"IF YOUR'E GOING TO PUT YOUR FAMILY IN A NURSING HOME... YOU BETTER VISIT THEM AT LEAST EVERY TWO DAYS, YOU BETTER LIVE NEAR THEM, YOU BETTER BRING THEM LUNCH, YOU BETTER SIT THERE AND WATCH TV WITH THEM, YOU BETTER SIT THERE AND RUB THERE FEET AND LOVE YOUR PARENTS (voice raises in anger) THAT WIPED YOUR BUTT, THAT TOOK CARE OF YOU, YOU SCUMBAG YUPPIES!!!"
-Alex Jones speaking to yuppies (and all Americans for that matter)
"What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated!"
--Alex Jones
We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.
Author: David Rockefeller, Source: Trilateral Commission meeting, June, 1991
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Page A01
Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.
"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.
Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported,
definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.
Iran has long contended that the uranium traces were the result of contaminated equipment bought years ago from Pakistan. But the Bush administration had pointed to the material as evidence that Iran was making bomb-grade ingredients.
The conclusions will be shared with IAEA board members in a report due out the first week in September, according to U.S. and European officials who agreed to discuss details of the investigation on the condition of anonymity. The report "will say the contamination issue is resolved," a Western diplomat said.
U.S. officials have privately acknowledged for months that they were losing confidence that the uranium traces would turn out to be evidence of a nuclear weapons program. A recent U.S. intelligence estimate found that Iran is further away from making bomb-grade uranium than previously thought, according to U.S. officials.
The IAEA findings come as European efforts to negotiate with Iran on the future of its nuclear program have faltered, and could complicate a renewed push by the Bush administration to increase international pressure on Tehran.
U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council -- which has the authority to impose sanctions -- have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran's real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House's belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials.
France, Britain and Germany have been trying for two years to convince Iran that it could avoid Security Council action if it gives up sensitive aspects of its nuclear energy program that could be diverted for weapons work. Iran has said it has no intention of making nuclear weapons and will not give up its right to nuclear energy. Iran has offered to put the entire program under IAEA monitoring as a way of alleviating international concerns. But European and U.S. officials have rejected that offer because it would still allow Iran access to bomb-making capabilities.
Iran built its nuclear program in secret over 18 years with the help of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a top Pakistani official and nuclear scientist who sold spare parts from his country's own weapons program to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Khan's black-market dealings were uncovered in 2003. He confessed on national television, was swiftly pardoned by Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and is now under house arrest.
Pakistan has denied IAEA inspectors access to Khan and to the country's nuclear facilities, but earlier this year it agreed to share data and some equipment with the inspectors to expedite the Iran investigation. Among the equipment were discarded centrifuge parts that match those Khan sold to Iran.
John R. Bolton, now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, served as the administration's point man on nuclear issuesduring President Bush's first term. He suggested during congressional testimony in June 2004 that the Iranians were lying about the contamination.
"Another unmistakable indicator of Iran's intentions is the pattern of repeatedly lying to and providing false and incomplete reports to the IAEA," Bolton said. "For example, Iran first denied it had enriched any uranium. Then it said it had not enriched uranium more than 1.2 percent. Later, when evidence of uranium enriched to 36 percent was found, it attributed this to contamination from imported centrifuge parts."
The IAEA, in its third year of an investigation in Iran, has not found proof of a weapons program. But a few serious questions, some connected to Iran's involvement with Khan, remain unanswered. While the investigation has been underway, Iran and the three European countries have been trying to reach a diplomatic accommodation. Their negotiations fell apart this month and Iran resumed some nuclear work it put on hold during the talks.
In the meantime, European officials convened an IAEA board meeting two weeks ago to discuss Iran's actions and sought a new report for this week on its program. But the report was pushed back to Sept. 3 so that the group of scientists, including officials from the Energy Department, could meet one last time to draft an account of its findings, according to U.S. and European officials.
The IAEA had put together the group of experts in an effort to foster cooperation but also to eliminate the possibility that its findings would be challenged by the White House, officials said. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House rejected IAEA findings that cast doubt on U.S. assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's arsenal. The IAEA findings turned out to be correct, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
Iran insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has not found conclusive evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a US magazine has reported.
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, writing in The New Yorker, cites a secret CIA report based on intelligence such as satellite images.
Correspondents say the alleged document appears to challenge Washington's views regarding Iranian nuclear intentions.
The article says the White House was dismissive about the CIA report.
The US and Europe say Iran is pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme - a charge Iran has strongly denied.
'Hostile' response
The CIA assessment, according to unnamed officials quoted in the article, casts doubt on how far Iran has actually progressed to making a nuclear weapon.
The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops
Dana Perino
White House spokeswoman
"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," Mr Hersh wrote.
It says the agency based its conclusions on technical intelligence, such as satellite photography and measurements from sensors planted by US and Israeli agents.
The article says: "A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis, and told me that the White House had been hostile to it."
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino criticised the article, calling it an "error-filled" piece in a "series of inaccuracy-riddled articles about the Bush administration".
