[CTRL] How Israeli Terrorism and American Treason Caused the September Attack
-Caveat Lector- http://www.christianparty.net/israeliterrorism.htm How Israeli terrorism and American treason caused the September Attack If Osama bin Laden is the man behind the September 11 terrorist attack on America, he obviously should suffer the ultimate punishment for his crime. No person or nation that commits terrorism against America should escape punishment. But now I will make a statement that may shock you. If you agree that those who commit terrorist acts against America should be punished, then America should also put Israel at the top of our hit list -- because Israel has committed deliberate acts of terrorism and treachery against the United States. I will also reveal strong evidence indicating that Israel is responsible for the terror attacks of September 11th. This article will show that Israel has committed more terrorism in the last half century than any other nation on earth. Increasing numbers of people are aware of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Lebanese and other Mideastern people have suffered from Israeli invasion and terrorism. However, few people are aware of the deliberate acts of Israeli treachery and terror committed against the United States of America. I will prove this charge against Israel and expose the long-running treason against America that penetrates the highest echelons of the U.S. Government. Why was America attacked? No one would argue that whatever his motivations, if bin Laden was behind the horror of the WTC attacks, he deserves punishment for killing so many innocent people. At the same time, it is vital that we know why bin Laden and millions of others around the world have come to hate America. Why are so many willing to risk or even sacrifice their lives to get at us? I certainly hope no one reading this is so naïve as to believe that the growing millions who hate America do so because we are free. That canard has to be the most ridiculous idea sold to the American people since the pet rock. To end the threat of terrorism against the American people, we must know the true reason why we are so hated. Modern technology makes mass murder and terrorism so ridiculously easy that just about anyone can do it. It cannot be stopped by military might. In fact, even the brute force we are using in Afghanistan supposedly to wipe out terror -- already shows signs of whipping up enough world wide hatred against America to give rise to a thousand new terrorists for every one terrorist we might kill. Perhaps we should have enough courage to consider the possible reasons why so many millions of people hate us. Only when we have all the facts, rather than cute little clichés like They were attacking freedom, can we decide the best way to protect our people in the future. And, perhaps we should ask the media how they define an attack on American freedom? I would say that a real attack on freedom is trashing the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. The Ten Amendments are the very core of what American freedom actually is. George Bush and the U.S. Congress, armed with the Orwellian U.S.A. Patriot Act, did infinitely more to take away our Constitutional freedoms than bin Laden ever could. The real reason we have suffered terrorism The real reason US has suffered the terrorism of the WTC attack is shockingly simple. Too many American politicians have betrayed the American people and their true interests by blindly supporting the leading terrorist nation on earth: Israel. The American mass media and the government cannot have it both ways. If they are motivated to attack Afghanistan for giving aid and comfort to terrorists, then some Palestinians naturally find motivation to attack America for giving aid and even military support to Israel, a nation that has committed unrelenting terrorism against them. Traitors to the United States have allowed a terrorist foreign nation to control the United States Government. Some readers might think it preposterous for me to assert that a foreign nation controls America. But, consider the fact that the former head of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, William Fulbright, said precisely that. He asserted on ABC's Face the Nation television program that Israel Controls the United States Senate. And, Senator Fulbright was no dummy; it is in his name that the brightest students scramble after the so-named Fulbright scholarships. Senator Fulbright is not the only one to make this indictment; many other important members of the U.S. Government have made such charges. Here's what General George Brown said when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We can say we can't possibly get the Congress to support a (Israeli) program like this. And they say don't worry about the Congress. We will take care of the Congress. This is somebody from another country, but they can do it. They own, you know, the banks in this country, the newspapers. Just look at where the Jewish
[CTRL] International Criminal Court: No to US campaign against international justice
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 10:00:36 +0100 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: International Criminal Court: No to US campaign against international justice * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 3 September 2002 IOR 30/007/2002 The international community must reject the US campaign against international justice, Amnesty International said in a new report released today. The USA has approached many governments requesting them to sign agreements not to surrender or transfer US nationals to the new International Criminal Court (ICC). It has already signed such bilateral agreements with Israel, East Timor, Romania and Tajikistan. The USA is exerting extreme pressure on states to meet their demands, in many situations threatening to withdraw US military assistance. Governments should refuse to sign agreements which would give impunity to US nationals should they be accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The USA is demanding an exemption for its nationals should they commit these crimes on the territory of states that have ratified the ICC. These agreements seek to undermine and weaken the ICC which was created to end impunity for the worst crimes known to humanity, Amnesty International said. When legal advisers from the 15 European Union members meet tomorrow, they should take the lead in stopping this campaign by asking its member states to refuse bilateral agreements. Amnesty International's report concludes that any state that enters into an impunity agreement with the USA will violate its obligations under international law. The USA claim that the impunity agreements are in accordance with international law is wholly without merit. In fact, the agreements seek to manipulate provision included to ensure that people accused of these crimes are brought to justice. Background The Rome Statute of the ICC entered into force on 1 July 2002. As of 30 August 2002, 78 states had ratified it; 139 states have signed it. The ICC is in the process of being established to investigate and prosecute people accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so. It is expected that it will become fully operational in the first half of 2003. The USA has been the only state actively to oppose the establishment of the ICC. Since the adoption of the Rome Statute in July 1998, the USA has sought an exemption for US nationals from the jurisdiction of the Court. Amnesty International, other NGOs and governments have repeatedly demonstrated that USA fears that the Court could be used for politically motivated prosecutions against USA nationals have no basis since the Rome Statute contains substantial safeguards and fair trial guarantees. Countries that have ratified the Rome Statute are obliged to comply with requests by the International Criminal Court to arrest and surrender persons accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Signing an impunity agreement with the USA is contrary to a state's obligations under the Statute and goes against the very purpose of the Statute which is to end impunity for the worst crimes under international law. States that have signed the Rome Statute are obliged by international law not to take any steps that would undermine the Rome Statute. Signing an impunity agreement with the USA is clearly against the object and purpose of the Statute which is to end impunity for the worst crimes under international law. All states -- regardless of whether they have ratified, signed or not signed the Rome Statute -- that enter into impunity agreements with the USA or refuse to arrest and surrender persons accused by the ICC may violate their obligations under international law to bring to justice those responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. For a copy of the report International Criminal Court: The US efforts to obtain impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, visit: www.amnesty.org/icc You may repost this message onto other sources provided the main text is not altered in any way and both the header crediting Amnesty International and this footer remain intact. Only the list subscription message may be removed. To subscribe to amnesty-L, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subscribe amnesty-L in the message body. To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe amnesty-L in the message body. If you have problem signing off, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. [EMAIL PROTECTED] handles only messages concerning list administration. Past and current Amnesty news services can be found at
[CTRL] Mandela Warns Bush Over Iraq
-Caveat Lector- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2228971.stm Mandela Warns Bush Over Iraq By John Pienaar BBC Sunday, 1 September, 2002 BBC political correspondent Nelson Mandela has warned President Bush that his administration risks destroying the United Nations if it attacks Iraq without international support. BBC News has learned that Mr Mandela spoke directly to the US president to urge him to show restraint, saying a military strike would undermine the trust between America and a spectrum of international opinion. Mr Mandela is also said to be seeking a meeting with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair to express his concerns. Nelson Mandela is a natural ally of those who want to see the UN play a pivotal and decisive role, but he is also an iconic figure and a voice that both Mr Bush and Mr Blair will find hard to ignore. Mounting pressure Mr Blair's staff say there has been no request to talk to the prime minister so far, but as one official put it, he is always ready to talk to Nelson. Mr Blair is already under heavy pressure from his colleagues in the Labour party to hold the American president in check - if he can. According to opinion polls, a majority of British public opinion is opposed to a war against Iraq. The direct intervention of a figure such as Nelson Mandela can only add significantly to the impression of mounting pressure. Mr Blair arrived in the central Mozambique town of Dondo on Sunday to show support for the economic and political reforms he sees as the key to tackling the problems of the developing world. He will take that message to the World Summit in Johannesburg, all the time hoping to regain control of his own political session. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Iraq: Hype, Hysteria, Hypocrisy
-Caveat Lector- http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/09/02/35718.html IRAQ: HYPE, HYSTERIA, HYPOCRISY Rumsfelds hysterical discourse echoed by Cheney Richard (Dick) Cheney, the Vice President of the United States of America, has taken up the gauntlet left by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the Bush administration schemes for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. That a man in the position of Richard Cheney can justify the notion of a unilateral military campaign against a sovereign state outside the auspices of the UNO and without a consensus of favourable opinion from the international community, based purely upon conjecture, is as shocking as it is ludicrous. The Vice President claims that Baghdad is pursuing an aggressive programme to develop a nuclear weapons capacity, that His Excellency President Saddam Hussein aims to dominate the Middle East and submit the world to nuclear blackmail and his trump card, accompanied by the Churchillian tones of an increasingly incoherent Rumsfeld, who evokes the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s, is that time is against us and It is better to act than to do nothing. Act, the United States has already done, with Depleted Uranium weaponry in 1991, which has been responsible for 200% increases in malignant diseases in southern Iraq, mainly in children. Act, the United States has already done, in burning crops in Iraqi agricultural fields, to deprive an already hungry civilian population of nourishment. However, there is not one shred of evidence which links Saddam Husseins Ba'ath regime to a global terrorism campaign and there is not a grain of truth in Cheney's accusations. The USA is the only country in the international community which chooses to use blackmail and bullying instead of diplomacy, as it revises trading treaties with states which do not jump as high as they are told, this after any threads of economic independence have been assimilated. Planning a military intervention based on pure conjecture and haphazard guessing is an amateurish and extremely dangerous method of conducting crisis management, amateurish to the degree exposed in the last US Presidential election. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush cannot count on the support of one single neighbour of Iraq nor on any single political heavyweight in the international community, for a unilateral military strike. The German Defence Minister, Peter Struck, has even considered pulling out his nuclear/biological contamination detection unit from Kuwait so as not to involve German soldiers in a war against Iraq, while Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has repeatedly made it clear that he is against any attack, as has French President Jacques Chirac, who claims that only the UN Security Council has the competence to order military intervention against Baghdad. The only potential ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrestles with the knowledge that 52% of his own party is decidedly against a strike against Iraq. The ridiculous stance of the USA is blatantly exposed in the field. Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait have all attacked a military solution and called on a diplomatic resolution to the tension. The old adage Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are, applied to the current situation, presents a telling and chilling spectacle that of an iceberg floating alone in ever warmer waters, with a walrus, a polar bear and a penguin stranded on top, looking more and more isolated and more and more out of their element. Applied to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush, the adage shows that there are no friends. The rules of international diplomacy have already taught the lesson that the isolated must sink. Whether or not they can swim remains to be seen. Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to
[CTRL] Fisk: It is not my job to provide the evidence for a war crimes trial
-Caveat Lector- The Independent (London) August 24, 2002, Saturday - Comment - IT IS NOT MY JOB TO PROVIDE THE EVIDENCE FOR A WAR CRIMES TRIAL A reporter's job does not include joining the prosecution. We are witnesses and we name, if we can, the bad guys. Robert Fisk Three Western war crimes investigators turned up to see me in Beirut last week. No, they didn't come to talk about the Bosnian war. They wanted to know about torture at Israel's notorious Khiam jail in southern Lebanon, about beatings and imprisonment in cupboard-size cells and electrodes applied to the toes and penises of inmates under interrogation. Most of the torturers were Lebanese members of Israel's proxy South Lebanon Army militia, and they performed their vile work for the Israelis - on women as well as men - from the late Seventies until Israel's withdrawal in 2000: almost a quarter of a century of torture. Khiam prison is still there, open to the public, a living testament to brutality and Israeli shame. The problem is that Israel is now trying to dump its Lebanese torturers on Western countries. Sweden, Canada, Norway, France, Germany and other nations are being asked to give citizenship to these repulsive men in the interests of peace - and also because the Israeli government would prefer they left Israel. The three investigators - two cops and a justice ministry official - had come to Beirut to make sure that their government wasn't about to give citizenship to Israel's war criminals. And they knew what they were talking about. We both knew that one former torturer was living in Sweden with his two sons, and that another had opened two restaurants in America. And I was happy to chat to them. But chatting is one thing. Testifying is quite another. I make this point because the BBC told me last week that their Belgrade correspondent, Jacky Rowland, was planning to testify against Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague war crimes tribunal. I was invited this week to participate in a BBC radio interview with yet another BBC man who had given evidence at The Hague, Dan Damon. And, in fact, I received a phone call from one of The Hague investigators a few weeks ago, wanting to know if I had accompanied a European Union delegation to a Bosnian concentration camp in 1982. I had travelled with the EU men to two camps - not the one that The Hague investigator was interested in. But this was not the first call I've had from The Hague and I pointed out this time - as I had before - that I didn't believe journalists should be policemen. My articles could be used by anyone at The Hague and I was more than ready to sign a letter to the effect that they were accurate. But that was all. So when Dan Damon of the BBC argued on air this week that the written or spoken report might not be believed if a reporter wasn't ready to testify in a court, I was a bit taken aback. In many cases, The Hague has commenced proceedings against war criminals on the basis of newspaper articles and television programmes. No one, so far as I know, has ever questioned our reports on Serbian, Croatian - and, yes, Muslim Bosnian - war crimes. In fact, I suspect Dan's argument was a bit of a smokescreen to cover his own concern about the boundaries of journalism. I know, of course, how the arguments go. I may be a journalist, says the reporter as he or she turns up to the court, but I am also a human being. A time must come when a journalist's rules are outweighed by moral conscience. I don't like this argument. Firstly, because the implication is that journalists who don't intend to testify are not human beings; and secondly, because it suggests that reporters in general don't normally work with a moral conscience. Jonathan Randal, who worked for The Washington Post in Bosnia and has told The Hague tribunal that he will not testify against a Serb defendant, understands this all too well. What worries me, though, is that journalism includes an element of masquerade if we cover wars as reporters and then participate in the prosecution of the bad guys at the request of a court whose writ extends only to those war crimes which it sees fit - or which the West sees fit - to investigate. Jacky Rowland of the BBC, for example, did not - while reporting the Balkan atrocities - turn up on Serbian assignments with the words: I'm from the BBC and - if your lot lose - I'm ready to help in your prosecution. Indeed, if she had said that, she wouldn't have had the chance to undertake many more reporting assignments. Nor would any of us. But - if it's now going to be the habit for BBC reporters to turn up as prosecution witnesses at The Hague - heaven spare any of us in the future. Now I have nothing against Jacky Rowland's reports. And if she feels her testimony is vital to convicting Mr Milosevic, that's up to her. But this story has another side. For Ms Rowland is not planning to attend The Hague court because she has chosen to give evidence against
[CTRL] FBI will tap into personal profiles
-Caveat Lector- http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/tue/news/news_1n3fbidata.html FBI will tap into personal profiles No legal basis for suspicion needed By Bruce V. Bigelow STAFF WRITER September 3, 2002 When direct marketing consultant Mike DeCastro gets hired to plan a campaign pitching vacations in Mazatlan or cell phone service in San Diego, one of his first moves is to consult an online catalog of customer lists. Such lists are the lubricant that keep the wheels of our consumer society spinning. If you applied for a loan or used a credit card, your name is on a list. They identify almost everyone who has attended school, subscribed to anything, or bought anything from a catalog, direct mail or online merchant. Ultimately, such lists also provide the raw material used to build sophisticated computerized databases that have become a multibillion- dollar industry. Just about anything that you want to know about anybody is available in a commercial database, said DeCastro of San Francisco. Most people don't have a clue that such databases compile information from a variety of sources, linking their names to their Social Security numbers, credit profiles, employment histories, travel records, court records, personal interests and chronic health conditions. And now, under changes ordered by Attorney General John Ashcroft, the FBI is moving to use commercial databases in its efforts to prevent acts of terrorism in the United States. The change was part of a broader decision, announced by the Justice Department May 30, to loosen the internal policies that guide federal terrorist investigations. Now, even if they don't have a specific suspect or legal basis for suspicion, FBI agents under the new guidelines are empowered to scour public sources for information on future terrorist threats, Ashcroft said. The attorney general did not specify how the FBI would use commercial databases, and a Justice Department spokesman did not return calls seeking elaboration. Experts say the FBI would likely use special software and advanced data-mining techniques that can sift through enormous fields of data to identify patterns and characteristics of potential terrorists. Given the potential threats to American security, some say the changes were long overdue. The computer systems that were available to the general public were not available to agents like me, said Darwin Wisdom, a former FBI agent who runs the Baker Street Group, a San Diego investigative firm. I was always dismayed by our inability to access information that was available on computer just about everywhere else. 'Dragnet-style' Before Ashcroft changed the guidelines, the FBI could not even use standard Internet search engines such as Google to look for information concerning terrorist activity, said Mitch Dembin, who resigned two years ago as a federal prosecutor specializing in computer crimes. Investigators first had to have suspicion. The guidelines cannot be so strict that they shut out from law enforcement the very tools that are available to you and me, Wisdom said. That's preposterous. Ashcroft's changes have stirred some opposition. The American Civil Liberties Union says the new FBI guidelines reversed many self- imposed restraints the Justice Department adopted in the 1970s after revelations of FBI illegal spying. For over a decade, the commercial data collectors have promised Americans they would not turn this data over to law enforcement, said Chris Hoofnagle, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. This was a guarantee that has staved off legislation and allowed this data collection to continue. The new capabilities of these technologies now allows suspicionless, dragnet-style investigations of all Americans, Hoofnagle said. FBI agents could use commercial databases before Ashcroft changed the guidelines, but only after indications of criminal activity were established, Hoofnagle said. A prosecutor would then obtain a warrant that allowed a search, as well as electronic eavesdropping. Under the old guidelines, they were not allowed to engage in prospective searches meaning they could not sit down and say all Protestant men between 20 and 24 are likely terrorists and print out a suspect list, Hoofnagle said. By using commercial databases, DeCastro said, the FBI could generate lists of potential suspects based on a profile using such criteria as race, religion, travel, bank accounts and even grocery-store purchases. It's a disaster, said John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This information has been gathered with an assurance to the consumer that his privacy was being protected, except when warrants were issued for a specific release. Said Barlow: We have increasingly what strikes me as the foundation for a police state in the United States. But Wisdom, who spent 27 years as an FBI
[CTRL] Russia threatens to veto any UN move to attack Iraq
-Caveat Lector- http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/primenews/story/0,1870,141375,00.html Russia threatens to veto any UN move to attack Iraq Moscow says it has not seen a 'single well-founded argument' that Saddam's regime represents a threat to America MOSCOW - Russia said it had seen no 'single well-founded argument' that Iraq represents a threat to the United States and warned it would veto any measure for military action against Baghdad that comes before the United Nations Security Council. 'We hope... that this question will not be placed before the Security Council, thereby necessitating the veto,' Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said in a blunt message to the US after meeting his Iraqi counterpart, Mr Naji Sabri, here. Russia, Iraq's biggest trade partner, has come out strongly against US military action to overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and has echoed Baghdad's calls for a diplomatic settlement. But in his talks on Monday, he also pressed Baghdad to allow the return of United Nations weapons inspectors. He stressed that the resumption of inspections was necessary 'for the regularisation of the situation and for the lifting of sanctions... I don't see any alternative'. Mr Ivanov's statements appeared to indicate that the Kremlin is putting heavy pressure on Iraq, with whom it has cultivated close ties. Russia fears a war would complicate the tense Middle East situation and jeopardise its economic interests in Iraq, which owes it US$7 billion (S$12.3 billion). At the Earth Summit in Johannesburg, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said Baghdad was ready to discuss a return of UN inspectors but only with other issues, such as ending sanctions and restoring Iraqi sovereignty over its territory. It has been a stance UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has previously rejected. His spokesman said he urged Mr Tariq to comply with Security Council resolutions calling for the unconditional return of inspectors. Mr Tariq said earlier: 'You have to find a solution for all these matters, not only pick up one certain aspect of it.' He also accused the US of being uninterested in talks. US Secretary of State Colin Powell was en route to Johannesburg for the Earth Summit, where he was expected to face criticism over threats by President George W. Bush to attack Iraq. Washington has said that it aims to overthrow the Iraqi leader. Mr Powell, seen as a Bush Cabinet moderate, has said Iraq allowing UN inspectors back would be a 'first step'. He made the comment shortly after US Vice-President Dick Cheney said there was no point in sending inspectors back into Iraq and pushed for military action. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday that Britain will publish evidence of Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction in 'the next few weeks'. 'A lot of the work has already been done,' he said. 'There needs to be some more work... but I think probably the best thing to do is to publish that within the next few weeks... We will produce whatever we have.' -- AP, AFP A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] CRG: On Target
-Caveat Lector- http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TAY209A.html On Target by Scott Taylor The Halifax Herald, 2 September/ septembre 2002. Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation (CRM), globalresearch.ca , 3 September/ septembre 2002 Order by phone from publisher. Call (toll free) 1-888-713-8500. AS PRESIDENT George W. Bush and his hawkish advisers continue to argue their case for a war with Iraq, they appear to have found many willing allies in the North American media. Journalistic values, such as printing only provable facts, have been all too frequently replaced with dangerously irresponsible jingoism. The intent of this inflammatory rhetoric appears designed to whip up an anti-Iraq war fever among an increasingly sceptical public. Referring to Saddam Hussein as the Butcher of Baghdad and revisiting his notorious resume, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the use of poison gas against Kurdish rebels, can be viewed as fair comment in such pro-war editorials. However, the only real issues that President Bush can use to justify launching a military strike to change the regime in Iraq are the linking of Saddam to a terrorist plot and allegations that Iraq continues to possess weapons of mass destruction. Until now, the U.S. has had great difficulty in producing proof of such activities. Bush's longstanding European and Arab allies have publicly denounced the idea of war against Iraq while in Britain, the only country openly supporting military action, Prime Minister Tony Blair runs the risk of splitting his Labour party vote and bringing down the government should hostilities escalate. It was therefore very surprising to read Finance Minister John Manley's recent proclamations that Saddam has a chemical arsenal and that he poses a real threat to Western civilization. There was no ambivalence in Manley's quote; it was simply stated as a fact. By contrast, that same day, Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. security adviser, was addressing British parliamentarians and trying her best to bring them on board the American war wagon. Rice's statements differed significantly from Mr. Manley's in that she couched her comments with such words as if Saddam possesses chemical weapons and should Iraq acquire weapons of mass destruction, then all of us will be in danger. Given that Canada does not operate an extensive intelligence network in the Middle East, that we do not have the benefit of independent spy satellite observations, that there has been no Canadian diplomatic mission in Baghdad for 12 years, and that Canada definitely has no unilateral weapon inspection teams operating in Iraq, how could John Manley possibly have acquired the damning categorical proof that the U.S. is so desperately seeking? Mr. Manley obviously had his reasons for making such a statement; however, journalists must ask for their own proof before simply parroting a politician's comments to the public. If Manley cannot or will not reveal the source of such significant findings, then his allegations are merely hearsay and as such do not merit publication. Likewise, any official statements from the Pentagon or U.S. State Department must be taken with a liberal grain of salt. During the 1999 NATO air strikes against Kosovo, the media gleefully reported the mounting tally of destroyed Yugoslavian military hardware. Pentagon officials and their NATO counterparts released hundreds of video clips that showed laser-guided bombs striking Serbian tanks and artillery pieces. But when the horde of NATO-accredited journalists rolled into the embattled province, they were shocked to find only 13 hulks of shattered Yugoslav armoured vehicle littering the battlefields. Of this meagre tally, five had been disabled by Albanian KLA guerrillas, not destroyed by NATO airstrikes. For 78 days, the NATO press pool had been duped into reporting fictitious success claims substantiated by phony video clips. Likewise, during the Kosovo campaign, the U.S. State Department had sent up cries of Serbian genocide, with allegations that up to 100,000 Albanians had been systematically slaughtered. Despite an exhaustive search to unearth the evidence to substantiate the claims, fewer than 2,000 bodies have been located. This includes 700 Serbs, as well as other combatants from both sides. Based on these statistics, it was recently concluded by none other than the Albanian Kosovar Supreme Court that Serbian authorities had not perpetrated acts of genocide against their people. Another recent example of media manipulation was the speculation on Osama bin Laden's cave complexes in Afghanistan. A widely reproduced artist's impression of the Tora Bora secret hideout resembled something out of a James Bond movie: The entire inside of a mountain was hollowed out and equipped with all manner of modern conveniences, including generators, elevators and even hot tubs! But when the coalition forces, including the Canadian contingent, probed the
[CTRL] South Carolina Secretly Creates Children's DNA Database
-Caveat Lector- http://www.goupstate.com/docs/Opinion/Editorials/5878.asphttp://www.goupstate.com/docs/Opinion/Editorials/5878.asp --- Published: February 21, 2002 State of mistrust South Carolina agencies continue to violate citizens' privacy. This time the state is distributing our children's DNA. Lawmakers need to institute firmer rules on the collection and distribution of individuals' personal information. _ Once again South Carolina's state government has proven that it can't be trusted with the personal information it demands from its citizens. South Carolinians had hoped it was a fluke when the state sold the information on 3.5 million people's driver's licenses to a New Hampshire company without their permission or even notification. Citizens thought that the outrage from that incident surely would make state officials more responsible about how they handle the personal information citizens are forced to give the state. But last week South Carolinians learned that -- without their knowledge or permission -- the state had created a DNA library on our children. By law, babies are tested for specific genetic diseases after they are born. The state Department of Health and Environmental Control has been saving all of those samples since 1995 in a special deep freeze facility. State officials told us not to worry. These genetic blueprints of our children are safe with them. This information could not be misused. This week we learned that the information has already been misused. Without the permission of these DNA donors or their parents, the state has given some of the samples to a genetics laboratory and gave others to the State Law Enforcement Division to help start a DNA databank there. Are there any parents left who still trust the state with this information? It's not likely. Do South Carolinians want a genetics lab experimenting on their children's DNA? Did state officials ever think to ask? And what right does SLED have to include our innocent children's DNA in its databank? Legislative remedies for this problem have been discussed in Columbia. They range from the immediate destruction of the DNA samples held by DHEC to a system in which parents can instruct the state not to keep their children's samples. Clearly, the state must institute a process that -- at a bare minimum -- requires DHEC to get parental permission to keep the samples. [...] A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Hearing Voices?
