Re: [CTRL] Very real threat
-Caveat Lector- A few points regarding this hideously misguided letter from what is clearly a spectacularly uncritical thinker: On Jul 16, 2004, at 6:04 AM, Ed Raymond wrote (quoting an anonymous letter): Our country is now facing the most serious threat to its existence, as we know it, that we have faced in your lifetime and mine (which includes WWII). The deadly seriousness is greatly compounded by the fact that there are very few of us who think we can possibly lose this war and even fewer who realize what losing really means. Actually, the case can be made that there are *twin* threats far greater to America's existence: increasing environmental devastation (i.e., we're physically destroying our country) and increasing economic disparity (i.e., we're turning into a postmodern feudalist society). First, let's examine a few basics: 1. When did the threat to us start? Many will say September 11th, 2001. The answer as far as the United States is concerned is 1979, 22 years prior to September 2001, with the following attacks on us: Iran Embassy Hostages, 1979; Beirut, Lebanon Embassy 1983; Beirut, Lebanon Marine Barracks 1983; Lockerbie, Scotland Pan-Am flight to New York 1988; First New York World Trade Center attack 1993; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia Khobar Towers Military complex 1996; Nairobi, Kenya US Embassy 1998; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania US Embassy 1998; Aden, Yemen USS Cole 2000; New York World Trade Center 2001; Pentagon 2001. (Note that during the period from 1981 to 2001 there were 7,581 terrorist attacks worldwide). [3] America has waged wars of aggression and enacted aggressive, arrogant foreign policy throughout its history; the threat (or, rather, growing animosity toward America) started long before 1979. 2. Why were we attacked? Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms. The attacks happened during the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2. This is a dangerously simplistic explanation, and simply a parroting of the dumbed-down sound-bite version offered up by the neocon administration. We were attacked (have been attacked, and will continue to be attacked) because of a number of overdetermined reasons, among which are our imperialistic foreign policy, fealty to Israel's inhumane agenda, our militaristic occupation of much of the globe, and our lack of respect for other nations and ways of life. We cannot fault either the Republicans or Democrats as there were no provocations by any of the presidents or their immediate predecessors, Presidents Ford or Carter. We can very easily fault both parties, as America's foreign policy has for at least the past century been embodied by many of the points marked above, and no president has been beyond reproach. 4. 5. 6. 7. [snip] Simplistic, but no major arguments here. So with that background, now to the two major questions: 1. Can we lose this war? What war? Iraq (which had nothing to do with terrorism)? Yes, we will lose that war, just as we lost Viet Nam. The so-called War on Terror? Given the nature of the conflict, there is by definition no way to win. 2. What does losing really mean? It means continuing with the Bush administration's policies, which took their blueprint from the positions of Project for the New American Century and the American Enterprise Institute. [snip] What losing really means is: We would no longer be the premier country in the world. The attacks will not subside, but rather will steadily increase. And everything this current administration does seems to be calculated to bring about that end. Remember, they want us dead, not just quiet. If they had just wanted us quiet, they would not have produced an increasing series of attacks against us over the past 18 years. The plan is clearly to terrorist attack us until we are neutered and submissive to them. We will of course have no future support from other nations for fear of reprisals and for the reason that they will see we are impotent and cannot help them. Other nations are unwilling to help us because our actions are morally reprehensible, *not* for fear of reprisals. It is unconscionable to attack an unarmed sovereign nation without provocation, depose its leader, occupy its people (then torture them), and loot its resources. We had the world with us after 9/11; after invading Iraq, they've all turned their backs. They will pick off the other non-Muslim nations, one at a time. It will be increasingly easier for them. They already hold Spain hostage. It doesn't matter whether it was right or wrong for Spain to withdraw its troops from Iraq. Spain did it because the Muslim terrorists bombed their train and told them to withdraw the troops. Anything else they want Spain to do, will be done. Spain is finished. Spain came to its senses, and withdrew its troops because 98% of its citizens were against Bush's war on Iraq to begin with. Rather than being finished, Spain is reborn. The next will probably be France. Our one hope
[CTRL] [humor] Things You Have to Believe to Be a Republican Today
from http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/07/con04294.html x-tad-biggerJuly 14, 2004 /x-tad-bigger Things you have to believe to be a Republican today x-tad-biggerA BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerBuzzFlash Note: This was forwarded to us by a BuzzFlash Reader. If you know who wrote it, please let us know so we can provide proper attribution. Thanks./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerThings you have to believe to be a Republican today:/x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerSaddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a we can't find Bin Laden diversion./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerTrade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerThe United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerA woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerJesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerThe best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerIf condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerA good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerProviding health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerHMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerGlobal warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerA president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerA president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerGovernment should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerThe public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerBeing a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerYou support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerWhat Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerFeel free to pass this on./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerFriends don't let friends vote Republican./x-tad-bigger x-tad-biggerA BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION/x-tad-bigger
Re: [CTRL] isn't time?
-Caveat Lector- That's right, William! With you all the way! I mean, who needs breathable air, right?!? Who cares about the natural world?!? WE are the creatures who deserve to TAKE IT ALL and use it up at our will! There just aren't enough toxic pollutants in our air, water, and food right now... Seriously, do you *really* hate nature that much? Why don't you list a *single* renewable source of energy in your ridiculously destructive screed? With all due respect, people who espouse views like yours make me sick. And if such wingnuts have their way, we'll ALL be sick. Literally. Forever. Consume consume consume... --eh On May 6, 2004, at 9:41 AM, William Bacon wrote: -Caveat Lector- Isn't it time? Yes I think it is time! With the latest whipsawing on oil prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), isn't time for the United States to start developing our own energy resources. These resources include developing the giant oil fields in Northern Alaska, off shore oil resources off of our own coastline, building Nuclear power plants to replace oil, coal and Natural Gas power plants and additional oil refinery capacity. We could also develop the three trillion barrels oil shale that exist in Colorado and Wyoming. Yes its time to shake off our dependence on OPEC once and for all! www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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 www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] isn't time?
Oh, please. Energy shortages in California?!? Enron was gaming the system! The whole thing was completely manufactured! What doesn't work is continuing w/ the Bush Cartel's insane (and insanely anti-environmental) energy policy. Even the damn *Pentagon* game out and said we MUST address global warming. Here's a positive solution for you: Invest in and provide incentives for renewable energy development, and slap *real* fines on corporate polluters. Develop hybrid SUVs. Demand better fuel economy. Provide tax breaks for fuel-conserving vehicles (and *not* for H2s, which is Bush's break). Practice smart fire control -- engage in controlled burns, and allow naturally-occurring (i.e., lightning-sparked) forest fires to burn (within reason, and not at the expense of personal property or safety). As for Saddam, well he *was* our friend, wasn't he? We certainly had no qualms about selling him lots of nasty chemicals in the '80s, did we? He became our much-needed boogieman after the Cold War ended when he oh-so-conveniently stepped outside his good puppet boundaries. While we pretended not to look... Of course, on the plus side, if ill-informed knee-jerk nature haters like yourself get your way, my house will be oceanfront property by the time my kids retire! If only they could still breathe the air... -eh On May 6, 2004, at 1:22 PM, Bill Howard wrote: This is the kind of thinking that got us into this energy mess in the first place. This enviroment first is not working. Forest fires in California, energy shortages. It just doesn't work. Give us a positive solution to the problem and being friends with Hussein is not a positive response. On May 6, 2004, at 9:51 AM, William Shannon wrote: Not if it means further degrading our environment...no thanks.
Re: [CTRL] Great Idea
Great idea! The private sector is always superior to a government run agency. Bill H. On Mar 25, 2004, at 4:59 AM, Prudy L wrote: Now, compare that to Blockbuster: you are two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Hmmm... Except when it comes to utilities like water and electricity, right? And health care. And airport security. Oh, and pretty much anyplace else where citizens aren't going to benefit by having those supposedly acting in their best interest instead serving shareholders and fattening the corporation's bottom line. Sheesh. There IS a place for government, y'know. That place is just not in my bedroom, on my television, listening to my telephone calls, etc... --eh
Re: [CTRL] Great Idea
-Caveat Lector- Electricity. Both the feds and state do a wonderful job or regulating that. Just look at how the California State Government let its citizens get ripped off a couple of years ago. Wait... So you're saying it's not Enron's fault for being greedy criminals, but the *government's* fault for *letting* them? I think you'd be hard-pressed to find ANY instance of the private sector delivering better electrical service at a better price than ANY municipally-held utility. Across the board. Sorry, but corporate control = crappy service higher prices. It's about money, m'friend, not delivering what's needed. --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] [JBirch] Liberal Radio Network Unveils Lineup (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- Why bother? There are the following left wing/marxist/lennist news networks ABC, CBS, NBC, cnn and NPR(which is financed by us traxpayers!) I'm not sure what lennist is, but the aforementioned networks are all corporate shills for the White House mouthpiece, and rarely if ever air a voice of dissent. They unquestionably beat the drums for Bush's insane war, they repeat ad infinitum the lies emanating from Washington, and they refuse to even examine viewpoints that stray from the party line. Kinda sounds like fascism to me. Oh, wait... Bush's America... right. Get in line, sucker! I, for one, welcome a network where REAL American values can find a voice. I can't wait to hear truth spoken to power at 100,000 watts. Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 10:39:21 PST From: carl william spitzer iv [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [JBirch] Liberal Radio Network Unveils Lineup Yes its called NPR. ...and would that acronym stand for National Petroleum Radio? or would it be National Pentagon Radio? Remember, these are the same media whores whose news is brought to you by GE (war criminals) and Archer Daniels Midland (price-fixing crooks who're tampering with our food supply). The spineless investigative journalism that seeps out of NPR is enough to make cringe even the cursory consumer of What's Really Going On. Sheesh. What's wrong with you people? --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] Letter to John Kerry
>I will explain: > >First, you are right. Iraq was not a threat. The problem was that Iraq's >government was. The insinuation that Saddam Hussein was not a threat is >absurd. If Saddam Hussein was so non-threatening, the why did the UN >feel the need to pass 71 (http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html) >resolutions to condemn and contain, and control him and his cronies, >including resolutions demanding that Saddam Hussein give up his WMD >programs? So I assume you're prepared to claim the UN is de facto correct in every one of its decisions? If so, then please explain why you would support the Bush administration's unwillingness to allow the UN inspectors to continue their work last winter, despite the UN's own insistence that they were making positive headway (including the agreed-upon destruction of the Al Samoud missiles by Iraq). Saddam Hussein was/is no saint, but to claim he was/is a threat to anyone beyond his own citizens strains the credulity of any thinking individual. >Second, the very same US military personnel and Iraqi civilians you are >so eager to defend were already suffering. Yes, no US military personnel >died as a result of combat during the containment, however dozens of >them died preparing for and supporting that mission and dozens more died >as a result of terrorism directly linked to our presence there. And, it >was just a matter of time before there were combat deaths. Never mind >the hardships endured by the personnel that were deployed over there for >six, twelve, even 24 months at a time supporting containment. On this point with you I'm wholly in agreement. I'd long supported an end to the sanctions and the US-imposed no-fly zones (which resulted in weekly bombings). Food for Oil only lined Saddam's pockets, and the sanctions -- which prevented, for example, the importation of chlorine, necessary for clean drinking water -- hurt the civilians of Iraq rather than the leadership. This does not, however, justify the Bush administration's disregard for international law. >During that same period, tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians were >murdered by their own government at the rate of as many as 30,000 a year >conservatively. Tens of thousands more died as a direct result of the >UN's policy of containment. Yes, the UN's (and US's) containment policies resulted in the deaths of not tens, but HUNDREDS of thousands of Iraqi civilians for over ten years. >My question is: how was our toppling of Saddam Hussein the wrong thing >to do? And my answer is: Because of the way we went about it. Plain and simple. The Bush administration lied about the offensive capabilities of Iraq, presented its case for war in a disingenuous manner, ignored the will of not only its own citizens but the entirety of the rest of the world (who were wise enough to see Iraq as the non-threat that it was), and ultimately, because of the enormous scale of its actions, has run its own economy into the ground, leaving little in the way of federal funds for much-needed social programs at home and -- to take a federalist view -- underfunding the states themselves. >My next question is: are you afraid? If so, why are you doing nothing >about it? Personally? No. I realize that the terrorist threat to the US is almost nonexistent. 9-11 was an anomoly (and I won't go into the machinations of that here, but let's just say I'm rather skeptical of the Official Story). But you better believe I'm doing *everything* that I can to replace this dangerous, psychotic, paranoid administration currently in power. Actually, in all fairness, I'm a little bit afraid, but only of the Bush cartel seizing power for another four years. If that happens, I'm afraid that the country that I grew up to love and believe in will be gone, with the Constitution shredded and a police state installed, and the gap between the super-rich and everyday working people like myself widening to point that we live in what is in effect a feudalist society. >It strikes me as absurd that anyone would claim that Americans are >afraid or intimidated of anything. We have a well-established track >record of taking matters into our own hands when we think our government >is treating us wrongly from our own Revolution, to the Civil War, to the >Equal Rights movement. Modern times would be no acceptation. Yeah, you'd think that, wouldn't you? I sure would. But here we are. Americans continually cite Terrorism/National Security as one of their top concerns, though recently Jobs the Economy seems to be surpassing that category. That's a good sign. And I hope you're right about that whole taking matters into our own hands bit... the first step will be throwing out the madmen in Washington right now. >And what terror? Where is it? What is it? How is it being done without a >nationalist outcry to end it? Hmmm... depends on where you want to look. Abroad? Rather than going after bin Laden as a massive criminal operation, he visited
Re: [CTRL] Letter to John Kerry