"The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops, and whose articles consistently rely on outright falsehoods to justify his own radical views," she was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.
The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says if the New Yorker article is correct, it would suggest that the CIA is being more cautious than the Bush administration in evaluating whether or not Iran is on its way to building a bomb.
And he says, as with Iraq, it suggests political battles to come over how intelligence is used as a basis for American foreign policy.
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To be fair I will include the L.A.Times article below, which was released two years after the report above. Of course Hayden goes against facts & logic, he is after all the scumbag who hates our privacy. '
CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Sunday that he believes Iran is still pursuing a nuclear bomb, even though the U.S. intelligence community, including his own agency, reached a consensus judgment last year that the Islamic Republic had halted its nuclear weapons work in 2003.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he thought Iran was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Hayden said, “Yes,” adding that his assessment was not based on “court-of-law stuff… . This is Mike Hayden looking at the body of evidence.”
He said his conviction stemmed largely from Iran’s willingness to endure international sanctions rather than comply with demands for nuclear inspections and abandon its efforts to develop technologies that can produce fissile material.
“Why would the Iranians be willing to pay the international tariff they appear willing to pay for what they’re doing now if they did not have, at a minimum … the desire to keep the option open to develop a nuclear weapon and, perhaps even more so, that they’ve already decided to do that?” he said.
However, a sweeping assessment from the intelligence community issued in December concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons work in 2003, soon after the United States invaded Iraq, and appeared not to have restarted it.
The CIA director is the latest senior Bush administration official to question the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate, which was widely seen as a setback to efforts by the United States and European nations to step up international pressure on Tehran.
Soon after the report was released, President Bush argued that it should not be seen as a sign that Iran was backing away from its pursuit of the bomb.
“Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” he said in a Dec. 4 news conference.
In an interview with ABC News last week, Vice President Dick Cheney alleged that Iran was “heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels.” International inspectors have not found evidence of such an effort.
Iran has said its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful energy purposes, to generate power. In its latest report, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ watchdog group, said that Iran’s uranium enrichment operations at its Natanz plant are yielding material useful for civilian reactors, but far below the 80% or 90% grade needed for weapons production.
Still, the United States and other Western nations fear that Iran’s pursuit of dual-use nuclear technologies will eventually enable it to develop nuclear weapons.
The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran represented a startling shift in the intelligence community’s views of Tehran’s nuclear activity. The report, issued after years of warnings that Tehran appeared bent on building a nuclear bomb, begins by saying that U.S. spy agencies had concluded “with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
The finding was cited as evidence that Tehran was susceptible to diplomatic pressure. It was subsequently attributed to new intelligence that had surfaced in the summer of 2007, including journals kept by senior Iranian officials that documented the decision to suspend the program.
But the report also notes that Tehran “at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons” and has not ceased civilian uranium enrichment activities that could possibly be converted to weapons development purposes.
The nation’s top intelligence official, J. Michael McConnell, testified last month that he “probably would change a few things” if given a chance to redo the report, suggesting that its conclusions had been misinterpreted.
The document includes a footnote that specifies that Iran is believed to have stopped only its “weapon design and weaponization work,” not the uranium-enrichment work that is widely considered the biggest obstacle to constructing a bomb.
Hayden acknowledged Sunday that U.S. estimates on such matters were now viewed with greater skepticism because assertions about Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of banned weapons had been proven wrong.
The U.S. intelligence community “has additional burdens to carry because of the Iraq NIE, in which we got so much of that estimate wrong,” he said.
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What about the dumb chicken necked liberals who just love their Zionist tool change boy Obama? Obama is no different than McInsane.
Won't rule out force in speech in Chicago to pro-Israel group
Sen. Barack Obama said Friday the use of military force should not be taken off the table when dealing with Iran, which he called "a threat to all of us."
Speaking before a pro-Israel crowd at a downtown hotel, Obama also repeated his call for a phased pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq and strongly backed a strong U.S. relationship with Israel.
Earlier in the day, the Republican National Committee took aim at Obama, issuing a research memo aimed at highlighting the Illinois freshman senator's lack of experience on foreign affairs. That the gloves-are-off memo was even generated at this time is a testament to Obama's growing strength in the Democratic primary field.
» http://www.suntimes.com/new... 'fullimage', 'toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no, menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,width=650,h eight=650')" class="enlarge_pic">Click to enlarge image
Obama campaign spokesman Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the Republican memo as an "example of the type of politics Barack Obama is hoping to change." He said Obama has spoken out against the war for years.
Iranian leader 'reckless'
While he was being attacked in Washington, Obama was in friendly territory in Chicago as he appeared at a forum attended by 800 members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential pro-Israel lobby. He received a standing ovation from the crowd and a hug from one of the group's leaders.
Obama said global leaders must do whatever it takes to stop Iran from enriching uranium and acquiring nuclear weapons. He called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "reckless, irresponsible and inattentive" to the day-to-day needs of the Iranian people.
The Iranian "regime is a threat to all of us," Obama said.