-Caveat Lector- http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,50483,00.html Point-'n'-Shoot Sound Makes Waves By John Gartner 2:00 a.m. Feb. 21, 2002 PST Those voices in your head may be real. Researchers have developed technology that can project a beam of sound so narrow that only one person can hear it. Directed audio sounds like it's coming from right in front of you even when transmitted from a few hundred meters away. Inventors of the new ventriloquist technology say it could provide an added dimension to entertainment. The military, however, is investigating using it to confuse opponents or even inflict pain. The Audio Spotlight is one of two competing audio transmission systems that emit a one-foot square column of sound that can only be heard by people in its direct path. Joseph Pompei, a PhD student at the MIT Media Lab, decided to develop it while working at audio company Bose, which he joined at 16 as its youngest-ever engineer. Pompei, who used to play jazz trumpet in nightclubs in Chicago, became interested in how sound systems reproduce and distribute music. He thought it would be cool to choreograph sound just like you would dancers on stage. Pompei imagined that instead of loudspeakers blaring the same cacophony of instruments to all parts of the room, it would be more interesting to selectively spotlight the soloist to the left side of the audience, while featuring the percussion up front, and then switching them around. Sound in real life is occurring all around you. Regular speakers only go so far in reproducing an accurate environment, Pompei said. Pompei developed the first demonstration systems of the technology for installations at Sega's Joyopolis theme park in Tokyo and the Boston Museum of Science, and he's planning to start selling it commercially soon. He said museums like the system because visitors who stand in front of an exhibit can hear the appropriate audio track without being distracted by sound from other displays. The Audio Spotlight transmitters range from several inches in diameter to about 20 inches and generate a column of sound between one to three degrees wider than the transmitter. The technology could also be used to prevent fights over the car's radio tuner, Pompei said. He put several Audio Spotlights in a concept truck from Chrysler, which enabled passengers to hear their own radio stations -- the kids in the back seat enjoyed heavy metal while the parents relaxed to elevator music. It could make for much happier trips, he said. The Audio Spotlight converts ordinary audio into high-frequency ultrasonic signals that are outside the range of normal hearing. As these sound waves push out from the source, they interact with air pressure to create audible sounds. Pompei said the non-linear effect of air pressure modifies sound waves in a consistent fashion. He wrote algorithms that reverse-engineered the desired sound waves to determine the appropriate ultrasonic source signals. According to University of Texas professor David Blackstock, high-frequency signals are easier to focus, and control like a flashlight, than sounds that are within the human range of hearing, which disperse in all directions. Blackstock said ultrasonic signals decay more slowly than lower-frequency waves so they are easier to send farther. The Audio Spotlight emits sounds in the 60-kilohertz range, which, according to Blackstock, is well above the 20-KHz limit of human hearing. Blackstock said the first experiments to use ultrasonic sounds were conducted underwater in the 1960s, and Japanese researchers made advances in the 1980s but were unable to create a commercial application for the technology. Pompei said Audio Spotlights are currently being installed in Australia for the upcoming Fringe Festival. Pompei started Holosonic Research Labs to sell Audio Spotlights to corporations such as Kraft and Kodak, which are in the process of integrating them into information kiosks and retail displays. An alternative to Pompei's invention, which also may be commercially available soon, is American Technology's Hypersonic Sound System. The HSS system similarly converts audio into ultrasonic sound waves, and Blackstock was impressed by a demonstration. Blackstock said he heard a clear signal at about 100 meters, but then heard nothing by moving two steps out of the audio's path. It's remarkable, a spectacular effect. American Technology president Terry Conrad said the company is going into its first mass production of chips that convert the audible sounds into ultrasonic waves in February. American Technology recently signed an agreement with the U.S. Army to develop the technology for a decidedly non-commercial use: psychological warfare. According to American Technology CTO Jim Croft, the technology could be used to confuse opponents by making them think there was someone nearby. Small transmitters could be kept out of sight, and ghost sounds could be bounced off rocks or any
[CTRL] Pentagon Propaganda Plan Is Undemocratic, Possibly Illegal (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- FAIR-L Fairness Accuracy In Reporting Media analysis, critiques and activism MEDIA ADVISORY: Pentagon Propaganda Plan Is Undemocratic, Possibly Illegal February 19, 2002 The New York Times reported today that the Pentagons Office of Strategic Influence is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations in an effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries. The OSI was created shortly after September 11 to publicize the U.S. governments perspective in Islamic countries and to generate support for the U.S.s war on terror. This latest announcement raises grave concerns that far from being an honest effort to explain U.S. policy, the OSI may be a profoundly undemocratic program devoted to spreading disinformation and misleading the public, both at home and abroad. At the same time, involving reporters in disinformation campaigns puts the lives of working journalists at risk. Despite the OSIs multi-million-dollar budget and its mandate to propagandize throughout the Middle East, Asia and Western Europe, even many senior Pentagon officials and Congressional military aides say they know almost nothing about its purpose and plans, according to the Times. The Times reported that the OSIs latest announcement has generated opposition within the Pentagon among those who fear that it will undermine the Defense Departments credibility. Tarnished credibility may be the least of the problems created by the OSIs new plan to manipulate media-- the plan may compromise the free flow of information that democracy relies on. The government is barred by law from propagandizing within the U.S., but the OSIs new plan will likely lead to disinformation planted in a foreign news report being picked up by U.S. news outlets. The war in Afghanistan has shown that the 24-hour news cycle, combined with cuts in the foreign news budgets across the U.S., make overseas outlets like Al-Jazeera and Reuters key resources for U.S. reporters. Any accidental propaganda fallout from the OSIs efforts is troubling enough, but given the U.S. governments track record on domestic propaganda, U.S. media should be pushing especially hard for more information about the operations other, intentional policies. According to the New York Times, one of the military units assigned to carry out the policies of the Office of Strategic Influence is the U.S. Armys Psychological Operations Command (PSYOPS). The Times doesnt mention, however, that PSYOPS has been accused of operating domestically as recently as the Kosovo war. In February 2000, reports in Dutch and French newspapers revealed that several officers from the 4th PSYOPS Group had worked in the news division at CNN's Atlanta headquarters as part of an internship program starting in the final days of the Kosovo War. Coverage of this disturbing story was scarce (see http://www.fair.org/activism/cnn-psyops.html), but after FAIR issued an Action Alert on the story, CNN stated that it had already terminated the program and acknowledged that it was inappropriate. Even if the PSYOPS officers working in the newsroom did not directly influence news reporting, the question remains of whether CNN may have allowed the military to conduct an intelligence-gathering mission against the network itself. The idea isnt far-fetched-- according to Intelligence Newsletter (2/17/00), a rear admiral from the Special Operations Command told a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to gain control over commercial news satellites to help bring down an informational cone of silence over regions where special operations were taking place. One of CNNs PSYOPS interns worked in the networks satellite division. (During the Afghanistan war the Pentagon found a very direct way to gain controlit simply bought up all commercial satellite images of Afghanistan, in order to prevent media from accessing them.) Its worth noting that the 4th PSYOPS group is the same group that staffed the National Security Council's now notorious Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), which planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration's Central America policies during the 1980s. Described by a senior U.S. official as a vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory (Miami Herald, 7/19/87), the OPD was shut down after the Iran-Contra investigations, but not before influencing coverage in major outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post (Extra!, 9-10/01). The OPD may be gone, but the Bush administrations recent recess appointment of former OPD head Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs is not reassuring. It suggests, at best, a troubling indifference to
[CTRL] Microsoft's lobbying efforts eclipse Enron
-Caveat Lector- http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-835267.html Microsoft's lobbying efforts eclipse Enron By Matt Loney ZDNet (UK) February 12, 2002, 7:40 AM PT Microsoft's budget for political lobbying exceeded that of Enron, the judge residing over the antitrust case has heard. The software giant's budget for its Political Action Committee (PAC) increased from about $16,000 in 1995 to $1.6 million in 2000, according to Edward Roeder, a self-styled expert on efforts to influence the U.S. government, and founder of Sunshine Press Services, a news agency devoted to investigating money in politics. Roeder's report was submitted to Judge Kollar-Kotelly at the end of January. Microsoft has been unable to comment. Judge Kollar-Kotelly heard that total donations to political donations from Microsoft and its employees to political parties, candidates and PACs in the 2000 election cycle amounted to more than $6.1 million. During this period, Microsoft and its executives accounted for $2.3 million in soft money contributions, compared to $1.55 million by Enron and its executives for the same period. Soft money is the term generally given to unregulated corporate and individual contributions that cannot go directly to candidates, but which typically goes to political parties. The evidence came from a review commissioned by the Computer Communications Industry Association. Roeder said that although the research was commissioned by the CCIA--a known critic of Microsoft--the evidence was based on the extraordinary public record of Microsoft's political activities during the timeframe of this trial. Roeder said that his review of the available documents has led him to conclude that over the past five years, Microsoft has engaged in political influence peddling in many ways unprecedented in modern political history. The report was delivered in response to the deal unexpectedly reached between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice last year after Microsoft had been found guilty of violating antitrust laws. Microsoft's campaign contributions significantly surpassed those of Enron, said Roeder in his report. It appears Microsoft may have successfully influenced the administration's antitrust policy, with major implications for legal antitrust pecedent. Microsoft insists it did not participate in any backroom deals. Nevertheless, Roeder recommended that the court undertake an immediate review of Microsoft's lobbying activities surrounding this settlement, with particular attention to meetings with the Justice Department of the White House by Microsoft or its agents. What makes Microsoft's lobbying throughout the trial so unique is not necessarily the size of political contributions but the scope of its efforts and the speed at which Microsoft went from having almost no political presence in Washington to having one of the largest and most sophisticated political operations. In 1995, the company had just a single lobbyist based in Chevy Chase, Maryland; today, it has one of the largest PACs in U.S. corporate history, said Roeder. Microsoft has leapt to the top of the corporate contributor list in soft money contributions. The size and speed of this leap was staggering. In the seven days preceding Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's ruling against Microsoft, said Roeder, the company donated more soft money to the national political parties than it gave to federal candidates and political parties in the seven years spanning 1989 to 1996. And during the 1999-2000 election cycle, Microsoft and its executives accounted for some $2,298,551 in soft money contributions. Enron, by comparison, donated $1,546,055 during the same period. Microsoft's direct lobbying has also grown out of all proportion, so that it now retains more lobbyists than the handful of companies with more than 300,000 employees. Microsoft has just 30,000 employees. Part of the reasoning for extensive use of retainers, says Roeder, citing a Business Week article, is to suck all the oxygen out. In Washington State, Microsoft has hired many law firms with antitrust expertise to work in unrelated areas. The strategy was extended to other key states, with the dual benefits of starving the opposition of experienced lobbyists, and achieving political results that have benefited the company's case. In South Carolina, one of the states originally participating in the antitrust suit, Microsoft contributed $25,000 to attorney general Charles Condon shortly before his re-election in 1998. According to the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party this was the largest unsolicited donation ever received. Three weeks after Condon won the election, South Carolina withdrew from the antitrust case. The analysis of donations by political party shows some surprising results. While Microsoft donations favored Republicans (who got 72 percent of the money from 1995 to 1998), its employees were more inclined to support the Democrats. Democratic PACs
[CTRL] Secret Sweetheart deal between DOJ and M$ execs
-Caveat Lector- Secret Sweetheart deal between DOJ and M$ execs? On Newsforge, Feb 20, 11:58: http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/02/20/1619205 Wednesday February 20, @11:58AM [ Government ] - By Jack Bryar - Is it really possible that when Microsoft set out to market a Linux killer last November it began to get itself into more legal difficulty than ever before? And could it blow up into a political scandal as well? Perhaps the weeping Canadian figure skaters kept you distracted this week, but if you were sifting through the public comments in the Microsoft antitrust case, you'd notice that the New York Times, among others, is hinting that the sweetheart settlement proposed between Microsoft and Assistant Attorney General Charles A. James is about to blow up, big time. The proposed antitrust settlement between Microsoft and the U.S. Department of Justice drew about 30,000 comments, more than any business case in recent memory. The DOJ and the court released 47 of the most substantial of these comments. They are worth reading. Most of them lay out the technical and legal flaws in the settlement. A couple of comments, notably the detailed suggestions of connectivity maven Dan Kegel, lay out the wording needed to make the settlement an effective document. However, several other comments focused on whether or not the Microsoft and the DOJ have violated the Tunney Act in its first big test since the Act was passed in 1974. At issue: the legal obligation of Microsoft and the DOJ to document exactly what was said to justice officials by Microsoft during negotiations. Was there an covert deal, generated by secret Microsoft lobbying and tons of soft money contributions? Among the curious is none other than former U.S. Senator John V. Tunney, the author of the sunshine legislation bearing his name. The Tunney Act is supposed to prevent government litigators from entering into sweetheart deals with their adversaries. One of the mechanisms of the act is supposed to be full disclosure of all contacts and all representations made during negotiations between parties. Tunney filed a comment with Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly insisting that, in order to comply with the Tunney Act, Microsoft must specify all contacts between it and the government and what was said. In his statement, Tunney said, In my opinion, it is essential that all discussions between the defendant corporation and the government ... that might have led to a proposal settlement decree be disclosed. The Senate Judiciary Committee made much the same point, stating that Microsoft has made no secret of the political influence it has sought to create during this trial. The committee suggested that is was concerned that Microsoft had engaged in precisely the sort of secret lobbying of Justice Department officials that the Tunney Act was designed to expose. The New York Times has also weighed in with an opinion that, contrary to the Tunney Act, Microsoft has not disclosed who attended this and other meetings. Nor has Microsoft described in even the most cursory fashion the substance of any of these communications, the Times stated. Two sets of dates are of particular interest to outside observers. These are October 5 and October 30-31. I earlier wrote a column about the Halloween negotiations between Microsoft and Assistant Attorney General Charles A. James, when James effectively left the Justice experts advising him outside the room. Litigators for the states that have refused to accept the settlement are understandably curious about just what was said in those negotiations. They are even more curious because of the possibility that James and his staff may have been misled by Microsoft officials at an earlier meeting, and the effect it may have had on any discussions of unbundling. Unbundling was an idea in circulation during most of the antitrust litigation. Part of what brought Microsoft into court was the company's bundling of Internet Explorer (and since then, its video package) into the core of the Windows operating system. Microsoft vehemently insisted throughout the last several years that unbundling Explorer, in particular, couldn't be accomplished without wrecking the integrity of the platform. The state attorneys general could not help but notice when last November Microsoft announced ... an unbundled Windows! Marketed as a Linux killer, Microsoft newest iteration of its codebase was called Windows XP Embedded. To the holdout states' way of looking at it, here were all the components that Microsoft asserted couldn't be separated, available at a price for developers who wanted to Windows enable their CD players or cell phones. It would be hard to imagine that in October, Microsoft senior management would not know about XP Embedded's pending release in November. This why observers are curious about what was said at a technical meeting held October 5 between Microsoft and Justice officials. Microsoft has failed to disclose
[CTRL] The Pentagon's Ministry of Truth
-Caveat Lector- http://www.sfgate.com/comics/meyer/archive/index.shtml The Salt Lake Tribune Friday, February 22, 2002 Commentary The Pentagon's 'Ministry of Truth' BY CHRIS MATHEWS CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE WASHINGTON -- Wasn't this Ministry of Truth and War is Peace stuff was supposed to arrive 20 years ago? George Orwell predicted a government stamping lies as truth and fighting a war so endless as to assume the monotony of peace. Writing against the early Cold War backdrop, he predicted this grim world to arrive in 1984. Well, worse late than never. The Orwellian fears of post-World War II are taking form in early 21st-century Washington. The prophesied Ministry of Truth is the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence. The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policymakers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said, The New York Times reported this week. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Pentagon is merely doing in 2002 what countries did in past wars: fool the enemy. The World War II allies protected the Normandy Invasion using a feint toward Calais instead of its actual location, the Cotentin peninsula. If that fooled the Germans, it also saved lots of American, British and Canadian lives. We've got to be just as sneaky, Rumsfeld argues, in fighting the terrorists and terror-backing countries today. Is this the extent of the lies the Pentagon will tell? Tactical stuff about operations that puts the bin Laden crowd off the trail? If so, who could complain? But if the new Pentagon operation goes further and pumps out big, strategic lies, a mission its name clearly implies, we are crossing a line that used to separate the good guys -- us -- from the bad guys like Josef Goebbels. If this new Office of Strategic Influence plans to broadcast lies with a global reach, to use an anti-terrorist standard of measure, lets kill this thing before it gets going. How can we possibly win the hearts and minds of the Islamic and Arab world with an American propaganda mill already labeled as such by the American media? That other feature of 1984, the notion of endless war, is more troubling. President Bush makes the case daily for a new kind of open-ended conflict. First, it was al-Qaeda we were after. Then, it was the government in Afghanistan that protected al-Qaeda. Next, it was the groups associated with al-Qaeda. Then, it was the list of governments that allow such groups to reside in their country. Then, it was the Axis of Evil that makes weapons and may or may not be working with terrorist groups. Where do we stop? How many countries are we talking about here? The Ministry of Truth is a gruesome enough prospect. But, what about the dull and throbbing reality that, as long as we are on this Earth, the United States military will be fighting someone somewhere? To borrow a favorite Orwellian phrase we are now bent on being down and out in Baghdad, Tehran and Pyongyang and each and every one of the world's other evil capitals for the rest of our lives. We ain't ever coming home. Note: Winston Smith, the hero of 1984, works at the Ministry of Truth. His job is to rewrite and alter newspaper stories to conform to government purposes. Sounds like the excellent work somebody has in mind for the Pentagon. © Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL
[CTRL] USA 'Freedom' Corps to Guard Americans' Homeland Security
-Caveat Lector- http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/22/180141.shtml Interest in Volunteering Booms NewsMax.com Wires Saturday, Feb. 23, 2002 WASHINGTON (UPI) - Citizen interest in volunteer service within the United States and abroad has increased dramatically since President Bush last month appealed to Americans to consider devoting two years of their lives to helping others, government-backed volunteer services say. The Peace Corps, which aims to double its numbers to about 15,000 over the next five years, said visits to its Web site from Jan. 29 to Feb. 19 numbered 125,939, a 300 percent increase. Requests for information and applications via mail, phone and Internet have jumped 39 percent since the Jan. 29 State of the Union address, and the number of completed online applications for service abroad with the agency, founded by President John Kennedy, has hit 477. A little less than half of the applicants are eventually accepted for service and posted to one of the more than 70 countries in which the Peace Corps operates. We've had a great response, said Peace Corps Communications Director Ellen Field. And in the spring and summer, we have a very active recruitment program planned for college campuses, seniors' groups and other community organizations. In his appeal for volunteerism, Bush noted it would enable the American people contribute to the war against terrorism, aid in homeland security and tackle social problems. The Peace Corps, he said, would not only return to Afghanistan in the near future after an absence of more than a decade, but it would seek new opportunities in Muslim countries to tackle poverty, ill health and illiteracy, and in the process convey American values by example. 'The Values We Believe In' The greatness of the country is in the values we believe in: freedom and hope and opportunity. We're a nation founded on some just, valuable principles, and that the power of the idea cannot and will not be stopped at our borders. In his address, Bush said Americans could become involved domestically through USA Freedom Corps, a newly created entity that would act as an umbrella for established volunteer services and new programs such as Citizen Corps, which would work with state and local agencies for emergency response and homeland security. Linday Cosberg, spokeswoman for USA Freedom Corps, said public response has been outstanding across the board. More than 5 million hits on its Web site have so far been recorded. When the president of the United States stands up and calls for people to volunteer their time, it's serious, and the people have taken it that way, she said. Cosberg said one of the elements already in place but that will be expanded is the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Civilian Emergency Response Teams for disasters and others such as Neighborhood Watch. A Medical Reserve Corps is to be created as part of Citizen Corps councils to recruit and train retired health-care professionals to augment health care authorities in time of emergency. Volunteers in Police Program, in which civilians are used to free officers from administrative tasks, will be expanded. A publicity and information campaign on crime prevention and what to do in an emergency also will be launched. Bush has proposed more than $230 million for the programs in the fiscal 2003 budget. AmeriCorps, founded in 1984, and Senior Corps also will have a contributing role. AmeriCorps and Senior Corps are under the auspices of Corporation for National Community Service. AmeriCorps volunteers are sent to relief and aid agencies to help with health, education and other tasks, including relief efforts during disasters. In return, the volunteers are paid a stipend of up to $800 a month, and after a year of service can receive more than $4,000 for paying student loans or for financing further education. What we're finding is that people really want to serve in this, our national moment, Siobhan Dugan, spokeswoman for the CNCS, said. Sept. 11 was really an impetus. Dugan said interest in AmeriCorps was up 53 percent since the president's appeal. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/2/22/180141.shtml A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives
[CTRL] Clinton and the Mossad
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 19:47:16 -0800 From: The Grateful Head [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ParanoidTimes] Clinton and the Mossad Forget about believing me and the horrors I have been subjected to for daring to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, let's look at the bigger picture. Who really brought about the recreation of Israel? I say it was the global economic cartel that dates back to the Rothchild banking empire (and some say the money-changers that crucified Jesus). This banking empire has been traced back as the culpable party for a litany of wars in the past 300 years, profiting and consolidating with each atrocity. This Rothchild Family Empire is Jewish. They have life and death control over almost every nation. Yet some Israeli's feel they must intimidate and destroy the Palestinians and the rest are too timid to speak out or have already been silenced. WHY with so much power must this go on? Israel is a little powerless country? Monica Lewinsky was a sleeper for the Mossad used to set Clinton up. He was in a meeting with Netanyahu and refusing to look the other way as Netanyahu proposed violating the peace accords with U.S. support. That day, for Clinton's refusal to go along with what he saw as unacceptable and corrupt behavior, MSNBC (NBC has been the Jewish anchor in U.S. television more so than any other network) broke the Monica Lewinsky story. Clinton's seat was not even cooled down from the meeting yet. We all know the rest. The Mossad machination was labeled by the Zionist media as a right wing plot and while right wingers had no complaints about this, it had little to do with reality. The day of impeachment came. The Mossad had blackmailed enough legislators to force them to vote either way. If Clinton gave in to Netanyahu's demands, he would not be impeached. If he did not, he would have been impeached. The day of impeachment Clinton started bombing Baghdad again and he was not impeached. While I cannot monitor all that goes on in Israel, I only need to see the criminal actions that go on in the U.S. to easily extrapolate what is happening to those stone throwing children and what poor Yasser Arafat must be dealing with. Think about it. Neal == IF YOU'RE NOT PARANOID, THEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION! == To Post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParanoidTimes Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] == NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml == A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Sen. Clinton Reassures Israel
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2002 15:59:28 +1100 From: Bond [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ParanoidTimes] Sen. Clinton Reassures Israel Sen. Clinton Reassures Israel By JASON KEYSER Associated Press Writer February 23, 2002, 8:33 PM EST JERUSALEM -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that U.S. support for Israel was rock solid and blamed 17 months of Palestinian-Israeli bloodshed on Yasser Arafat, saying he has failed as a leader. Yasser Arafat leaves a trail of violated vows and death along a path that could have and should have led to peace and life, Clinton told members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that was meeting in Jerusalem. The junior Democratic senator from New York, on the first day of a two-day visit to Israel, urged other Americans to travel to the Holy Land as a show of support for Israel and defiance against terrorism. It is imperative that we do everything within our power not to give the terrorists any victory no matter how small or mundane, she said. Clinton said that following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the bonds between Israel and the United States are firmer than ever. The United States and Israel stand together in resolve against those who would try to undermine and destroy us, she said. Clinton spoke after Tourism Minister Benny Elon, and she was criticized for sharing the podium with the ultranationalist politician who advocates expelling Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli opposition leader Yossi Sarid said in a statement that it was unseemly for Clinton to appear on the same stage as Elon. Clinton caused a stir during a 1999 visit when as then-first lady, she hugged and kissed Soha Arafat after the Palestinian leader's wife accused the Israelis in a speech of using poison gas against Palestinian women and children. Clinton later repudiated the remark and said that she feared she would have caused an international incident by denouncing Arafat's wife on the spot. Clinton has no scheduled meetings with Palestinians. http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-israel-hillary-clinton0224feb23.story A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] BushMob--Israel's obedient PUPPETS
-Caveat Lector- http://rense.com/general20/isr.htm Bush Administration Acts Like Israel's Puppet By Charley Reese My biggest disappointment in President George W. Bush has been in how he has allowed himself to be manipulated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He has followed the same failed policy that his predecessor did. That policy can be summed up as the Israelis are always right, and the Palestinians are always wrong. That's a very convenient policy for politicians who don't want the powerful Israeli lobby on their case. But if the goal is peace, the policy is a failure. If the goal is to protect America's interests, the policy is a failure. If the goal is to bring stability to the Middle East, the policy is a failure. If the goal is to eliminate terrorism, the policy is a failure. Now, when people pursue a policy that has not achieved the goals it was supposed to, there are three possible reasons. One, the people are stupid. I think we can eliminate that. Nobody in the White House is stupid. A second reason is that they are afraid to change the policy because of domestic political pressure. A third reason could be that their goals are not the ones they publicly espouse. I never thought I would feel sympathy for Yasser Arafat, but he's been put into an untenable position. Imagine a football game. Imagine that you take the coach away and lock him up in a room. Imagine that you shoot half his team. And then imagine how silly it sounds for you to demand of the coach that he win the game. Arafat is under house arrest. He can't walk outside without chipping his teeth on the muzzles of Israeli tanks. For weeks, no matter who did what, the Israelis have bombed and shelled the Palestinian Authority police stations - along with their equipment and files. The Israelis have killed and injured numerous PA policemen. Yet Sharon continues to demand that Arafat stop terrorism, and no matter what Arafat says or what he does, Sharon scoffs at it. Now, to our international shame, the Bush administration has adopted the same pathetic line. Like a flock of parrots, Bush and his people repeat whatever Sharon says. It's not just people in the Arab countries who see this sorry spectacle. People all over the world are wondering how it is that a little country like Israel can jerk the chain of a powerful nation like the United States. A few facts: The Palestinians are right. The Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is illegal. When the occupation ends, peace follows. As long as the occupation continues, so will the resistance. Sharon has no intention of ending the occupation or of negotiating in good faith. Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is a brutal record of human-rights violations, violations of the Geneva Accords and violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions. It ought to make every American angry that our politicians tell us U.N. Security Council resolutions are worth the lives of Americans to enforce against Iraq but are to be vetoed and spit upon when directed at Israel. Our policy is an insult to anyone who supports the United Nations, and, frankly, people in Europe are getting sick of it. Israel has hired two public-relations firms, in addition to its American lobby, because it is scared to death that Americans are going to wake up and see the connection between the Israel First policy and the attacks that occurred Sept. 11. It need not worry about the Bush administration or most of the Israel First journalists, but I hope the American people have not all lost their ability to think and to reason. In the meantime, the Bush administration ought to replace the American eagle with a parrot clutching an Israeli flag in one claw and a tin cup in the other. ___ Former Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese writes for King Features Syndicate. http://archive.showmenews.com/2002/feb/20020207comm003.asp A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A
[CTRL] In the Name of God, Thou Shall Kill - Ashcroft
-Caveat Lector- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3-2002Feb19.html Ashcroft Invokes Religion In U.S. War on Terrorism By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 20, 2002; Page A02 Attorney General John D. Ashcroft yesterday cast the government's war on terrorism in religious terms, arguing that the campaign is rooted in faith in God and urging Christians, Jews and Muslims to unite in the effort. Contrasting the way of God and the way of the terrorists, Ashcroft's speech to a group of Christian broadcasters in Nashville included some of the most explicitly religious remarks from the attorney general since he was confirmed amid controversy over his views more than a year ago. Civilized people -- Muslims, Christians and Jews -- all understand that the source of freedom and human dignity is the Creator, Ashcroft said in prepared remarks released by the Justice Department. Civilized people of all religious faiths are called to the defense of His creation. We are a nation called to defend freedom -- a freedom that is not the grant of any government or document, but is our endowment from God. Ashcroft, the son and grandson of Pentecostal ministers, has not shied from overt public displays of religious faith. The attorney general holds daily prayer meetings in his office at Justice Department headquarters in Washington and has made several appearances at Christian events since taking office. Yesterday's remarks revived criticism from civil liberties advocates alarmed by Ashcroft's religious views and did little to quell complaints from Arab American and Muslim leaders about a controversial statement about Islam attributed to Ashcroft by a syndicated columnist. Cal Thomas quoted Ashcroft as saying that Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you. Ashcroft said in a statement last week that the reported remarks do not accurately reflect what I believe I said. Rather than allaying our concerns, these comments only raise more concerns, James Zogby, president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute, said yesterday. It is fine that he is a man of faith, but the attorney general, who represents all the people, seems to be projecting himself as a religious leader. Barry W. Lynn, who is president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and testified against Ashcroft during his confirmation hearings, said that at a minimum, it seems to increase the perception that [Ashcroft] cannot separate his religious agenda from his public office. Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Dryden said yesterday's speech was intended as a multifaith appeal for unity in the war on terrorism. The attorney general will generally make comments that are appropriate to his audience, Dryden said. The message is that we all need to get along in order to fight a common enemy. The broadcasters group said Ashcroft had agreed to speak at the convention after President Bush canceled an appearance to travel to Asia. In a speech peppered with biblical citations, Ashcroft said the conflict that confronts us is not Christian versus Muslim or Muslim versus Jew. This is not a conflict based in religion, he said. It is a conflict between good and evil. And as President Bush has reminded us, we know that God is not neutral between the two. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
Re: [CTRL] BushMob - Israel's Obedient PUPPETS
-Caveat Lector- On Sun, 24 Feb 2002, snapachini wrote: This board has now truly lost all objectivety. Your article is pure propaganda (and old as well). Lets try to base arguements on fact, not anti-semitism! Objectivity can only be achieved by getting all the views. Only then, can one truly understand the situation and everyone's motives. I think the article provieds one view. Not necessarily true, but in light of the house demolitions and suicide bombings going on in Israel and the death ratios of the people there, it has a ring of truth about it. * Peace can not be achieved as long as people are oppressed. * Being opposed to oppression of people is not anti-semitism. Anti-semitist accusements almost always lead back to a radical jewish party behind them, with their own political agenda. - Usually that of Israeli government and Mossad. I myself would oppose oppression, even if the Arabs were bulldozing Jewish houses, and Jews were doing the suicide attacks against them from their concentration camps. But the tides of history have turned, and now we have a strong Israel who is doing the oppression. And ALL the reason they REALLY have for it, it seems, is political games for their leaders. This is merely one case of oppression of people in the world, and yet it is the ONLY one that is defended by the perpetrators by making accusements of people who are trying to talk about it, by being anti-semitic. This is a wide strategy of publicity that we are seeing in almost a global scale. I think, however, that it is losing it's effect. Every day those who care to get the information, can read how Palestinian houses were demolished in the middle of the night and how school children were shot by Israeli occupation troops when they were throwing stones. Or how aggravated and oppressed people were frustrated enough to commit one final act of revenge, and kill themselves in a last suicide attack against their oppressors, to finally be free of it all. It is almost funny, how some people still seem to totally refuse to see the other side, don't you think? Don't open the curtain!, - they yell, for fear of going blind with the light of truth, preferring to keep the shades shut, instead. Israel can do no wrong is their mantra, all who dare criticize Israel are anti-semites. Maybe the arabs in reality are just super-Nazis who hate jews so much so that they are killing themselves for the heck of it? I don't know, but *I* think that people who kill themselves have nothing worth living for and nothing to expect, except perhaps more misery. IMHO, if you wish the violence to end, then stop the racist oppression that is giving it birth. But it apprears that we are no longer allowed to even logically discuss the situation in the middle-east, lest we too are labeled HORRIBLE anti-semites or whatever the buzzword of the moment happens to be. It is too bad that American leadership has chosen to keep their own eyes closed. I for one would have thought that black people in there would understand. As history proves it, the people who seek to deny public discussion, about anything, seek to hide things and deny the public the truth. .. Sidenote: EU is banning hate speech in the new Cyber Crime bill. I am sure, starting next year that the law is ratified, EU citizens can no longer discuss these things properly. You will be labeled an anti-semitic hate-speaker if you should oppose the Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Ironically, this is all done in order to defend the ones doing the racist oppression and apartheid politics, namely Israeli government. This is truly a moment in history - we get a law banning racist hate-speech, just to outlaw those criticizing the racist apartheid policies and laws of Israel! Who knows, maybe in 50 years, people will be labeled anti-palestinian, but right now, the situation for Palestinians is the same as it was for jews 50 or so years ago, and the same as it was for black people in South Africa and black people in the USA when they were oppressed. Where were you when they were being oppressed? Are you one of those people who just shut up? Or are you one of those who tell people to shut up? Like the good George W Bu$h has said - You are either one of those who shut up, or one of those who oppose us. --- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jei [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://rense.com/general20/isr.htm Bush Administration Acts Like Israel's Puppet By Charley Reese My biggest disappointment in President George W. Bush has been in how he has allowed himself to be manipulated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He has followed the same failed policy that his predecessor did. That policy can be summed up as the Israelis are always right, and the Palestinians are always wrong. That's a very convenient policy for politicians who don't want the powerful Israeli lobby on their case. But if the goal is peace, the policy is a failure. If the goal is to protect America's
[CTRL] Concentration camps in US by State index
-Caveat Lector- Concentration camps in US by State index http://gulagamerika.homestead.com/StateIndex.html List members, please make your reservations now. ;-))) A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Electronic Spy in their car will charge drivers for traffic jams
-Caveat Lector- - Original Message - From: Bob1776 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 7:27 PM Subject: Electronic Spy in their car will charge drivers for traffic jams We have got to turn this world around and back towards liberty and limited government. This article below is INSANE. We are heading for a police state/world. Below are 3 articles you MUST READ. Bob - Original Message - From: Steve To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 10:06 AM Subject: Spy in the car will charge drivers for jams Spy in the car will charge drivers for jams By Edward Simpkins (Filed: 24/02/2002) EVERY motorist in Britain will be monitored by satellite and charged for using busy routes under plans being presented by the Government's transport commissioner this week. Under the proposals cars would be fitted with a global positioning device and drivers billed for sitting in traffic jams. In a report to be published tomorrow, the Commission for Integrated Transport, chaired by David Begg, claims that the charges could reduce road congestion by up to 44 per cent, saving 219 million man-hours, without increasing the overall tax burden. The scheme would work by fitting all cars and lorries with a unit linked to a satellite covering the nation's road network. Drivers would be charged according to how busy the roads are and the time they are used. The scheme would be expected to raise £5.7 billion a year. Prof Begg, who was appointed to the commission three years after successfully introducing measures to curb car use in Edinburgh, where he was the city council's transport convenor, suggested that vehicle excise duty and fuel duty be reduced to compensate motorists for the charges on busier roads, making the scheme tax-neutral. He would prefer to see car tax scrapped altogether and fuel duty reduced by 2p per litre. He said the proposals would be introduced once the public transport improvements promised in the Government's 10-year Transport Plan had been delivered so that drivers priced off the road would have an alternative. Under the plan, an 80-mile journey from London to Rugby would cost £3.40. A journey of the same mileage on the M25 from Maidstone to Luton would cost £9.50. Someone who commuted from Brighton to Croydon would pay £14 per day, but Prof Begg says that the journey time would be cut by one-third to one hour, saving almost five weeks of working time per year. Our starting point was that roads are the only public utility that is free at the point of use. As a result, everyone wants to use the most popular roads at the same time, causing gridlock, he said. Although decisions on implementing the plan will be taken by ministers, the Government has already mooted the possibility of using GPS technology to clamp down on speeding. Edmund King, the director of the RAC Foundation, the motorists' organisation, said that charging would work only as part of a package that included spending to remove bottlenecks from the road network and introducing better traffic management. The other concern is that there would be obvious unfairness: drivers in rural areas would be much better off, whereas if you are a public-sector worker or on a lower income in the South-East you would be worse off, he said. The proposals could find favour with business, however. The Confederation of British Industry calculates that traffic congestion costs employers £18 billion per year in lost time and lost business caused by delays. Digby Jones, the director-general of the CBI said: Reducing the multi-billion-pound cost of road congestion is a top business priority and making the way we all pay for road use fairer has to be part of the solution but the policy and practical implications are complex, as recent experience in London shows. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, is expected to say this week that he will impose a £5 charge on motorists entering the city centre from next year. Westminster city council is threatening legal action to block the move. ++ BELOW ARE 2 MORE MUST READ ARTICLES The New Complaint of Portnoy By Israel Shamir | March 16, 2001 Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist. His articles The Rape of Dulcinea, The Test Failed, Galilee Flowers could be found on many Internet sites, www.thestruggle.org, www.antiwar.com, www.NileMedia.com etc. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED], or write P.O.B. 23714 Tel Aviv 61236 The Viennese Jewish shrinks decided to disinvite the American Palestinian Professor Edward Said, who had been called to lecture them in memory of Sigmund Freud. The Professor had been seen throwing a stone towards an Israeli border. The psychiatrists said it speaks a lot about his subconscious. They would never throw a rock, as the wild Arab from Columbia University; they prefer Sharon's missiles. I think it is a right approach, and it should be applied not
Re: [CTRL] [Conspiracy-Theory] Concentration camps in US by State index