-Caveat Lector- Whatever the political reasons may have been for the war in Iraq, ultimately, it was the right thing to do. Now we have a much better chance at an endgame than we ever did enforcing international policies that were never designed to succeed. Do not forget that enforcing those policies also tied down tens of thousands of American troops, put them in harms way on a daily basis, and cost the American people a sum nearly as large as the $87 billion recently funded to help pay for the war. How was that, especially since it was an unending situation, better? If all else fails, now we can just leave and know that at least Iraq will not trouble us for some time to come. The right thing to do? Please explain how invading and occupying a sovereign nation while knowing full well that said nation posed absolutely no threat to any other nation; simultaneously alienating our allies and further infuriating our enemies, resulting in *increased* likelihood of terrorist acts; using highly toxic weaponry that endangers the long term health of our own soldiers and contaminates the occupied land; causing the deaths within the first year of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and almost 600 (and growing) of our own troops; all on premises that were outright lies the right thing to do? Whatever the political reasons may have been for the war in Iraq -- personal grudge against Saddam, distraction from a failing/nonexistent domestic agenda at home, reconstruction and energy/oil contracts for his big donor Pioneers/Rangers, failure to find Osama, some ridiculous Perle/Wolfowitz grand vision of Democracy in the Middle East -- Dubya's Big Adventure in Iraq was, ultimately, absolutely the WRONG thing to do. And it was done while brazenly LYING to the American people in order to keep them sufficiently terrified to support this madness. Yes, George W. Bush is a TERRORIST, as terror is exactly what he visits upon his own subjects in order to keep them in line. (In order to win their hearts, he uses a deceptive tax cut, year after year... the guy's like a broken record.) I'm afraid history won't look very kindly on this sad chapter. THIS, my friend, is an unending situation, and it's most certainly NOT better [than containment]. At least w/ containment/sanctions we weren't losing 2 American lives a day over there, we weren't hemorrhaging our own economy to fund it, we weren't pissing off the entirety of the rest of the world (just, you know, *most* of it) and our bombs were killing far fewer innocent Iraqi civilians. As far as the cost, if you assess containment from 1991-2003 as nearly as large as the $87 billion [...], that's $7.25 bil/yr, which I dare say is substantially less than the almost $200 bil we've spent so far in the first year alone (let's not forget the $79 billion initially outlayed, long before the $87 bil request!). It ain't chump change. Politics are always burdensome in times of war, but that burden does not make the politicians criminals. What makes politicians criminals in war and in peace is irresponsibility when faced with the daunting task of waging peace and war. Um, actually that burden DOES make the politician criminal when said politician wages a criminal war, which is exactly what Gulf War, the Sequel was and is. This was purely an elective war, started by the Bush Cartel, with no direct provocation (harsh language and acting a little shifty don't count). In fact, this war is in clear violation of international law. Don't like the rest of the world? Okay, try this: Since Bush LIED us into a war that only he and his buddies actually wanted, a rather strong case could be made that he deliberately misused our nation's military. Last I checked, that was a crime. In fact, it's impeachable. -eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] FWD: They Must Think Americans Are Idiots
from http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/01/09_idiots.html They Must Think Americans Are Idiots January 9, 2004 By Becky Burgwin You know, I'm really starting to think that our current president and his cronies must not have gotten in very much trouble when they were kids. I'm thinking that maybe they had permissive parents who were oblivious and let them get away with everything because they don't seem to have the skills they need to be successful liars. You know, the tools that experienced liars use, like covering your tracks and getting your stories straight. The fact that I can tell when they're lying makes me think that nobody's even listening anymore - especially Congress and the press. Or maybe it's the same syndrome that happens to children who are allowed to watch tons of movie and TV violence - they become desensitized. The question really is, though, why does our president, our vice-president, our defense secretary and our national security advisor think that they can lie over and over to our faces and get away with it? I'm guessing that it's because they think Americans are really stupid. In the days leading up to the war, when they were talking about the WMDs, even I knew that they were lying. Bush said several times, Time after time we have asked Mr. Hussein to let the inspectors in and time after time he has refused. Now that's just bad lying. Even as he spoke, Hans Blix was in Iraq saying that Iraq was being very cooperative and that they hadn't found anything so far in their months of inspections. After that, Bush started calling them the so-called inspectors. I am not a rocket scientist and I am not a politician, but I knew he was lying. I knew why they wanted to get into Iraq and I knew what was going to happen if they succeeded in getting into Iraq. The members of Congress and the press who heard him saying these things must have had that heard-so-many-lies-I'm-just-completely-oblivious-to-them syndrome. Then we have the famous forged document. In order to convince the American and British citizens that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, someone forged a document. Now let me tell you something. I, like many Americans, have forged documents myself, in my younger days. There's the ever-favorite fake ID. What college kid didn't do that? And in my generation there was the phony draft card. So even I know that if you're going to forge the signature of a government employee on a document with a date on it, you'd better make sure that guy worked in that position on that date. Because it's really not going to be very effective if it's signed by J. Edgar Hoover and dated 1996. Bush's document was so phony, only someone who thinks that they're untouchable and everybody else is an idiot would even dream of using it. It hasn't yet, but this comment from our national security advisor is what I think is going to finally bring these guys down: How were we supposed to know someone would hijack an airliner and crash it into a building? Well, here's how - because Bill Clinton's national security advisor, Senator Hart, Senator Rudman, and terrorism expert Richard Clarke started trying to warn you about it before Clinton left office in Jan. 2001. Did she honestly think that all of these men were going to keep quiet about how much effort they put into warning her and her boss about the impending terrorism threat? Did they underestimate how bad they would look when the public was told that, in spite of the ever-increasing level of alarm being expressed by these men, President Bush took a month long vacation that ended on Sept. 4th ? Mark my words, this is the one that's going to come back and bite them in the ass. Here's the problem, though. I really think that Congress and the press are so desensitized to Bush's lies that he could get away with standing in front of them and saying, Look, we lied about the reasons for going to war. We really just want their oil. And we wanted to help our cronies make a shitload of money by overcharging the American taxpayer for rebuilding the country after we destroyed it. And we really don't give damn how many Iraqi men, women and children or American kids have died or been maimed by what we've done. Not only that, we ignored repeated warnings about a terrorist attack on our country and then, at the very least, we were completely inept on the morning of that predicted attack because I sat in a school room reading a book about goats to children while 3,000 of our citizens were being murdered by weapons of mass destruction and the greatest military in the history of humankind stood by and never fired a shot. It was the very the next day, after we flew the Bin Laden family out of the country on a private jet, that we started blaming Saddam and using fear as a political tool to convince you that we needed to alienate all of our allies and go to war with Iraq. And furthermore, we don't give a damn that the country is spiraling into a devastating
[CTRL] FWD: Five impolite questions for the president
Well said, if a bit Moore-esque... --eh --- URL: http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_364_2563050,00.html Five impolite questions for the president By DON WILLIAMS January 9, 2004 Dear Mr. President: If I knew you were reading this, I'd be grateful and surprised. You've been quoted as saying you don't read negative press. Recent reports suggest that your handlers arrange public appearances so that you seldom even see protesters against your policies. Still, should this find its way to your eyes, I have five impolite questions, along with a few follow-ups. * Why won't you tell us about those daily briefings you received in the nine months or so leading up to Sept. 11, 2001? Why won't you answer charges by Robert Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor you appointed to investigate 9-11, that your administration had ample warning that terrorists were capable of flying aircraft into buildings and had been discussing such actions for a decade? If you need a refresher, Mr. President, check out the story by CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston located on the CBSNews.com homepage for Dec. 17, 2003. Kean's charges are spelled out there. * Would you please acknowledge that it was mostly elements in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - not Iraq - who worked with al-Qaida to bring down the World Trade Center? It's pretty clear that your administration grossly exaggerated claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein had strong ties to al-Qaida. I know your war in Iraq is popular now that you've caught Saddam, but the killing goes on. Nearly 500 American soldiers have died now, and about 11,000 are wounded or maimed. Some 10,000 Iraqis have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded. Maybe you were right to protect Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where we (especially your family) have many friends and business associates. Maybe you were right to invade Iraq, but you were wrong to lie about the reasons. No Americans should die in a war based on falsehood and exaggeration. * Why is it taking so long to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame Wilson affair? It's been more than six months since someone high in your administration leaked the CIA operative's identity to columnist Robert Novak. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, has said her identity was disclosed to punish him for saying you exaggerated Iraq's nuclear capabilities. Surely you, like George Bush the Elder, don't approve of betraying undercover intelligence agencies. After all, your daddy was the former head of the CIA. Couldn't you have convened a meeting to find out who did this and knock some heads together? Frankly, your handling of this smacks of a cover-up. Can you imagine the mayhem that would've ensued had President Clinton or one of his top aides betrayed an American spy to the media? * Does some fundamental religious belief - say, that the end of the world is coming soon - influence your policies on the environment and on nuclear weapons? If not, how do you explain policies that seem designed to destroy the planet? Seriously, if you had run on a platform of destroying the Earth, I don't think your policies would be much different. According to a list released Dec. 23 by the Sierra Club, you've tripled allowable levels of mercury pollution, shifted the burden of toxic cleanup from polluters to taxpayers, changed the rules for cleaning up America's dirtiest power plants, undermined the endangered species act and lied about the air at Ground Zero after 9-11. You've made us more dependent on Arab oil, not less. According to Sonoma State University's Project Censored, a 27-year-old program dedicated to shining light on the shortcomings of major news media, your administration has broken or otherwise compromised about 10 international treaties. These include the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Commission, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and the U.N. Convention on Climate Change. You've also made a lot of old friends angry. * Does it worry you that the dollar appears to be in freefall just now? Our currency has fallen dramatically when measured against the Euro and others. Analysts blame this largely on our increasing deficit, now running at about half a trillion annually. Despite this, there are reports you're planning more tax cuts and a dramatic - and expensive - mission to return us to the moon. Could you hire an intern or somebody to do the math? Oh, I forgot, you avoid the negative. Well, I know you're a busy, busy man, so I'll stop asking such impolite questions. If you ever feel you owe some answers, however - say, to those 9-11 widows who sued your administration under the RICO Act - some of us have a few other
Re: [CTRL] DEBKA file on Saddam
-Caveat Lector- 16Always claim that Al Gore *really* won the last election and that Bush isn't really the president. Wait a sec... did Al Gore NOT receive over half a million more votes than his opponent? Were tens of thousands of people NOT erroneously thrown off the voter rolls in Florida due to a flimsy scrub list bought for $4 million by Jeb's administration? Did the findings of a nonpartisan consortium NOT confirm over a year after the election that had ALL the votes in Florida been counted Gore would have won? I mean, sheesh, by any measure of a democratic election, Gore DID win the last election. Bush may be the president, but he's certainly not holding the office by any democratic means. Let's keep things in perspective here, shall we? --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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's Operation Clean Sweep--World War IV in 2004
from http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/11402_politics.html - Bush's Operation Clean Sweep--World War IV in 2004 - 12/01/2003 05:30 Even though Bush II will lose the popular vote in the US presidential election of 2004, his Electoral College victory seems assured. With Republican party governors firmly in charge of Florida, California, Texas and New York, and supported by a whopping Bush campaign war chest approaching $200 million, dubious electronic voting schemes courtesy of Diebold, Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors (http://www.blackboxvoting.com), it seems certain that Bush will make it back to the Oval Office through the back door that is the Electoral College. And if not the Electoral College then by benefit of a rebel attack on US soil which kills thousands of Americans and leads to the suspension of the US Constitution. That according to General Tommy Franks, USA (Ret.), who opined in the magazine Cigar Aficionado that the US will have to shed its constitution in favor of a military style of government. Even the notorious aristocrat Alexander Hamilton would have been appalled as such a statement, as would Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But these are mediocre times in history; particularly, and dangerously, in America where its people have eliminated those who might have continued to wage a struggle for an equitable form of government in the US, as well as engage the world through international treaty building. Mediocre times produce the very worst that the world has to offer: Reagan, Bin Laden, Bush, Hussein, Sharon, and Blair. None but the feeble minded could draw inspiration from such a ghastly lineup of leaders. This is the world as it has become absent the shortened lives of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X and Yitzhak Rabin, all of whom were murdered for their beliefs, or, rather, for the threat they posed to the established interests. Even Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power in the then USSR in 1964 for trying to push his country towards a more peaceful coexistence with the rest of the world. The threats these titans of history posed to the established order of their day was not so much monetary as it was ideology. Each of them planted in the minds of those who would listen the thought that the established order of war, racism, poverty, and income and wealth disparity could and should be questioned. However, those who pull the strings could not stand an ignorant populace that questioned the order of things. And so their fate was, it seems, preordained by disgruntled individuals agitated by those portions of business and government who were wedded to the status quo. And so, JFK and Khrushchev, King and RFK, and Malcolm X and Rubin were terminated and Americans, and the world, found themselves at the mercy of Bush and Bin Laden, Hussein and Blair, and Reagan and Sharon. Crippled Opposition With the election of Bush II in 2004, the ideological and economic fracturing of America will be complete and, for the foreseeable future, permanent. The three branches of the US government, corporations, and the majority of state's governors and state houses will be controlled by those Republicans and Democrats who have become indistinguishable in their belief that the government's only role in America is to make it safe and ludicrously easy for small and large corporations to make a profit without the drag of government regulations, programs and taxes that, in their view, steal from the bottom line. With those folks at the helm, 2002 and 2003 saw the US federal and state governments give the business community trillions of dollars of hand-outs in the form of tax cuts, regulatory relief and legislation that allowed businesses to rape and pillage the American landscape and its middle and lower classes. The latter group's struggle is getting worse. Even as its industrial, service and information technology jobs are exported to other countries, these Americans are being forced to work longer hours, endure more expensive privatized health and welfare benefits, and higher prices for feeding, clothing and educating their children. Slowly but surely, Americans from the middle and lower classes find themselves at an increasing distance from their rulers, yet must bear the burden of profit and war for these same dastardly people. But those that rule have in their malleable plebian audience a strange group of middle and lower class acolytes. Among them, the notorious Christian right and an estimated 5 to 9 million American-Muslims who handed Bush II over 90 percent of their vote in the last presidential election. That group, along with neo-con Latinos and Asians, seem to have forgotten the struggles they waged to reach, what once was, a republic with a semblance of representative democracy. Are they trying to recreate the religious-military dictatorships of their own home countries? Bush II certainly has
Re: [CTRL] Bush's Operation Clean Sweep--World War IV in 2004
>from http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/11402_politics.html - Bush's Operation Clean Sweep--World War IV in 2004 - 12/01/2003 05:30 My apologies. I neglected to notice that Bill Shannon had posted this piece several days ago.