While Obama wouldn't rule out force, he said the United States should engage in "aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions" to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threat.
Visited Israel last year
Again taking aim at the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, he said the war had actually strengthened Iran's influence in the region. He noted the war had spurned "anti-U.S. and further anti-Israel propaganda."
Obama told of a trip he took to Israel in January 2006, visiting a village that resembled a suburb in the United States. He said he was deeply moved by a visit to a home hit by a rocket launched by Hezbollah.
"Our job is to never forget that the threat of violence is real," he said.
Obama's appearance was seen as a move to court Jewish donors, although the event wasn't a fund-raiser. He did pose for photos with AIPAC members at a private reception before the speech. Although the event was billed as a "forum," he took no questions from the audience or media and left immediately after his half-hour speech.
Even though many in the crowd endorsed his remarks, some said they are waiting to hear more from him in the coming months to better gauge his position on Israel and other foreign-policy questions.
"He is an unknown," said Diane Dubey, an AIPAC member from Lincolnwood.
Others said Obama, who largely read from prepared remarks, seemed slightly less passionate about the topic than presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who spoke at AIPAC's national convention last year. Both Clinton and Obama will be at the convention March 11 in Washington.
"He speaks beautifully, but we don't find a lot of emotion in what he says," said Mark Sherman of Northbrook.
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Obama:"Israel True Friend" and " Elimination of Iran Threat"
Republican congressman Ron Paul warns against military engagement in Iran, saying 'bombing Iran' will cause energy prices to skyrocket.
In a speech on the House floor, Congressman Paul suggested that the US is inching toward an 'endless struggle' similar to the Iraq war.
"In the last several weeks, if not for months we have heard a lot of talk about the potential of Israel and/or the United States bombing Iran. Energy prices are being bid up because of this fear. It has been predicted that if bombs start dropping, that we will see energy prices double or triple," said the Republican.
"To me it is almost like deja vu all over again. We listened to the rhetoric for years and years before we went into Iraq. We did not go in the correct manner, we did not declare war, we are there and it is an endless struggle," he told a nearly empty House chamber.
"I cannot believe it, that we may well be on the verge of initiating the bombing of Iran," said the war veteran.
The 72-year-old former presidential candidate then blasted what he called the 'virtual Iran war resolution', which is soon to be considered by the House of Representatives.
"This resolution, House Resolution 362 is a virtual war resolution. It is the declaration of tremendous sanctions, and boycotts and embargoes on the Iranians. It is very, very severe," Paul said.
Supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), House Resolution 362 (and the Senate version Resolution 580), known as the 'Iran War Resolution' can be considered a means of imposing harsher sanctions as well as a naval blockade restricting exports to the oil-rich country.
This bill, which was introduced at an AIPAC annual policy conference, has gained 208 co-sponsors in the House and 29 in the Senate. It will likely be put to a vote after July 4.
"The fear is, they say, maybe some day, [Iran is] going to get a nuclear weapon, even though our own CIA's National Intelligence Estimate has said that the Iranians have not been working on a nuclear weapon since 2003," continued the 10-term congressman.
The US and Israel accuse Tehran of making efforts to produce nuclear weapons; Iran insists its nuclear program is directed at peaceful purposes.
The most recent UN nuclear watchdog report on Tehran's nuclear program, however, has conceded that there is no link between the use of nuclear material and 'the alleged studies' of weaponization attributed to Iran by Western countries.
"This is unbelievable! This is closing down Iran. Where do we have this authority? Where do we get the moral authority? Where do we get the international legality for this? Where do we get the Constitutional authority for this?" asked Paul.
As forecasters take that possibility more seriously, they describe fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time.
The more expensive oil gets, the more Katherine Carver's life shrinks. She's given up RV trips. She stays home most weekends. She's scrapped her twice-a-month volunteer stint at a Malibu wildlife refuge -- the trek from her home in Palmdale just got too expensive.
How much higher would fuel prices have to go before she quit her job? Already, the 170-mile round-trip commute to her job with Los Angeles County Child Support Services in Commerce is costing her close to $1,000 a month -- a fifth of her salary. It's got the 55-year-old thinking about retirement.
"It's definitely pushing me to that point," Carver said.
The point could be closer than anyone thinks.
Three months ago, when oil was around $108 a barrel, a few Wall Street analysts began predicting that it could rise to $200. Many observers scoffed at the forecasts as sensational, or motivated by a desire among energy companies and investors to drive prices higher.
But with oil closing above $140 a barrel Friday, more experts are taking those predictions seriously -- and shuddering at the inflation-fueled chaos that $200-a-barrel crude could bring. They foresee fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live and how we spend our free time.
"You'd have massive changes going on throughout the economy," said Robert Wescott, president of Keybridge Research, a Washington economic analysis firm. "Some activities are just plain going to be shut down."
Besides the obvious effect $7-a-gallon gasoline would have on commuters, automakers, airlines, truckers and shipping firms, $200 oil would drive up the price of a broad spectrum of products: Insecticides and hand lotions, cosmetics and food preservatives, shaving cream and rubber cement, plastic bottles and crayons -- all have ingredients derived from oil.