-Caveat Lector- Why do you think we, the Majestic-12, are implementing the National ID card system in the USA? ;-) The plan is to make the WHOLE COUNTRY one big prison system, or a forced labor slave-camp. It's not economical to let good slave-labor be wasted. The Americans will be in deep debt very soon, every one of them, and will be working to pay off their military budgets for the next hundred years, enslaved by the international banking organizations. Of course, those who cut themselves a deal and diverted some cash from the top secret military budgets in time, will be enjoying their rich lives together with us, but they will be few and far between. The whole concept of Your home is your prison Arbeit macht frei will be beta-tested with the Britons. Most ironically, it seems that the Britons can be manipulated so far that they will even ask and pay for these systems themselves!! :-)) There's nothing like slaves who pay for their shackles and put them on themselves! Slave for Happiness On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Party of Citizens wrote: Don't worry, be happy It's the American slogan. BTW does the world need USA? Would it not be better off without it? The United States of Europe (now united under the ECU) are a bigger economic unit than USA. Name one thing the USA makes that Europe and Asia cannot make. Does the common language (English) give Americans an edge? Only for a while. Soon human language translators will become a common feature, attached to telephones, tv sets etc. What about space for development? Canada is bigger than USA and culturally more diversified. We have only 30 m. people, which includes 1 m. American refugees. Canada could absorb the entire world population and have lots of room left over. No we don't need the USA. POC * POC Plans: For BC Election 2005, Political Avatars under development; For BC Election 2009, Political Avatars run on trial basis; For Election 2013, Political Avatars with super-human AI online * On Mon, 25 Feb 2002, Jei wrote: Concentration camps in US by State index http://gulagamerika.homestead.com/StateIndex.html List members, please make your reservations now. ;-))) *** Share with us your ideas. *** The things here are a collection from various places or persons and I am not responsible for the contents. The content is not meant to offend anyone. Anyone can post here. Please get your friends to join our list. The more people we have, the better the list will be. Community email addresses: ?? -- Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-) -- Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-( -- Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;-) -- List owner: [EMAIL PROTECTED] See our links page for other conspiracy sites. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Buy Stock for $4. No Minimums. FREE Money 2002. http://us.click.yahoo.com/BgmYkB/VovDAA/ySSFAA/KlSolB/TM -~- *** Share with us your ideas. *** The things here are a collection from various places or persons and I am not responsible for the contents. The content is not meant to offend anyone. Anyone can post here. Please get your friends to join our list. The more people we have, the better the list will be. Community email addresses: ?? -- Post message: [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-) -- Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] :-( -- Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;-) -- List owner: [EMAIL PROTECTED] See our links page for other conspiracy sites. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL
[CTRL] Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life
-Caveat Lector- World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org -- WSWS : News Analysis : North America Enron VP tells Congress she feared for her life But media remains silent on Baxter suicide By Patrick Martin 22 February 2002 Enron Vice President Sherron Watkins, who warned top company officials last August that the energy trading giant might implode in a wave of accounting scandals, said she feared for her own life during the crisis that culminated in Enron's filing for bankruptcy. Testifying under oath before the House Energy and Commerce Committee February 14, Watkins, who still holds a high position at Enron, spoke at some length about the atmosphere of intimidation that existed inside the company during the months before its collapse. But none of the congressmen participating in the hearing, Democratic or Republican, made any connection between Watkins' concern, not only for her job, but for her physical safety, and the mysterious death last month of J. Clifford Baxter, Enron's former vice chairman. Baxter had been identified in the media as an internal critic of Enron's accounting scams and was slated to testify before a congressional committee probing the Enron collapse when he was found dead in his car on January 25. He died of a gunshot wound to the head. Officials of Sugar Land, Texas, the wealthy Houston suburb where Baxter lived and where he was found dead, immediately declared his death a suicide. No serious investigation has yet been conducted and police refuse to release the alleged suicide note or answer questions about the case. Within a few days of Baxter's death, reports on his demise and the police investigation virtually disappeared from the television news and the major daily newspapers, in sharp contrast to their treatment of such events as the suicide of Vincent Foster, the lawyer in the Clinton White House who killed himself in 1993. Baxter's death was clearly on Watkins' mind when she testified three weeks later. At one point the transcript shows the following interchange with Iowa Republican Congressman Greg Ganske, who asked her about the August 15 memorandum she wrote to Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, warning him of massive financial irregularities in the company's accounts. GANSKE: Did you keep a copy for your own personal files? WATKINS: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. GANSKE: And where did you keep those files? At home? WATKINS: No. GANSKE: At work? WATKINS: No, in a lockbox. GANSKE: In a lockbox. So you were enough concerned about this that you wanted to put this somewhere where it couldn't be destroyed. WATKINS: Yes. GANSKE: Were you worried about your own personal safety? WATKINS: At times, I mean, just because the company was a little bit radio-silent back to me, so I didn't know how they were taking my memos or the investigation. GANSKE: Why would you be worried about your personal safety? WATKINS: Because it was the seventh-largest company in America. GANSKE: And you were dealing with a really powerful person WATKINS: Yes. GANSKE: and a really powerful company. This extraordinary exchange projects a picture of modern America which has more in common with John Grisham's The Firm and far more truththan the standard media depiction of America as a land of democracy and freedom. Why would you be worried about your personal safety? the congressman asks. Because it was the seventh largest company in America, she replies. Both witness and questioner take it for granted that those in possession of so much power and wealth would not hesitate to resort to violence. Yet no such understanding informs the media coverage of Baxter's death. There has been no voicing, in the daily newspapers or television networks, of the entirely justified suspicion that Baxter may have been killed because he knew too much and was discussing with his lawyer an agreement to cooperate with congressional investigators. The media silence is not so much a matter of protecting Enronnow bankrupt and under new managementas of protecting the Bush administration, which had the closest ties with the company and numbers at least a dozen high-ranking officials who were either Enron executives, highly paid consultants or significant stockholders. Other portions of Watkins' testimony suggest that Baxter, who resigned as vice chairman last May after becoming increasingly critical of the company's financial arrangements, had continued to press his views on other Enron executives, and thus potentially made himself a target for retaliation. She related conversations with Baxter, as recently as January 15, 10 days before his death, in which he was highly critical of former CEO Jeffrey Skilling and other top executives. In this conversation Baxter told her that he had repeatedly met with Skilling to express his views on the private partnerships controlled by Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, used to shift huge debts off Enron's
Re: [CTRL] FBI reports threat to Liberty Bell
-Caveat Lector- Lessons from history in how the government has dealt with activists... -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 06:29:09 -0500 From: preston peet [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: cia-drugs [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], rootsofteror [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Spy News] FBI reports threat to Liberty Bell On the topic of blowing up the Liberty Bell, once more I find myself feeling a bit suspicious of the FBI's alert of a supposed terrorist threat. I don't doubt terrorists are out there, but how many threats are we going to hear/be told about? I don't often read or hear about threats that drug dealers are going to be making a sale down the street, the cops simply move in, no? (or take money to look the other way, but I digress.) Keeping us, joe/jane public, tense and feeling threatened, thereby helping make many folk much more willing to unquestionably allow the US government to carry out its targetless, never ending war on terror, seems to be the only reason I can personally come up with for these continued alerts. Peace, Preston Peet [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://howmanyroads.com/Chapter_3_Excerpt.htm snip- It was in the Black Liberation Front that Ray found ready acceptance. Once a member, Ray began proposing actions the group could undertake. Suggesting that the Black Liberation Front expose the nations hypocrisy by defacing the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and the Washington Monument, he gave the members an old US-Army manual of his, which outlined the use of explosives. Everyone agreed that Rays suggestion was a good idea, but no one except Ray was willing to take any action. Ray led the Black Liberation Front on a reconnaissance trip to the Statue of Liberty. Having been an explosives expert in the military, he showed the members where to place their bombs in order to cause maximum damage. Since no one wanted to put up any money, Ray agreed to pay for the bomb materials himself. Next Ray convinced his Black Liberation Front girlfriend to accompany him to Montreal, Canada, to buy 30 sticks of dynamite. Upon returning, they hid the cache of explosives in a vacant lot in the Bronx. On February 17, 1965, the lead headline of the New York Times proclaimed: Four Held in Plot to Blast Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell and Washington Monument. Under the bold headline were the pictures of the arrested Black Liberation Front members, along with a smaller headline, A Rookie Policemen Here Infiltrates a Group of Negro Extremists. The article went on to discuss how a loyal Negro hero cop had infiltrated the fanatical extremist Black Liberation Front. Besides major front-page coverage, an entire inside page was devoted to the story. Two additional reports discussed Rays heroic work for the NYPDs Bureau of Special Services. Although Ray had been in the department for less than a year, he was given an on-the-spot promotion from rookie to detective. The police fantasy that he had single-handedly uncovered and thwarted a horrendous terrorist plot was repeated on the front pages of all the US newspapers, and was the lead story on radio and television newscasts nationwide. The media portrayed this agent-provocateur as a bigger-than-life American hero who had put his life at risk by infiltrating a dangerous group of ruthless, fanatical Black nationalists bent on destroying America.13 When the trial of the Black Liberation Front members began in May of 1965, the evidence that the defense presented received no publicity in most newspapers. In what little was reported, defense claims were always preceded with the word alleged, while the testimony that Ray gave was presented as fact. Under cross-examination, Ray admitted that he had given the defendants US Army explosives books, and suggested the targets. Even more damning, he admitted that in order to purchase the explosives, he provided the money and the car, both of which had been supplied to him by the NYPD, and then drove to Canada to purchase the explosives. The only action the defendants could be accused of was agreeing with Ray. His girlfriend pleaded guilty to illegal transportation of explosives into the US, since she had ridden with Ray when he bought the dynamite. This was such a clear-cut case of police entrapment that I could not fathom how the jury would find the defendants guilty. However, the all-White jury was terrified by the prosecutor, who depicted the defendants as dangerous African-American-extremist terrorists committed to destroying the nation. Even this attempt at further biasing the jury did not remove the fact that the only thing the defendants ever did was to agree with Ray. Although the prosecutor was seeking a much longer prison sentence, the four defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison. After serving a few years, they were all paroled. Unfortunately, this case is but one example of the dirty tricks
[CTRL] US Foreign Policy Under Israeli PSYOPS Control
-Caveat Lector- Subject: Why Are Americans Scared to Criticize Israel? Because Political Intimidation is what works on Americans. - US foreign policy IS under Israeli PSYOPS control... Why we few criticize Israel Is Sri Lanka Worth Criticism? 2/25/02 11:26:37 AM Joe Sobran / (Old) National Review Commentary -- Why we few criticize Israel By JOSEPH SOBRAN WASHINGTON - People sometimes ask me why I'm so critical of Israel, as if I should be devoting more of my attention to Sri Lanka, or perhaps Zaire. But the question is always a little nervous, as it wouldn't be if I were writing equally often about Sri Lanka or Zaire. I could understand this curiosity if some other small, remote country were one of the world's four or five military powers; if it received a quarter of our foreign aid; if it were constantly on our front pages; and if its sympathizers regularly occupied much of the op-ed space of The New York Times and other major newspapers. But there is only one country of whom these things are true, and that is Israel. Nobody thinks it's odd that there should be 20 columnists who are apologists' for Israel; but apparently it is unfathomable that there should be one or two who are critical of Israel. But there's another reason that is both personal and professional. Israel has a very powerful lobby in this country, with a highly accomplished propaganda corps. And that lobby is not content with making the case for Israel and putting fear into nearly all the politicians in Washington, who are supposed to be representing the interests of the United States. It also tries to shut up opposition in the free press. I have felt its pressure. So have Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. So has Patrick Buchanan. And a great many newspaper editors. We still hear of the fear engendered by Joe McCarthy. But people talked freely about that fear even 'at the height of Sen. McCarthy's career. I believe that someday historians will look back with more wonder about the quieter and more paralyzing fear engendered in our own era by domestic Zionist power. The press was never afraid of Sen. McCarthy; it is very much afraid of Israel's U.S. sympathizers. One result is that the news we get from Israel is heavily self censored and bowdlerized. The average American thinks of Israel as a democratic country whose domestic troubles are due to unruly Arabs. Not one American Christian in a hundred realizes that if he lived in Israel, he would be the victim of official discrimination forced, like the Soviet Jew, to carry an identification card effectively stigmatizing him. If Israeli propaganda were true, there would be no need to Quash or intimidate critics. The very act of trying to silence opposition is a kind of confession in itself. Ring Lardner said it well: 'Shut up,' he explained. Is there no case to be made for Israel? Of course there is. I have made it myself. I would make it again -- if Israel had not become a threat to freedom of speech and ethical debate in this country. But when you risk injury to your career in the U.S. by defending the interests of the U.S., something is seriously wrong. A proper parallel is not with Joe McCarthy, who at least was trying to uphold America's position, but with the publishing industry in New York during the 1930s, when a book critical of the Soviet Union stood scant chance of seeing print. Suppression is a good tactic, but a bad strategy. In the long run, the truth has a way of seeping through. No matter how many clever excuses you make for a Yitzhak Shamir, it's not a terribly good idea to have Americans identifying Israel with Yitzhak Shamir. Israel was much better off when Americans identified Israel with Abba Eban -- now in political exile for his moderation. And it isn't wise, in the long run, to make Americans afraid, in their own country, to speak their minds about a foreign country. They will eventually resent the colossal impudence of it. And the country on whose behalf the suppression was enacted will bear the consequences. Joseph Sobran is a senior editor of the National Review. Libertarian Socialist News Post Office Box 12244 Silver Spring, MD 20908 http://www.overthrow.com (check out our messageboards -- discuss this story on-line!) A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] UK: 'Super prisons' should be built for more offenders
-Caveat Lector- 'Super prisons' should be built for more offenders Ananova Tuesday 26th February 2002 An independent report has concluded the Government should build massive super prisons with space for 1,500 inmates each. Up to 12,000 new prison places should be built near major cities in new for old projects. Valuable city centre sites would be sold to help fund their replacements. The review of private finance initiative jails by Government-appointed expert Patrick Carter said privatisation had been very successful. It recommended opening three or four super prisons in the next few years. The report also suggests the best locations for the new jails would be London, Hertfordshire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear. It said: Too many of our prisons are old, costly and unsuitable for modern needs. We are recommending that an ambitious programme of 'new for old' prisons which should aim to deliver 12,000 new places, mainly in large prisons close to large conurbations. All new prisons should be designed and built by the private sector. Mr Carter noted that there was a them and us attitude in the Prison Service towards private jails. He suggested adopting a mixed management style based on a French system, where the public and private sectors work side by side. A prison with 1,500 spaces would make the most of economies of scale, he added. The biggest existing jail is Liverpool with a maximum capacity of 1,510 but the second-largest, Wandsworth in south London, is significantly smaller with 1,371. http://www.ananova.com/yournews/story/sm_530738.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Bush Seals Fate of Office of Influence in Pentagon
-Caveat Lector- And THUS started the domestic release of dis-information to Americans. Give'em a big hand! Maybe the office will not be there, but they aren't claiming that they wouldn't be doing it. More likely they'll just let the existing agencies or outsourced private companies do the work. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 21:36:22 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] Bush Seals Fate of Office of Influence in Pentagon http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/26/international/26OFFI.html February 26, 2002 HEARTS AND MINDS Bush Seals Fate of Office of Influence in Pentagon By ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 President Bush expressed alarm today over the possible activities of a new Pentagon office intended to influence public sentiment abroad and strongly endorsed efforts to disband or reconfigure the agency. When asked today whether he had ordered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to close the office, Mr. Bush said, I didn't even need to tell him this; he knows how I feel. I saw it reflected in his comments the other day. Mr. Bush went on to say that he was confident that Mr. Rumsfeld would handle this in the right way. Interpreting the president's remarks, a senior administration official said, He specifically mentioned that the office would be shut down before it started or that its focus would be dramatically narrowed to obvious things like leaflet campaigns. Proposals from the new agency, the Office of Strategic Influence, have stirred outrage in Congress and inside the administration. Its director, Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, had proposed that the office coordinate activities as varied as issuing news releases and conducting secret information warfare in friendly as well as unfriendly countries which could include spreading inaccurate information, military officials said. Mr. Rumsfeld said on Sunday that the Pentagon might eliminate the office because its credibility had been badly damaged by disclosures of its proposed activities. Senior military officials said today that it was now virtually certain that the 15-person office, as currently constituted, would be disbanded or restructured. Officials were discussing how to incorporate its missions that had not raised opposition elsewhere in the Pentagon bureaucracy. The office reports to Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy. Mr. Feith was traveling in Russia today, so any final decision about the office's fate will wait until he returns this week, a Pentagon official said tonight. The Office of Strategic Influence was formed after the attacks on Sept. 11 to coordinate disparate information operations inside the Defense Department that were intended to assist the military overseas. Administration officials have expressed frustration that the United States is losing public support for the war on terrorism, especially in the Islamic world. Senior Pentagon officials had endorsed the office's general mission, but Mr. Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had not approved any of its specific, classified proposals, which had been circulating at lower levels of the Pentagon, military officials said. The office's activities, disclosed last Tuesday by The New York Times, caused major concern among Bush administration officials traveling with the president in Asia. Karen P. Hughes, senior adviser to Mr. Bush, called back to aides, and asked, Did you know about this? one administration official said. The official added, We're obviously careful about any kind of effort to mislead the public. Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, called senior Pentagon officials to express concern about the office's reported activities, the administration official said. The matter also raised questions on Capitol Hill. Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld late on Friday seeking more information about the purpose of the office. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- FREE COLLEGE MONEY CLICK HERE to search 600,000 scholarships! http://us.click.yahoo.com/iZp8OC/4m7CAA/ySSFAA/TySplB/TM -~- === SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html === *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Spy News is making it available without profit to SPY NEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law
[CTRL] Follow the money, as they say, and you'll find the smoking gun
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: American Patriot Friends Network [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 4:52 AM To: APFN Yahoogroups; APFN SMARTGROUP Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Follow the money, as they say, and you'll find the smoking gun. Follow the money, as they say, and you'll find the smoking gun. The truth is out there ... right? At first, it all seemed so obvious. It was those Islamic terrorists. Osama bin Laden. Mullah Omar. George W. Bush had nothing to do with it ... did he? http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495article=19225 Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Saturday, February 23, 2002 The right wing benefited so much from September 11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they'd done it. Norman Mailer When the paladin of Camelot joined the fray, I knew 9/11 had become the Kennedy Assassination of the 21st century -- a real-life X-Files episode occurring before my eyes. Like those X-Files accounts of aliens living in oil deposits, this was a story with such staggering implications the mainstream media are loath to go near it. The question isn't who killed the president -- it's who piloted the airplanes that slammed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvanian countryside. Just as there remains lingering doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald fired a burst of fatally accurate shots from the Texas Book Depository, so there is skepticism that cells of Islamic terrorists secretly coordinated and simultaneously commandeered four commercial jetliners. The culprit responsible for the Sept. 11 attack is now rumoured to be the same one who lurked behind the grassy knoll: the oil-dependent U.S. military-industrial complex. Not everyone is ready to accept this -- a substitute teacher in North Vancouver's Sherwood Park elementary school has been called on the mat for suggesting to Grade 5 students the Central Intelligence Agency might have been involved in 9/11. And at last count, there were a dozen U.S. Congressional Committees investigating the tragedies and how such an intelligence and security breakdown was allowed to occur. But President George W. Bush and his right-hand man, Vice President Dick Cheney, have taken the unprecedented step of trying to restrict those investigations, pouring fuel on the simmering conspiracy theories being propagated in alternative publications, on wingnut Web sites and among some serious media outlets. In Germany, a former minister of technology, Andreas von Buelow, made headlines when in an interview he dismissed the U.S. government's explanation that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is responsible for the attacks. His own explanation implicated the White House. I wonder why many questions are not asked, von Buelow said. For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground; 48 hours later, however, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive. In Britain, a flight engineer has published a detailed paper asserting the U.S. took the joysticks out of the pilots' hands using a method of remote control developed by the American military in the 1970s. In the U.S. and Canada, independent publisher and editor Mike Ruppert (a former LAPD cop who hates the CIA) has drawn huge crowds to his two-hour lecture in which he states baldly that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks and had foreknowledge. He opens his documentary presentation with an offer of $1,000 US to anyone who can prove any of his sources were misrepresented or inauthentic. A former U.S. government agent also has given interviews claiming the CIA has been dealing with Osama bin Laden since 1987. According to those who do not believe in The Lone Gunman, the truth is as plain as the nose on your face: Sept. 11's terrorist acts were planned and paid for by the CIA to enable the Bush Administration to legitimately bomb Afghanistan into submission on behalf of the oil industry. After all, everyone knows the Bush family has strong and long acknowledged ties to the oil industry, as do other senior members of the administration. Cheney until recently was president of a company servicing the oil patch. National Security adviser Condoleeza Rice was a manager for Chevron. Commerce and Energy Secretaries Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant. Follow the money, as they say, and you'll find the smoking gun. Under this scenario, conspiracy theorists say a pliant Afghan regime was essential because of plans to pipe central Asian oil across Afghanistan. And there is a harvest of coincidence and contradiction to feed such imaginings. Consider first that the intelligence breakdown that led to 9/11 appears to have been a consequence of the Bush Administration telling the Federal Bureau of Investigation to back off on its investigation of Middle Eastern terrorism. A senior FBI
[CTRL] Disinformation News Agency First News Report: Disinformation News Agency Closed. Reporting Only the Truth From Now On. Really. Trust Us.
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: International Justice Watch Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Joanna Ensum Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 3:40 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Pentagon defense marketing unit closed Rumsfeld's disinformation unit has been closed due to damage by inaccurate news reports. There is a God. Joanna ~~~ Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld emphatically killed the Pentagon's new Office of Strategic Influence, saying yesterday that inaccurate news reports had damaged the new propaganda coordination office beyond repair. Rumsfeld defended the office even as he buried it. Even though much of the media commentary was off the mark, he told reporters at the Pentagon, the office has clearly been so damaged that it's . . . pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively, so it's being closed down. Pressed by reporters about whether the office would have disseminated false information overseas, as had been reported, Rumsfeld insisted that it wouldn't have done so. At any rate, he said, the new office's charter hadn't been completed, so what it was to do was an open question, even today as it ends its very short, prominent life. Rumsfeld added, with characteristic vigor: The office is done. It's over. What do you want, blood? The swift demise of the new office, which was created in November to better coordinate the military's dissemination of information overseas, represents a victory for the military public affairs community and a surprising setback for the new information warfare specialty. Military public affairs specialists had worried that the new office would blur the line between their work of dealing with the media and the public and the black world of covert operations, which sometimes involves disseminating false information. I'm sure that the public affairs community is having a drink tonight, said one veteran military spokesman. But specialists in information warfare -- which can cover anything from dropping leaflets to hacking into foreign computers -- believed that the Pentagon public affairs community had done a poor job in the Afghan war, especially in putting U.S. views before foreign audiences. It's frustrating for us to see the office shut down, one officer involved in information operations said yesterday. He said the new office was mainly involved in what might be called defense marketing, and that only about 5 percent of its planned work would have involved covert operations. One idea under consideration, he said, was to seek to justify U.S. actions to the Pakistani public by putting up billboards in that country showing an image of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11 and indicating the death toll resulting from that day's terrorist attacks in New York, at the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. The lesson is what a lot of us have known for a long time, that truth is always the best weapon, and everyone who works for Secretary Rumsfeld knows that to be true, said Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman. Rumsfeld said that the functions of the now-defunct office would be carried on by other Pentagon offices. We'll just have to do it with the offices that existed previously, he said. The public affairs veteran predicted that the propaganda function now would be performed by other, lower-profile offices, perhaps by private companies working on contract. But the officer involved in information warfare said the incident has shaken the confidence of his colleagues and has done some damage to their emerging specialty. At the same briefing yesterday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that, with another 14 people turned over by Pakistan over the past two days, there are now about 500 suspected members of al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in U.S. custody, with about 300 being held at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba, and another 194 in captivity inside Afghanistan. Myers said he expects that the number of captives will continue to increase. We still have a lot of people we've not looked at completely that the Afghans and the Pakistanis have, he said. Rumsfeld indicated that the top U.S. priority in interrogating the detainees is to gather intelligence, and then to deal with them in terms of possible law enforcement actions. We are beginning that process now, he said. He said the U.S. government is pretty close to releasing the rules under which trials might be held. Most of those rules have leaked already, and they generally seem to resemble the U.S. military justice system, legal experts say. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its
[CTRL] USA Is the Real Rogue State
-Caveat Lector- http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo Posted on Mon, Feb. 25, 2002 Philadelphia Inquirer In its unilateralist disregard, U.S. is the real 'rogue state' By Richard B. Du Boff and Edward S. Herman Most people believe that their own country is virtuous and that only others misbehave enough to qualify as international outlaws. But the United States has elevated this popular sentiment to the level of national policy - by designating certain countries, of its own choosing, as rogue states. The dictionary defines rogue as a fierce and dangerous animal, like an elephant, that separates itself from its herd. By this standard, the United States, not the piddling tyrannies named by the State Department, is the world's number one rogue. Since it obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 - cities, not military targets - the United States has bombed 18 countries, and invaded still others, with no declaration of war nor any possibility of retaliation, at least until Sept. 11. In the case of Afghanistan, the United States launched a unilateral war of revenge against a brutal regime of its own creation, although none of the 19 hijackers were Afghan and none of the thousands of detainees held in the United States and abroad have been charged with any participation in the crime. Furthermore, the alleged mastermind, still at large, might well have been turned over to the United States through negotiations - which President Bush rejected outright from the start. All this is defended on the ground that we are so good (as the President has said) and always act in the world's interest. But in fact, U.S. actions reflect the power of corporate interests. For example, the United States refused to participate in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-sponsored talks in Paris in May 2001, on ways to crack down on offshore and other tax and money-laundering havens. For any other nation, this would now be highly embarrassing in the age of Enron, but such a thought would never even occur to U.S. policymakers. Or consider Bush's declaration in March 2001 that the Kyoto Protocol was dead - all because it might harm the U.S. economy. Bush separates himself from the global consensus based on his reading of U.S. interests alone - and his stance coincides with that of the oil industry, not with the real interests of the American people. Several U.S. unilateral positions have been geared to the demands of the military-industrial complex, and other parties advocating an aggressive foreign policy. The United States has withdrawn from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, gutting this landmark arms control accord to the dismay of virtually every country in the world. The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty signed by 164 nations; Bush opposes it. This country rejects the Land Mine Treaty, concluded in Ottawa in December 1997 and signed by 122 countries. This country was also the only nation to oppose the U.N. Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms in July 2001. The United States rejects an International Criminal Court because our personnel might become subject to its jurisdiction. The United Nations is treated the same way: When the United States can get the Security Council to do what it wants - say, bomb Iraq in 1991 - it goes that route; if not, as with its invasion of Panama in 1989, it simply disregards the United Nations or uses its veto. In Afghanistan, the administration couldn't be bothered with the United Nations or any other international body to deal with what it declared to be a crime against humanity: It simply bombed. As for the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, classified as unlawful combatants, South African jurist Richard Goldstone points out that this is not a term recognized by international law. If prisoners, they are entitled to POW treatment; if simply criminals, under the U.S. Constitution, they've got even better protection. But for U.S. leaders, international law is for others, not ourselves. Whether an action involves waging war, with the devastation and death that precision bombing brings to a chosen country, or expanding environmental controls, the United States is proclaiming, more loudly than ever, that it will act unilaterally, whatever the cost to others - and sooner or later to its own people. Richard B. Du Boff is a professor emeritus of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Edward S. Herman is a professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
[CTRL] How to Make People More Responsible
-Caveat Lector- L i b e r t y W i r e |*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*| Harry Browne's weekly Liberty Peace commentary appears today on www.WorldNetDaily.com . . . How to Make People More Responsible by Harry Browne Some people object to libertarian ideas because there are too many irresponsible people in the world -- people who will cause trouble if the government doesn't restrain them. They say we must have big government because some people won't act decently toward others, some people won't plan for their own retirement, some people are too stupid to take care of themselves properly. In fact, the entire effort to wed morality and politics is based on the assumption that there are immoral or irresponsible people whom the government must control. Yes, there are plenty of people who won't act responsibly. There are people who have no regard for the consequences of their own acts. There are people who seem incapable of behaving wisely or benevolently. But we already have a $2 trillion federal government. Why is it that after amassing so much power and taking so much of our money, the government hasn't already protected us from irresponsibility? It's because politicians don't use the power and money you give them to do the things _you_ want. They use those resources to do what _they_ want. And all they want is more power -- and more power -- and more power. Your Are the Target That power is aimed at you, not at the people you want to control. Politicians exploit the existence of irresponsible people to justify rigid controls on _your_ life. Because some people won't plan for their old age, _you_ must be forced into Social Security. Because some people will do strange things if they look at dirty pictures on the Internet, _your_ access to the Internet must be restricted. We ask for a government that will restrain or punish those who impose their way physically on others, but we get instead a government that regulates virtually all areas of our own lives. Discouraging Irresponsibility So what should we do about people who won't take responsibility for their own actions? I believe the answer is simple: _Set them free_. Give them the freedom to make their own decisions, to face the consequences of their own acts, to see for themselves what their actions do to others and how others respond to them. Only free people have an incentive to be virtuous. Only people who bear the consequences of their own acts will care about those consequences and try to learn from their mistakes. A free society rewards virtue and punishes irresponsibility. Government does just the opposite -- subsidizing irresponsibility while taxing work and responsibility. What do we do about people who might not plan for their own retirement? _Set them free_. Let each person know that his future depends largely on his own actions. If younger people see older people who haven't planned ahead and have to rely on charity, the young will be more likely to provide for the future. Today when someone plans poorly, the only consequence people see is a demand for more government. What do we do about people who are insensitive to other people? _Set them free_. Let other people shun them or respect them for what they do. Let each person bear the results of being civil or uncivil. Freedom Responsibility It's often said that freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin -- that if you want freedom, you must first accept the responsibility that goes with it. The truth is simpler. Freedom and responsibility aren't interconnected things. _They are the same thing_. Freedom _is_ responsibility. Responsibility is experiencing the consequences of your own acts -- not the consequences of others' acts or making others pay for what you do. And that's what freedom is. Without government to force others to pay for your pleasures or mistakes, and without forcing you to pay for what others do, you are a free, responsible human being. Freedom and responsibility are inseparably linked -- not because they _should_ be, but because they _are_. Responsibility accompanies freedom, whether or not you want it to. So the only way to induce people to be more responsible is to _set them free_. First Things First We are told America must have a moral revival before we can have greater freedom -- that people must be taught responsibility before they can be free. This puts the cart before the horse. If we wait on government to make people responsible, we will wait forever. We have to decide whether we want a nation of self-reliant individuals who improve their own lives by offering needed services to others -- or a nation in which everyone is responsible for everyone else and so the government must control every aspect of our lives. We don't need a moral revival, we don't need politicians making moral decisions for us, we don't need more controls. If we want people to act more responsibly, there's only one way to
[CTRL] First they came for the Muslims
-Caveat Lector- Rev. Martin Niemoller, commenting on events in Germany 1933-1939 said: In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up. -- Rev. Dr. Martin Niemoeller, July 1, 1937; arrested by the Third Reich During World War II the United States detained Japanese-Americans without charges. In hind sight, we now look upon this as an injustice. Will we do it again? http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?dir=70story=139913host=3printable=1 The Disappeared Since 11 September last year, up to 2,000 people in the United States have been detained without trial, or charge, or even legal rights. The fate of most is unknown. Andrew Gumbel investigates a scandal that shames the land of the free 26 February 2002 They came for Rabih Haddad in the afternoon, as his family was getting ready to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Three men from the Immigration and Naturalization Service took him away from the apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that he shared with his wife and four children. His wife frantically shoved a few dates into his pockets so that he would have something to break his fast as he headed off to jail. That was 14 December, more than two months ago. Since that time, Haddad, a widely respected religious leader and founding member of one of the United States' largest Muslim charities, the Global Relief Foundation, has been held in solitary confinement, first in Ann Arbor and then at a federal facility in Chicago. He is in his cell, alone, for 23 hours a day. Every time he leaves, either to exercise in a special high-security cage or to take one of his thrice-weekly showers, he is handcuffed. At first he was allowed to see his family for four hours a week; now that has been reduced to just four hours a month, and on one recent occasion his wife and children were turned away without explanation. Personal phone calls are restricted to 15 minutes per month. And yet Haddad, a Lebanese citizen who was educated in the United States, has been charged with no crime. According to the Treasury Department - the only branch of government to give any explanation whatsoever - he and his charity are suspected of links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida organisation. But no evidence has been publicly forthcoming to substantiate the claim and no formal accusation has been made against him. On the day he was arrested, Global Relief's assets were frozen by the Treasury Department and its headquarters in Bridgeview, Illinois - a suburb of Chicago - was raided by 15 FBI agents, who seized every last piece of computer and video equipment, as well as the entire archive of office records. At the same time, the charity's field offices in Albania and Kosovo were raided in similar fashion by Nato troops and two of their operatives hauled off into custody for several weeks. The charity's executive director, Mohamad Chehade, was questioned at his home for two hours and, according to his lawyer, watched helplessly as field officers stripped his dwelling of paperwork, ripped open the Ramadan presents that were due to be opened that night, tore up the furniture and even confiscated his daughter's computer games. Chehade has since stated in court papers that he was never shown a search warrant. After more than 10 weeks of investigation, neither Mohamad Chehade nor any of Global Relief's other full-time employees in the United States has been detained or accused of wrongdoing. In fact, the only ostensible reason for Haddad to be behind bars is a minor visa irregularity. The tourist visa he used to enter the country most recently in 1998 expired after six months, and at the time of his arrest he and his wife were in the process of applying for permanent resident status, in accordance with a visa amnesty law passed in the dying days of the Clinton administration. This is far from the first case of an Arab or south-Asian national being rounded up and subjected to indefinite detention in the wake of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. The Justice Department acknowledged the arrest of 1,200 people before it stopped releasing numbers in November; human rights groups believe the total number could be as high as 2,000. But Haddad's case is perhaps the most troubling of all because of the sheer severity of his treatment and the shockingly abrupt suspension of his rights to due legal process. Government lawyers have refused to spell out what evidence, if any, they have against him, saying that they do not have to under the Bush administration's stiff new anti-terrorism law passed in late October, the so-called Patriot Act. The US Attorney's
[CTRL] War Against Iraq to Start Secretly - Without Informing Congress
-Caveat Lector- http://news1.iwon.com/article/id/215359|top|03-03-2002::13:40|reuters.html Lieberman: Action Against Iraq Might Start Secretly March 3, 2002 1:17 pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading Democrat said on Sunday that U.S. action against Baghdad might begin without notification to Congress to allow President Bush to employ surprise in attacking or going against the leadership of Iraq. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat and former vice presidential candidate, criticized the Bush administration for generally failing to consult enough with members of Congress in the ongoing war against terrorism, telling CBS's Face the Nation program: The administration could at this point do a better job of involving members of Congress in some of the discussions about where the war is going. But Lieberman made a blunt distinction with regards to Iraq and efforts to overturn President Saddam Hussein. Bush's recent declaration of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an axis of evil bent on pursuing weapons of mass destruction fueled speculation the U.S. administration would act next against Saddam, whose regime survived the U.S.-led 1991 Gulf War. Bush has warned Saddam his country will face the consequences if he does not allow U.N. weapons inspectors to return, and also has reportedly approved a covert plan to topple Saddam. Iraq denies it has any weapons of mass destruction. The president should consult with members of Congress as his administration it seems to me has clearly turned a corner here and made a judgement that it is critically important to American security to change the regime in Baghdad, Lieberman said. But I think you have also got to give the commander in chief the right to employ surprise in attacking or in going against the leadership of Iraq, the senator added. And therefore, consultation, but it may be that we will not have an actual congressional resolution until after activities or actions have begun in Iraq. Lieberman was one of 10 leading members of Congress who have urged Bush to make Iraq the next target in the U.S. war on terrorism, saying it had reinvigorated its weapons programs since U.N. inspectors left in December 1998. Another senator who joined the effort, Arizona Republican John McCain, told CNN's Late Edition program, Saddam presents a clear and present danger to the United States and should be removed from power. The administration and others are discussing and planning whether to pursue diplomatic, economic and other means, said McCain, a former presidential rival to Bush. The United States I think has to examine all options. I don't think there is going to be a precipitous invasion of Iraq but I do believe that we have to explore the options necessary for a regime change, he said. Lieberman also hailed the Middle East peace proposal recently outlined by Saudi Prince Abdullah, calling it a significant development. The United States should seize this moment of opportunity, send a high-level, permanent ... representative to stay in the Middle East and use the Abdullah plan as a way to begin to create negotiations, Lieberman said. McCain called the plan an important framework the United States must embrace in the face of a terribly, terribly explosive situation. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] KeyConference on Agent Orange Opens in Hanoi