[CTRL] Terror market will reopen in March
from http://www.dailykos.com/ Terror market will reopen in March by kos Sun Nov 16th, 2003 at 03:12:11 UTC Amazing to believe, but a sharp-eyed reader has found that the Policy Analysis Market -- that Pentagon-funded and Pointexder-led futures market -- will reopen in March http://www.policyanalysismarket.com/announce2.htm>. You remember this particular DARPA project http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,59813,00.html>: The program is called the Policy Analysis Market. DARPA said it was part of a research effort to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks. Traders would have bought and sold futures contracts -- just like energy traders do now in betting on the future price of oil. But the contracts in this case would have been based on what might happen in the Middle East in terms of economics, civil and military affairs or specific events, such as terrorist attacks. Holders of a futures contract that came true would have collected the proceeds of traders who put money into the market but predicted wrong. A graphic on the market's Web page Monday showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown. Although the website described the Policy Analysis Market as a Middle East market, the graphic also included the possibility of a North Korea missile attack. The announcement at the Policy Analysis Market website now brags that it will reopen free of government involvement. The idea is still grotesque, and the site would still allow terrorists to make money off their own attacks. Bet on an attack, conduct the attack, cash the check. Beyond ridiculous. Who is behind the new site? The domain is registered to Net Exchange http://www.nex.com/>, which originally developed the market with Pentagon funding. So who is funding the market now? I'm not a journalist. But someone should find out.
Re: [CTRL] It is the soldier, ........ ( Happy Veteran's Day)
-Caveat Lector- Bravo, Daniel! I couldn't have put it better myself. Way to nail it. If only the soilder knew he was fighting not for his or his familys freedom or even freedom of speech but the freedom of global companies to expand into markets not yet tapped by removing troublesum governments from power by force. He might feel pretty disillusioned On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 15:19, you wrote: -Caveat Lector- With thanks to Nancy in Oxnard It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag. Anonymous www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] Woman Who Filed Sex Suit Against Bush Dead
Of course the most suspicious aspect of this account is that her suicide was attributed to a gunshot wound to the head, which, given the fact that female suicide by gunshot over the age of 19 almost *never* happens, should raise more than a few red flags. When women die from gunshot wounds, they tend rather overwhelmingly to be shot by *men*, not themselves. (That's what pills are for, don'tchaknow.) Really, if you're going to whack someone and try to make it look like a suicide, you should do your homework and at least try to make it look plausible. Oops. Whatever actually happened aside, where the hell is the media on this? Don't you think this whole thing would be worth even a *mention*? The silence is deafening. Remember Dubya Biographer James Hatfield's (Fortunate Son) suicide in July of 2001? I'm certain we haven't forgotten about Paul Wellstone's accident... Surely there's more. Anyone know of any ongoing databases listing the Bush Suspicious Body Count? I seem to recall seeing a very well-detailed listing covering the Clinton years; where's Dubya's? As the Chickenhawk-in-Chief says, Bring 'em on! --eh > Woman Who Filed Sex > Suit Against Bush Dead > Clipped from a Yahoo board: > 11-10-3 > > Woman who filed sexual assault lawsuit against bush confirmed dead, cause of death listed as gunshot wound to head... > > I finally got some confirmation from an obit in the Houston Chronicle that Margie Schoedinger, the woman who filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Bush last year, died in September. > > I called the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, which lists her cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head and suicide. Anyone versed in CIA/Mafia lingo knows that suicide sometimes means murder or at least carries with it some pressure to commit suicide by outside parties, such as those against whom that person has filed a lawsuit. I'm not yet saying this is a murder - you draw your own conclusion.
[CTRL] New UPI editor's journalism oath to Rev. Moon
from http://www.gorenfeld.net/blog/2003_11_01_barchive.html#106850250361714868 Monday, November 10, 2003 New UPI editor's journalism oath to Rev. Moon As you may recall, United Press International was the home of legendary reporter Helen Thomas until it was bought by the Moonies in 2000. Now, the editors of Rev. Moon's publications claim a Christian Science Monitor-ish separation between church and newspaper. But today, UPI has announced that its new editor is to be Michael J. Marshall, who used to run Moon's The World and I, and, well... Cut to May, 2003, in a Workshop on Journalism and Media. Your host: media mogul Rev. Moon (we are not exactly talking about the Poynter Institute). The following scene, transcribed here at a Unification Church website, occurs. Moon is ticking off the seven reasons he's the Messiah, and talking about how to get the word out in the press, when suddenly... REV. MOON (addressing Marshall) Are you with World and I? Can you follow what I'm saying, do what I'm saying, the contents? For how long? MICHAEL MARSHALL, EDITOR I will commit to follow forever. REV. MOON Forever, for life. Great. And from another Moon speech, Nov. 30, 2000 in Brazil, more UPI fun. Now, the best way to become famous will be to write articles about Rev. Moon. The media organization that employs the reporters who write such articles and publishes them will be respected around the world. UPI was purchased just as it was about to collapse, and it is being supported now. UPI can write such articles. In a few years, if they keep this up until 2003, then everything will be finished.
[CTRL] More on Electronic Touch-Screen Voting...
...or what I like to call The End of Democracy! - from http://www.sptimes.ru/archive/times/904/opinion/o_10419.htm The St. Petersburg Times #904, Tuesday, September 23, 2003 OPINION Chris Floyd's Global Eye Vanishing Act It's a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It's a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers - and presidential family members - lie down together in the slime. It's a hacker's dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny. It's how the United States, the world's greatest democracy, casts its votes. And it's why George W. Bush will almost certainly be the next president of the United States - no matter what the ***people*** of the United States might want. The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players - Diebold, ESS, and Sequoia - with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies - all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid - have been given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide by the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems - many using touch-screen technology that leaves no paper trail at all - are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities. The technology had a trial run in the 2002 mid-term elections. In Georgia, serviced by new Diebold systems, a popular Democratic governor and senator were both unseated in what the media called amazing upsets, with results showing vote swings of up to 16 percent from the last pre-ballot polls. In computerized Minnesota, former vice president Walter Mondale - a replacement for popular incumbent Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash days before the vote - was also defeated in a large last-second vote swing. Convenient glitches in Florida saw an untold number of votes intended for the Democratic candidate registering instead for Governor Jeb L'il Brother Bush. A Florida Democrat who lost a similarly glitched local election went to court to have the computers examined - but the case was thrown out by a judge who ruled that the innards of America's voting machines are the trade secrets of the private companies who make them. Who's behind these private companies? It's hard to tell: the corporate lines - even the bloodlines - of these competitors are so intricately mixed. For example, at Diebold - whose corporate chief, Wally O'Dell, a top Bush fundraiser, has publicly committed himself to delivering his home state's votes to Bush next year - the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at rival ESS. The brothers were originally staked in the vote-count business by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing steering group stacked with Bushist faithful. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist Christian Reconstructionist movement, which openly advocates a theocratic takeover of American democracy, placing the entire society under the dominion of Christ the King. This dominion includes the death penalty for homosexuals, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, stoning of sinners and - we kid you not - slavery, one of the most beneficent of Biblical laws. Ahmanson also has major holdings in ESS, whose former CEO is Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes; needless to say, his initial victory was reported as an amazing upset. Hagel still has a million-dollar stake in the parent company of ESS. In Florida, Jeb Bush's first choice for a running mate in his 1998 gubernatorial race was ESS lobbyist Sandra Mortham, who made a mint installing the machines that counted Jeb's votes. Sequoia also has a colorful history, most recently in Louisiana, where it was the center of a massive corruption case that sent top state officials to jail for bribery, most of it funneled through Mob-connected front firms. Sequoia executives were also indicted, but escaped trial after giving immunized testimony against state officials. The UK-owned company's corporate parent is private equity firm Madison Dearborn - a partner of the Carlyle Group, where George Bush I makes millions trolling the world for war pork, privatizations and sweetheart deals with government insiders. Meanwhile, the shadowy defense contractor SAIC has jumped into the vote-counting game, both directly and through spin-offs by its top brass, including Admiral Bill Owens - former military aide
[CTRL] AP: 9 / 11 Leader Says Plot Began in 1996
from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Terror-Mastermind.html September 22, 2003 AP: 9 / 11 Leader Says Plot Began in 1996 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 9:33 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, told U.S. officials the plot was five years in the making and that a wave of suicide attacks was supposed to follow, say interrogation reports reviewed by The Associated Press. Mohammed said the plan, first developed in 1996, called for hijacking five planes on each American coast, but was changed several times as al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden sought to improve the chances that the attacks could be pulled off simultaneously. Mohammed, a key captive in the U.S. war on terrorism, also addressed one of the questions raised by congressional investigators in their Sept. 11 review. He said he never heard of a Saudi man named Omar al-Bayoumi who provided rent money and assistance to two airliner hijackers when they arrived in California. Congressional investigators have suggested Bayoumi could have aided the hijackers or been a Saudi intelligence agent, charges the Saudi government vehemently deny. The FBI also has cast doubt on that theory after extensive investigation. In fact, Mohammed claims he did not arrange for anyone on U.S. soil to assist hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they arrived in California. Mohammed said there ``were no al-Qaida operatives or facilitators in the United States to help al-Mihdhar or al-Hazmi settle in the United States,'' one report says. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were on the plane that was flown into the Pentagon. Mohammed portrays those two as central to the plot, and even more important than Mohammed Atta, initially identified as the likely hijacking ringleader. Mohammed said he communicated with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar while they were in the United States by using Internet chat software, the reports say. Mohammed said al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were among the four original operatives bin Laden assigned to him for the plot, a significant revelation because they were the only two whom U.S. authorities were seeking for terrorist ties just before Sept. 11. U.S. authorities continue to investigate the many statements that Mohammed has made in interrogations, seeking to eliminate deliberate misinformation. But they have been able to corroborate with other captives and evidence much of his account of the Sept. 11 planning. Mohammed told his interrogators the hijacking teams were originally made up of members from different countries where al-Qaida had recruited, but that in the final stages bin Laden chose instead to use a large group of young Saudi men. As the plot came closer to fruition, Mohammed learned ``there was a large group of Saudi operatives that would be available to participate as the muscle in the plot to hijack planes in the United States,'' one report says Mohammed told his captors. Saudi Arabia was bin Laden's home country, although it revoked his citizenship in the 1990s and he reviled its alliance with the United States during the Persian Gulf War and beyond. Saudi authorities have suggested bin Laden has tried to drive a wedge between the United States and the kingdom, hoping to fracture the alliance. U.S. intelligence has suggested that Saudis were chosen, instead, because many were willing to follow bin Laden and they could more easily get into the United States because of the countries' friendly relations. Mohammed's interrogation report states he told Americans some of the original operatives assigned to the plot did not make it because they had trouble getting into the United States. Mohammed was captured in a March 1 raid by Pakistani forces and CIA operatives in Rawalpindi. He is being interrogated by the CIA at an undisclosed location. He told interrogators about other terror plots that were in various stages of planning or had been temporarily disrupted when he was captured, including one planned for Singapore. The sources who allowed AP to review the reports insisted that specific details not be divulged about those operations because U.S. intelligence continues to investigate some of the methods and search for some of the operatives. The interrogation reports make dramatically clear that Mohammed and al-Qaida were still actively looking to strike U.S., other Western and Israeli targets across the world as of this year. Mohammed told his interrogators he had worked in 1994 and 1995 in the Philippines with Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah on the foiled Bojinka plot to blow up 12 Western airliners simultaneously in Asia. After Yousef and Murad were captured, foiling the plot in its final stages, Mohammed began to devise a new plot that focused on hijackings on U.S. soil. In 1996, he tried to persuade bin Laden ``to give him money and operatives so he could hijack
[CTRL] Iraqi doctors blame cancer rise on depleted uranium shells
from http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=newscat=8id=269783 All rights reserved. Copyright ©2000 - 2003 Editorial comments: [EMAIL PROTECTED] japantoday > national Iraqi doctors blame cancer rise on depleted uranium shells Sunday, August 17, 2003 at 06:19 JST TOKYO - An increasing number of Iraqis are suffering from cancer and leukemia allegedly caused by depleted uranium shells the United States military used in the area, two visiting doctors from Iraq said in presentations in Japan over the past two weeks. Around 116 out of 100,000 people were diagnosed in 2001 with cancer in the vicinity of Basra in southern Iraq, where the U.S. military used depleted uranium shells in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, according to one of the doctors. The number marks a 10-fold increase from the 11 cases diagnosed in 1988, he said. Jawad Al Ali, 59, a doctor from Basra, said an increasing number of families have members who are suffering from cancer, and the death toll from cancer has risen 19-fold during the same period. Several Japanese civic groups jointly invited Ali and Janan Ghalib Hassan to Japan as part of their activities to make known the harmful effects of depleted uranium shells. The two delivered presentations in cities including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were devastated by atomic bombs the U.S. dropped in 1945 in World War II. Hassan, 47, said that in 2001, 611 babies were born with no limbs, no eyes or other birth defects, compared with 37 such cases in 1990. Ali expressed concern that a high number of cancer patients will emerge in Baghdad and other parts of the country due to the recent U.S.-led war on Iraq. Depleted uranium, a metal remainder left when natural uranium is refined, is used in artillery shells and bombs designed to penetrate tanks and other armored vehicles. The metal is believed to turn into small particles when a shell hits its target, and can be toxic in humans if breathed or eaten. The U.S. has been denying, including via embassy Web sites, such adverse effects, asserting there is no basis to claims that depleted uranium causes cancer in newborns. But Yuko Fujita, an assistant professor at Keio University who examined the effects of radioactivity in Iraq from May to June, said that damage from depleted uranium will be more serious in the future due to the recent war. I doubt that Iraq is fabricating data because in fact there are many children suffering from leukemia in hospitals, Fujita said. As a result of the Iraq war, the situation will be desperate in some five to 10 years. Regarding efforts by Japan in helping to rebuild Iraq, he said, Japan should build up-to-date hospitals for children with cancer instead of sending Self-Defense Forces personnel. (Kyodo News)
[CTRL] Blair's office substantially altered Iraq dossier, British probe hears
from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=storyu=/afp/20030818/wl_mideast_afp/britain_iraq_inquiry_030818190320 Blair's office substantially altered Iraq dossier, British probe hears Mon Aug 18, 3:03 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s office authorized a substantial rewrite of the government's controversial dossier on Iraq (news - web sites), an inquiry into the apparent suicide of weapons expert David Kelly heard. Kelly's death is the subject of a parliamentary inquiry, amid allegations -- reportedly based on the weapons scientist's evidence -- that the Blair administration exaggerated the case for war on Iraq. An email from Blair's director of communications Alastair Campbell to chief-of-staff Jonathan Powell, dated September 5, disclosed that the dossier was being substantially rewritten ahead of its publication on September 24. Campbell, 46, is the man accused by BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan of personally beefing up Downing Street's controversial dossier on Iraq, aimed at justifying the case for military action ahead of the March war. Gilligan alleged in a British newspaper article on June 1 that Campbell, who is set to testify before the probe Tuesday, was responsible for inserting a sensational claim into the dossier, a week before its publication, that stated Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons in just 45 minutes. Documents released to the inquiry Monday showed that the dossier should be altered as per TB's discussion -- an apparent reference to Tony Blair. It said: Re dossier, substantial rewrite with JS and Julian M in charge, which JS will take to US next Friday, and be in shape Monday thereafter. Structure as per TB's discussion. Agreement that there has to be real intelligence material in their presentation. JS apparently referred to John Scarlett, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, while Julian Miller was the the Cabinet Office's chief-of-the-assessment-staff. The US stood for the United States. Meanwhile a separate email from Powell, also presented to the inquiry Monday, outlined his misgivings over the dossier on the potential threat of Iraqi weapons. The government row with the BBC over whether or not the government sexed up the dossier and Kelly's subsequent and mysterious death have left Blair, who is dwindling badly in opinion polls, facing his gravest crisis since coming to power in 1997. Kelly apparently committed suicide in July days after being grilled by two parliamentary committees and after he was named by the defence ministry as the likely source of Gilligan's reports. The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced, Powell said in an email addressed to Scarlett. The document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam, said the e-mail -- dated September 17 last year -- exactly a week before the dossier was published. It shows he (Saddam) has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the West, Powell said in the e-mail. Now in its second week, the inquiry into Kelly's death has turned to focus on the role of Blair's office, with the careers of several officials including Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon hanging in the balance. The government has faced criticism for identifying Kelly, a top expert on biological weapons, with concern that failing to protect the scientist from the ensuing media and political storm may have contributed to his death. It remains to be seen who will take the political flak for the crisis, but many commentators have named Hoon as the likely government scapegoat. The inquiry heard last week that Hoon himself had overruled the advice of his top civil servant and decided to burden Kelly with the added pressure of testifying publicly in front of a parliamentary committee. Blair was also implicated when it emerged that he had personally ordered Kelly's defence ministry bosses to grill him for a second time over his contacts with Gilligan. Hoon and Blair, both currently on holiday, are expected to be summoned to appear at some point before the inquiry, due to last several more weeks.
