreading propaganda and mayhem in a staunchly anti-war America. It almost defies belief. Try to imagine a CIA office in Oxford Street with 3,000 US operatives working in a similar way. The idea would be incredible - but it was happening in America in 1940 and 1941, and the organisation grew and grew."

Sharon to Peres: "We Control America" - Congressional Pandering to Israel proves him Right

In honor of a month of pounding of Lebanon by Israel, unimpeeded by any request for a cease fire from the US... here's a blast from the past, from November 20, 2001—

Media Monitors Network: "

by Mohamed Khodr

On October 3, 2001, I.A.P. News reported that according to Israel Radio (in Hebrew) Kol Yisrael an acrimonious argument erupted during the Israeli cabinet weekly session last week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his foreign Minister Shimon Peres. Peres warned Sharon that refusing to heed incessant American requests for a cease-fire with the Palestinians would endanger Israeli interests and 'turn the US against us. 'Sharon reportedly yelled at Peres, saying 'don't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America.'
_____________________________________________

'The Israelis control the policy in the congress and the senate.'

-- Senator Fullbright, Chair of Senate Foreign Relations Committee: 10/07/1973 on CBS' 'Face the Nation'.
_____________________________________________

'I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews..... terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they don't approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the congress through influential Jewish people in the country'

-----Sec. of State John Foster Dulles quoted on p.99 of Fallen Pillars by Donald Neff"

Gladio & terrorism

Bet you didn't know about this.

Cambridge Clarion: Observer, 7 June 1992,:

"GLADIO Europe's best kept secret

They were the agents who were to 'stay behind' if the Red Army overran Western Europe. But the network that was set up with the best intentions degenerated in some countries into a front for terrorism and far-right political agitation.Hugh O'Shaughnessy reports.
Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Observer, 7 June 1992, pages 53-54

The codename was Gladio and it was the most ambitious and secret operation in Western Europe since the Second World War. But now, with the Cold War over, it is ending on notes of pure farce."

[. . .]

One day in 1984 a party of US Marines set out from an airport north of London. Highly trained men, each fluent in one Eastern European language, they parachuted to their secret rendezvous and were met by an agent, a local bank manager, who offered them guidance. They lived off the land for a fortnight, hiding from the local civilian population as they stalked towards their prey. Steathily they approached their objective and opened fire, killing a warrant officer. One of the Marines lost an eye in the operation.

[ . . . ]

The object of the exercise had been twofold: to jolt the local Belgian police into a higher state of alert and, no less important, to give the impression to the population at large that the comfortable and well-fed Kingdom of Belgium was on the brink of red revolution. Guns used in the operation were later planted by a shadowy Belgian intelligence outfit in the Brussels squat used by a Communist splinter group.

In Belgium, for instance, all evidence points to the fact that a US-born Gladio agent, Wood Gardiner, infiltrated the Belgian pacifist movement and persuaded some of its members in 1984 to steal shells from the missile base at Florenne. When the theft was discovered it did the pacifist cause no good at all.

More important were the apparently random shootings in Belgian supermarkets which ended with a particularly nasty incident in 1983 in the town of Aalst, a few miles from Brussels, which became known as the Brabant-Walloon massacres. Senator Lallemand has linked the killings to 'the work of foreign governments or of intelligence services working for foreigners, a terrorism aimed a destabilising democratic society'.

[ . . . ]

Meanwhile, at least one British family still mourns a victim of the darkest chapter of Gladio, a series of bombings a decade ago which were at first attributed to the Red Brigades.

The largest, at Bologna railway station on 2 August 1980, claimed 86 lives. Harry Mitchell, a civil servant, and his wife Shirley, of Bloomfield Road, Bath, lost their daughter Catherine, who was 21. She died in the blast with her 22-year-old fiance John Kolpinski, from Bristol. Her body was so disfigured that it was identified only by the Miss Selfridge label on her blouse.

The explosion was part of a series of atrocities which left at least 300 dead as bombs went off in the Piazza Fontana in Milan, on trains at Brescia and on the Naples-Milan express in a tunnel south of Bologna. The Mitchells are outraged that Britain is refusing to extradite back to Italy one of those sought for questioning about the crime, Roberto Fiore.