-Caveat Lector- http://www.tehrantimes.com/News.asp?Da=3/4/02Cat=2Num=0#004 KeyConference on Agent Orange Opens in Hanoi HANOI -- U.S. and Vietnamese government scientists and international experts gathered in Hanoi on Sunday for a key meeting on the effects of the toxic Vietnam war defoliant agent Orange. The three-day conference will look at what is known about the effects of the Agent Orange and its major contaminantsh--highly poisonous disjoins -- and consider future research needs. The issue is a tricky one for the United States, which has faced compensation demands from both Hanoi and U.S. veterans for exposure to the toxic defoliants sprayed to deny Communist soldiers jungle cover during the Vietnam war that ended in 1975. U.S. forces sprayed millions of gallons of agent Orange and other defoliants on Vietnam from 1962 to 1971. Spraying was halted after it was discovered that agent Orange, which contained the disking TH.D., caused cancer in rats. The U.S. government says it hopes the conference will lead to a more precise understanding of the effects of herbicides and other toxic chemicals in Vietnam, with which it normalized ties in 1995. But it stressed it is not about to entertain compensation claims from Vietnam. U.S. Vietnam-relations were normalized in 1995 after Vietnam dropped claims war reparations/compensation, a U.S. embassy statement said. At the time of normalization, neither compensation nor reparations were granted or contemplated for the future. Asked if this situation could change in the future depending on the outcome of more research, a U.S. embassy spokesman said: I think the statement speaks for itself. --- Lobbying by Veterans --- The Hanoi conference came about after intense lobbying in the United States by the Vietnam veterans of America, which would like to see more compensation for members who have fallen sick after exposure to agent orange, and assistance to Vietnamese victims. The Vietnam veterans of America have pushed for over 20 years to make this happen, VVA President Thomas Cory told Reuters in Hanoi. We have to get the research started and move from there. More than 100,000 veterans have asked the U.S. veterans administration for help for illnesses they feel are associated with Vietnam war service. Only 7,500 are receiving assistance. Vietnam estimates that more than a million of its people were exposed to agent Orange and says it is to blame for tens of thousands of birth defects. Washington argues the scientific evidence is inconclusive and says the conference is aimed at filling holes in research so far. One of the issues that has always been a concern in trying to start a research program is understanding what the Vietnamese already know about the environmental and health effects, said conference chairman Christopher Portier of the U.S. government's national institute of environmental health sciences. Much of the research is unpublished and we hear about it in sketchy pieces and parts, Portier said. Observers say conclusive research could have far reaching and expensive consequences in terms of compensation claims for the United States and the Agent Orange makers, Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Co. A group of 20,000 U.S. veterans sued the two firms in 1999 and eventually won a $180 million judgement. Agent Orange exposure is also an issue for veterans from other countries who served in Vietnam, including South Koreans, Australians, Thais and New Zealanders. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Powell urges Sharon to reconsider
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.msnbc.com/news/677951.asp?cp1=1 Powell urges Sharon to reconsider U.S. warns Israels tough stance against Palestinians wont work Palestinian police survey the damage at a security complex hit by a missile from an Israeli warplane in Gaza City on Wednesday. http://a799.ms.akamai.net/3/799/388/9ff142d40b586a/www.msnbc.com/news/140569 0.jpg NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES March 6 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Wednesday offered a surprisingly harsh assessment of Israels current response to Palestinian violence, urging Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to reconsider his pledge to intensify the military crackdown. If you declare war against the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed I dont know if that leads you anywhere, Powell said. TESTIFYING BEFORE a House Appropriations subcommittee on the State Departments budget, Powells tough line toward Sharon contrasted with President Bushs reaction to the spiraling violence in the Mideast. The bloodshed continued Wednesday as Israel launched its fiercest assault yet in the Gaza Strip in fighting that killed seven Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers. Three other Palestinians died in separate incidents, including a Hamas activist in an explosion at his home. Sharon repeated his vow to intensify the military onslaught, promising Israel would strike without letup until Palestinian militant attacks on Israelis are reined in. The relentless violence has overshadowed a number of initiatives to resume peace talks, frustrating the United States and its allies. On Wednesday, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said violence had got completely out of hand and urged both sides leaders to end it or history will judge them harshly. In Washington, Powells stern words were unusual because the United States has placed most of the blame for the surge in violence on the Palestinians. Advertisement On Tuesday, for example, Bush blamed only the Palestinians, saying peace was only possible if there is a maximum effort to end violence throughout the region, starting with Palestinian efforts to stop attacks on Israelis. But Powell confronted Sharon, who has publicly declared war on the Palestinians and has said Israel intends to continue its bloody assault in reprisal for terror attacks. Mr. Sharon has to take a hard look at his policies and see whether they will work, Powell said. The Palestinians are experiencing enormous difficulties, Powell said, unable to get to their jobs. And, he said, everybody is a second-class citizen where you cannot go out for an evening walk because of fear of attack. Both Israelis and Palestinians are in a tragic situation, he said. Both sides are following policies that lead to more violence, he said. ARAFAT CRITICIZED At the same time, Powell was unsparing in criticism of Yasser Arafat. He said despite Israels confinement of the Palestinian leader to his West Bank compound, Arafat can use the telephone and is capable of ordering a halt to the attacks. Mr. Arafat can do more and he must do more, Powell said. The obstacles to peace in the Middle East Rep. Dan Miller, R-Fla., also criticized Israel, saying Israeli vigilantes were blowing up Palestinian installations. Powell said peace initiatives by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States will not accomplish anything if the fighting persists. You can come up with all the ideas in the world but they are not going to move us forward until the violence ends, Powell said. Bush has praised the peace initiative by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia as a very positive development and said he supports Israels suggestion for preliminary talks with the Arab kingdom. Abdullah has offered Israel peace and security in exchange for all the land the Arabs lost in the 1967 Six Day War. So far, the proposal is being described by Americans and Saudis as a vision, not a blueprint for peacemaking. Israeli President Moshe Katzav and other Israeli officials have volunteered to go to Saudi Arabia, which has no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, to pursue the proposal. But the Saudis are cool to the idea. SAUDI REACTION Bush, at a joint news conference Tuesday at the White House with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, said he appreciated those in Israel who are trying to find out exactly what it means. Bush also praised Mubaraks offer to act as host for talks between Sharon and Arafat as a move that will help lead to peace, hopefully. In Israel, Sharon let it be known that he saw no point in meeting with Arafat while Palestinian attacks were taking a heavy Israeli toll. Mubarak said in
[CTRL] Sharon to Ban Palestinians From Using Roads
-Caveat Lector- Sharon to Ban Palestinians From Using Roads March 6, 2002 Palestine Media Center-PMC http://www.palestine-pmc.com/news/2002/march/new-6a-3-02.html A day after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had clearly declared his aggressive intentions of hitting the Palestinians hard, he further confirmed, following a security cabinet meeting Tuesday afternoon, to grant the Israeli occupation army free rein to further intensify military 'pressure' on the Palestinian [National] Authority, especially in Ramallah, where [President] Yasser Arafat remains limited in movement. The Israeli Security Cabinet also decided to prevent Palestinians from traveling on roads in the West Bank until further notice. Previous to this dangerous decision, the Israeli occupation authorities had been limiting Palestinian movement in the West Bank to specific roads while others were designated for Israeli traffic only in what could only resemble apartheid. Following this decision, Palestinians will be barred from using the few roads, most of which are mountainous and arduous, to move from their homes to work, schools, universities, and most gravely, hospitals. The four-hour meeting was reportedly marked by bitter disagreements, whereby the Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres allegedly pleaded not to return the tanks to Ramallah, which removed last week from the area surrounding President Arafat's headquarters. Peres criticized the decision to continue applying pressure on President Arafat and underlined the need to talk to the Palestinian leadership. If [President] Arafat is not the address and he is irrelevant, then there is no point in pressuring him... But if he is relevant, we need to be talking to him. Following the meeting, Peres voiced his dissatisfaction with his government's decisions. If I would have known the reality would get this bad, I would not have joined this government in the first place. He added, The decision to hit the Palestinians even harder will not achieve anything. Entering the refugee camps and using fighter jets will only harm Israel's 'sense of morality' and its image abroad. We will pay a heavy price for scorning international opinion. For his part, Mr. Yasser Abed Rabbo, Minister of Culture and Information, condemned the Israeli decision yesterday, stating, The decision that the Israeli government has taken amounts to a war crime. History has never seen a precedent to such punitive measures for it has never happened that an entire People is jailed or subjected to house arrest. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] U.S. busts Israeli spy ring
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 16:46:11 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] French media say spies were operating in U.S. http://www.msnbc.com/news/719589.asp?cp1=1 Reports: U.S. busts Israeli spy ring French media say spies were operating in U.S. PARIS, March 5 The United States has broken up a huge Israeli spy ring that may have trailed suspected al-Qaida members in the United States without informing federal authorities, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday. A SECRET U.S. government report outlining spying activities by Israelis contained elements (that) support the theory that Israel did not give the U.S. all the information it had about the planning for the Sept. 11 attacks, it wrote. Le Monde said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had confirmed to it the existence of the secret study, which says the Israelis posed as graphic arts students and tried to enter buildings belonging to the DEA and other federal agencies. Intelligence Online, a Paris-based newsletter that reported on the study on Monday, said some 120 Israeli spies had been arrested or expelled and inquiries were continuing. An FBI spokesman on Monday called the Intelligence Online report a bogus story. ... There wasnt a spy ring. In Israel on Monday, a spokesman told Reuters: The prime ministers office declines to comment on this matter. VAST ISRAELI ESPIONAGE But Le Monde on Tuesday reported Intelligence Onlines findings and added elements it said its reporters had uncovered. A vast Israeli espionage network operating on American territory has been broken up, Le Monde wrote. It called the case the biggest Israeli spy case in the United States to be made public since 1986, a reference to the life sentence given Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew who passed U.S. military secrets to Israel. Advertisement The Pollard affair strained relations between the United States and Israel, two traditionally close allies. Guillaume Dasquie, editor of Intelligence Online, said Mondays report did not specify exactly what information the alleged agents were seeking. The report shows the clandestine network was engaged in several intelligence operations. It was a long-term project, not a one-off coup, he said. Le Monde published what it said were excerpts from the introduction of the June 2001 report, including a comment that the women in the spy ring were usually very attractive. LINK TO AL-QAIDA? Le Monde said more than one third of the suspected Israeli spies had lived in Florida, where at least 10 of the 19 Arabs involved in the Sept. 11 airplane attacks on New Yorks World Trade Center also lived. At least five of them resided in Hollywood, Fla., where alleged hijack mastermind Mohammad Atta and four accomplices in the World Trade Center attacks also lived. The United States holds Saudi dissident Osama bin Ladens al-Qaida network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Two Israelis lived in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., near Delray Beach, where hijackers in the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania resided temporarily, it added. This concordance could be the source of the American view that one of the missions of the Israeli students could have been to track al-Qaida terrorists on (U.S.) territory without informing federal authorities, Le Monde wrote. Le Monde said Fox News television reported in December that Israeli agents were sent to the United States before Sept. 11 to warn Washington about a threat, but the agents did not have enough useful information for U.S. officials to act on. A look at the 22 suspects Le Monde, which said it had seen a copy of the secret report, said it also had learned that six suspected spies had used portable telephones bought by a former Israeli vice-consul in the United States. Le Monde said several suspected spies had frequently entered and left the United States after only short stays. TECH CONNECTIONS Intelligence Online said the DEA also had confirmed the existence of the report drawn up for the Justice Department by the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Air Force. Intelligence Online said the suspects, all between 22 and 30, had recently finished their Israeli military service and one was related to a two-star Israeli general. It named several of the Israelis it said had been arrested. The inquiry began in February 2001 and is still continuing, the newsletter quoted the report as saying. The network targeted some of the most sensitive sites in the United States, the twice-monthly newsletter said, citing an Air Force base near Oklahoma City and unnamed federal
[CTRL] An Enigma: Vast Israeli Spy Network Dismantled in the US
-Caveat Lector- http://www.antiwar.com/rep/lemonde1.html An Enigma: Vast Israeli Spy Network Dismantled in the US By Sylvain Cypel Le Monde March 5, 2002 http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3222--265330-,00.html Translated by Malcolm Garris It is undoubtedly the largest case of Israeli spying in the United States that has been made public since 1986. In June 2001, an investigative report detailed the activities of more than one-hundred Israeli agents, some presenting themselves as fine arts students, others tied to Israeli high-tech companies. All were challenged by the authorities, were questioned, and a dozen of them are still imprisoned. One of their tasks was to track the Al-Qaida terrorists on American territory without informing the federal authorities. Elements of this investigation, taken up by American television Fox News, reinforce this thesis: that Israel did not transmit to the United States all the evidence in its possession on the preparation of the September 11 attacks. The latest issue of the Online Intelligence Letter, http://www.intelligenceonline.com/ a publication specializing in questions of information, has revealed that a vast Israeli spy network operating on American territory was dismantled. It is the biggest affair involving the Mossad (the Israels external security agency) in activity against the United States since Jonathan Pollard, an employee of the US Navy, was condemned to life in prison, in 1986, for spying for Israels benefit. Which was the real scale of this network? The facts evoked by an American investigative report do not indicate if the network obtained the information it was after, or if the authorities dismantled it in its initial phase. According to the chief editor of Online Intelligence, Guillaume Dasquié, this vast network of Israeli intelligence agents was neutralized by the counter-espionage services of the Department of Justice. The Americans would have apprehended or expelled close to 120 Israeli nationals. M. Dasquié gives a report on a 61-page review article from June 2001, given to the American justice department by a task force made up of agents of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and some INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents who were associated with the FBI and the office of investigation of the US Air Force. Questioned by Le Monde, Will Glaspy, of the Public Affairs department of the DEA, authenticated this report, and said the DEA holds a copy. This is not the first time that information relating to Israeli espionage appeared in the United States since the Pollard affair. In June 1999, the review Insight had described, at length, a secret investigation by division 5 of the FBI regarding Israeli phone-tapping targeting the White House, the State Department and the National Security Council. After the attacks of September 11, very little detailed information had come out about the arrest of some sixty Israelis. Finally, from the 11th to the 14th of December 2001, the Fox News television channel aired an investigation in four parts into Israeli espionage in the United States, in the broadcast Carl Cameron Investigates. http://www.firefox.1accesshost.com/cameron.html The Israeli embassy in Washington immediately responded by stating that it did not contain anything true. American Jewish organizations such JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), AIPAC (America-Israel Political Action Committee) and others, denounced the report as a machination. Fox withdrew from its Internet site, one day and half after its posting, all the material related to this investigation. Le Monde requested three times with Fox News to provide a tape of the broadcast. It was never done. On February 26, Fox told our correspondent in New York that sending it posed a problem, without being specific. Le Monde, however took note of the whole script in this investigation. Carl Cameron evokes a vast secret investigation held there relating to 140 Israelis made to pass for students of the University of Jerusalem or Betzalel Academy of Arts [which have] unceasingly sought to come into contact with civil servants and, according to a document, targeted and penetrated military bases, dozens of buildings of the DEA, FBI, and others. His investigation focused on two aspects. Firstly, could the Israelis have had preliminary knowledge of the September 11 attacks and not informed the Americans? His sources, explains Carl Cameron, tell him: The principal question is how they could they have not known? On the screen, his editor-in-chief tells him thus: Certain reports confirm that the Mossad sent representatives to the United States to warn them, before September 11, of the imminence of a major terrorist attack. That does not go in the direction of an absence of warning. Camerons response: The problem is not the absence of warning, but the absence of useful details compared to those which American services suspect Israel of having
[CTRL] Israeli Spyring Scandal
See attached document. Title: THE ISRAELI SPY RING SCANDAL THE ISRAELI SPY RING SCANDAL The Story That Will Not Go Away "Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring. OVERVIEW "Israel does not spy on the United States of America." -- Mark Regev, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon. What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when. Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America. Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well. Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers. Let us be clear here. There is nothing benign about Israel spying on the United States. When Jonathan Pollard stole our nuclear secrets (which your taxes paid to develop) and sent them to Israel, Israel did not hesitate to trade those secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas. The implication of these facts is that the billions of our tax dollars sent to Israel (while women and children sleep in America's alleys and eat out of trash bins) have bought and paid for a monstrous phone tracking and phone tapping system that can eavesdrop on almost any phone call in America. Even the White House phones were open to such tapping by listening in on the other end outside the White House itself. This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself! So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America. That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word. Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED. Since then, any and all mention of the Israeli spy ring and phone tapping scandal has resulted in a barrage of shrill screams of "hate" and "anti-Semite", two well worn and frankly over used devices to try to silence discussion on any topic unfavorable to the nation which owns the spy ring in question. The story of the
[CTRL] Israel/Occupied Territories: Inaction is complicity
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 17:04:45 + From: ainews [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Israel/Occupied Territories: Inaction is complicity * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 8 March 2002 MDE 15/017/2002 42/02 Amnesty International called on the international community to act immediately to save Palestinian and Israeli lives by insisting on an international presence in Israel's Occupied Territories. Over the past ten days, at least 130 Palestinians have been killed. At least 18 wounded Palestinians have reportedly died because of denial of access of medical services. In the same period, at least 33 Israelis have been killed, including 17 civilians. No country should stand on the sidelines. Palestinian and Israeli children are slaughtered, ambulances carrying wounded Palestinians shot at, Palestinians homes are demolished and their towns and villages sealed off. Remaining silent amounts to condoning the escalation of killings, violence and retaliation, said Amnesty International. Now is the time to act. The international community has made many statements and sent many delegates, but these efforts have failed to prevent an escalating human rights crisis, added Amnesty International. AI has repeatedly called on the Israeli Government to halt unlawful killings and on Palestinian armed groups to cease killing civilians, said Amnesty International. International monitors with a strong human rights component can help to stop unlawful killings, and the human suffering caused by the bombings, the siege and demolition of homes in Gaza and the West Bank. The Gaza Strip and the West Bank, occupied by Israel in 1967, are governed by the rules of human rights and humanitarian law. Those living under occupation are protected by the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention which describe as grave breaches acts such as wilful killing, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity. Yet grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and serious violations of human rights standards are daily currency in the Occupied Territories, Amnesty International emphasized. The number of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the current intifada in September 2000 has now reached more than 1000. The great majority of those killed, who include more than 200 children, were killed unlawfully when no lives were in danger. More than 600 houses have been demolished. In an act of collective punishment villages and towns in the West Bank are consistently sealed off by barriers manned by soldiers or made of earth, concrete blocks or trenches. At the same time at least 300 Israelis have been killed, including at least 200 civilians, among them over 50 children. The Commission of Inquiry established by the UN Commission on Human Rights called in March 2001 for an effective international human rights monitoring presence to be established immediately and constituted in such a manner as to reflect a sense of urgency about protecting the human rights of the Palestinian people. A year on, this urgent call remains unheeded. Respect for human rights and humanitarian law is the only viable path towards lasting peace and security for both Palestinians and Israelis. Armed Palestinian groups have also an obligation to respect the Geneva Conventions which forbid the targeting of civilians. But breaches in humanitarian law by an armed group can never justify a state's breaches of fundamental principles of human rights and humanitarian law it has solemnly sworn to uphold. Background Since 27 February Israeli troops have entered Palestinian refugee camps allegedly in order to arrest members of armed Palestinian groups. After raids in Balata refugee camp in Nablus and Jenin refugee camp, they also entered Aida and Deheishe refugee camps in Bethlehem, camps in the Gaza Strip and Tulkarem camp. In these camps, which house Palestinians exiled from their homes after 1948 and have a high density population, the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) have used hellfire missiles from Apache helicopters, tank rounds and bullets from heavy machine guns mounted on Merkava tanks. This represents a disproportionate use of lethal force and endangers the lives of ordinary people in the camps. In addition, the IDF in its action over the past three days has frequently targeted ambulances, killing five Palestinian medical workers including the director of a hospital in Bethlehem and the head of Jenin emergency services, while preventing or hindering ambulances from carrying away wounded Palestinians. You may repost this message onto other sources provided the main text is not altered in
[CTRL] Pakistani intelligence and Americans 'abduct' Briton
-Caveat Lector- http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,664471,00.html Pakistani intelligence and Americans 'abduct' Briton Case part of trend in casual detention, say lawyers Audrey Gillan Saturday March 9, 2002 The Guardian Fresh fears about the circumstances in which alleged terror suspects are being detained by US authorities have emerged after Pakistani intelligence was accused last night of working with Americans to kidnap a British man, bundling him into the boot of a car and smuggling him to Afghanistan. The case is being closely scrutinised by British and US lawyers who believe it reflects a trend of casual detention of terrorist suspects in the region, with apparent disregard for international law. A friend of Birmingham-born Moazzam Begg's family, Imran Khan, said Mr Begg was taken from his rented flat in Islamabad four weeks ago by two Pakistani officers accompanied by two Americans. They went into the house and grabbed him and put him into the boot of the car. He managed to phone his dad and me and said he was being taken away but then the phone went dead. Mr Begg's family was told by a man claiming to be from the Red Cross that their son was being held by Americans in a prison in Kandahar. The family has lodged a writ of habeas corpus in court in Faisalabad demanding that the Pakistani authorities produce Mr Begg along with L8,000 they say was taken from his house. A judge ruled yesterday that Mr Begg had been illegally removed from Pakistan and demanded that he be produced before the court on March 14. Mr Begg - who had worked as a translator in Britain and was teaching in Kabul - is being represented by British lawyer Gareth Peirce, who also represents some of the British men being held at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ms Peirce said Mr Begg's case was an example of how people taken by the US authorities were not necessarily combatants or members of al-Qaida, as the US claims. The position of the men being held at the camp is the subject of a legal wrangle in the US. Recently, the Pentagon admitted that it had yet to find enough evidence for any of the men to face a military tribunal, in spite of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld's earlier claims that the men being held were the hardest of the hardcore of al-Qaida. Mr Begg's situation could be used by lawyers to help show that in many cases the men detained were not fighters with the Taliban and al-Qaida but were simply picked up because they were foreign nationals. Ms Peirce said: This is fundamental to the cases of the other detainees. We do not know how they were detained and this is an example of how people are being picked off the streets and captured by gangs. This is tantamount to unlawful hijack, kidnapping. A Foreign Office spokesman said it had been told by the Begg family that their son was being detained in Kandahar. He said: We have yet to formally identify the detainee's identity or nationality and we are unable to confirm any more details about him. We are in close touch with the US about this. It is not known why Mr Begg was targeted, though intelligence sources may have believed he was the same Moazzam Begg whose name appeared on a photocopy of a money transfer found in an al-Qaida camp requesting that a London branch of Pakistan's Habib Bank AG Zurich credit the account of a Moazzam Begg in Karachi for an unspecified sum of money. At the time, US and Pakistani officials said they did not know who Begg was but would try to find him. Mr Begg, 35 and married with three children, moved to Afghanistan from Bordesley Green, Birmingham, in August last year. He bought a house in Kabul and set up a school. The family fled the Afghan capital four weeks after the US bombing started and rented a house in Islamabad. Pakistani solicitor Abdul Rahman Siddiqui, who represents Mr Begg's family, said: He was taken by some unknown agencies during the first week of February. There is no evidence against him. He was peacefully in a rented house on a regular basis. He is not a casual man who has just come here. More than 100 British Muslim families emigrated to Afghanistan before September 11 in line with the Koranic teaching called Hijrah, meaning migration from a bad way of life for a good or more righteous way. Mr Khan said: There are people who genuinely went there to live. They weren't fighters. They were just living there. But because they are in Afghanistan people assume they are extremists. Yes he did sympathise with the Muslim cause; he did feel that but still that doesn't make him an extremist. Mr Begg's father, Azmat, said yesterday: This is terrible. If my son has done something the evidence should be put up. He has been bundled into a car and we don't know where he is. His wife is due to have a baby in April. The Foreign Office are doing nothing to help us. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list.
[CTRL] Unending Carnage
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Rima Anabtawi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:49 AM To: Al-Awda-News Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] Unending carnage Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 March 2002 http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/576/re62.htm Unending carnage In the aftermath of the deadly blows inflicted on the Israeli army by the Palestinians, Sharon sent his troops into the refugee camps. Khaled Amayreh reports from occupied Jerusalem Despite the death of over 60 Palestinians and 30 Israelis this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not toned down his bellicose rhetoric. His seeming intent to perpetuate the killing comes in spite of the worsening bloodshed. Following the latest killing and another emergency cabinet meeting on Sunday, Sharon briefed Israeli reporters that pressure on the Palestinians would have to be upped in order to force them to return to the negotiating table. Anyone wishing to negotiate with the Palestinians must first hit them hard, we must inflict heavy losses on their side, he said. Sharon's provocative sabre-rattling translated into yet more terror being inflicted on the Palestinians, whether combatants or innocent civilians. In return, Palestinian militants carried out increasingly daring reprisals against Israeli soldiers and settlers. In the aftermath of last week's ruthless rampage at the Balata and Jenin refugee camps, in which more than 28 Palestinians -- civilians in their majority -- were killed and 260 others wounded, Palestinian resistance fighters retaliated. On Sunday the 3rd of March, a lone Palestinian resistance fighter, armed with an old WWII carbine rifle, carried out a surprise early morning attack on an Israeli army roadblock north of Ramallah, killing eight soldiers and two settlers, and injuring five others before escaping unscathed. According to Israeli press reports, the Palestinian guerrilla fired off 25 bullets in 20 minutes at the crack Israeli troops until his ancient gun jammed, at which time he dropped it and fled away. Twelve hours earlier, another Palestinian -- the 19-year- old son of a refugee from the Dheishe camp -- reportedly disguised himself as a rabbi and blew himself up in an ultra-orthodox Haredi neighbourhood in West Jerusalem, killing himself and seven Israelis, including a woman and three children. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing, declared responsibility for both operations, stating that Jewish blood will continue to be spilled as long as Palestinian blood flows. The two incidents, which occurred within 10 hours of each other, shook an Israeli society that, unlike the Palestinians, is unaccustomed to absorbing such a high number of fatalities on a single day. Responding to allegations that the Palestinian operations were related to Israeli army incursions into the refugee camps, Sharon had the audacity to claim that IDF activity was unrelated. But, in a reaction that betrays the shifting public mood in Israel, several commentators remarked that the prime minister was surely fooling himself and his people or was becoming progressively more detached from reality in making such a claim. In a bid to conceal the failure of his military option in suppressing the Palestinian Intifada, the Israeli army reoccupied Jenin. This time, over 40 tanks, 2,000 troops and several helicopter gunships effectively turned the densely-populated camp into a war zone. A local refugee told Al-Ahram Weekly that the attacking army was shooting at everybody and everything. They are targeting men, women, children, shops, mosques, animals, homes and schools, said Khalil Abu Bakr. They are intent on killing and maiming as many civilians as possible, sighed the middle-aged man, adding Don't believe them when they tell you that they don't target civilians. By 5.00 o'clock in the afternoon, eight Palestinians were dead, and more than eighty injured, many seriously. Several of the wounded lay in the camp's narrow streets, dying or awaiting to be transferred to hospital. However, the Israeli army was barring ambulances from entering the besieged camp. Their wilful obstruction resulted in several unnecessary deaths as the injured often bled to death. As usual, the Israeli army claimed that the casualties were exclusively gunmen and terrorists. However, upon examining the names of the victims, it became clear that virtually all, save one man, were civilians. The dead included two vegetable vendors -- Rana Abu Jouhar and Naim Sabbath; a house-wife --Samira Zubeidi, 53; and a high-school student -- 18-year-old Ayman Ghanem. Before pulling out of the camp, the Israeli army completed the carnage by firing a tank shell at a Red Crescent ambulance that was evacuating the wounded to hospital. The direct hit killed 53-year-old Dr Khalil Suleiman, head of the first-aid department at the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin and seriously injured three of his paramedics. The Israeli army
[CTRL] US 'has nuclear hit list'
-Caveat Lector- http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1864000/1864173.stm I can imagine what these countries are going to be saying at the UN. Joseph Cirincione, nuclear arms expert. Dr Strangelove is clearly still alive in the Pentagon. John Isaacs, arms control campaigner You are in: World: Americas Saturday, 9 March, 2002, 17:01 GMT US 'has nuclear hit list' First use has been unthinkable for years The Bush administration has reportedly ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for attacking seven countries with nuclear weapons. Quoting a secret Pentagon report, the Los Angeles Times newspaper names China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria as potential targets. Furthermore, the military have apparently been directed to build smaller nuclear weapons for battlefield use. The Pentagon has declined to comment on the report which analysts have described as dynamite. According to the paper, the report lists three situations in which the weapons could be used. These include retaliation for attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons and against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack. The third category - in the event of surprising military developments - is described by the BBC's Washington correspondent, Paul Reynolds, as a catch-all clause. The paper says the report was presented by the Pentagon to members of Congress on Friday. It is quoted as saying the Pentagon should be ready to use nuclear weapons in an Arab-Israeli conflict, a war between China and Taiwan and an attack by North Korea on the South. As for Russia, the report says that it is only listed in view of its own large nuclear arsenal and it is not viewed as an enemy. 'Taboo lifted' Defence analysts told the Los Angeles Times that the secret report appeared to mark the first time an official list of target countries had come to light. I can imagine what these countries are going to be saying at the UN, said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. The report clearly referred to nuclear arms as a tool for fighting a war, rather than deterring them, he added. Anti-nuclear campaigners pointed out that the reported instruction to build new tactical nuclear weapons indicated that the administration of George W Bush was more willing to lift the old taboo on using nuclear weapons except as a last resort. This is very, very dangerous talk, said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World. Dr Strangelove is clearly still alive in the Pentagon, he commented, referring to a 1964 feature film about a nightmare nuclear conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. Our correspondent recalls that the US made a veiled threat to Iraq during the Gulf War that it could respond with nuclear weapons to an attack by Baghdad using chemical or biological weapons. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Norwegian ambulance drivers protest against Israeli attacks
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: International Justice Watch Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Stian Loholt Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 8:53 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Norwegian ambulance drivers protest against Israeli attacks (cross-posting of comments only permitted) Between 30 and 40 ambulance drivers in 15 ambulances surrounded the Israeli Embassy in Oslo Saturday afternoon. With howling sirens they showed their contempt for the attack on doctors and medical personnel in the Palestinian areas. The drivers expressed feelings of shock and disbelief over the fact that Israeli soldiers shoot at ambulances and their personnel in active duty. Stian Loholt The Norway Post 9. Mars 2002 Norwegian ambulance drivers protest against Israeli attacks Ambulance drivers in Oslo on Saturday demonstrated in front of the Israeli embassy against Israel's attacks against Palestinian medical personnel in the Palestinian areas. They tried to deliver a letter of protest to the ambassador, but the door remained closed. Around 30 drivers from the Oslo Ambulance Club took part in the demonstration, and in the letter they expressed shock and disbelief over the fact that Israeli soldiers shoot at ambulances and their personnel on active duty. The Norway Post 9. Mars 2002 Strong criticism of Israel's attack on health personnel Foreign Minister Jan Petersen has accused Israel of serious breach of International Law, in the wake of Israeli attacks on doctors and medical personnel in the Palestinian self governing regions. -I deeply regret the continous Israeli attacks on the Red Crescent's medical personnel in the Palestinian areas, Petersen says. Petersen reacts in particular against Thursday's Israeli attacks against several ambulances in Tulkarem on the West Bank, during which two doctors were killed and several health workers were wounded. Also on Friday morning a Palestinian doctor was killed. -The attacks Thursday evening against ambulance personnel from the Red Crescent and the UN is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, which puts both sides under obligation to not attack neutral aid orgainzations like the UN and Red Cross which work to assist the victims of the conflict, Petersen says. The Norwegian Foreign Minister thereby supports Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross, who has called Israel's attacks against medical personnel gross violations of the Geneva Conventions and related protocols. Egeland rejects Israeli claims that the ambulances on the Palestinian side are being used to carry weapons and explosives, and asks for evidence. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Israeli Troops Slaughter Bulldoze Civilians in Dheisheh
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Zahi Damuni [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 4:46 PM To: Al-Awda News Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] URGENT: ISRAELI TROOPS ENTER DHEISHEH Importance: High Saturday, March 9, 2002 From: Muna Hamzeh I compiled this report following phone calls to Dheisheh this morning and last night. Israeli tanks, accompanied by bulldozers have now completely surrounded Dheisheh Refugee Camp and are right now imposing a curfew on the camp - not that people were venturing outside before. As being reported from nearby Aida Refugee Camp, Israeli snipers are shooting at anything that moves, and this is why people in Dheisheh have not left their homes since Friday. Right at this moment, Israeli troops have entered Dheisheh camp from the eastern part (They reached the old Ibdaa Cultural Center Building) and have overtaken several houses as outposts and also the Dheisheh School for Girls. Israeli snipers are on the roofs. They have also bulldozed the home of the Daraghmeh family, whose son carried out the suicide bombing in Jerusalem last weekend. The father of a friend of mine, Amjad Abu Laban (an employee of UNRWA), passed away in Dheisheh today of natural causes. Israeli troops refused to allow the family to bury him, so the family has had to bury him in the house - the first time such a thing ever happens in the camp. All men ages 14-40 have left the refugee camp. Reports from Tulkarem refugee camp indicate that Israeli soldiers have rounded up all men between the ages of 14-40 and have arrested 400 so far. No one within this age group in Dheisheh is taking any chances. They all left the camp yesterday. On Friday, as Issa Farraj, the nephew of a friend of mine in Dheisheh, was leaving a friend's house with two other friends and was just about to get in his car when an Israeli tank shell struck the car. Issa, who was wanted by the Israelis, died instantly, and friends of mine who live in the neighborhood told me that Issa's two friends were so badly burnt that they are not expected to survive. There is no flesh on their bones, one eye-witness told me. Meanwhile, residents of the neighborhood have found different parts of Issa's body in their homes. His body was scattered all over the place. Two houses in the neighborhood - only three blocks from where I used to live - were completely burned from the impact of the explosion. Numerous other homes had all their windows blown out. I am calling Dheisheh every hour and the mood is extremely tense. People are bracing themselves for the worst and they expect a massacre to take place. Now that the army has imposed a curfew, the soldiers are expected to start their house to house searches and rampages. And they will have a free reign - no UN personnel, no international protection, and no foreign media - no one to save the lives of innocent civilians. To make certain that no one in Dheisheh who is injured will receive medical treatment, the soldiers and tanks surrounded al-Yamama Hospital down the street from Dheisheh yesterday (Friday). Also yesterday, the hospital's director was killed in cold blood (see report below). I interviewed the hospital director when the Israelis shelled his son's house in November 2000. The shelling of this particular house was the subject of my November 2, 2000 diary entry. The hospital director killed yesterday is the one I quote, thought I don't name, as saying that he will rebuild the shelled house. In addition to surrounding al-Yamama Hospital, Israeli troops have also dug up the Jerusalem-Hebron Road leading from Dheisheh to Bethlehem to make sure that ambulances can't reach the camp and that no injured can be transported to hospital. As I write this, Dheisheh is completely isolated. The Israelis just cut off the camp's water supply and they will probably cut off the electricity as they did in Tulkarem refugee camp. As these developments take place in Dheisheh, nearly 6 bodies and tens of wounded in Tulkarem refugee camp are lying in the alleys of the camps and the Israeli army is preventing anyone from coming to their aid or removing the bodies of those who died. Meanwhile in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, friends tell me that Israeli helicopters have been pounding the camp with Apache Helicopter gunfire and doing so in a very indiscriminate way. One eye-witness told me the helicopter is just flying around and shooting at everything, in all directions. Anyone who has been to a camp knows that homes are clustered very closely to one another. Women, men and children -entire families are inside these homes being shelled. In Aida also, ambulances are forbidden from approaching. It is clear to us that they want anyone who is hit to bleed to death, my friend Hourieh in Dheisheh told me over the phone this morning. Please keep in mind that what is happening in the refugee camps isn't innocent. Why is Israel targeting Khan Younis, Jabalyia, Jenin, Tulkarem, Balata and now
[CTRL] U.S. foreign policy takes aggressive turn
-Caveat Lector- http://www.sunspot.net/news/custom/attack/bal-te.diplomacy10mar10bull.story?coll=bal%2Dhome%2Dheadlines From the Sunday Sun U.S. foreign policy takes aggressive turn Bush administration sees attacks as proof of need to change tack By Mark Matthews Sun National Staff Originally published March 10, 2002 WASHINGTON - The terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have propelled American foreign policy along a new course, shifting away from a desire to be a friend to the world and toward an almost single-minded drive to eliminate threats to American lives and to U.S. interests overseas. With a dazzling display of military power in Afghanistan, the United States forced foes and allies to recognize that the United States is the only world power of any consequence. Having crushed the Taliban government in Afghanistan, U.S. forces are assisting counter-terror campaigns elsewhere while pummeling the remaining Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas in mountain hide-outs. And President Bush is laying the diplomatic groundwork for confronting hostile nations that possess chemical and biological weapons and that seek to become nuclear powers. A prime target is Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But as they acknowledge American resolve and the military's demonstrated skill, critics question whether the Bush administration's emphasis on military muscle will really make the West safer in the long term. Critics also say that the anti-terrorism campaign fails to address the vast disparities in wealth and festering hatred that help fuel terrorism. They also see the United States making too little effort to end bloodshed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, another fuel for terrorism. Should we reduce all the world's problems solely to the battle against terrorism? said French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, who has taken the lead among Europeans in criticizing what he calls America's heavy-handed tendency. Must this be waged solely by military means, ignoring the deep-seated causes and roots? That is what would be too simplistic, dangerous and ineffectual. The attacks of Sept. 11 jolted Americans into a sense of their own vulnerability. For many in the Bush administration, the attacks reinforced previous judgments about what needed to be done and what they saw as the flawed outlook of the Clinton administration. In place of a vision of expanding opportunity and reduced tension, American policy-makers now see a world of dark corners hiding agents of hatred, a world divided into good and bad, us vs. them as at no other time since the Cold War. Where President Bill Clinton sought out economic partners, Bush seeks junior officers in a U.S.-led war on terror. In place of free-trade zones and development aid, Bush emphasizes military cooperation. Rather than try to resolve regional conflicts, he wants to combat extremism. Hostile regimes with ambitions of becoming nuclear powers can't merely be contained, in his view; they constitute parts of an axis of evil that must be weakened and, in at least one case, toppled. Regional wars aren't an American problem unless they directly affect U.S. interests. Longtime allies get consulted, but they don't get a veto. Bush puts U.S. economic expansion over a drive against global warming, is far from enamored of the concept of international justice and values good intelligence and threat of punishment, rather than treaties, in curbing weapons proliferation. The attacks confirmed for the Bush team the dangers lurking in the world. Administration officials recognized quickly that they couldn't defeat al-Qaida in Afghanistan, let alone in the more than 60 countries where it operates, without broad support and diplomatic, intelligence and law-enforcement help from old and new partners overseas. But the United States left no doubt who was in charge. Mr. Bush's is a policy very different from that of the Clinton administration, said Josef Joffe, editor of the German newspaper Die Zeit. Clinton, [Vice President Al] Gore and [Secretary of State Madeleine K.] Albright often confused schmoozing with tough choices. W., Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell behave more like 'adults' - laying down the law and sticking to it, he added, referring to the president, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Even allies who chafed at that approach now acknowledge that it got results and that Bush weighed his decisions carefully. The president has made no mistakes since September 11, a senior European diplomat said. The original mission is far from over, however. With a new government beginning to take shape in Kabul and al-Qaida and Taliban fighters mounting fierce resistance, U.S. forces might have to stay in Afghanistan longer than Bush expected, said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It's very difficult to tell the American people that we have to continue to take