[CTRL] Shh, don't tell anyone; we're running things
Shh, don't tell anyone; we're running things Jon Carroll Monday, August 18, 2003 ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/18/DD301973.DTL People with something to hide usually try to hide that something. Not a remarkable leap of logic, but lots of people are refusing to make it. The Bush administration doesn't have anything to hide, it's just, let's see, behaving prudently, or protecting executive privilege, or refusing to speculate. That last excuse is used for the question, How much is the occupation of Iraq costing? The Defense Department refuses to speculate. I mean, the Pentagon brass could look at the invoices and the pay stubs and get a rough idea, but they're unwilling to do that. Why? Because they want to protect the president. Why? Because he has something to hide. He has consistently lied to the American people about how much the war would cost -- and how long it would last, and why we were fighting it, and, gosh, just about everything. We do know that it must be costing an embarrassing amount because the Pentagon wanted to cut the extra monetary benefits to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to reduce the money drain. Then the news leaked out, and the Pentagon said oh no, it wasn't actually going to reduce the money going to soldiers, it was going to make up for the cuts in imminent danger pay and family separation allowances with compensatory raises in other, uh, somethings. The somethings weren't in the budget sent to Congress, but they were definitely in the plans for the, you know, next thingie. Soldiers make a great backdrop for presidential speeches, but let's face it, they just eat up money that could be better spent for shiny new weapons systems. And God knows we wouldn't want to raise taxes to pay our soldiers more. No, here's the plan: Increase the deficit and call it a growth package. Also, the soldiers should stop whining to reporters because their tours of duty keep getting extended. Oh, and sorry about the Taliban creeping back into Afghanistan, but we're a little overextended. Hold that line and fight fight fight, and we'll see you when we see you. I am not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here. Long after George W. Bush has retired to the board of directors of the Carlyle Group, the rest of us will be still wandering around in the great information blackout of aught-three. The Bush administration is now thoroughly devoted to its black-is-white strategy. We save the forests by cutting down the trees. We preserve the wilderness by building roads into its heart. We keep the air clean by lowering vehicle emissions standards. And we always, always, stay on message. Here's a problem that people with something to hide always have: The lies get so complicated that they get real hard to keep straight. The solution to that is to say as little as possible. When President Bush was finally embarrassed into holding a news conference, he managed to spend almost an hour saying nothing at all. He did say that we're all sinners but that gay marriage is a bad idea, which is a hard concept to parse. If we're all sinners, then who the hell are you to tell me which way to sin? It's the old marijuana bad, alcohol good tap- dance. Heterosexual oral sex good, homosexual oral sex bad. The Bible tells us so. The Bible also tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, but never mind that now. You queers wanna get married? Not on my watch. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney continues to refuse to release the details of his energy policy meetings. He has something to hide. Halliburton and Enron pretty much got the keys to the Treasury handed to them, but if we can't prove it, it didn't happen. Oh, and joblessness is at an all-time high even though we're just about to turn the corner, and we live in the United States of Insurance Companies, and, and . . . ah well. I'll take the Frappuccino, please, heavy on the nepenthe.
[CTRL] Voting machines criticized by scientists
from http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=58487ran=136139 Voting machines criticized by scientists By CHRISTINA NUCKOLS, The Virginian-Pilot © August 18, 2003 RICHMOND -- The touch-screen voting machines purchased by Norfolk last year put the city on the cusp of election technology, but the $1.2 million computer system is now under attack from computer scientists across the country. A report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists earlier this month said AccuVote touch screen computers, made by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems and used in 200 cities and counties in 13 states, are vulnerable to tampering. Norfolk is the only locality in Virginia using the Diebold machines, but computer scientists say they have similar concerns about the security of other brands of electronic voting equipment. ``It's not just Diebold,'' said David Dill, a Stanford University computer scientist. ``It's all of these machines. I don't think computer technology is ready for paperless electronic voting.'' State and local election officials say Dill and other computer scientists are wrong. Government officials say the technology experts failed to consider the security procedures developed over decades to prevent dishonest partisans from getting access to voting machines. ``Anybody would tell you that anything that's man-made could be compromised,'' said Norfolk Registrar Elisa Long. ``It may be possible for somebody to do this, but you have to ask how easy is it for someone to do this. We're not Fort Knox, but it would be very difficult.'' But pressure is mounting on state and local governments to re-evaluate the security of their voting machines. Dill has collected more than 1,000 signatures from computer scientists in a petition asking election officials and voting machine vendors to halt the sale of electronic machines until upgrades are made. Dill said he does not believe any voting fraud has yet occurred with the new machines. But he was disturbed by news reports during the November 2002 elections about the rapid proliferation of computerized voting screens, most of them made by three major manufacturers: Diebold, ESS of Omaha, Neb., and Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif. ``You could have national-level fraud,'' he said. The controversy is heating up just as national reforms are being implemented to fix problems exposed during the 2000 presidential election. Punch-card machine malfunctions and voter confusion over ballots in Florida created doubt over the outcome of that race. In response, federal officials promised to give states $3.9 million to replace aging voting machines and implement other reforms. ``Voting machines have not gotten a lot of attention from anybody for years,'' said Jean Jensen, secretary of the Virginia Board of Elections. ``Now the vendors are coming out of the woodwork and all kinds of people are suddenly experts on electronic voting machines.'' Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins, said that frenzy of activity is largely to blame for flaws he said he found in the Diebold machines. ``There was a rush to develop these machines without proper security procedures,'' he said in an interview. Rubin's report warned that a partisan infiltrator working for a voting machine vendor or a dishonest polling official could rig the equipment to miscount votes. On a smaller scale, the report warned that plastic ``smart cards'' used to ensure that each registered voter casts only one ballot can be replicated, with each counterfeit programmed to cast multiple votes for a single candidate. ``A 15-year-old computer enthusiast could make these counterfeit cards in a garage and sell them,'' Rubin said in a news release touting his report. Rubin's analysis is based on computer coding from the Diebold voting machines that was anonymously posted on the Internet. Diebold officials say the coding is outdated and incomplete. Long said a counterfeit card would likely be detected by her computers. Even if that didn't happen, she said, the computer system would alert workers if the number of ballots cast did not match the number of voters who arrived at the polls, triggering an audit that could identify any questionable activity. Norfolk purchased the AccuVote machines last year to replace its 20-year-old punch-card machines. The city was the first in Virginia to use touch screen computers, although Fairfax County, Arlington and Alexandria were already using other types of electronic voting machines. The new machines have been used in four elections in Norfolk. Workers at one precinct had trouble tabulating unofficial results last fall, but the machines themselves have worked well, Long said. Other registrars in South Hampton Roads say they are unaffected by the controversy over electronic voting machines. Although Virginia Beach and Chesapeake plan to replace their punch-card machines, officials in both cities
[CTRL] Has the Republican Party become hostile to the democratic process?