Fiore, now 33, has lived freely here in Pimlico since 1980, running a prosperous accommodation agency and mixing in extreme right, anti-semitic circles. There is strong suspicion that MI6 is grateful for information Fiore was able to give them about Lebanon, where he learnt some of his terrorist techniques, and is blocking efforts to question him.

The Mitchells got no satisfaction when they wrote about the Fiore affair to Mrs Thatcher in Downing Street in June 1985. But the other day they were been brought up to date on British government thnking. On 29 March, Sir Patrick Mayhew, then Attorney-General, explained in a letter to the Mitchells' MP, Chris Patten, how British justice could do nothing about sending Fiore back.

The Italian railway bombings were blamed on the extreme Left as part of a strategy to convince voters that the country was in a state of tension and that they had no alternative to voting the safe Christian Democrat ticket. All clues point to the fact that they were masterminded from within Gladio.

[ . . . ]

Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a convinced Fascist who was a member of the extremist Ordine Nuovo organisation and had close links with Gladio, has testified to us of his personal involvement in such schemes. Now serving a long sentence in Parma prison for his part in the killing of three carabinieri in the village of Peteano, he talked despite the Italian authorities' efforts to prevent access to him.

'You had to attack civilians, the people, women children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,' he said. 'The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the State to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the State cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.'

Vinciguerra recounted how the authorities covered the traces after the killing of the three carabinieri. 'A whole mechanism came into action - that is, the carabinieri, the Minister of the Interior, the customs services and the military and civilian intelligence services accepted the ideological reasoning behind the attack.'

The commanders of the carabinieri foiled a thorough investigation of the Peteano affair for years, he claims. 'It was more convenient to cover it up than to turn on those who killed their comrades. All the members of the Red Brigades were known by the police, the carabinieri and the intelligence bureaux and on one made nay attempt to stop them. So you see, "revolutionary warfare" should not be seen as being directed against Western democracy but rather as the means of defence adopted by Western democracies and implemented cynically and indiscriminately.'

[ . . . ]

The gravest charge against the Gladio project is that it co-operated in - or at least did nothing to prevent - the kidnapping and killing of Aldo Moro, a former Prime Minister of Italy. Moro, a Catholic and Christian Democrat, was known for his view that the Italian Communist Party should be brought closer to government.

It is well known that Moro died in March 1978 at the hand of the Red Brigades. What is less understood, but borne out by a number of well-informed witnesses, is that the Red Brigades were deeply infiltrated by Western intelligence. At the time of Moro's killing the principal leaders of the Brigades were in prison. Colonel Oswald Le Winter of the CIA, who served as a US liaison officer with Gladio, goes as far as to say that the planning staff of the Brigades was made up of intelligence agents. From his prison cell, Vinciguerra agrees.

How was it that Colonel Guglielmi, a senior figure in Italian intelligence, was on hand in the Via Fani in Rome when Moro was kidnapped and his body-guards murdered? Why did Guglielmi say he was there by accident on the way to lunch with a friend when the kidnapping happened at nine o'clock in the morning? Why was it that the bullets which killed the bodyguards were of a type only used by the Italian special services?

As Gladio winds down and governments on the continent declare they have shut down their parts of the operation, the silence in Whitehall and the almost total lack of curiosity among MPs about an affair in which Britain was so centrally involved are remarkable. Perhaps John Major's new commitment to more openness in government will eventually produce some answers to the many Gladio riddles.

Craig Murray's take on the British Muslim Bombing Thing

(He thinks it's a scam. There are several items in this post I'd not been aware of. Hmmm. A suspect interrogated in Pakistan. Sounds like fun. You don't suppose they had an idea of what kind of confession they had in mind before they started, do you?)

August 14, 2006

The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

SO OSAMA WALKS INTO TO THIS BAR, SEE? or, Palast deconstructs the War On Terror

Greg Palast puts it all together, so simply that everyone can follow along. (Sorry, Greg, I accidentally destroyed your email's original formatting, and then made all those lines an ugly bold red. My bad.)

by Greg Palast
Monday August 14, 2006

So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says... But wait a minute. I'd better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, "Security is no joking matter." But if security's no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to dump my Frappuccino and take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank the Lord the "shoe bomber" didn't carry Semtex in his underpants. Today's a RED and ORANGE ALERT day. How odd. They just caught the British guys with the chemistry sets. But when these guys were about to blow up airliners, the USA was on YELLOW alert. That's a "lowered" threat notice. According to the press office from the Department of Homeland Security, lowered-threat Yellow means that there were no special inspections of passengers or cargo. Isn't it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn't use these pretty color codes. He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day's terror color. "I can't say I ever have. I mean, who would?" He smiled. "The terrorists." America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won't be monitored. You've got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush's team. There are three possible explanations for the Administration's publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook. 1. God is on Osama's side. 2. George is on Osama's side. 3. Fear sells better than sex. A gold star if you picked #3.