[CTRL] US-Sponsored Terrorism Briefing- 'Hear Palestine'- 09-03-02
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Rima Anabtawi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:46 PM To: Al-Awda-News Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] US-Sponsored Terrorism Briefing- 'Hear Palestine'- 09-03-02 Saturday, 9 March 2002 Summary of Events, Saturday March 9, 2002: Israeli attacks on Palestinian population centers diminished slightly today following new pressure by the US and World governments and organizations, after a day of intense massacre and bloodshed on the part of Israeli forces yesterday, March 8. Amnesty International issued a strong condemnation of Israeli attacks on civilians. Indiscriminate attacks continued, however. Attacks on Bethlehem took the life of a teenage resident of al-Azza refugee camp while Israeli forces continued their assault of Deheishe and al-Azza refugee camps and Al-Khader village today with tank shelling, causing severe damage and injuries. Deheishe remains surrounded by dozens of tanks and is under total curfew. A young Dheishe man died from injuries sustained in a previous Israeli attack on March 7. Israeli forces continued mass arrests in Tulkarem refugee camp. Over 600 Palestinians have already been arrested. The closure, curfew and assault on Palestinian, towns, villages, cities and refugee camps continued causing a new mother to bleed to death at a checkpoint outside Tulkarem. Deaths and injuries are expected to mount as Israeli forces continue to deny Palestinians access to medical attention. An elderly man was found dead in Jerusalem, the apparent victim of a paramilitary settler group. Israeli continued air attacks against Palestinian targets, including a security installation in Gaza, one in Nablus and numerous residential areas in Hebron. Numerous Palestinians were injured. Israeli forces entered the villages of Jifna and Bir Zeit, just outside of Ramallah. See details of events below: ** Israeli State Terrorism ** 4 Palestinians Killed Nidaa al-Azza (15 years old), Bethlehem Imad al-Soufi (23 years old), Bethlehem Rana Hamad (18 years old), Qalqilya Ibrahim Odeh (elderly man), Jersualem Military Attacks *Israelis Kill Teen Girl Killed in Bethlehem Refugee Camp, Wide-Scale Israeli Attacks Continue* Young Palestinian Mother Bleeds to Death at Qalqilya Roadblock* *Israeli Occupation Army Continues Indiscriminate Killing, Destruction and Collective Arrests in Tulkarem *Various Areas in Hebron Come Under Israeli Fire* *Elderly Palestinian Man Found Dead in Jerusalem* *Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza City Security Installation; Attacks and Invasions in other Areas* *Israeli Helicopters Strike Security Compound in Nablus* *Israeli Tanks Enter Bir Zeit and Jifna Villages at Dawn Acts of Collective Punishment *Hundreds of Villages and Towns Isolated While Attacks and Arrests Continue ** Diplomatic Statements ** *Palestinian Leadership Condemns Israeli Crimes Against Humanity* *Arab Foreign Minister Condemn Israeli Massacres and Call for Immediate Protection* ** Israeli State Terrorism ** Military Attacks --- *Teen Girl Killed in Bethlehem Refugee Camp, Wide-Scale Israeli Attacks Continue* A teenage girl, Nidaa al-Azza, 15 years old, was killed in her home in al-Azza refugee camp, in Bethlehem, this afternoon, March 9, by Israeli missile shrapnel. al-Azza was the 9th Palestinian killed in Bethlehem by Israeli violence since yesterday. Israeli tanks layed siege to al-Azza refugee camp with heavy machine gun fire and tank shells. Several of the small camp's residents were wounded. Imad al-Soufi, 23 years old, died today, March 9, due to injuries sustained in an Israeli occupation military attack on Deheisha refugee camp on March 7. Over 25 occupation tanks and armoured vehicles now surround Deheisha camp which has been placed under total curfew. Due to the continued Israeli policy of preventing ambulances from aiding the injured, the number of injuries and deaths is expected to rise while Israeli attacks continue today. An official Palestinian Authority helipad, used by President Yasser Arafat, was destroyed in attacks on the camp. A Palestinian Coast Guard building and security installation in the refugee camp were occupied by Israeli soldiers. In al-Khader, Israeli occupation forces imposed a curfew on residents. Israeli occupation military troops and tanks continue to attack and occupy Beit Jala and al-Doha, where a Palestinian-owned private 8 story building has been converted into a military base on the Hebron-Jerusalem road. *Young Palestinian Mother Bleeds to Death at Qalqilya Roadblock* Rana Hamad al-Jayousi, an 18 year-old girl, from Qour Village south of Tulkarem, died at 1:00 pm today, March 9, after the ambulance transporting her was prevented from reaching the hospital by occupation forces at the eastern entrance of Qalqilya. Rana, who had given birth in her
[CTRL] B9Tselem on atrocities committed by IDF
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: International Justice Watch Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Dr Peter Hall Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 9:29 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: B9Tselem on atrocities committed by IDF B9Tselem on atrocities committed by IDF Since Israel began its invasions into Palestinian refugee camps on February 27, dozens of unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed, including children and medical personnel. In every city and refugee camp that they have entered, IDF soldiers have repeated the same pattern: indiscriminate firing and the killing of innocent civilians, intentional harm to water, electricity and telephone infrastructure, taking over civilian houses, extensive damage to civilian property, shooting at ambulances and prevention of medical care to the injured. Peter Hall === 12 March 2002 A Deadly Pattern Members of the Security and Foreign Affairs Committee of Israel9s Knesset were outraged at the phenomenon of IDF soldiers writing blue numbers on the arm of Palestinian detainees. As appalling as it is, this act is merely a symbol of the IDF9s loss of any moral compass in its treatment of the Palestinian population. Since Israel began its invasions into Palestinian refugee camps on February 27, dozens of unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed, including children and medical personnel. In every city and refugee camp that they have entered, IDF soldiers have repeated the same pattern: indiscriminate firing and the killing of innocent civilians, intentional harm to water, electricity and telephone infrastructure, taking over civilian houses, extensive damage to civilian property, shooting at ambulances and prevention of medical care to the injured. The grave results have not caused the IDF to change its course of action. Israeli policymakers knew the grave price to the civilian population after the incursion into the first refugee camp. Yet they continue to engage in actions that constitute grave breaches of international humanitarian law. We cannot wait for the next incursion before the IDF learns the lesson. A black flag of illegality flies over military actions that cause such widespread civilian casualties. Lethal Ambiguity: B9Tselem distributes pocket-guide to soldiers The IDF takes pride in the existence of directives intended to minimize harm to the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Territories. However, testimonies B9Tselem has taken from soldiers reveal that many soldiers are unfamiliar with these directives. In many cases, the orders to avoid harming Palestinian civilians do not reach the soldier on the ground. In response to the IDF9s 3policy of ambiguity2 with regard to its own orders, B9Tselem has issued a 20-page pocket guide, designed for IDF soldiers. The guide includes basic rules to be followed by soldiers stationed in the Occupied Territories. All the rules in the guide accord with standing IDF orders. Among the rules included in the guide: the duty to allow patients in need of urgent medical treatment passage through checkpoints; the duty to allow medicines, water and food supplies into Palestinian populations centers; the prohibition to shoot 3rubber2 bullets toward children, and more. 3It is not our job to inform soldiers about the IDF9s standing regulations and it is appalling that we have to tell soldiers something so self-evident, like allowing passage to those needing urgent medical care,2 said B9Tselem9s Executive Director, Jessica Montell. 3But B9Tselem has documented so many cases of ignorance about these orders, that we realized we had no choice.2 On Sunday, March 10 2002, dozens of B9Tselem volunteers began to hand out the pocket guides at soldier meeting and transport points in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Be9er Sheva, Haifa and other places around the country. === B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories is the leading Israeli organization monitoring, documenting and advocating to improve human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Founded in 1989, B'Tselem publishes reports, engages in advocacy and serves as a resource center. 8 HaTa'asiya St. (4th Floor), A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] US sends suspects to face torture - The Guardian
-Caveat Lector- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4372442,00.html US sends suspects to face torture Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles Guardian Tuesday March 12, 2002 The US has been secretly sending prisoners suspected of al-Qaida connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources. Prisoners moved to such countries as Egypt and Jordan can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The normal extradition procedures have been bypassed in the transportation of dozens of prisoners suspected of terrorist connections, according to a report in the Washington Post. The suspects have been taken to countries where the CIA has close ties with the local intelligence services and where torture is permitted. According to the report, US intelligence agents have been involved in a number of interrogations. A CIA spokesman yesterday said the agency had no comment on the allegations. A state department spokesman said the US had been working very closely with other countries - It's a global fight against terrorism. After September 11, these sorts of movements have been occurring all the time, a US diplomat told the Washington Post. It allows us to get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on US soil. The seizing of suspects and taking them to a third country without due process of law is known as rendition. The reason for sending a suspect to a third country rather than to the US, according to the diplomats, is an attempt to avoid highly publicised cases that could lead to a further backlash from Islamist extremists. One of the prisoners transported in this way, Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, is allegedly linked to Richard Reid, the Briton accused of the attempted shoe bomb attack on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in December. He was taken from Indonesia to Egypt on a US-registered Gulfstream jet without a court hearing after his name appeared on al-Qaida documents. He remains in custody in Egypt and has been subjected to interrogation by intelligence agents. An Indonesian government official said disclosing the Americans' role would have exposed President Megawati Sukarnoputri to criticism from Muslim political parties. We can't be seen to be cooperating too closely with the United States, the official said. A Yemeni microbiology student has also been taken in this way, being flown from Pakistan to Jordan on a US-registered jet. US forces also seized five Algerians and a Yemeni in Bosnia on January 19 and flew them to Guantanamo Bay after the men were released by the Bosnian supreme court for lack of evidence, and despite an injunction from the Bosnian human rights chamber that four of them be allowed to remain in the country pending further proceedings. The US has been criticised by some of its European allies over the detention of prisoners at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After the Pentagon released pictures of blindfolded prisoners kneeling on the ground, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was forced to defend the conditions in which they were being held. Unsuccessful attempts have been made by civil rights lawyers based in Los Angeles to have the Camp X-Ray prisoners either charged in US courts or treated as prisoners of war. The US administration has resisted such moves, arguing that those detained, both Taliban fighters and members of al-Qaida, were not entitled to be regarded as prisoners of war because they were terrorists rather than soldiers and were not part of a recognised, uniformed army. __ A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL
[CTRL] Bush's Stealth Policy on Nuclear Arms
-Caveat Lector- http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/071/oped/Bush_s_stealth_policy_on_N_arms+.shtml Bush's Stealth Policy on Nuclear Arms By Thomas Oliphant, March 12, 2002 WASHINGTON | It is not simply the fresh list of countries that the United States is willing to consider nuking someday. What is truly significant - as well as stupid, scary, and outrageous - is the almost casual breaking of long-standing policy taboos about the unthinkable and the implications of this cavalier attitude for relations with the rest of the world and for future arms races. The Russians and Chinese already know the United States is unilaterally departing from the 1972 treaty effectively banning missile defense systems. Now the world has reason to doubt the American commitment to the 1974 treaty to guard against nuclear proliferation as well as the honesty and good will of Bush administration pledges to cut back our post-Cold War nuclear arsenal and to maintain a moratorium on testing. The cover story the administration sought to peddle on last weekend's TV talk shows - via Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - is that contingency plans to target Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Russia, and China are more theoretical exercises than serious policy work and that no special notice need be taken. The cover story is belied by actual intentions as revealed to Congress in a freshly completed Nuclear Posture Review and in the very faint, fine print of the recently unveiled Bush budget. Over the weekend the headline-making list of countries leaked from Capitol Hill, but as part of a leak of the underlying policy document that began four weeks ago. On Feb. 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council - well-known for its thorough, documented research - put out the first detailed summary of the posture review that had been ordered by Congress in late 2000 and of a special briefing the Defense Department had conducted on the document - without the secret list of countries. At the time, no one really noticed. With the addition of the countries, The Los Angeles Times got noticed. Here's the council's highly critical but accurate summary view four weeks ago: Behind the administration's rhetorical mask of post-Cold War restraint lie expansive plans to revitalize US nuclear forces and all the elements that support them, within a so-called New Triad of capabilities that combine nuclear and conventional offensive strikes with missile defenses and nuclear weapons infrastructure. If the basic purpose of nuclear weapons since the end of World War II had been to prevent their use and proliferation, the deadly serious review by the Bush administration - with the force plans and massive spending as accompaniments - results in a doctrine that contemplates their use and appears indifferent to their proliferation. Numbers tell a large chunk of the story. When the administration's intention unilaterally to abrogate the ABM treaty was made known, President Bush made much of a supposed intention to reduce its supply of deployed warheads from roughly 8,000 to below 4,000 in 2007 and eventually to between 1,700 and 2,200. What the posture review actually reveals is a plan to cut immediate force requirements for operationally deployed forces. What's going on here is more a change of terms than in posture, hidden by a new, gobbledygook accounting system that the council properly declared worthy of Enron. Behind the clearly visible nuclear inventory, the council found a huge, hidden arsenal. It included, but no longer counted, warheads on two Trident submarines being overhauled at all times, as well as 160 more now listed as spare. It included nearly 5,000 intact warheads now in a status called inactive reserve, not to mention a few thousand more bombs and cruise missile warheads as part of a new responsive force. And on top of that there is to be a stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium and other components from which thousands more weapons could be assembled quickly. Extrapolating the information, the Defense Council estimated that the United States would have a total of 10,590 warheads at the end of 2006, compared with 10,656 this year. And there's more. The administration's posture review also discloses plans to greatly expand the nuclear war infrastructure and to prepare for a resumption of testing, in part to make possible a new generation of warheads that could penetrate deep into the ground. The rules of the nuclear road from the US perspective have never included a flat-out promise never to be the first combatant to resort to nuclear war. During the Cold War, the United States was always prepared to go nuclear to stop a massive, conventional attack from the east in Europe, and before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein got a stern message that all bets were off if he used chemical or biological weapons. But this is different. This is a plan to use nukes in conventional war-fighting and to maintain a
[CTRL] Senator Byrd: Why Congress Has to Ask Questions
-Caveat Lector- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/12/opinion/12BYRD.html Senator Byrd: Why Congress Has to Ask Questions By ROBERT C. BYRD March 12, 2002 WASHINGTON - Do members of Congress have any business questioning a president's military strategy in the midst of war? That was the question swirling around Capitol Hill last week. In the heat of debate, some went so far as to insinuate that any questioning of a wartime president is divisive and unpatriotic. What dangerous nonsense this is. Congress not only has the right to question a president's policies, but also the duty. In a war, the American people have every right to a full accounting of what their sons and daughters are fighting for and what their government expects to achieve. To question is not to accuse or to condemn. To question is to seek the truth. The less forthcoming a president is, the more Congress will have to probe for answers. Such is the current situation. In the wake of Sept. 11, President Bush declared all-out war on terrorism. Money is no object; time is no deterrent. We will win this war, the president vowed. We will hunt down and destroy the terrorists. Those words constitute a sweeping manifesto. I support the president's commitment, but as a senator, I have a responsibility to look beyond the rhetoric. How will we win this war? What are the costs? What are our objectives? What are the standards by which we measure victory? How long will we be in Afghanistan? Where else will we go? The Constitution states that the president shall be commander in chief, but it is Congress that has the constitutional authority to provide for the common defense and general welfare, to raise and support armies, and to declare war. In other words, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to weigh in on war-related policy decisions. Yet in this war on terrorism, Congress, by and large, has been left to learn about major war-related decisions through newspaper articles. One day we hear that American military advisers are heading to the Philippines. Another day we read that military personnel may go into the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The next day we are sending advisers into Yemen. And, oh yes, we also learn from news reports that we have a shadow government in our own backyard, composed of unknown bureaucrats, up and running at undisclosed locations, for an indeterminate length of time. Is it any wonder that members of Congress are beginning to question whether the administration is deliberately leaving Congress in the dark - or whether the administration is making major policy decisions on the fly, without taking time for due consideration or consultation? Neither scenario is comforting. And while the administration has started to meet with some members of Congress, it appears to be more in reaction to criticism than in genuine cooperation and consultation. Last Wednesday, the remains of seven American servicemen killed in combat in Afghanistan were brought home to Dover Air Force Base. The ceremony was a somber and chilling reminder of what is involved in prosecuting America's war on terror. It was a reminder that the waging of war is not merely a matter of political debate. It is a matter of guns and bullets and bombs and bloodshed. It is a matter of committing our sons and daughters to a life-and-death struggle. The loss of American lives in Afghanistan requires that we question the president's wartime policies, no matter how uncomfortable the questioning may be. We owe that to the Americans who have died, and who will die, in the course of what may be a long and murky war. Robert C. Byrd is a Democratic senator for West Virginia. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Hundreds of Arabs Still Detained in U.S. Jails
-Caveat Lector- http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-detained.html Hundreds of Arabs Still Detained in U.S. Jails By REUTERS Filed at 1:48 p.m. ET March 13, 2002 MIAMI (Reuters) - Six months after the attack on the World Trade Center, hundreds of Arabs remain detained in U.S. prisons and the net has widened to include asylum seekers, some women and children who fled persecution in the Middle East, human rights advocates say. The Justice Department has refused to issue a list of those detained or give a full accounting of the number. In its most recent statement on Feb. 15, it said there were 327 individuals detained on immigration violations or being investigated for ''possible terrorist connections.'' But that did not include those being held under sealed indictments or as material witnesses, a number, which the Justice Department will not divulge, or the asylum seekers. ``We have absolutely no idea how many they have behind bars and neither does anybody else because the government simply will not tell us,'' said Hussein Ibish of the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. James Zogby, chairman of the Arab American Institute, said he believed the 327 number were those still in custody from an original 1,200 people arrested just after Sept. 11 and the real number of detainees being held today was as high as 2,000. ``People released from the various detention centers tell us there are huge numbers of Arabs being held,'' he said. The American Civil Liberties Union and 15 other organizations filed a lawsuit last December seeking the disclosure of basic information about individuals arrested and detained since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed some 3,000 people. The case probably will not come before a judge for another month. Attorney General John Ashcroft has refused to release the names of immigration detainees, saying the disclosure would be ''too sensitive for public scrutiny.'' Testifying Dec. 6 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft said the Justice Department's efforts to combat terrorism were crafted to avoid infringing on constitutional rights while saving American lives. But Zogby said: Ashcroft is governing by fiat. He says, 'I can't tell you why they are being held or who is being held or where they are. ... Just trust me.' We are behaving like many of the countries we criticize for their human rights violations. When it comes to asylum seekers fleeing persecution, there have been a number of rulings that constitutional protections do not apply to illegal aliens. They can be detained indefinitely while their cases are investigated and have no automatic right to an attorney. ``Asylum seekers are getting caught up in the immigration sweep conducted in response to September 11,'' said Wendy Young of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children. FAMILIES SEPARATED ``The United States is violating basic principles of family unity by separating families already traumatized by their displacement into separate detention facilities,'' she added. Last December, the women's commission interviewed an elderly Christian couple from Iraq who arrived in Miami last August and were sent to separate prisons. They had only been able to meet privately three times and cannot telephone each other. They remain in detention, the commission said. It also interviewed an Iranian Christian woman who arrived last March with her two teen-age sons. They originally joined family members in Tampa but were arrested at the end of September 2001. The commission said the eldest son, who had turned 18, was sent to prison, while the mother and other son were detained in a hotel room. All three remain in detention, unable to post bond. Abdul Salam Amin, a Kurd from northern Iraq who was active in the opposition to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and twice imprisoned, has been held at the Krome immigrant detention center just outside Miami since arriving last August. His brother won political asylum in May 1999 and is living and working as a baker in Denver, Colorado. Amin was investigated by the CIA and FBI months ago and had an immigration hearing more than two months ago. Now he just waits in an overcrowded prison, the commission said. ``When another nationality arrives in the prison from China or Albania, they stay here a couple of days and get released,'' he said, interviewed through a plate glass partition wearing the orange jump suit of a convict. ``I don't understand it. They know Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds with chemical weapons. Obviously, it's enough just to be a Muslim to be held for months,'' Amin said. ``I try to be patient and respect their decision but always I am afraid. If they send me back, I will die and my family will probably be killed as well.'' The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which is incarcerating Amin, came under fire this week when it informed the Florida flight school where two of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers studied
[CTRL] URGENT APPEAL to protect medical services
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Trish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 11:04 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] URGENT APPEAL to protect medical services The Palestine Monitor, A PNGO Information Clearinghouse URGENT APPEAL to protect medical services 13 March 2002 Despite yesterdays relentless efforts to allow Palestinian ambulances to move inside Ramallah, - including a joint appeal from Israeli Physicians for Human Rights and UPMRC - the Israeli military continues to prevent all movement of emergency services and health care. Foreign consulates and diplomatic representatives, the US State Department, UN agencies, the Red Cross and Israeli Defence and Foreign Minister and all Knesset members, have all be informed of the grave situation, but there has been no action. Instead, yesterday - despite coordination with the International Red Cross - Israeli soldiers opened fire three times on Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances. They also shot at a Red Cross car and Palestinian ambulance convoy that were attempting to move a woman in labour from her house to hospital. Since this incident, the International Red Cross has withdrawn from the area, and no medical vehicle has been able to move in the city. Furthermore Israeli soldiers shot an Italian freelance journalist, Raffaele Ciriello, who has since died. Israeli soldiers also prevented him from receiving emergency medical treatment which may also have contributed to his death. The entire city of Ramallah is under curfew, leaving all patients - including women in labour and patients requiring immediate treatment - unable to access health care. Anyone attempting to leave their house risks being shot. This crisis situation is putting many innocent lives at risk. We call urgently on the international community to prevent the Israeli government from continuing its criminal policies: all Israeli troops must be ordered to allow free movement of medical care and ambulances throughout Ramallah and the occupied territories. Please take immediate action: write to your government representative and Foreign Minister and to the Israeli Foreign Minister and the Israeli Representative in your country. Write demanding that the Israeli government be made to comply with international law, particularly the IV Geneva Convention which protects the movement of patients and medical treatment in times of conflict and obliges the occupying force to provide humanitarian care to the occupied civilian population. Urge your government to intervene immediately, and ask for international protection for the Palestinian people. See www.palestinemonitor.org activism for a list of contact addresses. For more information, contact Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi on 050 254218 A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] KissingerWatch
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Bob Gonsalves [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 10:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FWD: KISSINGERWATCH PREMIERE OF KISSINGERWATCH An excellent new email bulletin has been launched to provide information and facilitate exchanges among activists and scholars on the subject of Henry Kissinger. Brussels-based International Campaign Against Impunity has teamed up with the East-Timor Action Network and the Instituto Cono Sur to produce KissingerWatch, which will be distributed several times per year. Below is the editors introduction to the first issue, followed by the table of contents. To subscribe to KissingerWatch (free of charge), send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** Kissinger Watch ( www.icai-online.org/kissingerwatch ) - a joint project of East-Timor Action Network International Campaign against Impunity Instituto Cono Sur ** Dear readers, In the past few years, the international movement against the impunity of public officials has gained unprecedented momentum; activists worldwide have made significant efforts to assure that these high-ranking politicians and soldiers will be held accountable for their acts, which include crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture, and genocide. General Pinochet was detained in London for more than 500 days and escaped extradition to Spain only after a dubious medical assessment found him unfit to stand trial. Slobodan Milosevic was extradited last June to the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) on charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. A second international ad hoc tribunal (ICTR) has been established for Rwanda and tries suspected perpetrators of the genocide. Support for the establishment of similar tribunals for Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and East Timor is strong. In the last week of February 2002, Portugal and Ecuador joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). Only eight ratifications remain before the ICC treaty enters into force. Impunity, however, is not limited to those countries that are placed under the label of the second or third world. The West must also confront its criminals; it cannot remain blind to the crimes of its officials. For this reason and with this issue, we launch KissingerWatch. To many, Henry Kissinger epitomizes the failure of the Western world to pay serious attention to the grave crimes committed by its leadership. In response, KissingerWatch is designed to examine this specific case of impunity, to provide information about Kissinger's alleged role in the violation of human rights worldwide, to kindle debate, and to facilitate the exchange of opinions among experts and activists. Inspired by the success of the Pinochet Watch bulletin (http://www.tni.org/pinochet/), KissingerWatch will be published as an email bulletin that will be distributed several times per annum. The first issue aims at providing a comprehensive - but far from complete - overview of Kissinger's past and present activities. It also serves to introduce other initiatives that raise awareness on Kissinger's alleged involvement in crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. Future issues will be more concise and hence more easily digestible. To subscribe to KissingerWatch (free of charge), send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] We also welcome your active participation in this project. We encourage all readers to share the results of their research with us. ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Thank you, and we appreciate your readership. Michael Schmitt, The International Campaign against Impunity, ( www.icai-online.org ) [EMAIL PROTECTED] John Miller, East-Timor Action Network ( www.etan.org ) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Gérman Westphal, Instituto Cono Sur [EMAIL PROTECTED] TABLE OF CONTENTS *** 1.HOLDING INDIVIDUAL LEADERS RESPONSIBLE FOR VIOLATION OF CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW The US-bombing of Cambodia and Laos (summary) 2.FORD AND KISSINGER GAVE GREEN LIGHT TO INDONESIA'S INVASION OF EAST-TIMOR IN 1975 New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto Source: Press release by National Security Archive 3.THE ASSASSINATION OF GENERAL SCHNEIDER / LAWSUIT FILED IN THE US by ICAI 4.FRENCH AND CHILEAN JUDGES TRY TO INTERROGATE KISSINGER Source: Pinochet Watch 36 5.KISSINGER HAD A HAND IN DIRTY WAR By Martin Andersen John Dinges Source: Insight Magazine, The Washington Times 6.RESOLUTION OF THE GENEVAN PARLIAMENT By Antonio Hodgers (Member of Genevan Parliament) 7.NPR RADIO INTERVIEW: I AM NOT A CRIMINAL 8.THE PITFALLS OF UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION by Henry Kissinger Source: Foreign Affairs, July / August 2001 9.THE CASE FOR UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION By Kenneth Roth (Executive Director of Human Rights Watch), Source: Foreign Affairs, July / August 2001 10.WEBSITES RELATING TO HENRY KISSINGER 11.FAIR USE NOTICE - In accordance with
[CTRL] Israeli bulldozers raze 73 Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 05:42:14 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] Israeli bulldozers raze 73 Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=11887 Israeli bulldozers raze 73 homes By Nazir Majally, Arab News Staff Friday, January 11, 2002 RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip , 11 January Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad said yesterday it was scrapping a deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat not to mount attacks in Israel, opening the way to fresh violence and dealing a blow to US peace efforts. The groups military wing in the West Bank announced its decision after Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished 73 Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip leaving large families consisting of men, women and children to spend the nights in shivering cold under open skies. Weeping women and men and children searched for their belongings in piles of rubble, twisted metal, wood and broken furniture at Rafah after tanks and bulldozers raided the camp before dawn. Witnesses said 110 families were left homeless. I was sleeping ... and he (my son) told me to get up the bulldozers are coming, said one woman, Um Ahmad Gishta. I didnt have time to do anything. I got my daughters and we ran out. Pressure also mounted on Arafat over Israels seizure of a ship which it said was carrying 50 tons of arms to the Gaza Strip, an allegation denied by the Palestinian Authority leadership. The United States said yesterday it had compelling evidence that Hezbollah, Iran and senior Palestinian Authority officials were behind an arms smuggling operation foiled by Israel last week. And, while Secretary of State Colin Powell said he had not yet seen information that directly implicated Arafat in the affair, senior US officials said they strongly suspected the Palestinian Authority leader was involved. The information that we are receiving and developing on our own makes it clear that there are linkages to the Palestinian Authority, Powell said a day after Israeli intelligence officials briefed their US counterparts on evidence they have collected into the incident. Later, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington had also seen evidence of complicity by Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese resistance movement. We think the weight of the evidence is compelling with respect to Iranian and Hezbollah involvement in this arms smuggling operation including in the provision of the weapons and the planning for their delivery, Boucher said. Palestinian officials dismissed the charge against Arafat but Bush said he was beginning to suspect the shipment was intended to promote terror. And terror will never enable us to achieve peace in the Middle East, Bush told reporters. Mr. Arafat must renounce terror, must reject those who would disrupt the peace process through terror, and must work hard to get to the peace table. Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat told CNN television the allegation against Arafat was absolutely unacceptable. The arms seizure last week followed by the deadly Palestinian raid on an Israeli Army post on Wednesday threatened to wreck a renewed US peace mission led by Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni, who left the region late on Sunday. In the latest blow to peace hopes, Islamic Jihads military wing said it was abandoning its freeze on attacks inside the Jewish state, a move taken after Arafats Dec. 16 cease-fire call, because Israel was continuing to kill Palestinians. We in the Jerusalem Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad in Palestine, announce that starting from today we will not adhere to the understanding with ... the (Palestinian) Authority and its security services, the group said in a statement. Israel alleged that the houses had been used for arms smuggling or to fire at Israeli soldiers, but a US State Department official said the demolitions would not contribute to the restoration of calm and an end to violence. The tanks and bulldozers carried out their task amid heavy firing, witnesses said. The Israelis ended their operation and withdrew at dawn, leaving clusters of newly-homeless Palestinians shivering in the cold mud around makeshift campfires, close to the craters of what had until then been their homes. The tanks and bulldozers had begun destroying homes under cover of heavy machine-gun fire in Block O, a neighborhood under Palestinian self-rule in the town on the Egyptian border, witnesses and security sources said. Block O sits close to the border zone, which falls under tight Israeli military control and is a frequent flash point. Rafahs Gov. Sufian Al-Agha said that 73 houses had been flattened and 123 families left homeless, adding that some women and children had been treated for shock and cold after the operation. He called the district a disaster zone. We are hoping
[CTRL] Afghanistan: Experts Ponder U.S. Treatment Of Prisoners
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:40:34 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] Afghanistan: Experts Ponder U.S. Treatment Of Prisoners http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/01/10012002092645.asp Afghanistan: Experts Ponder U.S. Treatment Of Prisoners By Jeffrey Donovan RFE/RL Weekday Magazine 10 January 2002 The United States is set to start transferring scores of Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners from Afghanistan to an American Navy base in Cuba. Experts say the unique circumstances of the war in Afghanistan present some daunting legal questions on how to treat those prisoners. Washington, 10 January 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The United States says it is set to transfer an initial group from nearly 400 Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured in Afghanistan to a U.S. base in Cuba where they will be detained and interrogated -- and possibly tried for war crimes. But the matter of taking prisoners in Afghanistan, including the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, transferring them out of the country, and perhaps trying them for war crimes has got U.S. legal experts scratching their heads, wondering: Is America's behavior legal under international law? The short answer, it appears, is the jury is still out. Experts interviewed by RFE/RL expressed concern about some U.S. actions in what they call an extremely complex legal environment involving soldiers from dozens of countries fighting for a non-state actor -- Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda terrorist network -- in Afghanistan. Alfred P. Rubin, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston, warns that any eventual American breach of international law could come back to haunt Washington: These are very complicated questions in which every step the U.S. takes has enormous implications and people are going to do to us what we think we can do to them. American officials have stressed that all detainees held in Afghanistan and on U.S. Navy ships are being treated humanely and in accordance with the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which dictate the treatment of war prisoners. At last count, the U.S. held 368 Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, many of them near the southern city of Kandahar. General Richard Myers, who as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the top U.S. military official, says the first group of prisoners will be flown within days to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay once the base on a U.S.-held part of the island of Cuba is prepared to receive them. The Cuban facility will be able to handle upwards of 2,000 prisoners. Myers made this observation at a Pentagon briefing yesterday: We want to make sure the facilities in Guantanamo Bay are adequate for the task. And this is serious business. We've gotten help from experts in this business -- both our own military detention people who work this issue and Bureau of Prisons [people] and so forth. So we're trying to make it ready in Guantanamo to start relieving some of that pressure in Kandahar. Myers says the U.S. took custody on 8 January of two Al-Qaeda leaders discovered with a group of fighters after the U.S. bombed a cave complex near the city of Khost. He says information gathered from prisoners recently has helped thwart terrorist attacks and that these two men were singled out for detention because they appeared to offer a greater chance for gleaning intelligence: They are Al-Qaeda, as opposed to Taliban. They become very interesting to us because they're part of the worldwide network of terrorism that Al-Qaeda supports. And so we would hope that we might be gleaning information that might point to future operations. So far, the highest-ranking member of the Taliban in U.S. custody is Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the militia's former ambassador to Islamabad who is being held on a U.S. Navy ship. The U.S. hopes he can provide information on the whereabouts of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the 11 September terrorist attacks on America. However, the legality of Zaeef's detention was questioned by Tufts University's Rubin, who notes that international law grants immunity to diplomats regardless of the actions of their governments. Rubin says that at the heart of international law is the idea of reciprocity -- that countries treat each other the way they themselves want to be treated -- and that taking an ambassador into custody could eventually endanger U.S. diplomatic personnel in another country. Rubin also questions the transfer to Guantanamo: It seems to me that [taking prisoners to Guantanamo] creates serious questions. That implies that the laws of war apply -- that is a thing that every congressman ought to be upset about in the United States -- and it does mean that the Al-Qaeda people, if they capture one of ours, can remove him to Somalia or
[CTRL] 911 money trail leads to Skull and Bones
-Caveat Lector- -- -- http://www.rense.com/general19/2bigminds.htm 2 Big Mind Jobs On The World - 911's Money Trails To Bonesmen By Roy Sawyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1-10-2 As this U.S. investigator and a small number of independent research journalist retrace the financial trails connecting the (911) attack and the other acts of bio terrorism; with evidence that the anthrax was made in this country, the overwhelming evidences points to the White House using some members inside the CIA, FBI, NSA, Justice and Treasury departments. Those involved that would have profited financially are President Bush's German (Skull and Bones) AKA Bonesmen and the German-based global banking conglomerate Deutsche bank-Alex Brown. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. This Bank played several key roles in the events connected to the September 11 attacks. Those responsible for the (911) and Bio attacks have used this mind control act of distraction before. Mind Job #1 In 1933, shortly after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the German Parliament was set on fire by the Nazis, but the Communists were blamed for this act of terrorism against the German people. Following the Nazi-inspired arson, Hitler exploited the outrage of the German citizens to arrogate to himself dictatorial powers, which he promised would be used to rid Germany of Communists. The next day, Chancellor Hitler demanded from the German cabinet an emergency decree which would enable him to deal decisively with the domestic crisis. President von Hindenburg signed the decree for the Protection of the people and the State. The grandfather of President George W. Bush (Skull Bones, AKA Bonesmen in the year 1968) was Prescott Bush (Skull Bones of 1917), and his great grand father was George Herbert Walker. Prescott Bush and George Herbert (Bert) Walker were directors of the London- affiliated New York banking house of Brown Brothers-Harriman and its various fronts, which funded and directed the military-industrial complex behind Hitler and the Nazi revolution. In 1919, George Herbert Walker had organized W.A. Harriman Co which merged with the British Brown Brothers in 1931. In 1924, Averell Harriman (Skull Bones, 1913) and Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who began funding Hitler in 1923, set up the Union Banking Corp. in New York to handle funds supplied to it through Thyssen's Dutch bank for American investment. Prescott Bush, who had been an officer of the W.A. Harriman bank since 1926, was a director of the Union Banking Corp from 1934 through 1943. According to government documents, all of the shares of the Union Banking Corp., were held for the benefit of members of the Thyssen family. In 1942, the U.S. government investigative report that surfaced during 1945 Senate hearings found that the Union Bank, with Prescott Bush on the board, was an interlocking concern with the German Steel Trust that had produced: 50% of Nazi Germany's pig iron 41% of Nazi Germany's universal plate 36% of Nazi Germany's heavy plate 38% of Nazi Germany's galvanized sheet 45% of Nazi Germany's pipes and tubes 22% of Nazi Germany's wire 35% of Nazi Germany's explosives Mind Job # 2 A major French publication (Le Figaro) was the first to report that Bin Laden meets with a CIA agent in a Dubai Hospital. It is reported that during the month of July Bin Laden's was visited by the local CIA representative in United Arab Emirates who was seen going into Bin Laden's room and later reported leaving the country after July 14 going back to Washington, after some many information meetings. Dubai, is one of the seven emirates of the Federation of the, North-East of Abi-Dhabi. This city, population 350,000, was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent. A partner of the administration of the Hospital in Dubai claims that Bin Laden stayed at this hospital between the 4th and 14th of July. He was admitted to this American Hospital with four bodyguards, as well as a male Algerian nurse. The American funded Hospital is a glass and marble building situated between the Al-Garhoud and Al-Maktoum bridges. Each floor of the hospital has two VIP suites and fifteen rooms. The Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden was treated at this well-respected Urology department run by Dr. Terry Callaway, gallstone and infertility specialist. Communication between the CIA and Bin Laden began in early 1979 when, as a representative of his family's business, bin Laden began recruiting volunteers for the Afghan resistance against the Russian Army. FBI investigators examining the embassy bombing sites in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam discovered that evidence led to military explosives from the US Army, and that these explosives had been delivered three years earlier to Afghan Arab rebels, currently known as the Taliban. The infamous international
[CTRL] Is George W. Bush God's President?