The pain would probably be particularly intense in Southern California, which is known for its long commutes and high cost of living.
"Throughout our history, we have grown on the assumption that energy costs would be low," said Michael Woo, a former Los Angeles city councilman and a current member of the city Planning Commission. "Now that those assumptions are shifting, it changes assumptions about housing, cars and how cities grow."
Push prices up fast enough, he said, and "it would be the urban-planning equivalent of an earthquake."
Consumers
With every penny hike in the price of gas costing American consumers about $1 billion a year, sharply higher pump prices would lead to "significant bankruptcies and store closings," said Scott Hoyt, director of consumer economics at Moody's Economy.com.
Consumer spending has held up surprisingly well in the face of skyrocketing pump prices -- bolstered in part, perhaps, by federal tax rebates. But the same day the government reported a 0.8% rise in May consumer spending, a research firm said consumer confidence had plunged to its lowest level since 1980 -- hinting at the catastrophic effect another big gas price surge could have on retailers and customers.
"The purchasing power of the American people would be kicked in the teeth so darned hard by $200-a-barrel oil that they won't have the ability to buy much of anything," said S. David Freeman, president of the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners and author of the 2007 book "Winning Our Energy Independence."
BIGresearch of Worthington, Ohio, said more than half of Californians in a recent survey said they were driving less because of high gas prices. Almost 42% said they had reduced vacation travel and 40% said they were dining out less.
If any retailers would benefit, it would be those on the Internet. In a recent survey by Harris Interactive, one-third of adults said high gas prices had made them more likely to shop online to avoid driving.
Restaurant operators such as Brinker International, which owns the Chili's and Romano's Macaroni Grill chains, are suffering and are likely to struggle even more as consumers look for ways to reduce spending. Fast-food chains wouldn't be immune, experts say, although they might fare better as families downscale their dining choices.
Vehicle sales, too, would probably continue to tank. Sales of new cars, sport utility vehicles and light trucks fell more than 18% in California in the first quarter compared with a year earlier. Although some consumers have been shopping for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles, many dealers are demanding premiums for gas-sipping hybrids, wiping out much of the financial advantage of buying one.
Nationwide, $200 oil and $7 gasoline would force Americans to take 10 million vehicles off the roads over the next four years, Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, wrote in a recent report.
As for the state's beleaguered housing market, prices are falling faster in areas requiring long commutes -- such as Lancaster and Palmdale -- than in neighborhoods closer to job centers.
Sky-high gas prices "would basically reorient society to where proximity would be more valuable," said Tom Gilligan, finance professor at USC.
Americans may also feel the effects of a rise in energy-related crime. Ads for locking gas caps are becoming more prevalent. Restaurant owners are complaining that thieves are helping themselves to used barrels of cooking oil, which can be home-brewed into biodiesel fuel.
Transportation
Workers stuck with long commutes and gas-guzzling cars would look increasingly to public transit, experts say.
Already Californians' mobility is being curbed. Traffic on the state's freeways fell almost 4% in April compared with a year earlier, and ridership on many subway and bus lines operated by the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has risen in recent months.
But a huge influx of riders would strain aspects of the system, MTA says, noting that many buses are overcrowded at rush hour now.
Quickly adding capacity to meet demand from new riders wouldn't be easy, because new buses cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take up to two years to deliver.
Transit advocate Kymberleigh Richards said new riders on popular routes such as Wilshire Boulevard, Vermont Avenue or Sherman Way in the San Fernando Valley "are going to have a bit of a culture shock. It's a different world to be using public transit when you're used to being in your own vehicle by yourself."
Just how many drivers would become public-transit riders if oil surges to $200 a barrel is hard to predict, but there's a big pool of potential customers. About 87% of Southern Californians commute by car, according to 2005 data from transportation expert Alan Pisarski. That compares with 63% in New York and its environs.
Travelers can also expect much fuller airplanes and much more expensive flights -- when they're available at all. Delta Air Lines Inc., for example, recently said it was cutting about 13% of its flights from Los Angeles International Airport to save fuel.
It also could mean shifting flights from outlying airports such as Ontario to LAX to cut overhead costs, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Carriers probably would also trim flights in highly competitive air corridors such as L.A. to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Even the cost of getting away from it all on Santa Catalina Island would go up. Greg Bombard, president of the Catalina Express ferry service, has trimmed schedules, raised fares and reduced hiring to make up for fuel costs that have risen sevenfold since 2002. Another big increase and he says he'll have to ask state regulators, who control his rates, to OK another fare hike.
Trade
The fee increases on the ferry would be nothing compared with the added cost of transoceanic shipping if oil goes to $200. Some experts say high energy costs are altering global trade and slowing the pace of globalization.
It takes about 7,000 tons of bunker-fuel to fill the tanks of a 5,000-container cargo ship for a trip from Shanghai to Los Angeles. Over the last year and half, the cost of that fuel has jumped 87% to $552 a ton, according to the World Shipping Council, boosting the cost of a fill-up to more than $3.8 million.