The Fear Factory I'm going to tell you something which is straight-up heresy: America is not under attack by terrorists. There is no WAR on terror because, except for one day five years ago, al Qaeda has pretty much left us alone. That's because Osama got what he wanted. There's no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after. Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: "Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places." To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia. And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29, 2003, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described "War President" quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama's demand. The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush's waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." But it wasn't America's mission that was accomplished, it was Osama's. Am I saying there's no danger, no threat? Sure there is: 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. IBM is legally stealing from its employees' pension plan and United Airlines has dumped its pensions altogether. Four-million three-hundred thousand Americans were injured, made sick or killed by their jobs last year. TXU Corporation is right now building four monster-sized power plants in Texas that will burn skuzzy gunk called "lignite." The filth it will pour into the sky will snuff a heck of a lot more Americans than some goofy group of fanatics with bottles of hydrogen peroxide. But Americans don't ask for real protection from what's killing us. The War on Terror is the Weapon of Mass Distraction. Instead of demanding health insurance, we have 59 million of our fellow citizens pooping in their pants with fear of Al Qaeda, waddling to the polls, crying, "Georgie save us!" And what does he give us? In my own small town, the federal government has paid for loading an SUV with .50 caliber machine guns to watch for an Al Qaeda attack at the dock of the ferry that takes tourists to the Indian casino in Connecticut. The casino dock is my town's officially designated "Critical Asset and Vulnerability Infrastructure Point (CAVIP)." (To find the most vulnerable points to attack in the USA, Al Qaeda can download a list from the Department of Homeland Security -- no kidding.) But that's not all. Bush is protecting us from English hijackers with a fearsome anti-terrorist tool: the Virginia-class submarine. The V-boat was originally meant to hunt Soviet subs. But there are no more Soviet subs. So, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have "refitted" these Cold War dinosaurs with new torpedoes redesigned to carry counter-terror commandoes. That's right: when we find Osama's beach house, we can shoot our boys right up under his picnic table and take him out. These Marines-in-a-tube injector boats cost $2.5 billion each -- and our President's ordered half a dozen new ones. Lynn Cheney, the Veep's wife, still takes in compensation from Lockheed as a former board member. I'm sure that has nothing to do with this multi-billion dollar "anti-terror" contract. Fear sells better than sex. Fear is the sales pitch for many lucrative products: from billion-dollar sailor injectors to one very lucrative war in Mesopotamia (a third of a trillion dollars doled out, no audits, no questions asked). Better than toothpaste that makes our teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It's political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube. What we don't get is safety from the real dangers: a life-threatening health-care system, lung-murdering pollution production and a trade deficit with China that's reducing mid-America to coolie status. Protecting us from these true threats would take a slice of the profits of the Lockheeds, the Exxons and the rest of the owning class. War on Terror is class war by other means -- to keep you from asking for real protection from true menace, the landlords of our nation give you fake protection from manufactured dangers. And they remind you to be afraid every time you fly to see Aunt Millie and have to give up your hemorrhoid ointment to the underpaid guy in the bell-hop suit with a security badge. Oh, hey, you never got the punch line. So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says, "Well, George, what are you serving today?" and Bush says, "Fear," and Osama shouts, "Fear for everybody!" and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, "Hey, who's buying?" and Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. "They are," he says. And the two of them share a quiet laugh.

Juan Cole deconstructs George Bush

Informed Comment:

Monday August 7, 3:57 pm ET WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush and Secretary of State Rice in press availability:

    Prairie Chapel Ranch
   Crawford, Texas

   8:59 A.M. CDT

"'They try to spread their jihadist message -- a message I call, it's totalitarian in nature -- Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, they try to spread it as well by taking the attack to those of us who love freedom. '"


There are many problems with this passage.

The first is that the Israelis are not confining themselves to bombing Muslim radicals. They dropped 3000 bombs on Aitaroun in a single day. They are leveling the towns of the south altogether. They are hitting people who are not Muslim fascists.