-Caveat Lector- http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp January 10, 2002|2:05 PM Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced that `there was some divine guidance in the President being elected.' Is George W. Bush God's President? by Joe Conason Do tax cuts for the wealthy represent the will of God? What might normally be an impertinent and perhaps offensive question suddenly seems entirely reasonable after hearing George W. Bush's ungrammatical but passionate pledge to defend the tax cuts his administration provided to the richest, smallest segment of American citizens, at the cost of his own life if need be. The vow he uttered during his town-hall meeting in California over the weekend - Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes! - was the strongest he's made on any subject since his promise to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice dead or alive. Even allowing for hyperbole, such edgy remarks indicate what matters most to Mr. Bush. For the moment, however, he appears more capable of fulfilling the former promise than the latter. And since it has lately become respectable to discuss his elevation to the nation's highest office as a matter of divine will, Mr. Bush's deep determination to empty the Treasury into the pockets of friends and supporters may likewise signify the unknowable agenda of the Almighty. Unbelievers will scoff at such notions, but in the wake of Sept. 11, the idea that a higher power ordained the inauguration of Mr. Bush is no longer confined to the loonier fringes of the religious right. While the President and the First Lady modestly demur whenever this topic comes up, others around the Oval Office assert that they are convinced. I think President Bush is God's man at this hour, a top White House aide told a religious publication not long ago. Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition who now chairs the G.O.P. in Georgia, says his fellow evangelicals believe God selected the President because He knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way. Nor is this revelation confined solely to Protestant conservatives. Two days before Christmas, Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced his own opinion that there was some divine guidance in the President being elected. In this sentiment, the Time magazine Man of the Year was swiftly seconded by a Catholic bishop. (Again, a skeptic might impiously wonder why the Lord didn't simply bless Mr. Bush with the actual majority of votes. But faith is nothing without mystery.) The implications of all this are obviously profound. If the President is indeed guided by Providence in lavishing additional billions upon those who already enjoy so much material abundance - even while the numbers of unemployed, uninsured and homeless soar - then his ascension may represent a millennial reversal of heavenly policy. Until now, few directives have been clearer than the guidance enunciated by prophets of both the Old and New Testaments regarding earthly greed. Woe to you who are rich, Jesus told his disciples, for you have already received your comfort. The impoverished carpenter also reportedly informed a well-heeled acquaintance that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. His best-known speech included the admonition that you cannot serve both God and Mammon. Universally familiar as those statements are, they are reliably among the most widely ignored. Entire schools of theology, across all ecumenical lines, have long been devoted to parsing a convenient loophole in such injunctions. They aren't the sort of Biblical quotations that politicians try to post in public schools, or that televangelists cite as evidence that Republicans are the party of God. What a relief it would be if the tax policy of the Bush administration means that we no longer have to worry about worshipping the golden calf. Divine inspiration may not be a persuasive explanation for Mr. Bush's fiscal schemes, which are pushing the government into deficit and threatening to prolong the recession. It is indeed hard to imagine that any omniscient power would prefer a $254 million tax break for Enron to a cut in payroll taxes for the working poor. But it's just as difficult to credit any of the more earthly justifications emanating from the White House press office. In any case, not all branches of the federal government have awakened yet to the new dispensation. On the same day that Mr. Bush made his dead body remark, a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office disparaged his tax cuts as useless for reviving the economy. According to the C.B.O. analysis, better results would ensue from more progressive cuts in payroll and sales taxes. While the nonpartisan report appropriately said nothing about theology, its recommendations were highly reminiscent of that old-fashioned scriptural preference for the poor
[CTRL] IP: Pres. Bush to Head-Up National ID System
-Caveat Lector- Pres. Bush to Head-Up National ID System As previously reported here, Congress has recently directed the US Department of Transportation to establish model guidelines for encoded data on driver's licenses issued by states as part of the 2002 transportation funding legislation. The Congressional directive also instructs federal agencies to work together towards development and installation of fingerprint or retinal scanners at airports which will read and verify data stored on the license documents. The directive constitutes formal establishment of a national ID system under the leadership of President George W. Bush as chief executive of his administration. According to the Congressional report the system will be used for national security and to prevent fraud. It will also be used to stop underage drinking. The newly established Department of Transportation safety agency will manage a federal database linking state driver information. The 1993 Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA), codified at Title 18, Section 2721, will serve as the authority for this program. The Act ~requires~ states to release personal information from motor vehicle records for purposes of national defense (security) and matters involving national or regional emergencies; all under direction of the President. The DPPA also authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to collect and collate transportation related information whenever the Secretary decides such collection will contribute to the improvement of the transportation system of the United States. The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) has already drafted a national ID standard. One of the required features of the AAMVA standard is digitally encoded inclusion of Social Security Numbers -- even though it is often claimed by proponents that SSNs would not be included. The AAMVA national ID standard also incorporates fingerprint and digital photo criteria. AAMVA's standards director, Nathan Root, was recently quoted -- in an effort to counter opposition to their national ID scheme -- saying, they're giving these systems too much credit in even assuming that somebody would be able and interested to track everybody's whereabouts and doings. If you believe Nathan Root, you deserve a national ID. --- CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2299, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2002 (H.R. 2299) ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr308.txt Conference Report (H. Rept. 107-308) Model guidelines for encoded data on driver's licenses.-- In light of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, it is clear that all levels of government need to work in concert to deter and prevent future attacks. One means of doing so is to ensure that individuals asked to identify themselves are not using false identities. The increasing availability through the internet of expertly crafted false identification makes the task very difficult. The conferees are aware of technology, existing today, that can quickly scan any encoded data on the reverse of a driver's license to validate the license as legitimately issued. By reviewing personal data encoded on the license, it can also be used to assist in making a quick determination that the person displaying the license is the person to whom it was issued. The conferees strongly encourage the department to consider the development of model guidelines specifying the types of encoded data that should be placed on driver's licenses for security purposes, and to work in concert with states and related licensing bodies toward the early implementation of such measures. This could benefit the nation's efforts to improve security as well as assist in reducing fraud and underage drinking. Document and biometric scanning technologies.-- Document and biometric scanners linked to federal databases by computers and containing advanced authentication capabilities would facilitate the processing of background checks, provide fingerprint and additional biometric identification capabilities, and authenticate documents presented for identification. It is the conferees' understanding that such off the shelf, commercially available technology is in use or being tested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The conferees encourage FAA to assess such document and biometric scanning technologies for use at all commercial service airports. The conferees also recommend that the Secretary implement standards to make use of technologies that quickly and inexpensively assess the daily fitness-for- duty of airport security screeners with respect to impairment due to illegal drugs, sleep deprivation, legal medications, and alcohol. Fingerprint identification technologies.-- The conferees are aware of the promise of forensic-quality fingerprint and palmprint identification technologies for the rapid verification of identities and employee background checks. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act
[CTRL] Project: Rescue of the Constitution!
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 13:32:27 -0500 From: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Rescuing the Constitution By Nat Hentoff Source: Jewish World Review http://www.jewishworldreview.com Rescuing the Constitution http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff1.asp Dec. 17, 2001 Nat Hentoff AT the start of both the civil rights and anti-Vietnam-war movements, a majority of Americans did not support either campaign. But, through teach-ins and other educational projects -- from newspaper ads to marches on Washington -- the direction of the nation was changed. The odds against similar organized national opposition to the Bush administration's weakening of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, are much longer than they were in the 1960s. Not only do polls show overwhelming public support for the diminishing of civil liberties; but Congress -- except for a few vocal constitutionalists -- is not going to vigorously exercise its oversight powers over John Ashcroft and the Justice Department. As Democrat John Dingell, a longtime, influential member of the House, told the Dec. 5 New York Times, I hear a lot of members saying they're concerned, but not many willing to say it publicly. There is insistent public opposition from civil libertarians, both on the left and the right; but the attorney general's often unilateral, scorched-earth approach to the Bill of Rights takes on new dimensions so frequently that his critics have been able only so far to react. There hasn't been time to organize pressure nationwide so that Congress will awaken to the separation of powers that is at the core of our system of governance. A new addition to John Ashcroft's war on both terrorism and our Constitution is his plan -- under the expanded surveillance powers in the USA Patriot Act -- to reintroduce a current version of COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Operation). From 1956 to 1971, the FBI not only monitored religious and political groups purportedly linked to Communist operations, but the bureau also infiltrated and disrupted these organizations. Among the FBI's targets were anti-war, civil rights and black nationalist groups, along with various liberal organizations that opposed certain government foreign policies. The Communist Party itself was, of course, included. But, as a reporter throughout that period, I can attest that many of the COINTELPRO probes were directed at entirely lawful groups and individuals without any ties to Communism. Finally, in 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee) began to hold hearings and otherwise investigate COINTELPRO. The committee concluded that this FBI operation was a sophisticated and vigilante program aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence. The Church Committee (named for Idaho Sen. Frank Church, its chairman) added: The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order. But a Dec. 3 Wall Street Journal story headlined Justice Department Considers Stepping Up Monitoring of Religious, Political Groups reported that the FBI will, under this proposal, no longer be held to Justice Department regulations requiring agents to show probable cause that a crime was afoot before spying on political or religious organizations. Those regulations were put in place after the Church Committee exposed the FBI's disgraced COINTELPRO record. On a Dec. 2 episode of ABC's This Week, Attorney General John Ashcroft not only did not deny the advent of a new COINTELPRO, but stoutly maintained that he will pursue whatever has to be done in the war against terrorism. He doesn't need congressional approval for this assault on the First and Fourth Amendments. During what passed for a congressional debate on Ashcroft's anti-terrorism bill, the American Civil Liberties Union organized a Coalition in Defense of Freedom in Time of National Crisis. Opposing parts of that bill, which became law, was the largest array of civil liberties organizations I have ever seen -- from left to right and center. Included were: The Center for Constitutional Rights; the Free Congress Foundation; the American Friends Service Committee; Gun Owners of America; the NAACP Board of Directors; the Rutherford Institute; and Amnesty International USA. If enough of these groups -- and individuals also intent on rescuing constitutional rights -- can move from reacting to organize a national coalition, Congress can be moved to act before, as Republican Congressman Bob Barr says, This massive suspension of civil liberties ...
[CTRL] Bush And ENRON - We The People Out In The Cold...
-Caveat Lector- A HREF=http://www.newswithviews.com/your_government14.htm;New Page In The Enron/Bush Fiasco 2/A http://www.newswithviews.com/your_government14.htm Excerpt: Many of Enronâs pre-bankruptcy 20,000 employees were barred by the company from cashing in their 401(k) retirement plans, primarily consisting of Enron stock, while key executives including Chairman Kenneth Lay, former President and CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow reportedly personally made more than $1 billion selling Enron shares before the collapse.  ENRON EXPLODING - MAY CONNECT TO MONEY LAUNDERING  by Michael C. Ruppert NewsWithViews.com    FTW January 11, 2002  Even as Attorney General John Ashcroft today recused himself from involvement in any Justice Department investigation into the mushrooming Enron scandal, larger conflicts of interest  potentially more damaging to the Bush Administration -- are becoming increasingly apparent. The conflicts involve the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Harvey Pitt and the head of Congressâ investigative arm, the General Accounting Office (GAO), David Walker. Both agencies are charged with investigating allegedly criminal behavior by the energy trading firm, once the seventh largest company in America, which has now become the single largest bankruptcy in world history and may soon become the largest financial and political scandal in American history.     As new revelations of Enronâs unethical and insider-based improprieties, apparently facilitated by more than $2 million in Bush campaign donations, continue to flash across TV screens on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis -- more serious allegations of criminal money-laundering activities by a respected financial expert suggest that what is already known about Enronâs behavior is but the barest tip of a razor sharp iceberg that could sink the Bush presidency.     Spokespersons for Pitt and Walker both denied to FTW in interviews on January 10 that there is any reason for the heads of these two agencies, long regarded as the last and best protections against unchecked government corruption, to recuse themselves from Enron investigations even though their respective agencies have key statutory obligations to investigate the growing scandal.     SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, who took office in August of this year, after most of the acts leading to the Enron collapse had been committed, was, according to a Jan. 9, 2001 report by the Center for Public Integrity, a partner in the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Jacobson. In that capacity he represented accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Enronâs auditor, which disclosed in a press release dated yesterday, that âin recent months individuals in the firm involved with the Enron engagement disposed of a significant but undetermined number of electronic and paper documents and correspondence related to the Enron engagement.â     This is significant because Andersen, one of the big five accounting firms, had routinely signed off on falsified financial statements concealing almost $20 billion in âoff-balance-sheetâ debt from stock and bond holders, regulatory agencies and Enron employees. Many of Enronâs pre-bankruptcy 20,000 employees were barred by the company from cashing in their 401(k) retirement plans, primarily consisting of Enron stock, while key executives including Chairman Kenneth Lay, former President and CEO Jeff Skilling, and CFO Andrew Fastow reportedly personally made more than $1 billion selling Enron shares before the collapse.     SEC spokeswoman Christi Harlan told FTW, âThe Chairman filed an agreement that he would recuse himself from votes in any matters where he had a conflict of interest. The investigation is being run by the enforcement division and they keep him [Pitt] advised.  âOnce the Commission launches an investigation to go forward they just do their thing. Thereâs no requirement for a vote until an action is recommended.â     Harlan stated that the enforcement division acts autonomously from any input from the Chairmanâs office and that the head of the division has management oversight for any investigations. This appears to be a different SEC practice from the long-respected partnership of SEC chairman Arthur Levitt and enforcement director Richard Walker who were known as a team for their single-minded and thorough non-partisan investigation of securities violations in the 1980s and 90s. Walker was recruited by Deutschebank shortly after the attacks of September 11th, 2001.     When asked if, in spite of his past representation of Andersen, Pitt was confident that there would be no conflict of interest or any resultant influence on the Enron probe, Harlan said, âAbsolutely!â     Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker, who heads the GAO, has an even more obvious dilemma. Until November 9, 1998
[CTRL] Future airline security news from 2002
-Caveat Lector- He who makes many enemies, will not lead a peaceful life. -- Ancient Wisdom of Chinese The point: The only way to FIX the American Airline security and *be secure* is to stop making enemies of half the world. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 02:25:38 -0500 From: Declan McCullagh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FC: Politech humor: Future airline security news from 2002 Warning: off-color humor below. The author of this message (who knows how many people actually have access to a yahoo/hotmail account) appears to be C.J. Parker, a colorful fellow: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sonofgomez709 --- From: sonofgomez709 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: C J Parker [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Future gNus Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 18:47:08 -0800 December 22, 2001 Lone Nut of Middle Eastern descent (later discovered to be a Puerto Rican) is subdued (i.e. beaten senseless) by passengers of airliner after trying to ignite plastic explosives in shoes. Plane is escorted by two military jets and rerouted to Boston where would be bomber is arrested. Later that day, all passengers are forced to removed shoes for inspection before boarding planes. Delays reach up to 4 hours during already hectic holiday season. No other shoe bombs are found, but the searches continue. All planes are equipped with video black boxes that record last images of pilots and passengers in the event of a catastrophe. February 4, 2002 An 86 year-old Amish woman on a Florida to Ohio flight detonates a bomb in pants disguised as battery operated light-up Viva Las Vegas! panties. The last video image from black box shows her knocking over stewardess and tearing off dress before detonating explosive. All passengers on board are killed. 25 people on the ground are also killed by falling debris. As a result, all passengers are required to remove their undergarments for inspection in makeshift, screened rooms. Flights are delayed for up to 3 days as lines of irritated passengers wait to be stripped naked by convicted felons (it is discovered that 89% of airport security employees are ex-cons and parolees). February 13, 2002 While passengers are still being strip searched in American airports, a man on United flight 302 from Philadelphia to New York belly flops in the center isle, setting off the nitro-glycerine that his clothes were later found to be soaked in. In a move that outrages the few surviving civil rights organizations, FAA requires all passengers fly in the nude and forgo any in-flight snacks as FBI demonstrates on live TV how a peanut can be used to kill a grown man. June 3, 2002 While Bush is on live TV proclaiming his success in clearing the world of terrorism (UN and US intervened in Indo-Pakistani conflict and accidentally dumped large Anthrax stockpiles and nuclear weapons on all of the Middle East. It was labeled colateral damage) a woman detonates a tube of explosives concealed in her anal cavity. 300 people on board are killed as well as 263 on ground as wreckage rained down on a Shriner's parade in Utah. All fliers are now required to submit to a body cavity search before boarding plane. July 4, 2002 A naked couple on Alaskan Airlines Flight 65 uses a two-in-one explosive compound to destroy the plane. The man had clear, odorless coating of one chemical on penis, and the woman had second chemical douche before boarding the plane. Flight footage shows couple engaging in intercourse, successfully combining two benign chemicals and forming one super explosive chemical that equaled the power of 5,000 pounds of TNT. Passengers are now required to wear an electronic chastity belt that dissolves the wearer's genitals with a highly corrosive acid at the first signs of arousal. CJ Parker mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED][EMAIL PROTECTED] http://profiles.yahoo.com/sonofgomez709 http://members.w-link.net/~sog/INDEX.HTMhttp://members.w-link.net/~sog/INDEX.HTM http://toto.diary-x.com ICQ 138724628 The True Story Of The InterNet The Xenix ChainSaw Massacre http://www.technopagan.org/politics/xenix/http://www.technopagan.org/politics/xenix/ WebWorld The Mythical Circle Of Eunuchs http://www.technopagan.org/politics/webworld/http://www.technopagan.org/politics/webworld/ InfoWar: Final Frontier Of The Digital rEvolution http://www.technopagan.org/politics/infowarriors/http://www.technopagan.org/politics/infowarriors/ Space Aliens Hide My Drugs http://www.technopagan.org/politics/sahmd/http://www.technopagan.org/politics/sahmd/ - POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
[CTRL] FW: US doesn't have the right to decide PoW status
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 12:23:02 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] FW: US doesn't have the right to decide PoW status -Original Message- From: International Justice Watch Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Daniel Tomasevich Sent: Monday, January 14, 2002 7:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: US doesn't have the right to decide PoW status This article adds to the discussion that the Taliban are PoWs. Once in front of a court or tribunal, the Pentagon might argue that the Taliban were not the government of Afghanistan and that their armed forces were not the armed forces of a party to the convention. The problem here is that the convention is widely regarded as an accurate statement of customary international law, unwritten rules binding on all. Even if the Taliban were not formally a party to the convention, both they and the US would still have to comply. Daniel (article not for cross posting) - The Guardian Monday January 14, 2002 Comment US doesn't have the right to decide who is or isn't a PoW Ignore the Geneva convention and we put our own citizens in peril Michael Byers Would you want your life to be in the hands of US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld? Hundreds of captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters don't have a choice. Chained, manacled, hooded, even sedated, their beards shorn off against their will, they are being flown around the world to Guantanamo Bay, a century-old military outpost seized during the Spanish-American war and subsequently leased from Cuba by the US. There, they are being kept in tiny chain-link outdoor cages, without mosquito repellent, where (their captors assure us) they are likely to be rained upon. Since Guantanamo Bay is technically foreign territory, the detainees have no rights under the US constitution and cannot appeal to US federal courts. Any rights they might have under international law have been firmly denied. According to Rumsfeld, the detainees will be handled not as prisoners of war, because they are not, but as unlawful combatants. This unilateral determination of the detainees' status is highly convenient, since the 1949 Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners of war stipulates that PoWs can only be tried by the same courts according to the same procedure as in the case of members of the armed forces of the detaining power. The Pentagon clearly intends to prosecute at least some of the detainees in special military commissions having looser rules of evidence and a lower burden of proof than regular military or civilian courts. This will help to protect classified information, but also substantially increase the likelihood of convictions. The rules of evidence and procedure for the military commissions will be issued later this month by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The Geneva convention also makes it clear that it isn't for Rumsfeld to decide whether the detainees are ordinary criminal suspects rather than PoWs. Anyone detained in the course of an armed conflict is presumed to be a PoW until a competent court or tribunal determines otherwise. The record shows that those who negotiated the convention were intent on making it impossible for the determination to be made by any single person. Once in front of a court or tribunal, the Pentagon might argue that the Taliban were not the government of Afghanistan and that their armed forces were not the armed forces of a party to the convention. The problem here is that the convention is widely regarded as an accurate statement of customary international law, unwritten rules binding on all. Even if the Taliban were not formally a party to the convention, both they and the US would still have to comply. The Pentagon might also argue that al-Qaida members were not part of the Taliban's regular armed forces. Traditionally, irregulars could only benefit from PoW status if they wore identifiable insignia, which al-Qaida members seem not to have done. But the removal of the Taliban regime was justified on the basis that al-Qaida and the Taliban were inextricably linked, a justification that weakens the claim that the former are irregulars. Moreover, the convention has to be interpreted in the context of modern international conflicts, which share many of the aspects of civil wars and tend not to involve professional soldiers on both sides. Since the convention is designed to protect persons, not states, the guiding principle has to be the furtherance of that protection. This principle is manifest in the presumption that every detainee is a PoW until a
[CTRL] Enron Contributions to Bu$h $$$$$$$$$$
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 09:57:24 -0800 (PST) From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [InTheShadows] Enron Contributions to Bush From: Deb Enron Contributions to Bush By The Associated Press January 12, 2002, 2:02 PM EST President Bush has received more money from Enron, its employees and their relatives over his political career than from any other source. The contributions supported Bush's unsuccessful House campaign in 1978, his two campaigns for Texas governor, renovation of his governor's office, last year's presidential race, his inaugurations and his presidential recount fund. Among the contributions: _ Texas governor's races: at least $312,500, including $122,500 from Enron CEO Kenneth Lay and his wife, Linda Lay; at least $160,000 from other Enron employees and their relatives; at least $30,000 from Enron political action committee. _ 2000 presidential campaign: at least $113,800 from Enron's PAC, its employees and their relatives, including $2,000 each from Kenneth and Linda Lay. Kenneth Lay also raised at least $100,000 for the campaign as a member of the Bush Pioneers. _ Presidential inaugural gala: $100,000 from Enron; $100,000 from Kenneth and Linda Lay; $100,000 from then-Enron President Jeffrey Skilling. _ Bush presidential recount: $5,000 each from Kenneth and Linda Lay; $500 from Enron employee Hal Elrod. Sources: Center for Public Integrity; Center for Responsive Politics; Texans for Public Justice. Copyright (c) 2002, The Associated Press This article originally appeared at: http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-bush-lay-glance0112jan12.story Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] James Bovard On Fighting Terrorism, Saving Tyrants (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 10:17:53 -0500 From: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: James Bovard On Fighting Terrorism, Saving Tyrants Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 23:21:08 -0800 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Jim Bovard [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Matt - Fighting Terrorism, Saving Tyrants Matt: Thought you might enjoy this bouquet for the war on terrorism. take it easy, Jim USA Today January 10, 2002 Don't bed down with tyrants to fight terrorism By James Bovard President Bush recently declared: So long as anybody's terrorizing established governments, there needs to be a war. Bush rightfully sought international support for the campaign to put the al_Qaeda terrorist network out of business. But the war on terrorism threatens to become a license for tyranny. The United Nations is concerned that an expansive call for governments to crack down on terrorism - a crime that is not clearly defined - is spurring a surge of oppression around the world. Los Angeles Times writer William Orme detailed some of the ways governments are exploiting the new war to repress their citizens: The Cuban government, as part of its war on terrorism, added a new law allowing the death penalty for anyone who uses the Internet to incite political violence. Zimbabwe's war on terrorism includes a proposal to criminalize any critical comment about President_dictator Robert Mugabe. Syria bragged to the U.N. that financial support for terrorists was effectively curtailed by the absence of any private banking system or independent charities, Orme reported. In other words, a government that totally destroys freedom expects to be applauded as an anti_terrorist superstar. Bacre Waly Ndiaye, a chief U.N. human_rights officer, recently complained: In some countries, non_violent activities have been considered as terrorism, and excessive measures have been taken to suppress or restrict individual rights, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, freedom from torture, privacy rights, freedom of expression and assembly, and the right to seek asylum. Many of these complaints, in fact, apply to the actions of the Bush administration. A new law decimates individual privacy by giving the FBI the de facto right to vacuum up practically anyone's e_mail. Permanent resident aliens who publicly criticize the U.S. government's war on terrorism can be banned from re_entering the United States. Some have floated the suggestion that permitting the torture of suspects could help avert future terrorist attacks. And Bush's executive order for military tribunals threatens to bring unsavory aspects of Third World justice to American shores. A myopic focus on private_sector criminals risks giving a green light to more dangerous government abuses. A core fallacy of the war on terrorism - as opposed to attacking and destroying al_Qaeda - is that terrorism is worse than anything else imaginable. Unfortunately, governments have committed far worse abuses than al_Qaeda or any other terrorist cabal. Official murderers Mass murder was the most memorable achievement of some 20th_century governments. The Black Book of Communism, a 1997 scholarly French compendium, detailed how 85 million to 100 million people came to die at the hands of communist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere. In Death by Government, R.J. Rummel declared that some 170 million people were killed in one of the myriad ways governments have inflicted death on unarmed, helpless citizens and foreigners. By raising terrorist attacks to the pinnacle of political evil, the war on terrorism implicitly sanctifies whatever tactic governments use in the name of repressing terrorism. But, in the long run, people have far more to fear from
[CTRL] Homeland Security, Homeland Profits By Wayne Madsen
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 12:03:52 -0500 From: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Homeland Security, Homeland Profits By Wayne Madsen Homeland Security, Homeland Profits By Wayne Madsen Special to CorpWatch December 21, 2001 http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=1108 WASHINGTON, DC -- Recent moves to beef up intelligence gathering in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks have civil libertarians concerned that law enforcement agencies will entangle many law abiding citizens and social justice groups in their surveillance missions. Intelligence networks are setting their sights on the Internet, which up to now has had no clear privacy guidelines. Under the provisions of the inaptly named anti-terrorism act, USA-PATRIOT, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a number of other smaller law enforcement agencies are looking for ways to monitor the Internet and mine useful intelligence from it. And new technology makes it easier than ever to spy on the Internet. Although law enforcement and intelligence agencies claim they are merely looking for information to counter future acts of terrorism, the definition of terrorism is being expanded to cover non-violent groups that have traditionally used the Internet to marshal resistance to corporate-inspired globalization. Politicians are already painting dissent as unpatriotic and therefore somehow linked to terrorism. Meanwhile, a phalanx of software companies, consultants, and defense contractors stand to reap billions of dollars over the next few years by selling surveillance and information-gathering systems to government agencies and the private sector. Technology Already in the Hands of Law Enforcement Law enforcement agencies like the FBI already have at their disposal a massive information sharing network through which federal, state, local, and foreign police forces can exchange information on groups felt to pose a threat. The system, RISSNET, or Regional Information Sharing System Network, which existed before the September 11th attacks, recently got a boost when Congress authorized additional money for it in the USA PATRIOT Act. RISSNET is a secure intranet that connects 5,700 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, as well as agencies in Ontario and Quebec, the District of Columbia, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Australia. According to sources close to the Washington Metropolitan Police, data on targeted local groups such as the Alliance for Global Justice, the anti-World Bank/International Monetary Fund activist organization, has been shared with other jurisdictions through RISSNET. RISSNET has also been used to coordinate the monitoring of the activities of anti-globalization protestors in Seattle, Quebec City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Genoa. For example, when the FBI seized network server logs from Independent Media Center (IMC) in Seattle during the April 2001 anti-free trade protests in Quebec City, RISSNET was used to coordinate activities across jurisdictional boundaries. The IMC, founded during the 1999 WTO protests, allows activists and independent journalists to post directly to its site. State and metropolitan police intelligence units also monitor the web sites of activist organizations in their jurisdictions. All RISS intelligence is archived by an Orwellian-sounding entity called MAGLOCLEN or Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network. There are other regional RISS intelligence centers around the country with equally mysterious acronyms. MAGLOCLEN, a nerve center headquartered in Newtown, Pennsylvania, distributes political intelligence to all police departments hooked up to RISSNET. MAGLOCLEN allows police investigators to link various activist groups and members through the Link Association Analysis sub-system, a relational data base that identifies the friends and families of groups and individuals. The Telephone Record Analysis sub-system can call up records of phone calls of targeted groups and individuals. A suspect group's banking and other commercial data can be monitored by the Financial Analysis sub-system. And through a system that would have been the envy of J. Edgar Hoover, police and federal agents can also call up profiles that provide specific information on the composition of organizations, including their membership lists. The Justice Department has instituted a project called RISSNET II, which directly links the individual databases contained within the various RISS centers. The FBI also runs its own intranet called Law Enforcement On-line or LEO, which allows it to communicate intelligence with select other law enforcement agencies. In the aftermath of September 11th , the FBI is under pressure to open up LEO to more police agencies so they can have
Re: [CTRL] OPED: Prisoners Shaved
-Caveat Lector- On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, RevCOAL wrote: uncomfortable to be outside in for any length of time... Especially with mosquitoes... That can be considered bloody torture in the swamp areas where they are, when they are forced to sleep naked. But the articles have totally missed one important point: Did they shave just the prisoners' heads or everywhere? A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
Re: [CTRL] what the hell is going ON ?!?