from http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_08_10_dneiwert_archive.html#106098896336594436 Has the Republican Party become hostile, or at best indifferent, to the democratic process? by David Neiwert This is a serious question, and it is raised by the GOP's own high-profile behavior of the past five years: -- Attempting to unseat a twice-elected president through an impeachment proceeding that had neither any rational basis nor popular support, and in the process undermining the office of the presidency. -- Forcing upon the electorate a president who lost the popular vote by more than half a million ballots, and who would have lost the Electoral College had all legally cast ballots been properly counted in Florida. -- Moreover, this theft of the election occurred under the auspices of a nakedly partisan Supreme Court whose tortured rulings en route to installing their candidate violated such basic principles of democracy as the constitutional separation of powers -- that is, the court in essence chose their own successors (who will assuredly be movement conservatives like themselves), something the Constitution does not empower them to do. -- What was particularly disturbing about this ruling and subsequent installation of a Republican president was that it was so inimical to the fundamental democratic principle that every person's legally cast vote should count (and certainly an aspect of this is that half-million more votes for his opponent should have counted for something as well). Indeed, Justice Antonin Scalia, during the process of bending the law whichever way was necessary to obtain the outcome desired by the Bush team, went even so far as to declare: There is no right of suffrage under Article II. This means, in simple terms, that citizens have no constitutional right to vote for President. (The thinking that could produce such an argument, by the way, is identical to the strict construction that is able to argue that the Constitution does not contain a right to privacy.) -- Evidently not satisfied with holding the presidency, the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress, Republicans have stepped up their efforts to consolidate their political power in every corner of the nation -- and have again demonstrated a willingness to overthrow basic democratic institutions to do so. This was especially on display this spring and summer in Texas, where Tom DeLay's plan to redistrict the state politically -- ignoring long-established traditions of reserving such work for Census years -- induced patriotic Democrats in the Texas Senate, who refused to participate in the trashing of basic principles of governance, to flee the state (twice) rather than allow DeLay's scam to succeed. (Indeed, as Lambert Strether points out today over at Eschaton, Texas Republicans are now threatening to postpone the primary election next March if the extralegal redistricting plan is not in place!) -- This refusal to accept the outcome of elections and traditional democratic processes has recently surfaced with a vengeance in California, where far-right Republicans exploited the state's devastated economy -- the chief havoc having been wreaked by a cadre of GOP business allies, particularly Enron, through outrageous manipulations of the energy markets on the Pacific Coast -- by forcing a recall of a governor who just won re-election last year. Having created first a power vacuum and then a circus atmosphere in the effort to fill that void, Republicans clearly hope to capture the governorship in a state where they clearly are incapable of taking power through ordinary means. Democratic institutions are the heart of our stable society; and by consistently disrupting and overthrowing these institutions in the blind pursuit of power, Republicans betray their own basic untrustworthiness when it comes to holding the reins of American governance. And when they consistently demonstrate that they are not willing to abide by the rules, nor respect traditions and institutions, we also have to ask: Just how conservative is this movement anyway? Where does it stop? Will Republicans ever accept democratic outcomes of elections? Will they ever respect the right of individuals to vote and for their vote to be counted? What happens when a Democrat wins the presidency in 2004? Do we have any reason to believe that the right will ever accept that outcome? And to what lengths will they next go to refuse or overeturn it? David Neiwert is a freelance journalist based in Seattle. His reportage for MSNBC.com on domestic terrorism won the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism in 2000. He is the author of In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest (1999, WSU Press), as well as the forthcoming Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of the Bellevue Japanese-American Community. His freelance work can be found at Salon.com, the Washington Post, MSNBC and
[CTRL] Study: 9 / 11 - Style Attack on U.S. Likely
from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Britain-World-Terrorism.html August 17, 2003 Study: 9 / 11 - Style Attack on U.S. Likely By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 1:46 p.m. ET LONDON (AP) -- Another Sept. 11-style terrorism attack is ``highly likely'' in the United States, which ranks fourth in an index assessing the risk to 186 countries, a research company said Sunday. The London-based World Markets Research Center ranked Colombia, Israel, Pakistan, the United States and the Philippines, in descending order, as the five countries most likely to be targeted in a terrorist attack in the next 12 months, Guy Dunn, author of the company's World Terrorism Index, said in a telephone interview. The goal of the index, to be published Monday, is to assess the risk of terrorism in 186 countries and, ``crucially, against those countries' interests abroad over the next 12 months,'' he said. Five criteria were used: motivation of terrorists, the presence of terror groups, the scale and frequency of past attacks, efficacy of the groups in carrying out attacks, and prevention -- how many attacks have been thwarted by the country. The categories were weighted differently; for example 40 percent for motivation and 10 percent for prevention. ``Another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack in the United States is highly likely,'' the report states. ``Networks of militant Islamist groups are less extensive in the U.S. than they are in Western Europe, but U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan and Iraq has exacerbated anti-U.S. sentiment.'' In terms of motivation, Dunn said, ``the United States, as a global superpower, is considered a legitimate, high-profile target.'' But in terms of presence of terrorist cells, the United States has relatively few, ``although it is probably the most open society in the world,'' he said. Terrorists also consider U.S. interests in other countries legitimate political targets, he said. The company, specializing in country risk, has hundreds of clients in 45 nations. Approximately 80 percent are multinational companies and banks, Dunn said. The remaining 20 percent are mostly governments, but also universities and charities. Foreign Ministries, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are among them. Terrorism has moved from being a peripheral threat before Sept. 11 2001, to being a key risk to business, Dunn said. It is no longer isolated in the targeted countries, he said, giving the example of the Irish Republican Army's attacks limited to the United Kingdom. In a survey of the clients, 72 percent said they considered terrorism when making international location decisions, he said. ``What changed with 9-11 was that the threat was internationalized. . All countries were at some risk. In essence terrorism has become a key risk to business. Companies have to take a much more specific interest in terrorism,'' Dunn said. The index is intended to help clients ``put their own assumptions into perspective,'' he said. The countries listed sixth through ninth are Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq and India. Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom are tied for 10th place, he said. The report says the country least likely to be attacked by terrorists is North Korea, Dunn said. ``It may have be on the 'Axis of Evil,' but this is about terrorist attacks on its soil,'' and repression practiced by the Pyongyang government hinders terrorism, Dunn said. Iceland is next-to-last at 185, and Andorra, Belarus, Liechtenstein and Slovenia are tied for places 181-184, Dunn said. Copyright 2003 The Associated Press | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
[CTRL] Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House
from http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=257row=0 POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights ZNet Friday, August 15, 2003 by Greg Palast I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that put out our lights tonight. I came up against these characters -- the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers. In the 1980s, NiMo built a nuclear plant, Nine Mile Point, a brutally costly piece of hot junk for which NiMo and its partner companies charged billions to New York State's electricity ratepayers. To pull off this grand theft by kilowatt, the NiMo-led consortium fabricated cost and schedule reports, then performed a Harry Potter job on the account books. In 1988, I showed a jury a memo from an executive from one partner, Long Island Lighting, giving a lesson to a NiMo honcho on how to lie to government regulators. The jury ordered LILCO to pay $4.3 billion and, ultimately, put them out of business. And that's why, if you're in the Northeast, you're reading this by candlelight tonight. Here's what happened. After LILCO was hammered by the law, after government regulators slammed Niagara Mohawk and dozens of other book-cooking, document-doctoring utility companies all over America with fines and penalties totaling in the tens of billions of dollars, the industry leaders got together to swear never to break the regulations again. Their plan was not to follow the rules, but to ELIMINATE the rules. They called it deregulation. It was like a committee of bank robbers figuring out how to make safecracking legal. But they dare not launch the scheme in the USA. Rather, in 1990, one devious little bunch of operators out of Texas, Houston Natural Gas, operating under the alias Enron, talked an over-the-edge free-market fanatic, Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, into licensing the first completely deregulated power plant in the hemisphere. And so began an economic disease called regulatory reform that spread faster than SARS. Notably, Enron rewarded Thatcher's Energy Minister, one Lord Wakeham, with a bushel of dollar bills for 'consulting' services and a seat on Enron's board of directors. The English experiment proved the viability of Enron's new industrial formula: that the enthusiasm of politicians for deregulation was in direct proportion to the payola provided by power companies. The power elite first moved on England because they knew Americans wouldn't swallow the deregulation snake oil easily. The USA had gotten used to cheap power available at the flick of switch. This was the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt who, in 1933, caged the man he thought to be the last of the power pirates, Samuel Insull. Wall Street wheeler-dealer Insull created the Power Trust, and six decades before Ken Lay, faked account books and ripped off consumers. To frustrate Insull and his ilk, FDR gave us the Federal Power Commission and the Public Utilities Holding Company Act which told electricity companies where to stand and salute. Detailed regulations limited charges to real expenditures plus a government-set profit. The laws banned power trading and required companies to keep the lights on under threat of arrest -- no blackout blackmail to hike rates. Of particular significance as I write here in the dark, regulators told utilities exactly how much they had to spend to insure the system stayed in repair and the lights stayed on. Bureaucrats crawled along the wire and, like me, crawled through the account books, to make sure the power execs spent customers' money on parts and labor. If they didn't, we'd whack'm over the head with our thick rule books. Did we get in the way of these businessmen's entrepreneurial spirit? Damn right we did. Most important, FDR banned political contributions from utility companies -- no 'soft' money, no 'hard' money, no money PERIOD. But then came George the First. In 1992, just prior to his departure from the White House, President Bush Senior gave the power industry one long deep-through-the-teeth kiss good-bye: federal deregulation of electricity. It was a legacy he wanted to leave for his son, the gratitude of power companies which ponied up $16 million for the Republican campaign of 2000, seven times the sum they gave Democrats. But Poppy Bush's gift of deregulating of wholesale prices set by the feds only got the power pirates halfway to the plunder of Joe Ratepayer. For the big payday they needed deregulation at the state level. There were only two states, California and Texas, big enough and Republican enough to put the electricity market con into operation. California fell first. The power companies spent $39 million to defeat a 1998 referendum pushed by Ralph Nadar which would have blocked the de-reg scam. Another $37 million was spent on
[CTRL] Less Than Meets the Eye?
Sources tell ABCNEWS the U.S. government sting operation that led to the arrest of accused arms dealer Hemant Lakhani was a setup. (ABCNEWS.com) Less Than Meets the Eye? U.S. Government Sting Operation Criticized as Setup By Brian Ross Aug. 13 - Administration officials are leaving out key facts and exaggerating the significance of the alleged plot to smuggle a shoulder-launched missile into the United States, law enforcement officials told ABCNEWS. They say there's a lot less than meets the eye. The accused ringleader, British national Hemant Lakhani, appeared today in federal court in Newark, N.J., and was ordered held without bond on charges of attempting to provide material support and material resources to terrorists and acting as an arms broker without a license. Outside the courtroom, U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie called Lakhani an ally of terrorists who want to kill Americans. He, on many occasions, in recorded conversations, referred to Americans as 'bastards' [and] Osama bin Laden as a hero, said Christie. But what he did not say was just how much of the alleged missile plot was a government setup from start to finish. For example, Lakhani had no contacts in Russia to buy the missiles before the sting and had no known criminal record for arms dealing, officials told ABCNEWS. Here we have a sting operation on some kind of small operator who's bought one weapon when actually, on the gray and black market, hundreds of such weapons charge hands, said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. Court documents show much of the case is based on the government's key cooperating witness, an informant seeking lenient treatment on federal drug charges, officials told ABCNEWS. He was the first person who led the government to Lakhani. 'He Might Say Anything' The missile shipped into the New York area last month was not a real missile - just a mockup - also arranged entirely by the government. The government also arranged the meetings at a New Jersey hotel and elsewhere, where Lakhani allegedly told undercover agents posing as al Qaeda terrorists about his support of bin Laden. One would have to ask yourself, would this have occurred at all without the government? said Gerald Lefcourt, a criminal defense attorney. In London today, Lakhani's neighbors described him as a quiet man who worked in the garment industry and had faced serious financial problems. I would have hoped the United States is thwarting real terrorism and not something manufactured because here all they're doing is stopping something they created, said Lefcourt. Government officials said the case will show that Lakhani went along with the scheme willingly and was not entrapped. But the question remains whether any of this would have happened if the government had not set it up.
[CTRL] Get-out-of-Jail-Free Card for Oil Companies
from http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx080803.html August 8, 2003 Get-out-of-Jail-Free Card for Oil Companies Take a gander at Executive Order 13303, which President Bush signed on May 22. It is innocuously entitled, Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest. But that other property refers directly to-surprise, surprise--oil. And the purpose of the Executive Order seems to be to shield U.S. companies and oil execs from prosecution. Unilaterally declaring a national emergency, Bush wrote: Any judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with respect to . . . all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein . . . in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons. Included in the definition of United States persons is any entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches). That means ExxonMobil. Leaving aside the legalese--you know, all those thereofs and hereafters--what we have here is a get-out-of-jail-free card for all of Bush's and Cheney's buddies in the oil industry. They can bribe officials, they can underpay their foreign workers, they can recklessly spill oil all over the lands and waters of Iraq--and still they will be untouchable by any arm of the law, at least that's how it reads to me. On top of that, if they're unloading Iraqi oil at some U.S. port, say Baltimore, and they spill it there, they may still be immune, because the order covers any petroleum, petroleum products or natural gas originating in Iraq, including any Iraqi-origin oil inventories wherever located. Not to worry. The Bush Administration said Wednesday that the immunity wouldn't be nearly so broad, the Los Angeles Times reported on August 7. But legal scholars interviewed by the LA Times said the order essentially gives oil companies blanket protection. In the lead-up to the war, peace activists were ridiculed for having the temerity to suggest that this war had anything to do with oil. But here it is, in black and white, in Executive Order 13303. -- Matthew Rothschild
[CTRL] Muffling the Left: Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes
from http://villagevoice.com/issues/0332/lee.php Watchdog Reveals Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes Muffling the Left by Chisun Lee August 6 - 12, 2003 he Bush administration is actively seeking to gag or punish social service organizations that challenge the party line on such matters as health care for poor children and HIV prevention, according to a new report. Nonprofits that disagree with the president's own solutions, or go further and blame him for problems in the first place, have come to expect unpleasant consequences. Those might include audits of federal-funds spending and reviews of content, such as workshop literature. If you disagree with the administration on ideological grounds, they're going to come down with a hammer. This has huge implications for the free flow of speech in this country, says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, itself a nonprofit, which released the report last week as part of its 20-year-old mission to monitor White House budget and spending decisions. As dramatic as that assessment sounds, the assault has been nearly invisible to the public. The Bush administration and its allies have hit progressives under the radar, maneuvering in the soporific-if enormously important-realm of nonprofit oversight. The idea of a right-wing conspiracy to audit nonprofits is more likely to set off yawns than outrage. Yet virtually every imaginable social cause-civil liberties, reproductive rights, affirmative action, accessible health care-relies on a lifeline of nonprofit advocates, fundraisers, and service providers. Since nonprofits operate on a tax-exempt basis and often receive government funding, they have always been subject to federal oversight and are forbidden from engaging in electoral politics. Under George W. Bush, however, oversight has quietly morphed into ideologically motivated intimidation and censorship, according to OMB Watch's review of some dozen specific conflicts. Even though causes of the right have their own tax-exempt advocates, conservatives have long reviled nonprofits in general for supporting the welfare state, according to Bass. He points to the major efforts to defund nonprofits and restrict their advocacy during the Reagan administration in the '80s and in Newt Gingrich's Congress in the '90s. But those were head-on, equal opportunity offensives, going after an entire genre. Under obvious attack, the nonprofits really rose up like a firestorm and survived, says Bass. The selective, stealthy approach of today is unprecedented, he says. His organization had wanted to put out the alert months ago, but piecing together the scattered developments took time. Almost every example we have here, there's a link to the Bush administration directly, not just ideologically, says Bass. Bush spokesperson Allen Abney declined to comment Monday, saying the White House had not yet thoroughly reviewed the July 28 critique. In perhaps the clearest example of the report's claims of squashed dissent, Bush's Health and Human Services Department (HHS) threatened advocates of the nonprofit Head Start-including parents and teachers of poor children-with monetary sanctions or even prosecution for speaking out against a presidential proposal. Head Start is the hardly controversial program that has promoted education and healthcare for young children nationwide since 1965. Participating providers launched a campaign earlier this year to get parents and teachers to tell Congress their concerns that standards and funding might fall with Bush's plan to decentralize the program. HHS soon began warning Head Start affiliates that their lobbying might violate nonprofit rules. This summer the National Head Start Association sued the administration, claiming it was interfering with First Amendment rights, and won. But organizers worry that the administration's warnings, wrong as they were, might have frightened many into silence. HHS began its apparent policing of protest a year earlier, when it audited over a dozen AIDS service organizations after they publicly shamed the administration at a July 2002 AIDS conference in Barcelona. There, U.S.-based advocates accused the Bush administration of cheaping out on HIV prevention and, during HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's closely watched speech, heckled so forcefully as to drown out his entire address. Conservative members of Congress immediately demanded that HHS review the nonprofits' spending of federal funds in Spain. HHS complied. Thompson's deputy, Claude Allen, told The Washington Post at the time that advocacy groups need to think twice before preventing a Cabinet-level official from bringing a message of hope to an international forum. In an interesting but brief mention, OMB Watch also reveals that groups currently applying for federal grants to provide humanitarian relief in Iraq are required to advertise the U.S. government's generosity. Presumably, any criticism of Bush administration policy would be
Re: [CTRL] Anti-Gay Hate Messages -was- WARNING: U.N. Group in 'showd...