"To put things in perspective, today's extra shipping cost from East Asia is the equivalent of imposing a 9% tariff on East Asian goods entering North America," said Rubin of CIBC World Markets. "At $200 per barrel, the tariff equivalent rate will rise to 15%."
If oil continues to rise from current levels, officials at the Port of Los Angeles believe West Coast ports would gain business because they are 10 to 12 days' sailing time from Asia, versus the 18-to-20-day route from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal.
But local ports could lose business if shipping costs get so out of hand that companies begin shifting production back to North America from Asia -- something that's happening in the steel industry, Rubin said.
Local distribution patterns could change too. Stephen Gaddis, chief executive of Pacific Cheese Co., a Hayward, Calif., cheese processing and packaging firm, thinks high fuel prices will push restaurants, retailers and food manufacturers to look for suppliers closer to their operations.
"Local sourcing is ideal. You won't pay as much for freight, and when you use less fuel it's better for the environment," Gaddis said.
Soaring diesel prices will make companies rethink whether they should have large, centralized plants or build smaller ones around the country.
That's what Pacific Cheese is doing. It's building a packaging plant in Texas to be closer to one of its larger suppliers and expects to serve its Southwestern clients from there.
In the near future, however, consumers can expect to pay for the higher cost of producing food and moving it around the country, say food executives, farmers and economists. Even having a deep-dish pizza with extra cheese brought to your door costs more now that chains such as Pizza Hut are charging for delivery.
The workplace
Dramatically higher transportation costs would usher in an era of virtual mobility, or zero mobility, for many workers.
"We're seeing companies go to four-day workweeks, place increased emphasis on working at home, show bigger interest in setting up satellite offices -- anything that gets commute times down and gets people off the road," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in San Jose.
Videoconferencing, touted as "the next big thing" for years, would finally have its day, thanks to improved technology and a desperation to cut corporate travel budgets.
Telecommuting, or working from home, is easier than ever because of the spread of high-speed Internet access, said Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at Basex Inc., a business research firm in New York. In particular, workers in "knowledge" jobs that can be performed with computers and phones would benefit.
But Gilligan of USC noted that lower-income workers tend to be in jobs that don't favor telecommuting, such as retail and food service.
"These are the same people who are already being creamed by the mortgage crisis," he said. "The impacts of energy price increases are highly disparate."
Although white-collar workers may be able to telecommute, they could also take a serious financial hit because soaring energy prices tend to wreak havoc on the stock market. The explosion of 401(k) plans and similar retirement accounts in the last few decades -- and the decline of traditional pensions with guaranteed payouts -- have tied workers' financial futures more closely to stocks than they were during the 1970s oil shocks. A prolonged Wall Street downturn could mean a no-frills retirement, or none at all.
Upsides
It wouldn't all be bad, of course. Some industries could boom, providing jobs and tax dollars. California has seen a jump in drilling activity as oil companies try to extract more crude from the state's fields. Regulators expect a record 4,000 wells to be drilled in the state this year.
"Every rig and every crew that's available is working right now," said Hal Bopp, the state's oil and gas supervisor.
And as rising oil prices make alternative-fuel vehicles more cost-effective, California companies such as Tesla Motors Inc., which recently began production of a $100,000 all-electric sports car, could become important leaders in an emerging industry.
Tourist attractions may also see an upswing in local business as families look for less-expensive vacation alternatives close to home. A recent survey by travel insurer Access America found that 26% of Americans would cut back on recreational travel as a first response to higher gas prices.
In Southern California, with its many natural wonders, theme parks and other attractions, the prospect of a "staycation" may be less disappointing than for a resident of, say, Nebraska. And movies, a staple of the local economy, may prosper as Americans seek escapism and a (relatively) cheap night out.
And spending less time stuck in traffic on the 405? Priceless.
"More carpooling, fewer people on the freeways, more telecommuting -- in many ways, what would happen is what people have been trying to make happen for a long time," USC's Gilligan said.
martin.zimmerman @latimes.com
Times staff writers Ken Bensinger, Leslie Earnest, Jerry Hirsch, Peter Pae and Ronald D. White contributed to this report.
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Monday, June 30, 2008
Senator Joe Lieberman has echoed a national talking point by promising that the new president will be welcomed by a terror attack in 2009, continuing a disturbing trend of talking heads anxiously relishing a catastrophic pretext to reinvigorate the Neo-Con agenda.
"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."
Lieberman's comments follow last month's Washington Times report concerning a warning from national intelligence spooks that, "Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America."
Let us swiftly dismantle the naive pretense that a terror attack is a negative thing for a new president - both Clinton and Bush exploited terror in America to realize preconceived domestic and geopolitical agendas.
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an inside job from start to finish - it did not come as a "surprise" to the U.S. government since they ran the entire operation, having cooked the bomb for the "Islamic terrorists" that they had groomed for the attack.