In fact, they are hitting Christian areas such as Jounieh."
[ . . . ]
"The Israelis have also bombed Ashrafiyah, a Christian area of Beirut. They have ruined Christian businesses-- restaurants, nightclubs, retail shops, by destroying bridges, roads and ports and by killing tourism for years to come. "
[ . . . ]
The Shiite Muslims of the south have been subjected to collective punishment on a mass scale. Whole towns and villages have been destroyed. Nearly a million people are displaced and homeless. The deliberate deportation or forcible transfer of a civilian population during war time is a crime against humanity, as is unnecessary expulsion of civilians from their homes.
[ . . . ]

Then there are other problems with what Bush said. He contrasted "Islamic fascism" to "democracy," presumably a reference to the Lebanese Hizbullah.

This point is incorrect and offensive for many reasons.

It is a misuse of the word "Islamic." "Islamic" has to do with the ideals and achievements of the Muslims and the Muslim religion. Thus, we speak of Islamic art. We speak of Islamic ethics.

There can be Muslim fascists, just as there can be Christian fascists (and were, in Spain, Italy and Germany, and parts of Central and South America; the Spanish fascists and the Argentinian ones, e.g., were adopted by the United States government as close allies.)

But there cannot be "Islamic" fascists, because the Islamic religion enshrines values that are incompatible with fascism.

Fascism is not even a very good description of the ideology of most Muslim fundamentalists. Most fascism in the Middle East has been secular in character, as with Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Fascism involves extreme nationalism and most often racism. Muslim fundamentalist movements reject the nation-state as their primary loyalty and reject race as a basis for political action or social discrimination. Fascists exalt the state above individual rights or the rule of law. Muslim fundamentalists exalt Islamic law above the utilitarian interests of the state. Fascism exalts youth and a master race above the old and the "inferior" races. Muslim fundamentalists would never speak this way. Fascism glorifies "war as an end in itself and victory as the determinant of truth and worthiness." Muslim fundamentalists view holy war as a ritual with precise conditions and laws governing its conduct. It is not considered an end in itself."

There's a lot more.

Intelligent Design: 'The Death of Science'

LiveScience.com:

by Ker Than

"'The most basic problem [with ID] is that it's utterly boring,' said William Provine, a science historian at Cornell University in New York. 'Everything that's complicated or interesting about biology has a very simple explanation: ID did it.'

Evolution was and still is the only scientific theory for life that can explain how we get complexity from simplicity and diversity from uniformity.

ID offers nothing comparable. It begins with complexity—a Supreme Being—and also ends there. The explanations offered by ID are not really explanations at all, scientists say. They're more like last resorts. And, scientists argue, there is a danger in pretending that ID belongs next to evolution in textbooks.

'It doesn't add anything to science to introduce the idea that God did it,' Provine told LiveScience. Intelligent design 'would become the death of science if it became a part of science.'"

Eat More Bacteria for Good Digestion

Physorg.com

A British study says those over 60 should boost their daily intake of probiotics, or diet with "good bacteria," to prevent intestinal infections.
Such a regimen will also protect the individual from hospital superbugs, says the study done by food microbiologists at the University of Reading, The Times of London reports. The experts also called for tighter labeling requiring specific details about the bacteria in products.

The study said about half of the probiotics now sold especially through the internet are inaccurately labeled and some even contain unhealthy pathogens. Recently there has been an explosion in the use of probiotics, including yogurt-style drinks, supplements and powders, The Times reported.

The study said "friendly" bacteria aid digestion in the gut and reduce the chances of stomach upsets.

The study's leader Glen Gibson said in the worst recorded case of food poisoning by the stomach bug E.coli 0157, all those who died were elderly.

The study said probiotic products need to contain at least 10 million bacteria to be effective.

9/11 Commission Chairmen Admit to Whitewash

Antiwar.com

by Ivan Eland

August 8, 2006

As both the Bush administration and its client government in Israel, with their invasions of Arab states in Iraq and Lebanon respectively, make the United States ever more hated in the Islamic world, a new book by the chairmen of the 9/11 Commission admits that the commission whitewashed the root cause of the 9/11 attacks – that same interventionist U.S. foreign policy.