-Caveat Lector- Wow, I had NO idea you people were so uptight! I'd figure anybody smart enough to see through the fog and lies of the current political climate could also see through the fog and lies of the anti-gay agenda propogated by the *EXACT SAME FORCES*. Sheesh. Mark S. Bilk nailed it, though. His reasoned, thoughtful response was right on the money. Way to go, Mark. Now where are the rest of you? I'm hoping you're too busy out there standing up for human rights, fighting the hate-mongering religious wackos sputtering monosyllabic diatribes about how we should all repent as the end is nigh or something... (Hey, the end may very well be nigh, but we'd be better off increasing fuel efficiency than hassling people about who they love...) And YOU, iNFoWaRZ -- if that IS your real name, heh heh (are you really a teenage hacker?) -- to you I'd ask: Where is the morality in discrimination, bigotry, and hate? As you seem to have cornered the market on the latter, I'd like to see a bit of the former... Lastly, re: Jim Rarey's post: Of course belief in God is a matter of faith, not scientific evidence, just like belief in evolution. You're kidding, right? If not, perhaps someday you should speak to an actual scientist. Or better, just show the 0.6% of qualifying DNA that proves you're a human and not a chimp. To all of you who refuse to stand up for human dignity, I'd like to make a deal: I'll call off the recruitment party if you stop imposing on me the supposed words of your invisible superheroes who live in outer space. Fair enough? --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] Germany tipped CIA about Sept 11 pilot
from http://www.expatica.com/germany.asp?pad=190,205,item_id=33442 Germany tipped CIA about Sept 11 pilot 13 August 2003 HAMBURG - The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had one of the September 11, 2001 terror pilots under surveillance as early as March 1999 after a tip from German security services, according to joint investigative reports in Germany. The weekly magazine Stern and the first German public television channel ARD, in reports to be published and aired on Thursday, focus on Marwan Alshehhi, who piloted the Boeing plane which crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Centre. How Alshehhi then managed to slip from the view of the CIA is the focus of the reports by ARD and Stern, details of which were provided Deutsche Presse-Agentur, DPA in advance on Wednesday. The joint investigative reports said that in January 1999, Germany's security agency BfV first noted the name of a man named Marwan after he had placed calls with Haydar Sammar, a German-Syrian living in Hamburg, who had been under surveillance since 1993. Two months later, in March 1999, the BfV passed the information about Marwan on to the CIA, which then also began keeping surveillance on him, ARD and Stern reported. The reports said the CIA had detailed information about Marwan Alshehhi, and the fact that he was from the United Arab Emirates and studying in Germany. The CIA had his cellphone number and knew that he was in contact with Haydar, whom the Americans had suspected of being al-Qaeda's contact man in Germany. The reports add to the growing evidence of mistakes made at the CIA and other security agencies in the United States in failing to detect the plot by the suicide plane hijackers. © copyright 2003 Expatica Communications BV
[CTRL] Want a warhead for $1? Ask Halliburton. Just don't blame them when your life is ruined.
is not incriminated in any way (by prosecutors) or finds itself in any conspiracy charges. Accurate Arms may face additional problems related to the warheads it received from Halliburton in the Jet Research sale. At a Nov. 14, 2002, hearing in federal court in Albuquerque, U.S. Customs agent Tony Singleton said Jet Research actually transferred 6,000 of the warheads to Accurate Arms. Aside from the approximately 2,500 that were sold to Hudak, Accurate Arms can not account for the warheads, Singleton said. The warheads were meant to be part of a weapons system known as a shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapon, or SMAW, according to court documents. In a March interview with Canada's W-FIVE news, Hudak said he paid approximately $3,000 for the approximately 2,500 warheads and in fact only paid for the boxes required to ship them and for the handling. The warheads were quality assurance rejects from Jet Research that were deemed unsuitable for use in actual weapons, Hudak said. Hudak, who remains in federal custody at the Torrance County Detention Facility in Estancia, could not be reached. Regardless of who owned the warheads, they should not have been sold to a nongovernment entity, said Sam Russo, public affairs specialist for the Defense Contract Management Agency. The DCMA is in charge of overseeing defense contracts on behalf of the federal government. All of those explosive ordnance contracts have clauses that call for the contractor to demilitarize or destroy lots of explosive ordnance. They can't be sold on the open market, Russo said. SMAW weapons systems are currently being manufactured by Talley Defense Systems of Mesa, Ariz., which court documents initially identified as the source of Hudak's warheads. Talley, however, was not making the items in 1994 and had nothing to do with the sale of the SMAW warheads to Hudak, said Talley spokesman John Bednarz. There is no way we would ever sell anything to a member of the public or without Defense Department approval, Bednarz said. At the time of his arrest, Hudak was involved in counterterrorism training near Roswell for soldiers of the United Arab Emirates. Federal prosecutors claim that the devices have no legitimate civilian application and have successfully argued that Hudak should be held in jail until his trial in August. He faces a minimum 50-year sentence on charges that include illegal possession of destructive devices and conspiracy to export defense services without a license. Key Hudak case figures David Hudak: A Canadian citizen from Vancouver, British Columbia, and a demolitions expert. His companies, here and in Canada, provide explosives and counterterrorism training to police and military personnel. He is charged with illegal possession of destructive devices, exporting defense services without a license and conspiracy. If convicted, he faces a minimum 50 years in prison. Halliburton Corp.: A major U.S conglomerate and a major player in the international oil and gas industry. The company has also been involved in construction and defense contracting. Vice President Dick Cheney served as chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to focus on the presidential election. Jet Research Center: A former subsidiary of Halliburton based in Alvarado, Texas. Jet Research formerly had the contract to supply the U.S. military with Shoulder-fired Multipurpose Assault Weapons, or SMAW missiles. Hudak's attorneys claim the company initiated the sale of the SMAW warheads to Hudak. Accurate Arms Co.: A McEwen, Tenn.-based company that manufacturers smokeless powder and explosives for both the military and civilian markets. Accurate purchased the assets of Jet Research Center from Halliburton in 1994. Court documents show that Hudak ultimately purchased the SMAW warheads from Accurate Arms. __ Eric Hoffsten [EMAIL PROTECTED] 207 865 0230
[CTRL] Wall Street bullish on the spoils of war
from the August 14, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0814/p16s01-bogn.html Wall Street bullish on the spoils of war The global private military industry is changing how nations fight By Alan Miller The creeping military-industrial complex about which President Dwight Eisenhower warned us five decades ago has reached critical mass. In fact, P.W. Singer, a security analyst at the Brookings Institution, suggests that Ike would be flabbergasted by the recent proliferation of privatized military firms and their influence on public policy both here and abroad. Calling them the corporate evolution of old-fashioned mercenaries, Singer's illuminating new book, Corporate Warriors, says they provide the service side of war rather than weapons. They range from small consulting firms, formed by retired generals, to transnational corporations that lease out battalions of commandos. There are several hundreds of these firms, operating on six continents, boasting yearly revenues of more than $100 billion. Operating mostly in the shadows, they have been players in numerous conflicts over the last decade, ranging from Angola to the former Zaire. They helped put down several low-grade rebellions. The governments of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia have used them to remain in power. So can anyone else with, as Singer wryly adds, sufficient plowshares to beat into swords. The US military has become increasingly reliant on private contractors for a wide range of support services. Contractors currently handle the logistics for every major American military deployment. They maintain such weapons systems as the B-2 stealth bomber, attack helicopters, and drone reconnaissance aircraft. What's more, President Bush has directed that many of the contracts for postwar reconstruction in Iraq go to US-based firms. The number of private contract employees being used by the US military in Iraq is nearly 10 times what it was during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. While there were just 10 such firms in this country two decades ago, there are more than 30 today. Many of them are strategically based in northern Virginia, where their lobbyists have ready access to Pentagon officials. DynCorp is a case in point. As one of the Pentagon's largest contractors in Colombia, the firm provides intelligence, trains Colombian troops, and sprays coca crops to help combat the country's cocaine trade. The State Department hired DynCorp to provide security for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. Then there is Halliburton Corp. The hugely profitable concern, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed during his highly profitable hiatus from public service, has handled most of the logistical supplies in the Balkans since the mid-1990s. Not coincidentally, a Halliburton unit has become a major player in Iraq. One of its divisions, Kellogg Brown Root, received a major contract to provide a wide range of services from building modular barracks to managing airports. From 1994 to 2002, the Defense Department had contracts with US-based firms for an estimated $300 billion. Next year, the Pentagon will spend $25 billion on these firms, more than double last year's tab. Corporate consultants will train the new Iraqi military. DynCorp will train the new police force. While our military has traditionally relied on private contractors, Singer says the wholesale outsourcing of US military services since the 1990s is unprecedented. Underscoring the scope of these services, he raises a red flag about the degree to which the rapidly expanding privatized military industry is driving tactical and strategic objectives. The centuries-old mercenary trade has morphed into an immensely profitable corporate enterprise, complete with boards of directors, stockholders, and substantial returns on investment. And the post-cold-war period has spawned a slew of former military types with access to global arms bazaars. These latter-day soldiers of fortune are working for firms ready to roll, provided the price is right. Factor in Sept. 11, with a more amorphous enemy, and one can see why Wall Street is bullish on these proliferating military firms. A Defense Department official summed it up, noting: The war on terrorism is the full-employment act for these guys. But should it be? Singer worries that the current rush to privatize runs the risk of cutting crucial corners. For-profit firms, he warns, may be cost-effective, but they are largely unaccountable, with plenty of incentives to pad their payrolls and hide their failures. Government can be notoriously inefficient, to be sure. Even so, its constitutional duty is to provide for the common defense. Those responsible for this fundamental public service, Singer says, should be fully accountable to the public. He's exactly right. * Alan Miller is an editorial writer for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry By P.W. SingerCornell University 368 pp., $39.95 Full HTML
[CTRL] Stealing The Internet
from http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8528 Stealing The Internet Jeff Chester is executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. Steven Rosenfeld is a commentary editor and audio producer for TomPaine.com. Ever stop to wonder what is really happening to the Internet these days? The crackdown by the music industry on illegal downloading tells just part of the story. Even with the dot-com bust, the digital boom is here, as high-speed connections, faster processors and new wireless devices increasingly become part of life. But the thousands of lawsuits are not just about ensuring record companies and artists get the royalties they deserve. They're part of a larger plan to fundamentally change the way the Internet works. From Congress to Silicon Valley, the nation's largest communication and entertainment conglomerates -- and software firms that want their business -- are seeking to restructure the Internet, to charge people for high-speed uses that are now free and to monitor content in an unprecedented manner. This is not just to see if users are swapping copyrighted CDs or DVDs, but to create digital dossiers for their own marketing purposes. All told, this is the business plan of America's handful of telecom giants -- the phone, cable, satellite, wireless and entertainment companies that now bring high-speed Internet access to most Americans. Their ability to meter Internet use, monitor Internet content and charge according to those metrics is how they are positioning themselves for the evolving Internet revolution. The Internet's early promise as a medium where text, audio, video and data can be freely exchanged and the public interest can be served is increasingly being relegated to history's dustbin. Today, the part of the Net that is public and accessible is shrinking, while the part of the Net tied to round-the-clock billing is poised to grow exponentially. One front in the corporate high-tech takeover of the Internet can be seen in Congress. On July 21, the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet held a hearing on the Regulatory Status of Broadband. There, a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others, told Congress that Internet service providers (ISPs) should be able to impose volume-based fee structures, based on bits transmitted per month. This is part of a behind-the-scenes struggle by the Net's content providers and retailers to cut deals with the ISPs so that each sector will have unimpaired access to consumers and can maximize profits. The industry coalition spoke of tiered service, where consumers would be charged according to gold, silver and bronze levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the Digital Divide in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company. Anybody interested in other non-mainstream news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission. Meanwhile, in the courts, there has been a rash of new litigation spurred by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s pursuit of people who have illegally shared copyrighted music. The music industry no doubt hopes to discourage file-swapping piracy, and some big telecom companies, such as SBC Communications, have counter-sued, saying they will protect their clients' privacy. While that's good public relations, there's more to this story as well. Telecoms, like most big corporations, don't want other businesses, let alone the government, interfering in their operations -- so there's plenty of reasons to counter-sue -- even if the record companies and telecoms have parallel stakes in privatizing the Net. But there's also a technologically insidious element to this side of the story. The software now exists to track and monitor Internet content on a scale and to a degree that previously hasn't been possible. The RIAA is taking people to court because it has the technology to track illegal Internet file swapping. This level of content-tracking is the next-generation application of what's been developed to keep children and teenagers from viewing porn at the local library or home. Consider this typical bit of sales arcana from the Web site of Allot Communications, which says its software can track and filter Internet communications and use that analysis to bill consumers. Allot Communications provides network traffic management and content filtering solutions for enterprises, IP service providers, and educational
Re: [CTRL] We Already Know the Administration Was Lying
-Caveat Lector- In deference to William Shannon's posting of the Stephen C. Pelletiere piece, I should clarify: [IF Saddam was actually responsible for that action in '88] Why, that'd be whatever our captains of industry sold him! Ask Rumsfeld, he was there... we've got a nice pic of him smiling, shaking hands w/ his buddy Saddam at right about that time... [in actuality, five years earlier, as a Reagan Special Envoy and employed as head of the multinational pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle Co.] You know, just to clarify... --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban
from http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=430073 US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles 03 August 2003 After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at airports. The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the relatively well-publicised no-fly list, which covers about 1,000 people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could endanger the safety of their fellow passengers. The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is that the second list has been used to target political activists who challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they were on an FBI no-fly list. The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, work for a small pacifist magazine called War Times and say they have never been arrested, let alone have criminal records. Others who have filed complaints with the ACLU include a left-wing constitutional lawyer who has been strip-searched repeatedly when travelling through US airports, and a 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who was prevented from flying to Washington to join an anti-government protest. It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject to special questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, according to police records. In no case does it appear that a wanted criminal was apprehended. The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri Srikantiah, said she is troubled by several answers that the TSA gave to her questions. The agency, she said, had no way of making sure that people did not end up on the list simply because of things they had said or organisations they belonged to. Once people were on the list, there was no procedure for trying to get off it. The TSA did not even think it was important to keep track of people singled out in error for a security grilling. According to documents the agency released, it saw no pressing need to do so. It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly targeted. Right-wing civil libertarians have spoken out against the secret list, and at least one conservative organisation, the Eagle Forum, says its members have been interrogated by security staff. The complaints by the ACLU form part of a pattern of protest since the 11 September attacks, with the Bush administration repeatedly under fire for detaining people on the flimsiest of grounds in the name of the war on terror. Many Muslims have had a hard time, especially if they have a surname such as Hussein.