In 1993 the FBI planted their informant, Emad A. Salem, within a radical Arab group in New York led by Ramzi Yousef. Salem was ordered to encourage the group to carry out a bombing targeting the World Trade Center's twin towers. Under the illusion that the project was a sting operation, Salem asked the FBI for harmless dummy explosives which he would use to assemble the bomb and then pass on to the group. At this point the FBI cut Salem out of the loop and provided the group with real explosives, leading to the attack on February 26 that killed six and injured over a thousand people. The FBI's failure to prevent the bombing was reported on by the New York Times in October 1993.
The attack, coupled with the Oklahoma City bombing less than two years later, enabled Bill Clinton to whip up support for the passage of a plethora of unconstitutional legislation, including the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Brady Bill, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and a $100 million dollar grant to Israel for "counter-terrorism" purposes.
By the time Clinton left office, the Patriot movement - which before the OKC bombing had grown in leaps and bounds, spurred on by the atrocities committed by the federal government at Waco - was effectively dead.
Few need reminding of George W. Bush's agenda before he took office. The ideological framework that would shape his presidency - encapsulated by the goals of the Neo-Con Project For a New American Century - required a "new Pearl Harbor" to get things started, which is exactly what they received on September 11, 2001.
"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade---if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency," Bush told Herskowitz.
That "chance to invade" arrived on the morning of 9/11, within hours of which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "Was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks."
The pattern is clear - each time a new President takes office they have a mandate to act as a torch bearer for the same agenda - domestic repression and foreign invasion. A terror attack provides the perfect pretext to realize those goals.
Whether it be Barack Obama or John McCain, we can expect a new crisis to conveniently arrive shortly after they take office, enabling them to pursue the same tyrannical blueprint followed by their predecessors.
Since August 2007, the price of oil has nearly doubled from under $70 per barrel to more than $135 per barrel. This is of course a big problem for the world economy. Not only will it cause massive redistribution of resources from consumers to producers, but by making transportation and production that uses petroleum products as an input, it will slow economic growth. And many consumers, particularly in America, are shocked and angered by the high prices. And since it is election year in America, this means the politicians all say they will try to fix the problem.
But as we will see, it is politicians which have caused the problems in the first place, and as no prominent politician except for Ron Paul recognize this and wants to abolish these policies, they instead create false scapegoats. The most popular scapegoats right now are speculators. Investing in commodities has in recent years been increasingly popular and certainly a very successful investment strategy, the case for which libertarian investment superstar Jim Rogers laid out in his book Hot Commodities that I reviewed on the Ludwig von Mises Institute web page. The politicians and their collaborators now charge Jim Rogers and others who have followed his strategy of causing the commodity price boom they predicted and profited from.
Yet this accusation is based on a complete misunderstanding of how commodity markets function, whether intentional or not. Considering how complex the functioning of these markets in fact is, it cannot be ruled out that it is unintentional. And even if it isn’t, people need to learn this in order to be able to see through the deception.
Starting with the basics, commodity markets can be divided into spot markets and futures markets. Spot markets are the markets for immediate delivery, futures markets are the markets for delivery at some future point in time, usually not more than a year or so in advance. As futures contracts are constantly traded, it should be noted that someone who buys a commodity with a futures contracts need not necessarily be the one that buys it at the expiration date. But this is not dissimilar to how someone who bought a commodity with a spot contract can sell the commodity to someone else.
And just as there is always both a buyer and a seller in a spot contract, there is always a buyer and a seller in a futures contract. Usually though, the buyer is referred to as having a long position while the seller is referred to as having a short position, but that is basically just semantics. People with long positions are in effect buyers while people with short position are in effect sellers.
What should further be realized is that first of all most commodity speculators invest in futures while what matters for the price of petroleum actually used in the economy is primarily the spot price. Note further that commodity speculators can take both long position and short positions. This implies that commodity speculators may not in fact be contributing to higher prices. If speculators as a group have equally large long and short positions then they will have no effect on futures prices, and if they as a group have larger short positions than long positions then their speculations will in fact lower futures prices.
Moreover, even if speculators as a group have a net long position, the speculators that pushed up the futures price in the first place will, once the futures contract approaches expiration date, face two choices. Choice number one is to sell the contract or sell the underlying commodity to some consumer once the contract expires. Choice number two is to put the commodity in some physical inventory and keep it there.
If the speculators choose the first alternative, then this will push down the price back to the level where it would have been in the absence of the original purchase. In this case, speculation will thus have no effect on the spot price.
If on the other hand the second alternative is chosen, then speculation will indeed contribute to higher prices, at least temporarily. But while that is a possible theoretical scenario, that does not mean it is applicable to the current situation. The fact is that there is no evidence of increased inventories. Indeed, according the Energy Information Administration, U.S. crude oil inventories were 14 % lower in the week ending June 20 than a year ago.
Some have replied to this argument by saying stock building for speculative purposes need not be above ground, it could also come in the form of producers choosing not to pump oil from the ground. But first of all, oil-producing governments is not what is typically meant by speculators. And the issue being discussed was the role of professional speculators acting on the futures markets, not what the governments of Saudi Arabia or Kuwait choose to do, so this argument is basically a case of changing the subject. And secondly, as it happens, no evidence exist that oil producers are choosing to reduce production for speculative purposes. Spare capacity among oil producers is relatively low, especially if you exclude spare capacity caused by, for example terrorist attacks against oil facilities in Nigeria.