Former Governor Tom Kean and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairmen of the 9/11 Commission – the publicity hounds that they are – want to keep the long-retired, but much-celebrated, panel in the public mind. They have written a tell-all book about the trials and tribulations of the panel's work. Despite the commission's disastrous recommendations – which led to a reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community that worsened its original defect prior to 9/11 (a severe coordination problem caused by bureaucratic bloat) – and apparent whitewashing of the most important single issue that it examined, the chairmen are trying their best to write another bestseller. The book usefully details the administration's willful misrepresentation of its incompetent actions that day, but makes the shocking admission that some commission members deliberately wanted to distort an even more important issue. Apparently, unidentified commissioners wanted to cover up the fact that U.S. support for Israel was one of the motivating factors behind al-Qaeda's 9/11 attack. Although, to his credit, Hamilton argued for saying that al-Qaeda committed the heinous strike because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East and American support for Israel, the panel watered down that frank conclusion to state that U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq are "dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world."

Some commissioners wanted to cover up the link between the 9/11 attack and U.S. support for Israel because this might imply that the United States should alter that policy and lessen its support for Israeli actions. How right they were. The question is simple: If the vast bulk of Americans would be safer if U.S. politicians moderated their slavish support of Israel, designed to win the support of key pressure groups at home, wouldn't it be a good idea to make this change in course? Average U.S. citizens might attenuate their support for Israel if the link between the 9/11 attacks and unquestioning U.S. favoritism for Israeli excesses were more widely known. Similarly, if American taxpayers knew that the expensive and unnecessary U.S. policy of intervening in the affairs of countries all over the world – including the U.S. military presence in the Middle East – made them less secure from terrorist attacks at home, pressure would likely build for an abrupt change to a more restrained U.S. foreign policy. But like the original 9/11 Commission report, President Bush regularly obscures this important reality by saying that America was attacked on 9/11 because of its freedoms, making no mention of U.S. interventionist foreign policy as the root cause.

Yet numerous public opinion polls in the Islamic world repeatedly prove the president wrong. The surveys show that people in Muslim countries admire American political and economic freedoms, culture, and technology. But the numbers go through the floor when Islamic people are asked about their approval of U.S. foreign policy. Much of this negative attitude derives from mindless U.S. backing of anything Israel does. In addition, Osama bin Laden has repeatedly written or stated that he attacks the United States because of its military presence in the Persian Gulf and its support for Israel and corrupt regimes in the Arab world.

Problem—poor terrorists need arms

Answer: sell them surplus arms for pennies on the dollar!

After all, how can you maintain a war on terror without dangerous terrorists to point to as boogie men?

The Sunday Mail:

"AMERICAN defence chiefs are selling millions of dollars worth of military hardware from Iraq and Afghanistan to the highest bidder over the internet.

The items - which include rocket launchers and guided missile radar - can easily be used or adapted by criminals and terrorists.

One American government source described it as a 'bargain basement' for terror chief Osama Bin Laden.

TheUSDepartment of Defense claims buyers on www.govliquidation.com are carefully vetted.

But our investigators registered a bogus company on their website.

Within minutes, our registration was accepted without question and we were sent a list of items for sale - many of which were surplus from Afghanistan and Iraq. These items included: Launcher mounts for anti-tank missiles.

Full military uniforms, including hi-tech, bullet-proof body armour.

Radar sets for guided missile systems and all-band antennae radios which can track enemy aircraft.

Small invasion landing craft.

Surveillance equipment, including global satellite positioning systems.

Grenade vests, ammunition belts, James Bond-style shoulder harnesses for revolvers - and even unused medals.

The US Government gave the contract to Liquidations Inc, who claim all buyers are vetted.

One senior Scottish military source said: 'This is far cry from the combat jackets and sleeping bags you used to be able to buy from Army and Navy Stores.

'These bayonet knives, for example, may have been used in hand-to-hand combat to kill people.

'They are not toys or ceremonial knives.

'You could equip a small army with the stuff you can buy on this site.'

The Total Destruction of Srifa

Counterpunch::

"The Total Destruction of Srifa: Mangled Bodies in the Wake of Israeli Bombs and Missiles

By LARA MARLOWE

Srifa, Lebanon."

It was an unseemly end for 80- year-old Manaheel Jabr, flung over a bloodstained walll, grey hair falling around her shrunken black face, a collapsed ceiling pinning her down at the waist.

"It's the grandmother," one of the onlookers gasped when the civil defense bulldozer finally pierced a hole in the rubble of what was until two weeks ago a three-storey house.