[CTRL] New Screening Plan Taking Flight
from http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/29/attack/main565609.shtml?cmp=EM8705 New Screening Plan Taking Flight WASHINGTON, July 31, 2003 It's the first truly national database of who is a risky passenger and who is not, and it may kick in the next time you buy an airline ticket, reports CBS News Correspondent Wyatt Andrews. Under what's called CAPPS, the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, the federal government will screen four areas of your reservation - name, address, phone number and birthday - match them against your credit records, and then crosscheck to see if you are a fugitive or on the terrorist watch list. When CAPPS is in use, passengers will be secretly categorized as green, yellow or red - with red meaning no fly and possible arrest. This solves the problem of whether or not, in the two-and-a-half-million people boarding aircraft on a daily basis, we can find a way to identify the few who deserve greater scrutiny before we let them on the plane, says Transportation Security Administration chief Jim Loy, who hopes to implement the program in about a year. That's the system to be tested now. For months, the government tried out a much more invasive CAPPS program that could check your identity plus medical and banking transactions. Privacy advocate David Soble calls the earlier program horrific, and says the backlash from both the public and Congress forced this new version, a kind of CAPPS-lite. It's obviously a good thing that financial information and medical information are off the table, but I think we still need to keep a very close eye on how this system is going to be designed, says Soble, spokesman for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Sobel said he's also concerned that the proposal doesn't require the government to say exactly where it gets personal information. Nuala O'Connor Kelly, Homeland Security's chief privacy officer, said the program has been reworked so less personal information will be checked. And people will be able to write or call to find out what's in the database about them, Kelly said. That was not the case under the original plan. Jay Stanley, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the changes were positive. But he remained wary. They haven't transformed a dog into a horse, but they've done some grooming on it, Stanley said. These are potentially fundamental changes in the relationship of the individual and the government, to have the government assigning risk scores to all of us. Congress ordered transportation officials to come up with an enhanced screening system following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But some of the harshest criticism of the initial plan came from lawmakers, who recently added the stipulation that federal officials test the program before implementing it.
[CTRL] 'Conservative' Bush Spends More than 'Liberal' Presidents Clinton, Carter
from http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-31-03.html July 31, 2003 'Conservative' Bush Spends More than 'Liberal' Presidents Clinton, Carter by Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven Veronique de Rugy is a fiscal policy analyst and Tad DeHaven a policy researcher at the Cato Institute. The Bush administration's newly released budget projections reveal an anticipated budget deficit of $450 billion for the current fiscal year, up another $151 billion since February. Supporters and critics of the administration are tripping over themselves to blame the deficit on tax cuts, the war, and a slow economy. But the fact is we have mounting deficits because George W. Bush is the most gratuitous big spender to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter. One could say that he has become the Mother of All Big Spenders. The new estimates show that, under Bush, total outlays will have risen $408 billion in just three years to $2.272 trillion: an enormous increase in federal spending of 22 percent. Administration officials privately admit that spending is too high. Yet they argue that deficits are appropriate in times of war and recession. So, is it true that the war on terrorism has resulted in an increase in defense spending? Yes. And, is it also true that a slow economy has meant a decreased stream of tax revenues to pay for government? Yes again. But the real truth is that national defense is far from being responsible for all of the spending increases. According to the new numbers, defense spending will have risen by about 34 percent since Bush came into office. But, at the same time, non-defense discretionary spending will have skyrocketed by almost 28 percent. Government agencies that Republicans were calling to be abolished less than 10 years ago, such as education and labor, have enjoyed jaw-dropping spending increases under Bush of 70 percent and 65 percent respectively. Now, most rational people would cut back on their spending if they knew their income was going to be reduced in the near future. Any smart company would look to cut costs should the business climate take a turn for the worse. But the administration has been free spending into the face of a recessionary economy from day one without making any serious attempt to reduce costs. The White House spinmeisters insist that we keep the size of the deficit in perspective. Sure it's appropriate that the budget deficit should be measured against the relative size of the economy. Today, the projected budget deficit represents 4.2 percent of the nation's GDP. Thus the folks in the Bush administration pat themselves on the back while they remind us that in the 1980s the economy handled deficits of 6 percent. So what? Apparently this administration seems to think that achieving low standards instead of the lowest is supposed to be comforting. That the nation's budgetary situation continues to deteriorate is because the administration's fiscal policy has been decidedly more about politics than policy. Even the tax cuts, which happened to be good policy, were still political in nature considering their appeal to the Republican's conservative base. At the same time, the politicos running the Bush reelection machine have consistently tried to placate or silence the liberals and special interests by throwing money at their every whim and desire. In mathematical terms, the administration calculates that satiated conservatives plus silenced liberals equals reelection. How else can one explain the administration publishing a glossy report criticizing farm programs and then proceeding to sign a farm bill that expands those same programs? How else can one explain the administration acknowledging that entitlements are going to bankrupt the nation if left unreformed yet pushing the largest historical expansion in Medicare one year before the election? Such blatant political maneuvering can only be described as Clintonian. But perhaps we are being unfair to former President Clinton. After all, in inflation-adjusted terms, Clinton had overseen a total spending increase of only 3.5 percent at the same point in his administration. More importantly, after his first three years in office, non-defense discretionary spending actually went down by 0.7 percent. This is contrasted by Bush's three-year total spending increase of 15.6 percent and a 20.8 percent explosion in non-defense discretionary spending. Sadly, the Bush administration has consistently sacrificed sound policy to the god of political expediency. From farm subsidies to Medicare expansion, purchasing reelection votes has consistently trumped principle. In fact, what we have now is a president who spends like Carter and panders like Clinton. Our only hope is that the exploding deficit will finally cause the administration to get serious about controlling spending.
[CTRL] US debates bid to kill Hussein and avoid trial
from http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/213/nation/US_debates_bid_to_kill_Hussein_and_avoid_trial+.shtml US debates bid to kill Hussein and avoid trial By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 8/1/2003 WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials are debating whether to order military commanders to kill rather than capture Saddam Hussein to avoid an unpredictable trial that could stir up nationalist Arab sentiments and embarrass Washington by publicizing past US support for the deposed Iraqi dictator, according to defense and intelligence officials. Trying Hussein before an Iraqi or international criminal court would present an opportunity to hold the Ba'ath Party regime accountable for its repression and murder of thousands of people over the past three decades. Iraq's new US-backed Governing Council said this week it wants to try Hussein in an Iraqi court, something the occupation authority there has said it supports. The New York Times, citing unnamed State Department officials, reported today that the administration favors creating a tribunal of Iraqi judges to try Hussein for crimes against humanity if he is caught. But as US troops step up the hunt for Hussein near his hometown of Tikrit, the prospect of an open trial that puts him on a public stage has given pause to some in the administration, according to government officials with knowledge of the high-level meetings. Among those said to have taken part in the discussions are Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. One of the officials, who is involved in the Iraq reconstruction effort, described at least one of the leaders as having ''mixed feelings'' about whether to kill or capture Hussein. Cheney, whose office would not comment on the issue last night, and senior Bush advisers are said to worry that a trial would be a spectacle in which Hussein could tap into Arab anxieties about the American occupation, try to implicate the United States for previously coddling the regime, and assert Iraq's compliance with United Nations resolutions outlawing weapons of mass destruction -- measures that the administration says gave legal justification for the war. Publicly, US officials contend that the decision to capture or kill Hussein will be up to commanders on the ground, the same scenario presented after American troops killed Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, in a firefight on July 22. Depending on the circumstances, the senior officer on the scene would determine whether conditions permit Hussein to be detained with minimal danger to American troops or civilians. ''This is a tactical issue,'' Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday. Nevertheless, the Bush administration is engaged in a fierce debate over the implications of that policy. The discussions might be moot, as some intelligence officials say Hussein probably would fight to the death like his sons rather than face a prison cell, interrogation, and -- if he is tried by Iraqis -- possible execution. ''He didn't run from Iraq when he had the chance, and he won't be taken,'' said Judith Yaphe, a professor of strategic studies at the National Defense University in Washington and a former Iraq analyst at the CIA. Others say Hussein might welcome the opportunity to defend himself before the world. The former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, has conducted his own defense before an international tribunal in The Hague, drawing media attention for more than a year. Hussein, in challenging the United States' justification for the war, would command far more world attention than Milosevic. ''I don't see him filling the glorious martyr tradition,'' said John C. Hulsman, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. The socialist Ba'ath Party philosophy, unlike the militant brand of Islam espoused by Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is not going to survive Hussein, he said. ''It's a one-man band, so from his point of view he might try to surrender and as Milosevic'' is doing ''try to prove he is a victim of history,'' Hulsman said. Such a prospect, however, raises concerns that a trial would create problems for the United States. One worry is that a host of embarrassing charges might be leveled at the United States. Washington supported Hussein's regime during Iraq's war against Iran between 1980 and 1988 -- including providing satellite images of Iranian military formations -- at a time when Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against troops and civilians. The United States may have even given Hussein the green light to attack Iran, according to Said K. Aburish, author of ''Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge.'' A trial might also raise uncomfortable questions about Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. So far, the United States has failed to find the alleged chemical and biological arms used as justification for the
Re: [CTRL] We Already Know the Administration Was Lying
-Caveat Lector- If Saddam Hussein's administration did not have WMD, then what did he use against the Kurds in northern Iraq, when he dropped chemical weapons to murder thousands of his own people? Why, that'd be whatever our captains of industry sold him! Ask Rumsfeld, he was there... we've got a nice pic of him smiling, shaking hands w/ his buddy Saddam at right about that time... Remember, he was virtually guaranteed no reaction from us with that action; we knew it was going on, and we turned our backs and put our fingers in our ears. La la la la la la I can't hear yo. Oh, BTW, if you ask a Kurd, I'm not so sure they'd consider themselves his own people. You know, FWIW... Um, I don't think *anybody* is saying he never had any nasty weapons, just that he almost certainly didn't have them when we decided we didn't want to wait for the UN weapons inspectors (with whom he was cooperating for several months immediately pre-war, I might add for those with memories that don't extend beyond 5 minutes) to NOT find them. Look, I shouldn't have point out the flagrant lies and deceptions of the Bush Administration to a reader of this list (we are, after all, a fairly well-informed bunch), but every credible witness within Iraq has admitted that the vast majority of all that stuff was destroyed after the first Gulf War, we know those two mobile labs were for hydrogen production for weather balloons, that those aluminum tubes were declared by the IAEA to be unsuitable for nuclear weapons productions (just ordinary old rockets, don'tchaknow, which were A-Okay), those unmanned aerial drones were little more than 30-year-old airplanes held together with tin cans and twine. On and on... Oh, yeah... there was that bit about buying uranium from Africa, heh heh. Somehow, I think it's a bit more than just 16 words at issue here. What exactly are you trying to say, anyway? --eh www.ctrl.org DECLARATION DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is 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://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://www.mail-archive.com/[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] Weapons of Mass Deception
from http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/05/ED161765.DTL -- Weapons of Mass Deception by Ruth Rosen Thursday, June 5, 2003 THE BUSH administration faces a growing credibility gap that may turn into one of the most serious political scandals in our nation's history. Watergate may one day seem minor-league by comparison. What I'm about to describe is not a conspiracy. It is the story of a group of men determined to implement a long-held vision. In 1997, years before George W. Bush entered office, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz founded the Project for the New American Century, a neo- conservative think tank. As part of their larger published vision for Rebuilding America's Defenses, they repeatedly lobbied for regime change in Iraq in order to extend America's influence in the Middle East. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, they began to build a case for invading Iraq. Many people, puzzled and confused, asked: What on earth does Iraq have to do with al Qaeda? Since the CIA didn't provide evidence for any connection, the answers would have to come from a new intelligence agency established by Rumsfeld, now secretary of defense, in the fall of 2001. Called the Office of Special Plans, it would be independent of both the CIA and Pentagon and headed by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. The selling of the war turned out to be a huge success. The vast majority of Americans believed Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and harbored nests of al Qaeda terrorists. Many Americans also believed that the Sept. 11 terrorists had included Iraqi men. By now, many Americans probably also believe that U.S. forces have found WMDs in Iraq. President Bush declared as much when he described two trailers that were probably used as mobile biological weapons labs. But none of the above is true. So far, no WMDs have been found. No Iraqis were involved in Sept. 11. No outposts of al Qaeda terrorists have been uncovered in Iraq. No traces of chemical or biological weapons have been detected in the two trailers. In an interview with the magazine Vanity Fair, Wolfowitz now admits that the Bush administration focused on WMDs because it was politically expedient. The truth, he says, is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction. . .. . He also discloses another justification that was almost unnoticed but huge-- the prospect of withdrawing American forces from Saudi Arabia once Saddam Hussein had been removed. In other words, WMDs were the one argument that could convince a public traumatized by terrorism that a pre-emptive war would save American lives. And, it worked. The war in Iraq, therefore, was not the result of some colossal intelligence failure. It happened because our leaders were given tainted evidence to convince a skeptical public that an immediate invasion of Iraq was necessary: -- When he addressed the U.N. Security Council, Sec. of State Colin Powell offered updated information on Iraq plagiarized from a 10-year-old paper posted on the Internet. -- In his State of the Union Address, President Bush claimed that Iraq had imported enriched uranium from Niger. The document proved to be a clumsy forgery. -- According to intelligence sources cited in the British Sunday Herald, just one Iraqi defector claimed that Iraq had huge stocks of WMDs ready for activation on 45-minutes notice. Tony Blair publicized this information, but not the disclaimer and doubts he also received from British intelligence. The foreign press has accused the Bush administration of having lied to the world. In the United States, however, people have been reluctant to ask: What did the president and other officials know, and when did they know it? Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it, Sen. Robert W. Byrd, D-W.V., said in a recent speech. Let's hope so. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Services Committee will conduct a joint re-evaluation of prewar intelligence. It's a good start. Rep. Jane Harman of Rancho Palos Verdes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has warned that This could conceivably be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time. I doubt it, but we have to ask. We also need to do more. Intelligence cannot always be examined in public. Congress must now hold the kind of public hearings that unmasked the secrets in the Watergate scandal. At issue is not whether the war was right or wrong. The question Congress must answer is whether our leaders abused their political power and knowingly deceived the American people.