What then is the cause of high oil prices and what could be done about it? As I indicated in the aforementioned review, the boom is primarily driven by structural long- or medium-term factors. Demand is growing rapidly because of the rise of China and fast growth in other emerging economies. Meanwhile, while global oil production is actually growing, growth is inhibited in the short term both because of various political factors that stop drilling and because of the fact that even where such political obstacles does not exist, it takes several years to actually extract the oil. Brazil has recently found vast new oil reserves, and no political obstacles exist there to prevent drilling, yet it will be several more years before that oil reaches the world market.
These political factors differ somewhat in their form, but none of them seems likely to go away anytime soon. In Nigeria, as was previously stated, constant attacks against oil facilities are holding down production there, and these attacks looks unlikely to cease. In countries like Venezuela, Mexico and Russia, hostility against foreign investments combined with governments and bureaucrats starving government run oil companies of competence and cash, means that potential oil production is held back. And in the United States, opposition to drilling for environmentalist reasons, mainly by Democrats, prevents increases in oil production.
Another factor that in the short term has contributed to the sharp increase in the price of oil is the Fed’s inflationary monetary policies. Because the price of oil is much more flexible than most other prices and it is immediately affected by, for example, exchange rate effects, the short-term effect of an inflationary monetary policy is much greater than the short-term effect on the more sticky prices of regular goods in the supermarkets. That the oil price increased so much after the Fed started its aggressive interest rate cuts was not really a coincidence.
What then can be done about the high oil price? The long-term solution is to reduce or abolish taxation on oil production and to abolish all regulatory restrictions (whether motivated for environmentalist reasons as in the U.S. or nationalist reasons as in Mexico) on oil drilling. Opponents of drilling often reply to this that it won’t provide any short-term relief. But while that is true, but there won’t be any short-term relief without drilling either and the point of drilling is to provide long-term relief. Moreover, their preferred solution of having the government invest in research to invent more so-called renewable sources of energy is likely to take even longer to provide relief (if it ever provides relief).
To provide short-term relief, different solutions are needed. This means, for example, that the U.S. government should start releasing the oil held in the so-called Strategic Petroleum Reserve, while the Fed should stop its inflationary policies.
Unfortunately, I don’t think any of these solutions are likely to be implemented anytime soon, which is one of the reasons why I am not as optimistic as Don Armentano about the possibility of a significant price decline in the near future. However, while the oil price is unlikely to go down, we should always remember that it is governments and not speculators that are responsible for the all-too-high oil price we suffer from now.
June 28, 2008
Stefan M.I. Karlsson [send him mail] is an economist working in Sweden. Visit his blog.
Iran to ready thousands of graves for enemy soldiers
21 hours ago
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran is to dig 320,000 graves in border districts to allow for the burial of enemy soldiers in the event of any attack on its territory, a top commander said on Sunday.
"In implementation of the Geneva Conventions... the necessary measures are being taken to provide for the burial of enemy soldiers," the Mehr news agency quoted General Mir-Faisal Bagherzadeh as saying.
"We have plans to dig 15,000 to 20,000 graves in each of the border provinces or a total of 320,000," the general said, some of them mass graves if necessary.
Bagherzadeh said Iran was keen to "reduce the suffering of the families of the fallen in any attack against our country... and prevent any repetition of the long and bitter experience of the Vietnam War."
His comments came as the United States continued to refuse to rule out an eventual resort to force against Iran over its contested nuclear programme, which the West fears is cover for a drive to build an atomic weapon.
They also came as Israeli officials spoke of their determination to prevent Iran developing a nuclear capability at all costs.
A former head of Israel's Mossad foreign intelligence agency said in comments published on Sunday that the Jewish state had one year to destroy Iran's nuclear programme or face the risk of coming under nuclear attack.
Shabtai Shavit told a London weekly that the "worst-case scenario" was that Tehran would have a nuclear weapon within "somewhere around a year".
"The time that is left to be ready is getting shorter all the time," he told the Sunday Telegraph.
Israel is the only, if undeclared, nuclear armed power in the Middle East.
In post-9/11 America, the exercise of free speech is relegated to government mandated "free speech zones" and to insist the whole of the country is a free speech zone casts one in dark suspicion along with the likes Osama and the manufactured enemies of America.
9/11 Chronicles: Part One, Truth Rising is a testament to free speech, an endangered commodity in post September 11, 2001 America. Alex Jones’ latest documentary is a vivid testament standing in complete and defiant opposition to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer’s admonishment that “nowadays you have to be careful what you say and do,” as if the orchestrated events of that horrible day have nullified the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In Jones’ latest documentary, filmed in cinéma-vérité style — an appropriate technique, as the phrase translates from the French as “cinema of truth” — we witness repeated instances of police insisting the First Amendment is a dead letter and citizens no longer have the right to speak their minds in public, especially citizens going up against the imposed political orthodoxy and Fleischer’s counsel.