Mrs Jabr's corpse presented a terrible dilemma to the Lebanese Red Cross yesterday. Should they cut her in two, put the pieces in a body bag and take her to the hospital morgue, or leave her behind, in the hope that more powerful equipment could lift the concrete slab from her back and would reach her before the dogs did?

It was late afternoon and the 48-hour "pause" in aerial bombardment promised by Israel was drawing to a close. The Red Cross's plan to retrieve 89 bodies across the war zone was about to end in failure. The Israelis, with whom the Lebanese Red Cross communicates via the International Red Cross, granted safe passage to only two of the six villages that the rescue workers wanted to visit yesterday, Srifa and Bint Jbail. And the convoy bound for Bint Jbail had to turn around because of bombing.

That left only Srifa, the site of the most dramatic devastation I have seen in this war. The entire Hay el-Birki neighbourhood - 18 buildings by some accounts - was flattened at 2 am on July 19. "The F-16s [ fighter bombers] came from the west, the Apaches [ attack helicopters from the east," said a local Hizbullah official who identified himself as Abu Hadi.

It seemed amazing that bombs and missiles could chop buildings into so many million of grey concrete pieces, a bed of rubble many meters deep, with only the occasional slipper or coffee pot to remind one that human beings lived here.

The field of ruins stretched to the horizon, reminding me of images of second World War bombings.

Thirty of the 89 names on the Red Cross list were in Srifa, eight in the house where we found Manaheel Jabr. Yet after battering away for four hours in the hot sun, the Red Cross and civil defense volunteers found only three corpses - one of them Mrs Jabr's - and a crushed skull.

It took the Israel airforce minutes to flatten Hay el -Birki but it could be weeks or months before their victims are dug out. The technology used to destroy the neighbourhood was the most sophisticated in the world. The means to dig them out derisory. At about 1pm, a resting Caterpillar bulldozer clamoured down the main street of Srifa belching black smoke and chewing up the tarmac. The driver stopped to put a white sheet with a Red Cross emblem on the roof of the cabin, in the hope of sparing it from bombardment. For the past two days, Israeli forces have battled with Hizbullah at Taib and at Adayseh, just 19 kilometres from Srifa. All afternoon we heard explosions, some frighteningly close.

"Israeli forces are trying to push in on the ground," explained Abu Hadi, the Hizbullah man.

"Hizbullah is protecting Lebanon - mortars, RPGs and even suicide missions if necessary. We will not let them in. We are protecting the border of Lebanon."

The bulldozer was joined with a digging machine with a scooped shovel. "Stop, stop!" an upset Hizbullah man with a walky-talky insisted as the bulldozer began pushing pieces of the former house down the hillside. "This is not the way to do it. You will crush the bodies. The Lebanese army has better machines. We must wait for them."

The Red Cross moved briefly to another address where civilians were known to have died. A medic in an orange jumpsuit placed a mattress over two black shrunken legs which stuck out from heavy rubble in the bomb crater.

"In Islam, we must respect a body," said the Hizbullah official objecting to the Red Cross operation. "Either we wait for the Lebanese army machines, or we wait until the war is over and do it ourselves, even if there are only bones left."

With infinite tact, the Red Cross persuaded Hizbullah to allow them to continue work on the Jabr house.

The gruesome task had been easier on Monday, the first day of the mythical truce, when volunteers collected 20 bodies from cars and the streets of seven villages. "Some are only bones and some are teeming with maggots", said Muhammad Makke head of the Red Cross in southern Lebanon.

"Some of their identities are known and some are not."

Red Cross volunteer Kassem Shalaan (28) lost 60 per cent of hearing in one ear when the Israelis fired on ambulances in Qana on July 25th. A man in the ambulance had a leg amputated by the missile, and his seven-year-old son, who had already suffered shrapnel wounds, is still in a coma, after the missile strike slashed his head open.

Shalaan took part in the body retrieval missions of the past few days. Is it true that dogs are eating corpses? "Yes," Shalaan said, turning his head to hide the tears. "Especially people in the streets and cars. The ones who are buried alive are usually safe from the dogs."

Whatever the outcome of this war, atrocities such as Srifa will poison Lebanese-Israeli relations for decades or even centuries.