-Caveat Lector- If you are not with India, you are against them. :-) On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, eric stewart wrote: -Caveat Lector- is india still trying, like its israeli and american role models, to maintain a mandate for war? all over US and pakistani news sources are reports that thousands of militants have been arrested in pakistan yet india is still looking for indications of concrete action... ?? SOMEONE is lying their asses off! Three days after Pakistan President Musharraf announced his new policy on curbing terrorism, India continues to be in the ÔÔwait and watchÕÕ mode, anxiously looking for indications of concrete action on ground from Islamabad. http://timesofindia.com/Articleshow.asp?art_id=1736756879 __ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Arthur Andersens Contract to Audit FBI Unaffected by Mounting Evidence of Criminal Activity
-Caveat Lector- Criminals to Audit the Investigators... -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 04:59:58 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] [windows-1250] Arthur Andersen^Òs Contract to Audit FBI Unaffected by [windows-1250] Mounting Evidence of Criminal Activity http://www.copvcia.com/stories/jan_2002/AndersenFBI.html Delusions of Sanity Arthur Andersens Contract to Audit FBI Unaffected by Mounting Evidence of Criminal Activity by Michael C. Ruppert Copyright 2002, From The Wilderness Publications and Michael C. Ruppert, www.copvcia.com. All rights reserved. May be reprinted, copied, distributed or posted on the internet for non-profit purposes only. FTW, January 15, 2002 In the exploding popcorn mix of new Enron investigations, increasingly focusing on possible criminal misconduct by accounting giant Arthur Andersen, a Justice Department spokesperson has told FTW that a contract for Andersen to review sensitive FBI management and recordkeeping procedures has been unaffected. Recent statements by Senators Joseph Lieberman (DCT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) indicating that investigations of Andersen may turn criminal, and a January 14 commentary by CNNs Lou Dobbs indicating that the scandal may put the company out of business, raise serious questions about the Department of Justices contract calling for Andersen to review the FBIs management practices, including recordkeeping, technology and human resources issues, as described in an August 29, 2001 story by reporter Kellie Lunney on the website www.GovExec.com. This is especially relevant since FBI agents will themselves be investigating Andersen in newly announced DoJ probes related to Enron. The Gov Exec story, relying on documents from the Federal Register, detailed that, In July, Justice and FBI officials revealed that more than 400 weapons and 180 laptop computers including some holding sensitive and classified information were missing from the agency. The FBI has faced harsh criticism over the last few months, most notably for its failure to turn over all documents to lawyers for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, a controversy that resulted in a temporary postponement of McVeighs execution. In August, Attorney General John Ashcroft authorized the creation of a special commission to evaluate years of serious and well-documented FBI lapses ranging from mishandling of key evidence in the crime lab, as exposed by FBI whistleblower Fred Whitehurst, to the loss of sensitive intelligence materials. Commission members include former CIA Director William Webster, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, former House Speaker Tom Foley and former HUD Secretary and U.S. Trade Rep Carla Hills. According to the GovExec story, All of the commissions meetings will be closed to the public to protect sensitive information according to a July 16 memo from the Justice Department. The key question is, Information sensitive to whom, that might damage whose interests? DoJ spokesman Brian Sierra indicated on January 14, that the issue of Andersens contract, which would give them access to many of the FBIs most sensitive files, has not yet been raised in the wake of the rapidly evolving Enron debacle. As of this moment the contract is still in effect, said Sierra. I cant speak to the issue and I dont think the question has been brought up at Justice. Spokespersons for Andersen, headquartered in Chicago, did not return an FTW call asking for comment. The obvious conflict of interest could not come at a worse time for an Administration that is frantically attempting to get ahead of the Enron scandal. It also comes at a time when the impartiality of other government agencies including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the General Accounting office is called into question because of the past relationships of the heads of those two agencies with the embattled accounting firm. Harvey Pitt at SEC once represented Andersen in his private law practice. GAO chief David Walker is a former board member at Andersen whose tenure there ended in late 1998, long after the time period in which Andersen has been implicated in the falsifications of Enrons financial statements which began in 1997. Walkers former partners may now become the subject of criminal probes by the FBI, the SEC and the GAO. Unlike the SEC and the FBI, the GAO is known as the investigative arm of Congress the same Congress which is now representing itself to be the champion of the public interest. Headed by Walker in the Comptroller General position, the GAO remains one of the last defensible positions that the government both the White House and the Congress can offer as a statement of government credibility to an increasingly cynical population. The notion that Andersen could now be trusted to investigate the FBI and gain access to
Re: [CTRL] Secrecy News -- 01/10/02
-Caveat Lector- On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Aftergood, Steven wrote: SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2002, Issue No. 4 January 10, 2002 **BILL WOULD BAN SPACE-BASED MIND CONTROL WEAPONS ... BILL WOULD BAN SPACE-BASED MIND CONTROL WEAPONS Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives late last year that would ban weapons in space. But while there have been many similar legislative initiatives in the past, Rep. Kucinich's bill is distinguished by its unusually expansive definition of weapons. Among the weapons that it would proscribe the new measure includes psychotronic devices that are directed at individual persons or targeted populations for the purpose of ... mood management, or mind control. ... I think we generally call these things 'televisions' nowadays, or satellite-tv, if you prefer to be more specific. Of course, any attempt to ban them is doomed to failure, as we in the Majestic 12 group will never allow it, but it is always good to see people to stand up and demand that they be allowed to spend their time better doing some work instead. // J A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Israel Spying on America
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 07:34:17 +1100 From: Bond [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ParanoidTimes] Spying on America Spying on America Charles R. Smith Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2002 FBI Investigates Foreign Spy Ring - U.S. Companies Deny Involvement In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the FBI reportedly stumbled on an espionage ring that had penetrated the wiretapping system of U.S. law enforcement. Fox News Channel reported that the FBI was holding nearly 100 Israeli citizens with direct ties to foreign military, criminal and intelligence services. In a follow-up to these reports, the FBI did not deny that such actions had been taken. However, FBI spokesman Paul Bresson would not answer specific questions on the reported espionage. We have seen the Fox News segments that aired several weeks ago on this topic and found some inaccuracies with it. Because they are sensitive issues, I do not have the luxury of discussing what precisely was accurate and what was inaccurate about their reporting, stated Paul Bresson, spokesman for the FBI. Most of the questions [asked by NewsMax.com] are not directly answerable by CALEA [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act]. Your questions may be more properly addressed to our National Security Division, which I know would never discuss this with you, unfortunately, stated Bresson. Employees of U.S. Companies Reportedly Involved The espionage operation reportedly includes employees of two companies that perform official wiretaps for U.S. local, state and federal law enforcement: Comverse Infosys and Amdocs. Official spokesman for both companies denied any involvement in the alleged espionage ring. Amdocs is unaware of any investigation or allegations and has not been contacted by any agency, stated Dan Ginsberg, of the PR firm Porter Novelli, for Amdocs. Amdocs has not been involved in any illegal or improper activity, said Ginsberg flatly. We know of absolutely no factual basis for suggestions that intelligence agencies or others have misused our products for illicit purposes, stated Paul Baker, spokesman for Comverse. In particular, no company employees have been involved in any of the incidents referred to in your December 19 story. Moreover, the reference in that story to a suspected abuse of our equipment in a foiled Los Angeles drug bust was completely erroneous. Our equipment was not involved in any such incident, said Baker. Comverse Technology is a New York-based corporation that has been publicly traded for 15 years. It is an SP 500 and a NASDAQ-100 Index company that has won a worldwide leadership position in telecommunications, noted Baker. More than 10 years ago, Comverse established Comverse Infosys Technology as a separate subsidiary to meet the monitoring applications needs of some U.S. customers. This group maintains the high-level security clearances these customers require, said Baker. In full compliance with U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) regulations, this subsidiary's operations are completely segregated from all other Comverse businesses and are insulated from any foreign influence, said Baker. The board of directors overseeing these operations consists of former high-level military officers, including two retired Air Force generals appointed by the DOD. In addition, the DOD monitors Comverse Infosys Technology's operations to ensure they remain in full regulatory compliance. All equipment supplied by Comverse complies with all applicable government security requirements. The notion that 'backdoor' access has been built into the systems is absurd. For more than 10 years, these systems have been sold to customers in more than 40 countries, who have subjected them to rigorous and continuous security testing without a single reported breach, said Baker. As with any computer equipment that sits on a network, the Comverse systems are protected by the security measures and access restrictions imposed by the user of the network, whether a government agency or telephone operator. We fully support the evolving CALEA standard, and remain committed to maintaining our industry leadership in providing secure and reliable systems, concluded Baker. FBI Response Raises Questions Despite the extensive denials by Amdocs and Comverse, the curious response by the FBI has raised more questions than answers. Sources inside Capitol Hill are investigating the allegations and made no comments on the allegations of espionage at this time. However, the demands for answers continued to grow outside political circles. If national security is the overriding issue in the FBI's treatment of this case, the correct response to your questions should have been 'Sorry, we have no comment at this time,' said Douglas Brown of the Nathan Hale Institute. Of course, the most reassuring response would have
[CTRL] Creation of Taliban was actively encouraged by CIA
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 17:33:31 -0800 From: Richard Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [911nomorevictims] Taliban was actively encouraged by CIA Three sources: Author Ahmed Rashid, a U.S. Senator, and a State Department official: The creation of the Taliban was actively encouraged by the . . . CIA, according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul, adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw nothing objectionable in the Talibans plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan. The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that, said another U.S. diplomat in 1997. The reference to oil and pipelines explains everything. Since the collapse of the USSR at the end of 1991, U.S. oil companies and their friends in the State Department have been salivating at the prospect of gaining access to the huge oil and natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republics bordering the Caspian Sea and in Central Asia. These have been estimated as worth $4 trillion. The American Petroleum Institute calls the Caspian region the area of greatest resource potential outside of the Middle East. And while he was still CEO of Halliburton, the worlds biggest oil services company, Vice President Dick Cheney told other industry executives, I cant think of a time when weve had a region emerge as suddenly, to become as strategically significant, as the Caspian. The struggle to control these stupendous resources has given rise to what Rashid has dubbed the new Great Game, pitting shifting alliances of governments and oil and gas consortia against one another. Afghanistan itself has no known oil or gas reserves, but it is an attractive route for pipelines leading to Pakistan, India, and the Arabian Sea. In the mid-1990s, a consortium led by the California-based Unocal Corporation proposed a $4.5 billion oil and gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. But this would require a stable central government in Afghanistan. Thus began several years in which U.S. policy in the region centered on romancing the Taliban. * * * Taken from Ahmed Rashid's book, _Taliban, Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia_, Yale University Press, 2000. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Somalia's President says the USA terrorizes the Country (CNN)
-Caveat Lector- http://www.khilafah.com/1421/category.php?DocumentID=3101TagID=2 SOMALIA'S PRESIDENT SAYS THE USA TERRORIZES THE COUNTRY The president of Somalias interim government says the population is terrorized by a propagation campaign launched by the USA that tries to present Somalia as the country that could become a shelter for Osama bin Laden and his followers. President Abdikassim Salad Hassan told in his interview to Reuters in Sudans capital Khartoum, that fear of USs bombardments hampers peaceful settlement in the country. Washington considers Somalia as a potential target in the war against terrorism. The people are terrified by a threat of USs attack on the poor country destroyed after a ten-year civil war, told the president. He stressed once again, no bin Ladens units were stationed in Somalia. We want the international community to help Somalia unite, so that the country could not become a center for terrorism in the future. Speaking about resources designed for struggle with terrorism, Somalias president mentioned problems of the government: governmental officials have not been paid salaries for four months already, the Ministry for Information has only one telephone line. He said, the feudal lords who want to throw off the central government, try to profit by USs unexpected attention to Somalia. For the sake of their selfish interests they want USs bombing in Somalia to seize the power as the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Abdikassim Salad Hassim says that Somalia is not like Afghanistan, and the interim government is not like the Taliban and he himself is not Mullah Mohammed Omar. US officials visited the feudal lords, the opposition to Somalias government in the southern town of Baidoa. President Abdikassim reminded the USA about catastrophic consequences of its humanitarian mission in Somalia at the beginning of the 90s. It is evident, the president told, that only striving for peace, not for a new war is the way to beat terrorism. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] All your European coordinates are belong to US
-Caveat Lector- Europe GPS Plan Shelved BERLIN -- Exasperated European officials say U.S. pressure appears to have torpedoed a $3 billion project to build a European version of the U.S. global positioning system, which uses signals from orbiting satellites to track geographical position within 36 meters. The proposed system, dubbed Galileo, was intended to give Europeans more autonomy, both industrially and militarily. That's no small concern, since the United States can selectively block access to GPS, as it has during the military campaign in Afghanistan. Also, European plans to develop a rapid-reaction military force will become much more credible with their own GPS in military operations. snip http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,49778,00.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] USA: Arbitrary, discriminatory, cruel, futile -- 25 years of judicial killing
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 10:00:34 + From: ainews [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: USA: Arbitrary, discriminatory, cruel, futile -- 25 years of judicial killing * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 17 January 2002 AMR 51/007/2002 7/02 A quarter of a century of executions in the USA has offered no constructive contribution to the country's efforts to combat violent crime and has caused serious damage to its international reputation, Amnesty International said today as it issued a new report to mark the 25th anniversary of the resumption of executions in the United States. The report, Arbitrary, discriminatory, and cruel: An aide-mémoire to 25 years of judicial killing, recalls some 200 illustrative cases of the men and women put to death since Gary Gilmore was shot by a Utah firing squad on the morning of 17 January 1977 -- the first execution after the US Supreme Court lifted the moratorium it had imposed on the death penalty in 1972. The USA likes to see itself as a champion of human rights, Amnesty International said. However, its relentless pursuit of the death penalty in an increasingly abolitionist world starkly gives the lie to that claim. In a period that has seen more than 60 countries legislate against the death penalty, the USA has shot, gassed, electrocuted, hanged or poisoned more than 750 prisoners, 600 of them since 1990, the organization continued. What is more, it has frequently violated internationally-agreed safeguards in getting the individual to the execution chamber. We urge US politicians to answer the question -- what measurable benefit to society have these killings achieved?, stated Amnesty International, whose report provides cases to illustrate the cruelty, futility and brutalizing effect of capital punishment as well as its rejection of the possibility of rehabilitation. The report gives examples of the arbitrary way in which the death penalty is applied in the USA, its politicized nature, and the fact that this is a punishment that diverts attention and resources from constructive responses to violent crime. The report points to numerous cases of people put to death since 1977, including: -- 18 prisoners executed, in violation of international law, for crimes committed when they were children; -- scores of individuals with mental retardation or histories of mental illness; -- dozens of African Americans convicted by all-white juries in cases which show a pattern of prosecutors removing prospective black jurors during jury selection; -- more than 25 individuals whose guilt remained in doubt to the end; -- numerous defendants denied their right to adequate defence representation, including those sentenced to death by juries presented with little or none of the available mitigating evidence; -- 17 foreign nationals who were denied their right to consular assistance after arrest. The USA should finally end its relationship with the executioner, Amnesty International said. The past 25 years of judicial killing has provided ample evidence that no amount of tinkering with the machinery of death can rid this cruel, brutalizing and irrevocable punishment of its fundamental flaws. It is time for the USA to finally join the modern world by abolishing the death penalty, the organization concluded. Background In 1972, the US Supreme Court overturned the country's capital laws because of the arbitrary way in which death sentences were being handed out. Four years later it gave the green light for executions to resume after ruling that newly-enacted capital statutes would cure the system of its capricious tendencies. The execution of Gary Gilmore went ahead six months later after he fought every attempt to stop it. He was the first of more than 90 prisoners who have dropped their appeals and consented to their execution. Racial and geographic bias remains widespread. Eighty per cent of the more than 750 prisoners executed since 1977 were convicted of killing whites, even though blacks and whites are the victims of murder in almost equal numbers. Eighty per cent were executed in the southern US states, a third in Texas alone. More than 60 were prosecuted in a single Texas jurisdiction, Harris County. The US capital justice system is error-prone. Since Gary Gilmore was shot, more than 90 prisoners have been released from death rows after evidence of their innocence emerged. Many had spent years on death row and some had come close to execution. Factors contributing to their wrongful convictions include inadequate legal representation, prosecutorial misconduct and false confessions given under duress. Read the report: http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/AMR510032002?OpenDocument You may repost this message onto other sources provided the main text is not
[CTRL] Credit Bureaus are selling YOUR personal records to IRS, FBI
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 23:24:00 +0100 From: Mario Profaca [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [Spy News] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] Privacy group says Credit Bureaus are selling YOUR personal records to IRS, FBI http://www.hackinthebox.org/article.php?sid=4926 Privacy group says Credit Bureaus are selling YOUR personal records to IRS, FBI. from L33tdawg Thu, Jan 17 @ 01:14 PM (Reads: 34) Source: PCWorld The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a lawsuit seeking the release of information involving the purchase of individuals' private information by U.S. government agencies from companies that sell personal data. In a statement yesterday, the Washington-based privacy advocacy group said it brought suit under the Freedom of Information Act after several agencies under the Departments of the Treasury and Justice failed to provide EPIC with information about contracts with private profiling companies. Those companies, most notably ChoicePoint Asset in Alpharetta, Georgia, and Experian, the Orange, California-based subsidiary of GUS, sell information on U.S. citizens, including credit information, property records, state motor vehicle records, and marriage and divorce data, to these agencies, the group said. Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Access Your PC from Anywhere It's Easy. It's Fun. - Free Download. http://us.click.yahoo.com/zWCYWA/7XkDAA/ySSFAA/TySplB/TM -~- === SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html === *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Spy News is making it available without profit to SPY NEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml --- SPY NEWS home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spynews To change your subscription mode to Daily Digest (one message a day) send a blank message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that replying to THIS e-mail will not remove you from the mailing list. To unsubscribe SPYNEWS send a blank message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Mario Profaca Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Bush Faces Flack Over Family Links to Defense Contractor
-Caveat Lector- Just a little family business with good old pals. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 16:11:31 -0500 From: preston peet [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: spynews [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: rootsofteror [EMAIL PROTECTED], cia-drugs [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Spy News] Bush Faces Flack Over Family Links to Defense Contractor posted by Preston Peet [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=114163 Bush faces flak over family links with winner of US defence contract By Jason Nissé 13 January 2002 President George W Bush's administration, already on the back foot over its connections with the collapsed energy giant Enron, faces questions over a massive defence contract which aided an investment firm with Bush family links. Last September, the Army signed a $665m (£460m) contract to develop the Crusader Advanced Field Artillery System, a $12bn weapons programme being built by United Defense Industries (UDI). Last week, Mr Bush signed a defence appropriation bill which included $487m for the programme. This has helped Carlyle Group, the well-connected Washington-based investment group, which controls UDI, to float the defence contractor on the New York stock exchange. Last month Carlyle sold $225m of shares in UDI in the flotation, retaining a 54 per cent stake worth $560m. But questions are being asked on Capitol Hill because of close links between Carlyle and the Bush administration, and because a Pentagon advisory panel recommended cancelling the Crusader. Carlyle, which was founded in 1987 by David Rubenstein, a lawyer who worked in the Carter administration, boasts $12.5bn of investments. Its chairman is Frank Carlucci, who was Defence Secretary in the Reagan administration and is a close friend of Donald Rumsfeld, the current Defence Secretary. The two were members of the same wrestling team at Princeton University. The chairman of Carlyle Europe is John Major, the former British Prime Minister. An adviser to Carlyle in Asia is George Bush Snr, the former president and father of the current president. And George W Bush himself was, for five years, on the board of Caterair, a business Carlyle backed. It's the first time the President of the United States' father is on the payroll of one of the largest US defence contractors, said Charles Lewis, a director of the Centre for Public Policy. He is among critics who have raised concerns over the about-turn on the Crusader contract. The programme was first put forward four years ago, then costed at $23bn. It was rejected in December 1997 by the Pentagon-appointed National Defense Panel as being inappropriate for modern warfare, a view reiterated last April despite UDI's shrinking the programme to $12bn. Carlyle bought UDI for $850m in 1997. Last August it took $290m in dividends out of the company and, in November, $90m. Its total investment is showing a $315m profit. Carlyle denies that any of its managers, directors or advisers used their influence to aid contracts for UDI. But the Crusader questions come at a time when the president is facing questions about his links to Enron. And in a subtle twist, it has emerged that in its darkest hour, when it was trying to raise money to stay afloat, the investment firm Enron turned to for help was Carlyle Group. Carlyle was wise enough to reject the approach. Also from the News section. Mayo claims ridiculed by Marconi's directors PO Princess investors may try to stall meeting Allied Domecq's Mexican tax break GSK asthma drugs approved for chronic lung disease in US American consumers believe economic recovery under way === SPY NEWS is OSINT newsletter and discussion list associated to Mario's Cyberspace Station http://mprofaca.cro.net/mainmenu.html === *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Spy News is making it available without profit to SPY NEWS eGroup members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml --- SPY NEWS home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spynews To change
[CTRL] World: Promotion of security undermining basic human rights
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 18:05:34 + From: ainews [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: World: Promotion of security undermining basic human rights * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 18 January 2002 IOR 50/002/2002 11/02 Human rights have been put at grave risk worldwide by governments' actions following the attacks on the USA on 11 September, Amnesty International said in a report published today, ahead of a meeting of the UN Security Council that will review the work of the Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee. The Counter-Terrorism Committee was established by the Security Council following the 11 September attacks, to monitor the far-ranging steps the Council said they must take to combat terrorism. Today, it will start examining more than 100 reports from States about those measures. Amnesty International's Secretary General, Irene Khan, wrote to the Security Council urging it to take concrete steps to ensure that governments do not violate the obligations and standards of international human rights law in the process, otherwise there is a grave risk, already borne out in some countries that security considerations will prevail over human rights, the Secretary General said. None of the six experts the Committee appointed to assist it in its monitoring task are experts in human rights. Amnesty International therefore calls upon the Security Council to request the Counter-Terrorism Committee to: appoint an expert in international law, including human rights, to assist the Committee in monitoring the actions of states; and provide specific guidance on how states can comply with international human rights standards in the context of implementing measures to combat terrorism. The organization added that a number of States have introduced new laws that violate human rights standards while others have used existing measures to crack down on opposition. The urgency of Amnesty International's concerns is demonstrated in the report published today. Rights at Risk describes human rights violations arising from anti-terrorist measures taken by countries around the world both before and after the attacks of 11 September. They include: - indefinite detention without charge or trial; - incommunicado detention, which facilitates torture; - unfair trials; - infringement of rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly. When the security of a State and the safety of its people are at risk, Amnesty International said, it is vital that human rights standards and the rule of law are upheld. Respect for all human rights is the only way to ensure real security for all. The following documents are available on request from Amnesty International's press office or by visiting our website: Rights at Risk report http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/recent/ACT300012002?OpenDocument Report Summary: http://web.amnesty.org/web/content.nsf/pages/gbrrightsatrisk_summa ry Open letter to the members of the Security Council: http://web.amnesty.org/web/content.nsf/pages/gbrrightsatrisk_openl etter You may repost this message onto other sources provided the main text is not altered in any way and both the header crediting Amnesty International and this footer remain intact. Only the list subscription message may be removed. To subscribe to amnesty-L, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subscribe amnesty-L in the message body. To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe amnesty-L in the message body. If you have problem signing off, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. [EMAIL PROTECTED] handles only messages concerning list administration. Past and current Amnesty news services can be found at http://www.amnesty.org/news/. Visit http://www.amnesty.org for information about Amnesty International and for other AI publications. Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you need to get in touch with the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at:
[CTRL] Konformist: 'It Would Help Enron If You Made That Call'
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2002 06:59:36 - From: robalini [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Konformist: 'It Would Help Enron If You Made That Call' Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com 'It Would Help Enron If You Made That Call' Bush Was Told By Ed Vulliamy The Observer - London 1-13-2 As he approaches the first anniversary of his inauguration, George W Bush is under siege. He has won the war in Afghanistan, but finds himself engaged in a new battle against a scandal that is threatening to dog his administration and tarnish his reputation . Bush and his administration have been revealed as entwined in a story of corporate greed and political manipulation by an energy firm called Enron, now under double criminal investigation. The scandal - in which the life savings and retirement funds of tens of thousands of employees vanished while a number of executive directors lined their pockets - reaches so high that John Ashcroft, the Attorney-General, has had to withdraw from the investigation because he received Enron money, and lawsuits are the pipeline to force Vice-President Dick Cheney for details of his contacts with the company. The day Bush took office - a year ago next Saturday - was as cold and comfortless as his victory; his motorcade braved driving rain and a gauntlet of demonstrations marking the most contested and ugliest election result in US history. After 11 September, the world changed and so did America's view of Bush. He became the only President since Franklin Roosevelt to maintain the support of over 80 per cent of Americans for weeks on end. But now the White House is laid bare by what rivals call 'Enronomics' - the political fable of the Enron corporation. It has long been reported how the Bush administration and family is beholden to the energy industry. Before the Afghan war, an 'Energy Task Force' favourable to the industry was the main concern for Cheney, who himself came to office from the biggest oil equipment firm in the world. Enron was just the kind of scandal a war would hide. The company plunged from a stock rating worth $60 billion - seventh on the Fortune list of US companies - into the biggest bankruptcy filing in US history, registered on 2 December. The ethical - maybe criminal - core of the scandal is that Enron trapped its employees into a 'stock-lock', whereby they were not allowed to sell share options bought by way of savings. When the company collapsed, they lost everything. Meanwhile, Enron's executives - blessed by inside information and foresight - made a killing by scrambling to sell shares before the price collapsed. The victims of Enron's rise and fall were regular employees who opted to join a savings plan by investing in their employer - and why not? With soaring energy prices and giddy profits, the share value quadrupled between 1997 and January last year. The catch was they were not allowed to sell. They were people like Pat Betteridge, of the subsidiary Portland General Electric company in Oregon, who remembers grand claims by Enron chief executive Kenneth Lay on a visit north: 'We like to think of ourselves,' he bragged, 'as the Microsoft of the energy world.' Betteridge used his $300,000 retirement savings to buy 3,500 shares - now worth not a cent. 'If I was hired to do electrical work and I botched it as bad as them,' he says, 'I'd either be doing time or get my licence yanked.' The beneficiaries of the company's surge to power were those who boarded the wheel of perpetual motion that binds the Bush administration to the energy industry. Then the company's brass even tried to make their fortune out of its fall as well. The Observer has dug into Enron's past to find that intimate connections with Bush and his Texan Republicans started long before the campaigns that brought them to Washington Enron is a Houston-based utility trading company that sells energy to consumers, industrial and domestic. It is one of the biggest of its kind in the world - a standing it owes in no small part to Bush's governorship in Texas. Texas's 1992 Energy Policy Act opened a regulatory black hole into which Enron moved and thrived, forcing established utility companies to buy energy from it. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, under the presidency of Bush's father, allowed for an exemption in trading energy subsidiaries. The practice would be Enron's downfall. The 1992 trading commission was chaired by Wendy Gramm, wife of Texas Senator Phil Gramm, close friend of the Bush family and recipient of $97,350 in political donations from Enron. Once the exemption was accomplished, Mrs Gramm resigned to join the Enron board. As a member of its current audit committee, she is expected to play a key role in the forthcoming lawsuits and criminal investigation
[CTRL] [InTheShadows] THE TRUTH (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 10:08:21 -0800 From: Ric Carter [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [InTheShadows] THE TRUTH http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~alb/misc/truth.html The Truth These are some basic truths about our society today. Look around, see for yourself. I am not going to be sidetracked into the wasted effort of ``proving'' these things here for people who will not listen anyway [but please see the additional reading section]. Listen to me, listen to the press, listen to the government. Who do you believe? 1. The United States Government tortures its own citizens. We go around the world talking about human rights, but agents of the U.S. government have not hesitated to commit the most vicious crimes against humanity right here at home. The political reality is that the U.S. is the leading economic and political power in the world, and the only superpower. Thus the U.S. government can maintain its pious hypocritical stance without fear of ``serious'' exposure. Our government has grossly abused its current power. It has wasted a chance to be a world role model for ethical government, and the chance likely will never come again. 2. The U.S. Constitution is just a piece of paper to covert thugs. The only rights you have are the ones you can enforce. Here in the land of High Noon, despite all the talk to the contrary, it is every man for himself. There are plenty of people who would love to see you literally tortured if you differ from them on the most minor political points. We lead the world in the technology of warfare and espionage. The same technology is used to suppress and harass so-called dissidents or ``threatening'' people and movements. If you cannot prove it happened, and the weapons officially do not exist, then nothing really happened, did it? 3. ``Freedom'' is an empty concept used for social control. You are free only to the extent that you do not, for any reason, step on the toes of any ``important'' people. You may not even know what you have done, and may never find out: The repressive machinery will kick into gear and your life will be ruined. You may even come to realize that a campaign of dirty tricks is being focused on you, but no one will believe you. Most people live boring (to others) lives that do not threaten the powerful, and therefore do not draw the attention of the repressive apparatus. Thus the myth of freedom is perpetuated, while you are labeled a paranoid kook. The rhetoric of freedom is at least useful in that it forces the repression into covert channels. That is why I can openly post this list. 4. The elite and powerful in the U.S. are effectively immune to law. The law is a tool to serve the ends of the powerful. Selective enforcement is the norm. Of course, the powerful have their own sets of laws they use to attack each other. Bad policies, based on misguided notions and a patronizing, pseudo-moralizing paternalism, produce disastrous consequences. Politicians cynically exploit the resulting suffering to maintain their positions of power, reinforcing the misguided policies. Police on the street end up paying the price, bearing the brunt of enforcing bad laws. 5. The elite opinion-makers are not nearly as smart as they think they are. Their insular debates are frequently characterized by ignorance and outright stupidity. This tendency is heavily abetted by a forced conformity of belief. The price of mounting too strong a challenge to a ``politically powerful'' idea is ostracism and ridicule by their peers. Soon, testing ideas for political viability or against projected poll results becomes a substitute for critical thinking. 6. The mainstream press will not challenge -- and at times participates in -- outrageous governmental abuses. Watergate and the investigations of intelligence abuses in the mid-'70s were historical rarities. The press routinely cooperates in a conspiracy of silence -- even when innocent American lives are being destroyed and hideous crimes are being committed. The investigations of intelligence abuses in the '70s were also not especially effective. The investigators were completely outclassed by a group of professional liars, trained to subvert governments worldwide. The Cold War was still on, giving additional clout to the apologists for domestic crimes committed by our own forces. The ``intelligence community'' is well aware of the limited attention span of the American press, and repeatedly and effectively uses stonewalling, or worse, to escape any responsibility or accountability for its actions. The reforms of the '70s were subsequently largely reversed. We need a sustained, nonpartisan political consensus to clean out our nation's dirty secrets, give the domestic victims redress, punish the Cold War criminals, and start fresh without the baggage of secret, unacknowledged atrocities. 7. The ``ruling class'' elites typically respond
[CTRL] [Armageddon-or-NewAge] Confiscation of registered guns begins in Chicago (fwd)
Title: Confiscation of registered guns begins in Chicago Because the right to protect yourselfshouldn't stop at your front door TM FAQ NEWS KY CDWL READING KC3 EVENTS HOME LEGISLATION SELF DEFENSE GEAR LINKS CONTACT News Reciprocity News Join KC3 What is KC3? Send us Email! Table of Contents Internet Search Self DefenseIncidents CCDW Stats Page Our Favorite States The Hall of Fame The Hall of Shame Links Pages Bad Signs Meet the Porcupine KPAC3 Support KC3 Confiscation of Registered Guns Begins in Illinois Chicago Anti Gun Enforcement (CAGE) unit. This elite squad, operated jointly by the Illinois State Police, the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, supposedly exists to identify illegal gunrunners. However, information gained by the ISRA makes it clear that the CAGE unit is targeting law-abiding citizens, not criminal gunrunners. The Chicago Police Department and the Illinois State Police have teamed up to make good on Mayor Daley's pledge that, if it were up to him, nobody would have a gun. Daley and his elite "CAGE" unit are apparently taking advantage of gun privacy loopholes to pinpoint certain individuals for inclusion in the confiscation program. The ISRA is following up on leads in one case that has disturbing implications. An elderly first-generation Chicago resident was recently paid a visit by an Illinois State Police trooper. After asking to come inside the man's home, the trooper asked if the man owned a gun - to which he replied yes. The trooper then directed the individual to surrender the firearm. The man complied with the officer's demand and the trooper left with the gun. And the story gets better... The gun in question was purchased legally by the man in the 1970s shortly after he became a U.S. citizen. When Chicago's infamous gun registration scheme went into effect in the early 1980s, the man registered the firearm as per the requirement. However, over the years, the fellow apparently forgot to re-register the firearm, and forgot to renew his Illinois FOID Card. So...what does this all mean? In the last edition of The Illinois Shooter, we reported on the activities of a shady taskforce known as the Chicago Anti Gun Enforcement (CAGE) unit. This elite squad, operated jointly by the Illinois State Police, the Chicago Police Department, and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, supposedly exists to identify illegal gunrunners. However, information gained by the ISRA makes it clear that the CAGE unit is targeting law-abiding citizens, not criminal gunrunners. Thanks to a ruling by a liberal federal judge, the CAGE unit now has the name of every single person in the United States who, since 1992, lawfully purchased more than one handgun in the period of a week. The CAGE unit also has all the makes, models and serial numbers of those guns. In essence, the Chicago Police Department is now registering guns and gun owners nationwide. The ISRA has also learned that the CAGE unit has compiled a list of families where more than one person in that family holds a FOID card. Acting on that information, the CAGE unit is now contacting gun shops where those families have shopped, and is illegally registering all guns purchased by those families. Now, it appears that the CAGE unit is scrubbing Chicago's gun registration list
[CTRL] 3767 Afghan civilian casualities by aerial bombing
-Caveat Lector- http://www.cursor.org/stories/civilian_deaths.htm -- A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,767 [thru December 6, 2001] civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. Professor Marc W. Herold Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Sc. December 2001 Departments of Economics and Women's Studies McConnell Hall Whittemore School of Business Economics University of New Hampshire Durham, N.H. 03824, U.S.A. FAX: 603 862-3383 Abstract Conclusion Appendex 1: The U.S. bombing through the words of Afghan refugees Appendex 2: Analysis of Discrepancies and Lying in Mainstream Corporate Media Appendex 3: The Aerojet/Honeywell CBU-87 Cluster Bomb Appendex 4: Daily Casualty Count of Afghan Civilians Killed in U.S. Bombing Attacks Appendex 5: Spatial Distribution of Afghan Civilian Casualties Caused by the U.S. Air War, Oct.7-Dec.6 -- -- When U.S. warplanes strafed [with AC-130 gunships] the farming village of Chowkar-Karez, 25 miles north of Kandahar on October 22-23rd,killing at least 93 civilians, a Pentagon official said, the people there are dead because we wanted them dead. The reason? They sympathized with the Taliban[1] . When asked about the Chowkar incident, Rumsfeld replied, I cannot deal with that particular village.[2] -- -- A U.S. officer aboard the US aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, described the use of 2,000 lb cluster bombs dropped by B-52 bombers: A 2,000 lb. bomb, no matter where you drop it, is a significant emotional event for anyone within a square mile.[3] -- -- Mantra of the U.S. mainstream corporate media: the report cannot be independently verified -- -- . . . shameful dependence on and uncritical acceptance of Pentagon handouts instead of substantial, critical coverage of the ground situation in Afghanistan. The US corporate media seems to be muting any talk of civilian casualties first by framing any such news with ``Taliban claims that . . .'' and then happily putting the matter to rest with Pentagon spokesman . . . [Joel Lee, civilian casualties -- notes from India, Znet Inter Active] -- -- When people decry civilian deaths caused by the U.S. government, they're aiding propaganda efforts. In sharp contrast, when civilian deaths are caused by bombers who hate America, the perpetrators are evil and those deaths are tragedies. When they put bombs in cars and kill people, they're uncivilized killers. When we put bombs on missiles and kill people, we're upholding civilized values. When they kill, they're terrorists. When we kill, we're striking against terror.[4] -- -- Abstract What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,767 civilian deaths in eight and a half weeks -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. A legacy of the ten years of civil war during the 80s is that many military garrisons and facilities are located in urban areas where the Soviet-backed government had placed them since they could be better protected there from attacks by the rural mujahideen. Successor Afghan governments inherited these emplacements. To suggest that the Taliban used `human shields' is more revealing of the historical amnesia and racism of those making such claims, than of Taliban deeds. Anti-aircraft emplacements will naturally be placed close by ministries, garrisons, communications facilities, etc. A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to `military targets', a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction, and the irresponsible use of out-dated Soviet maps. But, the critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions. Current Afghan civilian lives must and will be sacrificed in order to [possibly] protect future American lives. Actions speak, and words [can] obscure: the hollowness of
[CTRL] U.S. Backs Confinement of Arafat
-Caveat Lector- I wonder how much prestige does a president have to influence the hooligan groups when working under a foreign power's house arrest, nearly equal to imprisonment and under constant surveillance? :-) I guess this proves that Israel was the real beneficiary of 9.11., and who really is in control of U.S. foreign policy. Certainly not the Americans themselves. --- http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-mideast0124jan24.stor y?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines U.S. Backs Confinement of Arafat By BARRY SCHWEID AP Diplomatic Writer January 24, 2002, 11:28 AM EST WASHINGTON -- The White House gave its endorsement Thursday to Israel's confinement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to a West Bank compound. The president understands the reason that Israel has taken the action that it takes, and it is up to Chairman Arafat to demonstrate the leadership to combat terrorism. spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters at an informal morning briefing. It is a threat not only to Israel, but to Chairman Arafat, he said. He has been under virtual house arrest for nearly two months. This deprives him of barnstorming the Middle East and Europe in search of support for the Palestinians. From his office window in Ramallah, Arafat can peer our at Israeli soldiers who are posted just down the street. The president continues to believe that it is incumbent on Chairman Arafat to do more, take more steps, and show with action that he is committed to eliminating terrorism and combatting it wherever it exists, Fleischer said. With the Islamic militant group Hamas threatening to unleash all-out war, Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Arafat Wednesday to urge him to curb attacks on Israel. The fighting has sidetracked mediation efforts by Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general who has made two unsuccessful attempts to restore a cease-fire and had been expected to try again. Zinni remains on hold in Washington, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said there is no change in his situation. We haven't seen the sustained and full action that we believe is necessary, Boucher said of Arafat. We continue to believe he can do more to stop the violence. Fleischer, meanwhile, affirmed on Wednesday that the United States would remain deeply involved in the Middle East. The events in the Middle East are unique. They are not like any events anywhere else in the world, he said. Fleischer said Zinni's mission was derailed when the Palestinians tried to smuggle in weapons, a plot Israeli commandos aborted by seizing the ship in the Red Sea. This, he said, has immensely complicated the prospects for getting a return to the peace in the Middle East. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] FW: Mossad suspected of liquidating Hobeika
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: Zahi Damuni [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2002 2:06 PM To: Al-Awda News Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] Mossad suspected of liquidating Hobeika Mossad suspected of liquidating Hobeika Occupied Jerusalem: 24 January, 2002 (IAP News) Palestinian officials have accused the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, of assassinating former Lebanese Christian official Elie Hobeika in Beirut Thursday morning. Ha'aretz reported this morning that Hobeika, who was a leader of the Israeli-backed militia involved in the 1982 Sabra and Chatila massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, was killed in a blast Thursday, according to reports from Lebanese security sources. The report further stated that at least four other people were also killed, including three of Hobeika's bodyguards, and six were wounded in the explosion, which occurred in the Hazmiyeh district of Beirut as Hobeika was leaving his home. Hobeika has indicated that he possessed damning evidence incriminating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Sabra and Shatila massacres of Palestinian refugees in 1982. The Palestinian radio, the voice of Palestine, quoted Palestinian sources on Tuesday as saying that we have no doubt that the Mossad is responsible. They simply wanted to and did kill the witness, who happened to be an accomplice as well, the sources said. In addition, a personal representative in southern Lebanon of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Sultan Abu al Anian, charged that Hobeika's assassination was plotted and carried out by the Israelis. Hobeika, 45, led the right-wing Lebanese forces which massacred more than a thousand Palestinian refugees in the two refugee camps south of Beirut. A few months ago, Hobeika said during a BBC documentary on the massacres that the then Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, whose army was in control of Beirut in 1982, was responsible for the massacres. He voiced willingness to testify if called upon in connection with the suit which Palestinian survivors brought against Sharon in Belgium. The Belgian justice system will decide within 45 days if to proceed with the criminal investigation against Sharon. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Virus Spreads Across Britain
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 19:01:04 -0600 From: Snoopy [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ParanoidTimes] Virus Spreads Across Britain Virus Spreads Across Britain The Associated Press Published: Jan 23, 2002 LONDON (AP) - A flu-like virus that led a Scottish hospital to shut down its admissions has spread to hospitals throughout Britain, health officials said Wednesday. Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary was forced to close Saturday to all but emergency admissions following the rapid spread of the virus. Although rarely life-threatening, the bug has unpleasant symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea and fever for one to two days. In total, 295 staff and patients had been affected, the hospital said Wednesday. Health officials said 15 hospitals across Scotland had now been hit by the virus. Hospitals in Manchester in northern England and in the counties of Hertfordshire, Sussex, Dorset and Cornwall in southern England had also reported cases. Officials at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, south Wales said that more than 20 staff and patients on a ward had been struck by the virus. Health chiefs closed the ward to new admissions until the outbreak clears, a spokesman said. Simon Gregor, spokesman for the Public Health Laboratory Service which monitors infectious disease outbreaks, said the virus was present all year round, but said the current levels were higher than normal. The Department of Health estimates that the bug affects up to 1 percent of the British population every year. Health Secretary Alan Milburn said the Department of Health was keeping a close eye on the spread of the virus. Referred to as the winter vomiting bug, the virus' more official title is the Norwalk-like virus, after the town in Ohio, in the United States, where it was identified. The virus is airborne and can pass from person to person with ease. It is often found in hospitals and schools. http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAGBITOTWC.html Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/ACHqaB/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/zgSolB/TM -~- == IF YOU'RE NOT PARANOID, THEN YOU'RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION! == To Post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParanoidTimes Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] == NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml == Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Israel/Occupied Territories/Palestinian Authority: Injustice and repression are not the answer (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- From: ainews [EMAIL PROTECTED] * News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty International * 24 January 2002 MDE 15/010/2002 15/02 Two days after the latest arbitrary armed attack on Israelis Amnesty International condemned the attack and urged the Israeli authorities to change their policy. Injustice and repression have proved that they cannot stop these attacks, said Amnesty International delegates leaving today for Jerusalem. Justice and human rights are the only way forward and we call on Israel to choose it. Israel has consistently committed grave violations of human rights including unlawful killings when no life was in imminent danger, house demolitions and administrative detention. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) has sealed off the Gaza Strip with a high wire fence and closed every town and village in the West Bank behind concrete blocks, piles of earth and barriers manned by soldiers. These closures have not stopped members of Palestinian armed groups from escaping closed areas to carry out arbitrary attacks on civilians on the roads of the West Bank and in crowded places within Israel. In the latest armed attack, on 22 January 2002, a single gunman gunned down passers by in Jerusalem's main shopping street killing two Israelis and wounding 14. The attack was claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, apparently a faction close to Fatah. This was in retaliation for the killing of four Hamas members in Nablus and the occupation of Tulkarem. The way out of a cycle of violence and repression is not more violence and more repression. It is a return to justice, Amnesty International said, reiterating its call for international human rights observers to be deployed in Israel. Background After three weeks of relative ceasefire, on 10 and 11 January, the IDF demolished 59 Palestinian houses in Rafah and damaged some 200 other houses. The Israeli government alleged that this was because Palestinians had constructed tunnels to smuggle arms but the demolitions were apparently in reprisal for an attack the previous day on an Israeli army post. Three days later, on 14 January, the IDF apparently extrajudicially executed an alleged Fatah leader said to be responsible for a December attack on a bus carrying Israeli settlers in the West Bank which killed 10 people. Over the next two days, the Palestinian armed groups killed four Israelis in the West Bank, including a 72 year-old man. On 18 January, in another random shooting of civilians claimed by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed gunman killed six and wounded 33 in a Bat Mitzvah celebration in Hadera within Israel. *** Amnesty International will begin a mission to Israel, the Occupied Territories and the areas under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority today, 24 January 2002. The delegation is composed of two staff members of the organization's International Secretariat, Elizabeth Hodgkin and Maartje Houbrechts; Maria del Pozo, a staff member of the Spanish Section of Amnesty International; Karen Kennedy, a coordinator from the US Section of Amnesty International; and David Holley an independent military adviser. Delegates will investigate human rights concerns in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the areas under the jurisdiction of Palestine Authority, including unlawful killings of Palestinians and Israelis, closures and house demolitions. You may repost this message onto other sources provided the main text is not altered in any way and both the header crediting Amnesty International and this footer remain intact. Only the list subscription message may be removed. To subscribe to amnesty-L, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subscribe amnesty-L in the message body. To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe amnesty-L in the message body. If you have problem signing off, contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. [EMAIL PROTECTED] handles only messages concerning list administration. Past and current Amnesty news services can be found at http://www.amnesty.org/news/. Visit http://www.amnesty.org for information about Amnesty International and for other AI publications. Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you need to get in touch with the International Secretariat of Amnesty International. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary
[CTRL] Bush Considers Actions Against Arafat
-Caveat Lector- -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, January 25, 2002 3:36 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [AL-AWDA-News] Bush Considers Actions Against Arafat Bush Considers Actions Against Arafat By BARRY SCHWEID .c The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush and his foreign policy advisers, convinced that Yasser Arafat's organization tried to buy weapons from Iran, met Friday to consider punitive actions that could include severing ties with the Palestinian Authority. In a private White House session, Bush and his national security team discussed its options, which also include closing Palestinian Authority offices in Washington, ordering U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni to suspend his peacemaking mission and placing Arafat's personal security force on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, according to several government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Cutting ties with Arafat could greatly complicate Bush's fragile war coalition by angering Muslims and driving a wedge between the United States and its Arab allies. It also would make it tougher for U.S. diplomats, dealing with only one party in the dispute, to ease Middle East tensions. For those reasons, severing ties was the least likely option to be accepted by Bush, said a senior administration official involved in the discussions. The official said Bush's team agrees that action needs to be taken against Arafat, but the advisers are split over how serious the steps should be. It was unclear whether Bush would make a decision Friday. One source said the action may be postponed, giving Arafat one more chance to avoid punishment. The advisers' meeting comes after Bush sent proof to three key Arab leaders that the Palestinian Authority was engaged in a weapons smuggling plot and asked them to put pressure on Arafat to make arrests, senior administration officials said. Israeli commandos early this month intercepted a ship carrying the 50 tons of rockets, mortars, explosives and other arms in the Red Sea and informed the Bush administration. Most of the evidence Bush included in his letters last week to Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan was gathered by U.S. intelligence, diplomatic sources said Thursday. That underscored the Bush administration's conviction that Arafat's Palestinian Authority was involved. Arafat himself has denied any role and the Bush administration has hesitated to contradict him directly. But Israeli security officials say it was impossible for senior Palestinian Authority members to be involved in the plot first hatched in June without Arafat's personal awareness. They also said the weapons, if delivered to Palestinian militants, could have been used against Israel's Ben-Gurion airport and especially to pierce the reinforced surface of buses that carry tourists and Israeli civilians. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns called in ambassadors from two dozen Arab countries for a briefing Friday at the State Department. It is part of an administration campaign to rally the Arab world against terrorism and to compel Arafat to curb Palestinian attacks on Israel. The Palestinian Authority, under U.S. urging, has detained several suspects. But State Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeated on Thursday that Arafat had neither provided a satisfactory explanation of the smuggling nor arrested the key figures. According to Israeli security officials, the weapons were supplied by Iran and loaded on the ship there with the help of Hezbollah, a guerrilla group that is fighting a low-level cross-border war with Israel from southern Lebanon. Secretary of State Colin Powell publicly has demanded an explanation from Arafat about the smuggling, though Powell has said he has seen no evidence against the Palestinian leader. The administration has been turning up the heat on Arafat in recent days. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Thursday the president understands why Israel has confined Arafat to his West Bank headquarters. Fleischer, on Bush's behalf, demanded that Arafat eliminate terrorism, which he said posed ``a threat not only to Israel, but also to Arafat.'' ``The president understands the reason that Israel has taken the action that it takes, and it is up to Chairman Arafat to demonstrate the leadership to combat terrorism,'' Fleischer said. Arafat has been under virtual house arrest on the West Bank for nearly two months. Israeli soldiers are posted down the street. Bush plans to meet Feb. 7 with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who will be making his fourth visit to the White House to see Bush since March. Arafat has never been invited. AP-NY-01-25-02 0926EST Copyright 2002 The Associated Press. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list.