[CTRL] The Impeachable Offense
from http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=15121 - The impeachable offense: Bush jeopardized troops' lives on false pretext Geov Parrish 06.09.03 Finally, and far too late, the networks, the big dailies, and the national news magazines are discovering that the Bush Administration's case for invading Iraq was a combination of willfully gross exaggerations and flat-out lies. For weeks, various recently leaked or released documents have confirmed that there was little or no evidence in American and British files that even plausibly pointed to an Iraqi threat of either nuclear or other banned weapons or an Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts in both governments did not believe such threats existed; allegations of a threat only materialized when the politicians got involved. The new documentation of hyped claims, combined with an utter lack of post- invasion evidence that such claims had any basis in fact, are an enormous political scandal in Britain. However, their content does little more than confirm what opponents of the proposed invasion have said since last summer. Even then, it was a staple of opposition to Bush's invasion that intelligence community reports assessed the possibility of the existence of Iraqi WMDs as minimal and Iraq's threat to the U.S. as nonexistent. It was also an opposition staple that the Bush Administration routinely either misrepresented or ignored such expertise, and that most of the endless variety of Bush assertions proving either Iraqi WMDs or links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda were on their face preposterous. The Bush team's strategy of rapidly shifting justifications effectively deflected attention each time actual facts on the ground caught up with the rhetoric; by then, the White House was already hammering on a new reason for its unprovoked war. All this has been known for months by enough people to fuel the instant birth of a massive peace movement in America, and to inspire tens of millions to pour into the streets of cities around the world. The lack of any subsequent supporting discoveries of WMDs or terror links, and the utter disinterest by the British and American governments in finding any, comes as no surprise; a stopped clock is occasionally correct, but usually it's wrong, and usually its owner knows the clock is broken. But this wasn't a matter of reporting the time; it was a matter of the Bush Administration's swearing to Congress, America, and the world that the legal justification for invading, conquering, and occupying Iraq was based on evidence that did not in fact exist. The Bush Administration made such assertions repeatedly, for over half a year. Such assertions are not simply an appalling campaign of lies. They are an impeachable offense. For months, various mostly liberal and progressive critics of Bush have been whipping up impeachment calls on the Internet. Such calls have been delusional, boiling down, essentially, to the fact that Bush's critics hate a number of his policies. But there are no pending or existing indictments; no evidence of criminal wrongdoing; and no conceivable political route by which the votes for impeachment could be mustered by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and upheld by two-thirds of a Republican-controlled Senate. Critics may charge that Dubya's administration has been appallingly corrupt, or that it is gutting the Bill of Rights; but so far the corruption has been legal, and conservative federal courts have mostly upheld post-9/11 civil liberties atrocities. George W. Bush has inspired remarkable amounts of hatred amongst many of his critics; but that alone doesn't make impeachment legally viable or politically sustainable. It has been a non-starter. Until now. If proven -- and they can, in fact, be proven as such -- the Bush Administration's lies to the United Nations, to the American people, and to Congress in last October's effort to win authority to invade, all constitute an either unwitting or witting effort to put American soldiers in harm's way, guaranteeing the deaths of some. America's military was deployed for reasons Bush and his entire foreign policy apparatus either knew or should have known were fallacious. They did so anyway, in the service of a war whose unprovoked nature was a sharp departure from international law and norms. Bush claimed as his legal authority last October's Congressional vote. On the eve of that vote, in a major speech aimed at Congress, Bush claimed satellite photos gave irrefutable evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program, and claimed -- mere days after intelligence agencies put the date at 2010 -- that Iraq would have such weapons ready to deploy within a year. Facing clear evidence of peril, Bush told Congress, America, and the world, we cannot wait for the final proof that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. All this was nonsense, and plenty of the administration's own experts had told
[CTRL] How the News Media Fuels Conspiracy Theories
How the News Media Fuels Conspiracy Theories with hyperlinks:> http://www.tvnewslies.org/html/fueling_consipracy.html
Re: [CTRL] leftist nuts
-Caveat Lector- You know, I am SO sick of these knee-jerk reactionaries who have the gall to label anyone anti-war as somehow Anti-American. Unthinking sheep like the author of this original post (who I'll ask to kindly QUIT SHOUTING) should be ashamed to call himself an American. REAL Americans don't go after gnats with howitzers; they believe in fairness, justice, helping others (not murdering a quarter of a million of their children); they believe in democracy, and thus dissent, which entails questioning the incredibly misguided decisions of their leaders (particularly when those leaders are unelected crooks)... REAL Americans believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, NOT Power at Any Cost, Ruling the World, and the Pursuit of Profit over lives and global justice. Clearly, there are those on this list in dire need of a strong dose of TRUTH. Here's a version of America's Illegal Invasion of Iraq for Dummies; let it remove the blinders from your eyes: --- March 17, 2003 Endgame A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL It's the endgame of a mad, politically calculated war. From the beginning, everyone's agreed that Saddam Hussein is a bad man, almost a prototype for a villain in a James Bond Film. But that's where the agreement stopped. The Bush Cartel, for a variety of politically and financially calculated reasons, decided that a war that could cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars was of strategic importance to its world domination game plan -- and to a second term for George W. Bush. The corporate media -- for reasons of financial interest combined with sheer ineptitude -- enabled and facilitated a rush to war that was transparently self-serving for the Chickenhawks in the White House. The Democrats, as usual, allowed the Grand Hypocrisy Party (GHP) to define the issue in such a way that it marginalized any dissent. This despite the fact that the Bush Cartel brazenly used lies and shifting justifications to mask the real reasons for the war. In the end, Bush is going to war for two reasons. First of all, the Iraq war offers him and his Vietnam service evading administration many political positives from their perspective, including (but not limited to): 1. The permanent war public relations strategy is, in large part, aimed at keeping any of the numerous Bush domestic disasters off of the political table. War supersedes even an economy down the tubes. 2. Keeping the threat of terror simmering on the burner through ginned up and meaningless terror alerts scares Americans into supporting Bush, because they seemingly have no option, since they believe they are under a constant terrorist threat. This leads to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome for the nation as a whole. Most Americans look to their psychological tormentor for protection from an outside threat perceived as the more serious of two evils. 3. A war in Iraq offers almost bottomless billion-dollar profiteering opportunities for Bush Cartel campaign contributors and Bush administration officials. Halliburton, the Carlyle Group, etc. are all set to reap big financial benefits from the destruction of the Iraq infrastructure. Blow the country up with bombs paid for by taxpayers -- and then use taxpayer dollars to pay campaign contributors and companies with connections to administration officials to rebuild it. A nice scam if you got a railroad car on the gravy train. 4. By using a brutal, thuggish diplomacy -- including threats, bribes and intimidation -- the Bush Cartel has alienated the populations of almost every nation in the world. It has managed to lure a few leaders into the alliance of the unwilling with a combination of inducements worthy of a crime family, but created a hostile reaction in almost every country. Why does the seemingly disastrous result actually benefit the Bush Cartel? Because they want to see the United Nations sink into the East River. They don't want anybody but the Bush Cartel Chickenhawks calling the international shots. Sayonara, U.N., and good riddance. That's what the Bush administration fanatics want -- and they are on the verge of achieving their goal. 5. Through the financial inducements the Bush administration has offered some nations to support the war, they have found an ingenious way to pay back campaign contributors. Take Poland, for instance. The Bush administration gives Poland six billion dollars in taxpayer money (which would be okay if it were for improving the lot of Polish citizens). What will Poland use the money for, according to a New York Times article? Why, to buy six billion dollars worth of fighter jets from Lockheed-Martin. 6. The assertion of raw, brute, power -- in the form of sophisticated killing war technology -- is meant to intimidate all of the nations of the world, not just our enemies. It is also meant to bully dissenters at home into submission. Since Democratic leaders usually cower when the Bush Cartel barks, it is, additionally, meant to
Re: [CTRL] Eric Hoffsten wrote:
-Caveat Lector- Theodore Roosevelt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you think this is about power at any cost you are one screwed up lefty. Your head is so deeply placed in the Left's rectum that you can't even hear the lunacy of your own arguments. What makes you think I'm a lefty? Taking a stance against an insane, unjust, unnecessary, and outright illegal war does not automatically assign someone a specific place on the political spectrum. Perhaps your own lunacy precludes your ability to see that there are many, MANY conservatives who can see through the lies of this administration. If you hate this country so deeply, leave. The borders are still open. Clearly, Mr. Roosevelt needs to return to his remedial reading class. If you knew how to READ, you would have read that I, in fact, LOVE my country. I love the ideals and principles upon which it was founded. I do NOT, however, love the gutless toadies installed without the will of the people to LEAD the nation I love so dearly. One needn't a degree in rocket science to see the distinction here. Do YOU really hate democracy so much that you're not willing to stand up to try to save it? Maybe France. There are lots of gutless socialist toadies there. You'll fit right in. Hmmm... maybe. I DO love their toast and fries (and that dressing!), but I've never been too keen on Jerry Lewis. I am astounded that idiots like you keep spouting this drivel about the United States killing a quarter of a million children in Iraq. I am astounded by your inability to comprehend the current situation. The reference to 250,000 children points to the number of children that will be killed by the good ol' U-S-A by our liberating Shock and Awe invasion, perhaps within the next 48 hours. The number killed through sanctions is far, FAR greater than a mere quarter of a million. Do you have the faintest idea that Hussein was the one who had repsonsibility for lifting the sancitons against his country? Really?!? Wow, that's news to me... all this time I had NO idea that HE was the one imposing the sanctions. And I thought WE were imposing them. Silly me. (Seriously though, I understand your argument, and it's full of holes. Even if he destroyed every last BB gun in his country, the chickenhawks in ours would insist he hadn't disarmed. This war is just too important to them. And we've seen the degree to which they'll LIE to get it. Evidence?!? Who needs evidence?!?) Do you begin to comprehend that even lifting the sanctions would have improved nothing for the people of Iraq? On this point we're in agreement. NO ONE says Saddam Hussein is a swell guy... I think we're all aware of this. Sure, he won't help his people, he'll keep all the booty for himself, he'll buy Aeron chairs for all his palaces or whatever. But jeez, it's tough to deny that clean water (to which the Iraqi people could get a little closer w/ a bit of chlorine, banned by the sanctions, don'tchaknow) *might* help stave off a little more disease. That and maybe some medicine. But sanctions are beside the point... Grow up and at least begin to pubesce. Oh, if only I *could* stop time. Perhaps the greatest mistake my beloved country ever made might be averted. Unfortunately, it seems that when my son grows up and begins to pubesce I'll have to explain to him why America stands alone and isolated in the world, why my generation had more than he'll ever have, why he's denied the rights and liberties that my generation enjoyed... -eh __ Eric Hoffsten [EMAIL PROTECTED] 207 865 0230 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://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/[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] leftist nuts
-Caveat Lector- Theodore Roosevelt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You're simply full of shit. Oh, COME ON, Teddy! You're not even trying! No, seriously. Tell us why you think invading Iraq is right up there w/ ending world hunger! Really. We want to know. What's your argument? Take more than 25 words, if you wish (or if you're, you know, capable). Just try not to paraphrase the pro-war parroting of the administration's party line we get 24-7 from the liberal media. Think for yourself, Little Teddy. You can do it! -eh 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://archive.jab.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ A HREF=http://archive.jab.org/[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] Dangerous future oppressors killed
-Caveat Lector- On that note... interesting: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-486464,00.html --eh 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