Mahmoud Jabr (56) lost six relatives in the bombing of Srifa; among them his brother who owned the house that was partially excavated yesterday. "There is not even a bullet in this village," Jabr said.

"Israel forced the people to be Hizbullah with their barbaric behavior."

Mahmoud Nejbi ( 66) keeps returning to the rubble of another house, at the far end of the devastated neighbourhood. "My 27-year-old son was smoking the narguileh and drinking tea with his friends when the airstrike happened," he said.

"He was a mechanic in Dubai and he brought his wife home to have their baby . . . I would like to make a suicide attack on the Israelis . . . either the Israelis kill us or we kill them."

Lara Marlowe writes for the Irish Times, where this piece first appeared. There's nothing to stop US reporters from going to Srifa -- except doctrinal demands.

Lobbying for Armageddon

AlterNet:

"At the center of it all is Pastor John Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. While Hagee has long prophesized about the end times, he ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, 'Jerusalem Countdown,' in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the book's publication, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which, as the Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he said would cause 'a political earthquake.'

At CUFI's kick-off banquet at the Washington Hilton, attended by over 3,500 members, Republican support for both Hagee's effort and his drumbeat for war with Iran were on full view. Republican National Committee Chair Ken Mehlman told the group that 'no regime is more central to the global jihad' than Iran. Just two days before, Newt Gingrich and John McCain made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to sound the same message, leading Benny Elon, a member of the Israeli Knesset, to comment to the Jerusalem Post that their remarks originated with Hagee. Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback also addressed the group, and Bush sent words of support to the gathering. Republicans, and even some Democrats, spoke at CUFI events to show their 'support for Israel.' But while public and media attention was on the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Hagee's focus continued to be on Iran."

This is indistinguishable from totalitarianism

Washington Post: White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts

"A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal."

Let's stop right there. This means anyone and everyone is a posible terrorist. You. Me.

"Not directly involved." You give money to the Red Cross. The Red Cross helps someone. Later BushCo. thinks that person is a terrorist. You are now a terrorist. See how easy it is?

Ok. Proceed.

"Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors."

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

In other words, remember the Bill of Rights? Well, forget it.

We may torture someone you will never know into accusing you of something you will never know about, find you guilty without you being there, and lock you away forever, if we don't execute you first.

'Basically, this is trying to overrule the Hamdan case,' said Neal K. Katyal, a Georgetown University law professor who was Hamdan's lead attorney.

The plan calls for commissions of five military officers appointed by the defense secretary to try defendants for any of 25 listed crimes. It gives the secretary the unilateral right to 'specify other violations of the laws of war that may be tried by military commission.' The secretary would be empowered to prescribe detailed procedures for carrying out the trials, including 'modes of proof' and the use of hearsay evidence."

Did you get that? Rumsfeld himself will have the power to say that what you did is a crime. He will be able to say that you are a criminal. And all on his sayso, you can be locked away. Forever.

Please, let's hope this doesn't pass. But why wouldn't it? The toothless Congress gives Bush whatever he wants.

The real outrage is that any administration would dare ask for such a thing.

Welcome to the new world.

Surely if the Amazon were threatened with extinction we'd have heard about it....?

This one is so ominous that I've copied the whole article. Why isn't this headline news all over the world, I wonder?


The Independent: Amazon rainforest 'could become a desert':
And that could speed up global warming with 'incalculable consequences', says alarming new research

Source: Copyright 2006, Independent
Date: July 23, 2006
Byline: Geoffrey Lean and Fred Pearce

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

The alarming news comes in the midst of a heatwave gripping Britain and much of Europe and the United States. Temperatures in the south of England reached a July record of 36.3C on Tuesday. And it comes hard on the heels of a warning by an international group of experts, led by the Eastern Orthodox ' pope' Bartholomew, last week that the forest is rapidly approaching a ' tipping point' that would lead to its total destruction.

The research -- carried out by the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole centre in Santarem on the Amazon river -- has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise. When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 -- by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain -- he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes.

The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun.

By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change.

As we report today on pages 28 and 29, the Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility that it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.

Dr Nepstead expects 'mega-fires' rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert.

Dr Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says the research shows that 'the lock has broken' on the Amazon ecosystem. She adds: the Amazon is 'headed in a terrible direction'.

Fred Pearce is the author of 'The Last Generation' (Eden Project Books), published earlier this year"

The original link to this article was found here: http://www.climateark.org/
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