[CTRL] Anderson accounting for FBI
-Caveat Lector- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Anderson accounting for FBI Enron Accounting Firm Has Ties to FBI (english) by besmirked 10:50am Thu Jan 24 '02 Enron oversees FBI's inept investigation of Enron. [source: Reuters, Jan. 16; Newmax, Jan. 17] ARTHUR ANDERSEN HAS MILLION-DOLLAR FBI CONTRACT. The accounting firm now under investigation for destroying documents to cover up Enron's phony books, also has a $1 million contract to review FBI operations. Sen. Patrick Leahy warned on Wednesday that this could give Arthur Andersen access to information about the FBI's investigation of Enron. Now, unfortunately, the problem we're going to have is that Attorney General Ashcroft has also hired Arthur Andersen to do a million-dollar review of the FBI for their reorganization, Leahy said on Vermont radio. Noting that he will be using FBI agents to assist in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of Enron, Leahy also said: Arthur Andersen now had access to some very sensitive things in the FBI, at the same time where I'm going to be calling on the FBI to help my committee investigate why Arthur Andersen destroyed material. AND A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Former Enron exec found dead: Body found at 2:23 AM
-Caveat Lector- http://www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=sns%2Denron Chicago Tribune Chicago, Illinois January 25, 2002 Former Enron exec found dead Officials: J. Clifford Baxter died of apparent suicide The Associated Press Published January 25, 2002, 11:48 AM CST HOUSTON -- A former Enron Corp. executive who challenged the company's questionable financial practices and resigned last May was found shot to death in a car today, an apparent suicide, authorities said. Police in the suburb, Sugar Land, confirmed the death of 43-year-old J. Clifford Baxter, a former Enron vice chairman. He was shot in the head. We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our friend and colleague, Cliff Baxter. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends, the company said in a statement. Spokesman Mark Palmer had no additional comment. Baxter was vice chairman of Enron when he resigned in May 2001, several months before the energy company's collapse. Baxter was identified by name in the explosive warning that Enron executive Sherron Watkins wrote last August to company chairman Ken Lay. Cliff Baxter complained mightily to (then-CEO Jeff) Skilling and all who would listen about the inappropriateness of our transactions with LJM, one of the partnerships that kept hundreds of millions of dollars in debt off Enron's books. Watkins identified Baxter in a section of her letter stating there is a veil of secrecy around LJM and Raptor, another entity involved in the partnerships. Watkins' letter to Lay stated that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals unless the company halted practices that eventually sent it into bankruptcy. His body was found at 2:23 a.m. today in a car parked in between two medians in a residential area in Sugar Land. He was in the driver's seat of the vehicle and a police officer stopped to check on him after noticing the parked car. Jim Richard, a Fort Bend County justice of the peace, ruled Baxter's death a suicide. Baxter was one of 29 former and current Enron executives and board members named as defendants in a federal lawsuit. Plaintiffs' lawyers said the executives made $1.1 billion by selling Enron stock between October 1998 and November 2001. It said Baxter had sold 577,436 shares for $35.2 million. At the time his resignation was announced, Skilling said Baxter had made a tremendous contribution to Enron's evolution, particularly as a member of the team that built Enron's wholesale business. It said his primary reason for resigning was to spend more time with his family. Baxter had joined Enron in 1991 and was chairman and CEO of Enron North America prior to being named chief strategy officer for Enron Corp. in June 2000 and vice chairman in October 2000, the company said. Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press http://www.chicagotribune.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=sns%2Denron A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Is Windows XP's 'Product Activation' A Privacy Risk?
-Caveat Lector- http://www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20010816S0015 Is Windows XP's 'Product Activation' A Privacy Risk? Aug. 20, 2001 Is Microsoft's mandatory registration scheme also a back door for snooping? By Fred Langa Microsoft's forthcoming XP operating system, which represents the final merging of the Win9X and WinNT/2K product lines, will be a watershed for a number of reasons. We'll deal with many of them over time, but for now, let's focus on its privacy issues. As XP rolled out in betas, two major areas of privacy-related concerns bubbled to the surface. One was HailStorm, a set of services based on Microsoft's Passport technology (a Microsoft Passport account can contain a large amount of individually identifying data). HailStorm is a large and complex topic, deserving its own extended coverage, so we'll do that in a future column. (To get up to speed in the meantime, you can read Microsoft's explanation and spin about HailStorm and InformationWeek's reporting on the topic (see HailStorm Ties Microsoft To Its Future And Past and other recent articles). Today, we'll focus on the other major area of privacy concern: XP's anti-piracy Windows Product Activation feature. While our main focus will be on the operating-system-level WPA, we'll also discuss the WPA that also appears in Microsoft's XP line of Office applications and suites. Once you install XP software, the WPA system keeps track of how many times you've launched the software and how much time has passed. Before the end of a Microsoft-determined amount of time or number of launches, you must--must--register the software, or it reverts to a reduced functionality mode. For example, after 50 launches without registration, Office XP will let you view your documents, but not change them or create new ones. The allowed number of launches and time varies by product. For example, with the XP operating systems, you have 30 days before you must register. So, with the WPA, Microsoft is quite literally forcing you to register--to provide it with some personally identifiable information- -to keep using the products that you already bought and paid for! Of course, in legal terms, you don't usually buy software; you don't even buy the CDs on which the software resides. You're actually buying a license that lets you use the vendor's software on the CDs. The company selling the license--in this case Microsoft--can make up whatever rules it wants, and you must agree to those rules if you use its software. While larger enterprises are well-versed in the licensing model, medium and smaller business (and individual users) usually still think of software in retail terms: buying and owning the CDs. To these tens of millions of users, XP's WPA will be a bucket of cold water in the face, reminding them that that, even after paying full retail prices, they don't really own the software on their PCs. I expect Microsoft to experience a consumer backlash from this, especially in light of the rest of the Windows Product Activation story. Hardware Hashing And Phoning Home You might think you could evade the mandatory registration by doing what many users do when confronted with an invasive request for personal information: lie. You could, for example, make up information and register from a throwaway E-mail account. Except that won't accomplish much with XP. Here's why: When you register XP software, the registration process creates and sends to Microsoft a unique 50-digit numeric fingerprint or code. The code is a combination of the serial number of your copy of XP, plus additional information about 10 major hardware elements in your system. According to the German software firm Fully Licensed, which reverse-engineered the beta XP registration codes (see WPA Resource Center), the hardware hash code is based on the following information from your PC: CPU serial number CPU model number/type Amount of RAM in the system Graphics adapter hardware ID string Hard drive hardware ID string SCSI host hardware ID string (if present) Integrated development environment controller hardware ID string MAC address of your network adapter CD-ROM drive hardware identification string Whether the system is a dockable unit (e.g. a notebook) or not But that's not all. Even when it's been fully registered, the WPA component wakes up from time to time. It verifies that it's on the original system where it was first installed, and it phones home to check with the central Microsoft database to make sure it's still, indeed, a registered copy. If the WPA discovers that it's no longer on the system where it was originally installed, or if the Microsoft database at the other end of the phone-home connection says you're not registered, then reduced- functionality mode kicks in. But note: The WPA software identifies the PC on which it's loaded by the hash code of the 10 hardware elements listed above. So if you perform a major upgrade on your PC (say, you installed a new
Re: [CTRL] Any good conspiracy theories...
-Caveat Lector- On Fri, 25 Jan 2002, Chris Savage wrote: about the ex-Enron guy found dead in his car this morning? Vince Foster killed him? He was working for al-Quaeda? Nah ... wouldn't have been a bullet in the head; they'd have found his body parts spread all over the neighborhood, along with the remnants of his car [ever see how big a hole a 500 pound smartbomb makes???] No, no, no! You are insufficiently paranoid. *He* was working for al-Quaeda, and *they* didn't want him to testify (wonder where some of the lost money *really* went?), so *they* took him out. Or he knew that someone *else* relevant was working for al-Queda... That's not nearly complex enough. A good conspiracy theory must be 1) logical, 2) as complex as possible, 3) involve as many famous bad guys as you can. I think he knew of Enron's dark dealings with the Carlyle Group, which is owned mostly by the Bin Laden family. As much as the Bush family is involved with both of them. The Bushes have been serving and helping themselves to more money in the form of deals and help to friends of the family, throughout all their careers, dealing with oil, drugs, weapons and defence, as well as the legal system. The US government is the biggest milk-cow on the planet in this regard, but so is. The poor guy probably got hold of some financial information which implicated how the real WTC destruction was orchestrated by the Jewish(?) Bush family, through Enron with money to Carlyle guys who commissioned the demolition job to Osama's Al-Quaeda group. The destruction of WTC was in short meant to a) liberate the (Bush-friend's) CIA controlled drugs trade that the Taleban were harming b) liberate the oil flows in the region (for friends in the oil business) c) use some of that weapons stockpile and get more money for weapons, defence and other military spending i.e. for friends of the family and d) more power and prestige for the Bush family in political crisis. You know, nothing works for the presidential popularity polls like a good show of force, even if you should bomb just medicine factories or mud-huts, as long as the TV shows great pictures, it all works out great. So, the murder was done either by Mossad or a Secret Service agent waiting in the back seat of the car. I would have a hard time believing that someone *willing and eager* to testify, with loads of money and a rich and nice life ahead of him, would suddenly decide to take his own life, much less do it in a place such as the front seat of a car. Statistically, suicides don't just happen on the front seat of a car, by gunshot. You drive or gas yourself to death, but you don't shoot yourself there. You do it someplace else. Sounds about the same as that accidental suicide by a bomb explosion, of that guy who was going to testify against the Israel prime-minister Sharon. The people in power wouldn't be in power, if they didn't know the elementaries of how to keep and stay in power, and that means eliminating the threats. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Oppose Attempts to Allow Unchecked Domestic Spying!
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 02:12:39 -0500 From: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Oppose Attempts to Allow Unchecked Domestic Spying! Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 12:11:33 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Matthew Gaylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: 01-24-02 -- ACLU Action Update: Oppose Attempts to Allow Unchecked Domestic Spying! TO: ACLU Action Network Members FR: Jared Feuer, Internet Organizer DT: January 24, 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft is reportedly considering a plan to relax restrictions on the FBI's ability to spy on domestic organizations, a move that would loosen some of the most fundamental protections against FBI misconduct and threaten constitutionally protected advocacy of unpopular ideas and political dissent. The domestic spying restrictions were originally imposed in the 1970's after the country learned of the FBI's widespread, unchecked and politically motivated domestic surveillance of such figures as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI's campaign against Dr. King included tactics such as planting bugs in hotel rooms and threats to release the recordings, all done without evidence of criminal activity. Current domestic guidelines already provide broad authority to conduct investigations, but we must not allow the war on terrorism to permanently expand unchecked government power. Take Action! You can read more about this plan and send a FREE FAX to Attorney General John Ashcroft from our action alert at: http://www.aclu.org/action/spy107.html ** Help Strengthen the ACLU's Voice in Congress ... Click Below to Become a Card-Carrying Member today! http://www.aclu.org/action/joinaclu.html ** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ ** A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] EMPIRE: A Banana Republic?
-Caveat Lector- From: Boyle, Francis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954(voice) 217-244-1478(fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Undoubtedly, the further expansion of the American Empire and Pax Americana abroad will require the further imposition of an American police state here at home. As the Romans discovered, an Empire is incompatible with a Republic. No point would be served here by reviewing the extensive literature that was generated during the Vietnam War comparing the United States with the Imperial Athenian Democracy during what Thucydides denominated the Peloponnesian War that really extended over 30 years. Yet the Bush Jr. administration is publicly and shamelessly promising us a war against terrorism without a conceivable end in sight. Not even the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Bush Jr.'s Constitutional Coup D'Êtat From the Supreme Court's installation of Bush Jr. as President to the Ashcroft/Federalist Society post-September 11 regime of police state laws, the politico-legal functioning of America is increasingly resembling that of a Banana Republic. Since September 11th, we have seen one blow against the U.S. Constitution after another. For example, Attorney General John Ashcroft unilaterally instituted the monitoring of attorney-client communications despite the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures without a warrant and the Sixth Amendment right to representation by Counsel. He just went ahead and did it, without even bothering to inform anyone. Nearly 1200 aliens have been picked up and disappeared by Ashcroft and his Department of Injustice. The American People have no idea where most of these people are. They are being held on the basis of immigration law, not criminal law, for a period of detention which has not been defined. The phenomenon of disappearances is considered a crime against humanity by the Statute for the International Criminal Court. It appears that many of these aliens have been deprived of their basic human rights to consular notification and access as set forth in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which even the U.S. State Department concedes constitutes binding customary international law. Apparently Bush Jr.'s left hand does not care about what his right hand does. Yet another international convention to which the U.S. is a contracting party set at naught. The one characteristic these detained foreigners have in common is that they are mostly Muslims, Arabs, and Asians. Everyone needs a scapegoat for the 11 September tragedy, and it looks like we have one, both at home and abroad. Thousands more aliens are being moved into the pipeline for the Ashcroft gulag. Ashcroft is now planning to reinstate the infamous COINTELPRO Program, whose atrocities against the civil rights and civil liberties of the American People have been amply documented elsewhere. It is just a matter of time before the Bush Jr. Leaguers unleash the newly-augmented powers of the FBI, CIA and NSA directly against the American People. And we already have 2 million Americans rotting away in prison -- the highest rate of incarceration in the world, a disproportionate majority of whom are Americans of Color. For People of Color the American Police State has already arrived! Ashcroft's Police State ~ This brings the analysis to the Ashcroft Police State Act. There are no other words to describe it. While Bush failed to get a formal declaration of war that would have rendered him a constitutional dictator, clearly Attorney General John Ashcroft and his right-wing Federalist Society lawyers took every piece of regressive legislation off the shelf, tied it all into what they called an anti-terrorism bill, and then rammed it through Congress, giving it the appropriately Orwellian name of the USA Patriot Act. According to one report, Ashcroft's first draft would have had Congress suspend the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus - the necessary prerequisite for creating a police state in the United States of America. Many Members of Congress publicly admitted that they did not even bother to read the Ashcroft Police State Act. Another Congressman said basically: Right, but there's nothing new about that. Interestingly enough the so-called liberal Democrats in the House and the Senate were willing to give Bush Jr. and Ashcroft more police state powers than the conservative Republicans in the House. But there are no real differences that matter between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to promoting America's Manifest Destiny to control the World and now Outer Space too. Bush's Kangaroo Courts It would take an entire law review article for me to analyze all the constitutional and legal problems with the Bush Jr.'s proposed military commissions. Here a cabal of Federalist Society Lawyers in the White House got President Bush to sign an Executive Order
[CTRL] US anthrax attackers aimed to assassinate Democratic leaders
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:00:40 - From: robalini [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Konformist: US anthrax attackers aimed to assassinate Democratic leaders Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org -- -- WSWS : News Analysis : North America US anthrax attackers aimed to assassinate Democratic leaders Media silent on military links By Jerry White 23 January 2002 In the more than three months since anthrax-infected letters were mailed to US Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, evidence has emerged about the source and motives of the attack which has vast political implications. It is now generally accepted that the anthrax came from a domestic source, not from the Middle East. Given the fact that the intended victims were prominent leaders of the Democratic Party, it is clear that the perpetrators must be linked to right-wing organizations in the US. In December, the anthrax in the letters was traced to biological warfare facilities run by the US military. Most recently, the Washington Post reported January 21 that at least 27 biological warfare specimens, including anthrax bacteria, had gone unaccounted for at the Army's Fort Detrick, Maryland lab, prompting an internal investigation in 1992. Lab workers told the Post that they had produced anthrax in powder form, contrary to official claims that the lab generated only wet anthrax, which is less dangerous. Citing interviews with lab personnel, the newspaper concluded: the emerging details are consistent with the increasingly popular hypothesis that last fall's bioterrorist attacks were the work of a current or former Fort Detrick scientist. In other words, the leaders of the Democratic Party were targeted for assassination by right-wing elements that have some connection to the military. This staggering fact, however, has been met with a strange silence by the media, government officials and the Democrats themselves, including the two senators who were targeted. Investigators have determined that the letters contained weapons- grade anthrax, which an FBI microbiologist said was designed for overkill. Two postal workers at the mail facility where the tainted letters were processed died after being exposed to up to 3,000 times the lethal dosage of the bacteria, while scores of Senate office workers were only spared because they were quickly treated. The anthrax powder has been genetically traced to a single US military source: the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, the only facility known to have processed anthrax into the highly lethal powder form found in the letters. The spores in the letters to Daschle and Leahy were identical to those sent from Dugway to the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRID) at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC, and to a CIA lab in Langley, Virginia. Within political and media circles it is generally conceded that the assassination plot was hatched by right-wing elements in the US. In a barely reported comment last month Senator Daschle told a CNN interviewer, almost in passing, that he believes the most likely suspect in the attacks was someone related to the US military. But neither Daschle, Leahy, nor any other Democratic Party spokesman has sought to make an issue of this attempted political murder. The news media all but dropped mention of anthrax once it became clear that neither Osama bin Laden nor Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks and the White House could no longer use such claims to bolster its war effort and sweeping assault on civil liberties. As the military link to the attacks came to light, the media sought to blunt the significance of the exposure. Typical was Time magazine, which attempted to reassure its readers: While the possibility of an Army connection has raised a few eyebrows, investigators are urging people not to jump to any conclusions. Targets of the extreme right Daschle and Leahy have long been targets of vitriol by the extreme right of the Republican Party, which considers them hardcore opponents of Bush's agenda. As Senate Majority Leader, Daschle is the most prominent Democratic officeholder and a possible challenger to Bush in the 2004 presidential elections. He has been the subject of a non-stop smear campaign by the Wall Street Journal, which accused Daschle in an editorial last November of conducting his own guerilla war against Mr. Bush, blocking the President's [domestic] agenda at every turn. The statement was only one of many designed to incite reactionary elements with whom the Journal is politically and ideologically allied and which are tied to the Republicans and the military. As chairman of the
[CTRL] Enron UK: What gave Thatcher a stroke.
-Caveat Lector- http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,640312,00.html Wakeham faces British inquiry into Enron role Antony Barnett and Ed Vulliamy in New York Sunday January 27, 2002 The Observer Lord Wakeham, the former Tory Energy Secretary who now chairs of the Press Complaints Commission, faces the humiliating prospect of a British inquiry into his role in the Enron scandal. This could result in him being heavily fined and stripped of his professional qualifications. He could also lose lucrative directorships with four other companies. Wakeham, who was an Enron director, has already been summoned to appear before a Senate committee to explain his role in the #55 billion collapse, the largest in US corporate history, which has threatened to engulf the Bush administration. Wakeham was a key member of Enron's board audit committee, which was supposed to prevent any financial wrongdoing and protect shareholders' interests. Last night America's main trade union organisation, the AFL-CIO, which represents thousands of Enron workers who lost their jobs and saw the value of their pensions crumble, said it intended to launch a formal complaint about Wakeham to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Wakeham, who qualified as a chartered accountant before becoming a minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments, would then face an investigation by the institution's professional conduct committee into whether he had acted competently as a non-executive director of Enron. If Wakeham was found to have 'performed his work inefficiently or incompetently' he could face a range of penalties from being struck off to a fine. A spokesman for the institute said he could not comment on any individual cases, but confirmed that, if a complaint about Wakeham was received, the institute would have a duty to begin a formal investigation. The AFL-CIO, which represents 13 million workers in the US, has also written to the chairmen of four companies where Wakeham is a director asking them to sack him from their boards. Wakeham is a director of Bristol West building society (now owned by the Bank of Ireland), Michael Page International recruitment consultants, shipbuilder Vosper Thorneycroft and investment bank Rothschilds. The letters, which were sent out on Friday addressed to the chairman of each company, state: 'As you are most likely aware, Lord Wakeham is a director of Enron Corporation. We are writing to ask that in light of Lord Wakeham's role at Enron, the board of directors not nominate him to another term as director, unless Lord Wakeham can show he personally took meaningful steps to protect Enron investors.' Damon Silvers, the legal adviser at the AFL-CIO, said: 'Lord Wakeham has a lot of questions to answer. We believe he was one of a number of key directors who bear particular responsibility for the Enron collapse. He was a qualified accountant who was on the audit committee and if he was doing his job competently then this scandal might never have happened.' Wakeham has so far refused to comment publicly about his Enron role and did not respond to any phone calls yesterday. Wakeham was known as Thatcher's 'Mr Fix-It' . As Energy Secretary in 1990 he helped privatise the UK electricity industry and gave consent for Enron to build Britain's largest private power plant on Teesside. Since 1994 Wakeham has been a non-executive board director of Enron, earning more than #80,000 a year from the company. As well as his director's salary he was paid an additional fee for consultancy work and owned thousands of shares in the corporation. Most crucially, Wakeham was a member of Enron's audit and compliance committee, which was supposed to scrutinise the complex transactions between the giant energy trading company and two partnerships set up by its chief financial officer, Andrew Fastow. It is these two partnerships that are the central focus of the criminal investigation into Enron's spectacular collapse as it is alleged they allowed the corporation to hide millions of pounds in losses and keep investors in the dark about the state of the company's profits. More Enron stories http://www.guardian.co.uk/ Enron octopus could dramatically prune the shrubbery. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] Israeli Workers Key to Progress to End Violence
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 01:06:28 + From: W W [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [infowars] Weekly Worker 416 (24/1/02) - Israeli Workers Key to Progress Weekly Worker 416 - Towards a Socialist Alliance Party! In this week's Weekly Worker, paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain; Israeli Workers Key to Progress It is a nauseating sight. Tanks and troops from the misnamed Israeli Defence Force roll into another Palestinian town and raise the Israeli flag. Houses are bulldozed, administration offices destroyed, youths are shot. The pretext for the current offensive was an attack on a bat mitzvah, in the northern Israeli town of Hadera, by a lone gunman who killed six Israelis and injured a dozen. In response Israel insisted on teaching the Palestinian Authority a lesson it will never forget (The Guardian, January 19). This lesson - which has been 'taught' many times before - consists of Israeli attacks on key PA buildings. The headquarters of its media mouthpiece, the Voice of Palestine, was destroyed by Israeli troops. And in the West Bank town of Tulkarem, temporarily under Israeli occupation, F-16 fighters reduced the police station to rubble. Yasser Arafat has been confined for over a month to Ramallah by ab Israeli blockade. His regime is in deep crisis. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli defence minister, observed that, Everyone is fed up with Arafat (Jerusalem Post, January 21). Everyone included the Likud majority of the Israeli government. The dovish elements within the ruling coalition itself - wit foreign minister and Labour grandee Shimon Peres at their head - would rather deal with a Palestinian people led by Arafat than by Hamas. The United States has been impatiently urging Arafat to 'get tough', but is yet to abandon him completely. Having all but completed the first phase of its 'war on terrorism', the US government now has no compulsion to fete Arab opinion. Gone is talk of a Palestinian state and criticism of Israeli 'excesses'. In its place is the usual pious rhetoric in defence of the 'region's only democracy', as its right wing admirers glowingly refer to Israel. There is no doubt that the Israeli government could, if it chose, move decisively against Arafat. It could topple his administration or even re-annex the Gaza and the West Bank. Instead the rabidly chauvinistic Sharon government is playing a double game. On the one hand, it destroys the PA's infrastructure under the guise of retaliation against terror attacks and, on the other, it makes demands of Arafat which are impossible to meet - not least because of the damage inflicted by the Israelis themselves. The idea is that failure discredits Arafat in the eyes of the international community, while compliance diminishes him before the eyes of the Palestinian people. Whether Arafat is ousted by his own people - perhaps in a coup from within the PA - or is the victim of a sniper's bullet is of little consequence to Israel. The cleaner its hands the better but, either way, the path would be clear for what is left of the PA to be declared a 'failed state' in need of Israeli 'assistance'. The level of control that Arafat is able to exercise over his own people is questionable. The al-Aqsa Brigade - a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement - claimed responsibility for the Hadera attack despite the fact that Arafat himself has declared a ceasefire and condemned the outrage. At Israel's behest, he had begun - albeit hesitantly - to round up militants held responsible for such attacks. Prominent among these was Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Israel holds Saadat responsible for the assassination of the ultra-reactionary Israeli tourism minister, Rahavam Zeevi. Saadat's arrest, along with that of other PFLP militants, has prompted the PFLP to threaten to target PA security chiefs. PFLP supporters took to the streets denouncing Arafat for his capitulation to Israeli pressure. Together with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they issued a joint declaration calling for Sadaat's immediate release. Neither Hamas or Islamic Jihad have yet to go as far as threatening PA officials, as neither wants to be seen to be creating divisions within the national struggle of the Palestinians. However, as one Hamas spokesperson put it, the PA is digging its own grave (The Guardian, January 17). For revolutionary socialists and communists neither Fatah nor the islamicists have any answers for the Palestinian people. One wants to impose a settlement from above, without regard for democratic rights. The other uses terror tactics in support of a reactionary political programme. The indiscriminate suicide attacks on Israeli civilians are reactionary. Attacks like those on Hadera rally Israel working people around the chauvinism of Sharon and Likud. For some sections of Israeli opinion, Sharon has
[CTRL] Pro-Putin cult urges return to Soviet 'glory'
-Caveat Lector- Government sponsored mass mind-control... I wonder why didn't Dubya think of that? Oh sorry, it's already the Satanists, they're already supporting Bush, only they don't make as much noise about it.. -- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 22:34:17 +1100 From: Bond [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ParanoidTimes] Pro-Putin cult urges return to Soviet 'glory' Pro-Putin cult urges return to Soviet 'glory' By Clem Cecil in Moscow Sunday 27 January 2002 A SINISTER new organisation, backed by the Kremlin, is urging the Russian people to reject pro-Western views and go back to the glory of Soviet Russia. The 50,000-strong group which calls itself Walking Together has strict rules and indoctrination methods, but unlike the Chinese group it has the support of the authorities. We want to create a new generation to help the president bring Russia out of crisis, said its founder, Vasily Yakimenko. The Kremlin's clear involvement can be traced back to the group's beginnings. Mr Yakimenko left a job in the Kremlin administration, where he was overseer of state-run charities, in May 2000 to create Walking Together. The senior patron of the movement is Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration. The group is vehemently pro-Putin and its first public action was a huge rally in November 2000 to celebrate his presidency. Wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Putin's face, thousands gathered near the Kremlin and spoke of their love for the president. Mr Putin later received the organisers of the rally in the Kremlin. Russian liberals fear that the group is the embodiment of persistent attempts by senior Kremlin officials to set up a new Soviet-style cult of personality around the president: nationalism thinly veiled as patriotism is a hallmark of Walking Together. The group demands strict loyalty and discipline from its members, who are handed a long checklist on joining which includes commands to read at least six Russian classics a year, whether you enjoy them or not, and visit the site of a battle where the Russians were victorious. Mr Yakimenko's latest attempt to indoctrinate members, aged mainly between 14 and 30, is a proposal to purify Russian literature. Modern liberal books, which depict the difficulties of modern Russian life, have been damned by Walking Together. The group has in turn published thousands of copies of a book of stories recounting the Red Army's glorious victories during the Second World War. These books were offered free in exchange for corrupting works. Walking Together is secretly sponsored by two companies with close Kremlin ties as well as Moscow city council. Its outgoings are high: members are divided into groups of five called red stars, each led by a foreman who receives a free pager and £30 for his services. Each of his five soldiers receives £1 as well as free T-Shirts. Members are encouraged to recruit others with promises of rank and glory reminiscent of Communist indoctrination methods. Once you have a red star, try to persuade another 50 to join. Give them a party if they show interest in the group. You must be able to encourage and to punish, then you will become a commander of a division. If you persuade another thousand to put their fate in your hands, you will be a coordinator. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/27/wrus27.xmlsSheet=/news/2002/01/27/ixworld.html A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Cat triggers Kabul explosion
-Caveat Lector- http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,3662390%255E401,00.html Cat triggers Kabul explosion AP 27jan02 KABUL: A wandering cat set off an explosive warning device protecting the grounds of the US Embassy in the Afghan capital, an embassy official said. The explosion was heard through much of the embassy neighbourhood in eastern Kabul. Embassy spokesman John Kincannon said the explosion was caused by a cat triggering a warning device, known as flash-bangs, that are set up along the embassy's perimeter to guard against intruders. The cat lived, but it was a very frightened cat, he said. Concern about security is high at the embassy, which is surrounded by large open expanses. Last week, a homemade incendiary device was set off outside the embassy. Marines who came out to investigate found a land mine nearby. The mine was not concealed or attached to tripwires, Kincannon said. A HREF=http://www.ctrl.org/;www.ctrl.org/A DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html A HREF=http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html;Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]/A http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/;ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] FBI's too early arrival in Oklahoma City
-Caveat Lector- http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26115 OKC BOMBING FALLOUT Was FBI early arrival in Oklahoma City? Hotel receipt shows top terror man showed up 9 hours before blast By Jon Dougherty © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com The FBI's top counterterrorism agent checked into an Oklahoma City hotel nearly nine hours before a truck bomb nearly leveled the Alfred P. Murrah Building, according to a receipt obtained by WorldNetDaily, despite claims that he was in Texas the morning of the attack. The Embassy Suites Hotel receipt of Danny Coulson, then-director of the FBI's Terrorist Task Force and founding commander of the bureau's Hostage Rescue Team was dated April 19, 1995, with a check-in time of 00:20 military time for 12:20 a.m. (Editor's note: His last name is spelled Coulsen on the receipt, but it indicates he is with the FBI, located at 50 Penn Place, Suite 1600; OKC, OK.) The truck bomb exploded at 9:03 a.m., devastating half the building and killing 168 men, women and children. According to the receipt, Coulson checked out of his hotel room 406 April 27 at 11:16 a.m. The existence of the receipt and subsequent questions it raises surrounding the FBI's official denial of prior knowledge of the OKC bombing was first reported by J.D. Cash of the McCurtain (Oklahoma) Daily Gazette a small-town paper that has been out in front of scores of OKC-related stories. Since the bombing, officials at the Department of Justice have repeatedly assured victims that the FBI had no prior knowledge of any plot to bomb the Murrah federal building, the paper said Wednesday. However, evidence of Coulson's clandestine trip fits squarely with a substantial body of details found in hundreds of pages of other official documents obtained [via Freedom of Information Act requests] by the paper evidence revealing weeks of planning by an elite corps of drug and counterterrorism experts who were closely monitoring members of various far-right groups they considered religious extremists and threats to the safety and security of the nation. WorldNetDaily reported June 1 that Ricardo Rick J. W. Ojeda, a former FBI special agent involved in the original Oklahoma City bombing investigation, was given details of a relationship between convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh and members of a white supremacist group that may have helped McVeigh carry out the attack. McVeigh was put to death 10 days later. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is facing state charges in Oklahoma for his role in the bombing after having been convicted in 1997 on federal charges. In his 1999 book, No Heroes: Inside the FBI's Secret Counter-Terror Force, authored with Time magazine's Elaine Shannon, Coulson said he was in Dallas the morning of the Murrah attack. He said he and his wife were house-hunting and staying with friends: We were finishing up breakfast with some old friends in Fort Worth when we heard the first news bulletin, something about a big explosion up in Oklahoma. ... My pager went off, displaying a number I knew by heart. It's the SIOC, I said. The Strategic Information and Operations Center at the Hoover Building in Washington. John O'Neil, the headquarters official in charge of domestic terrorism investigations, answered. His voice was flat. I guess you heard a bomb went off in Oklahoma City. 9:02 a.m. Yes, it's all over the news. A lot of people have been killed and injured. We don't know what we have. Ricks needs help. Can you catch the next flight? We're right in the middle of thunderstorms, I said. Nobody in Texas is getting on a plane. I'll drive. ... But according to the Gazette's investigation aided by the discovery of the hotel receipt Coulson was apparently already in OKC, tied to an FBI investigation that ... was part of a highly sensitive operation that few outside the criminal division of the FBI knew existed until long after it was disbanded. That operation, allegedly begun by then-Attorney General Janet Reno in August 1994, was dubbed VAAPCON, assigned the number MC-111 (Major Case 111) and was aimed at investigating the so-called religious right in America and possible ties to violent acts, the paper said. Cash said he was unclear what VAAPCON meant, but he believes it has something to do with a Reno initiative to investigate violence against abortion providers. The paper also noted that Coulson referred to MC-111 as his initial reason for going to Oklahoma City, using the case number in a May 16, 1995, report filed he filed with the bureau. Others have also tied McVeigh and Nichols to white supremacist groups. WND reported June 27 that Indiana State University criminologist Mark Hamm, in a book published last fall, named former Aryan Republican Army member Mark Thomas, originally of Pennsylvania, and other members of his group as alleged coconspirators. Based on court records and other evidence, WND also reported similar connections May 30. Others, however, have said they believe McVeigh and