Truth Rising also reveals that it is not only New York City’s militarized police who believe the First Amendment is moribund, but many citizens do as well. “You ain’t American,” insists one such fine specimen at Ground Zero, angry over the possibility that somebody would actually dare contest the official version of events and ask questions and demand answers. Others fling mindless and obscene epithets and swipe at the camera, as if incapable of tolerating, let alone understanding and respecting the First Amendment, an absolute freedom that occupies a preferred position in the pantheon of our liberties. In post-9/11 America, the exercise of free speech is relegated to government mandated “free speech zones” and to insist the whole of the country is a free speech zone casts one in dark suspicion along with the likes Osama and the manufactured enemies of America.
Ari Fleischer’s warning is particularly injurious when it comes to the families of 9/11 victims and first responders, the latter consistently ignored, especially by the corporate media. In Truth Rising, first responder and former Iraq war vet David Miller, who is now reduced to toting around a respirator after his exposure to the toxicity of Ground Zero, takes the corporate media to task, rightfully characterizing this corporate cabal as “propagandists,” and “professional lairs and tools who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered journalists.” Miller, We Are Change, and unnumbered and mostly anonymous others have stepped forward to fill the imposed void of this deplorable corporate media silence — a deliberate suppression at the hands of their elitist taskmasters — with an indefatigable call not only for answers, but a demand that justice be delivered to the victims.
9/11 activist, former Iraq vet, and stricken first responder David Miller.
Manny Badillo, a 9/11 victim family member, reminds us in Truth Rising that “70% of family members’ questions were never answered during the 9/11 commission report. What if one of our family members were murdered, would we be okay with 70% of their questions never being answered during any trial? There still has never been a trial for those who have died, there still has been nobody held accountable.”
The 9/11 Chronicles demands those who killed 2,819 innocents, including well over 300 first responders, be called out and brought to justice. It is an effort to bring needed attention to the surviving first responders who are sick and dying in alarming numbers. It is an urgently needed effort to counter the disparaging propaganda of the corporate media — in particular but hardly limited to Hearst Corporation’s Popular Mechanics and its unscrupulous scheme to undermine the movement – a propagandistic media tasked with viciously mischaracterizing and slandering 9/11 truth activists as nothing short of crackpots and lunatics. Truth Rising is an answer to dismissive accusations. It documents a growing movement the corporate media refuses to cover without bias and detraction.
If you want to respond to these accusations, get 9/11 Chronicles: Part One, Truth Rising, and make copies, hand them out to your family, friends, and strangers on the street. Alex Jones, Luke Rudkowski, and many others featured in this documentary are patriots and heroes, not fruitcakes and traitors, as the corporate media insists at the behest of the government. Globalists and neocons within the government are afraid of the sort of truth so effectively presented in the 9/11 Chronicles. They are desperate to make sure the people never know the truth.
“How dare you” respond to lies and false history and deliver the light of truth to the darkness of criminal mendacity, rebuked Bill Clinton in Truth Rising when confronted by We Are Change. How dare you respond to one of the largest and most outrageous lies of American history? Clinton’s response is evidence proof positive our rulers are afraid of the truth finally finding the light of day. In Jones’ film, Rockefeller minion Zbigniew Brzezinski demands truth “sit down and shut up,” but it is too late now for that. Truth is on the street. It will not be silenced and 9/11 Chronicles: Part One, Truth Rising will make sure if spreads far and wide.
Gore Vidal, US novelist, historian and social critic says the Bush regime has killed all of the constitutional links that made the US a republic.
On early Friday morning Iran time, in an exclusive interview with Press TV, Vidal said that President Bush has rid the country of the Bill of Rights, habeas corpus and the entire legacy of the Magna Carta in the name of war on terror.
He also criticized the House of Representatives for not impeaching President Bush, over a wide array of subjects such as disclosure of CIA agent Valerie Plame's covert status. Vidal did however single out Rep. Dennis Kuchinich for drawing up articles of impeachment against the president.
Vidal, long strongly critical of the Bush administration, said the administration has both an an explicit and covert expansionist agenda.
In his writings he has made the assessment that for several years, the administration and its associates, many of whom are magnets in the oil and gas industry have had clear aims to control the oil of Central Asia which is to follow on the heels of gaining effective control of the oil of the Persian Gulf--a project that took a new twist with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1991.
That event inadvertently served as the basis for the neo-conservative American Project for the 21st Century document and policy guideline that has been the hallmark of the Bush-Cheney years.
Regarding the September 11, 2001 attacks, Vidal has written the American intelligence community clearly warned it was coming but the event provided political cover and pretext for the plans that the administration already had in place for invading Iraq--plans that can be traced to the waning days of the first Bush family presidency. .
An Alex Jones film.
Coming to the Infowar July 4th 2008
The 9/11 Chronicles Part One: Truth Rising follows the growing momentum of the 9/11 truth movement, as people throughout the world take action against their globalist masters.
Shot unlike anything you have ever experienced from Alex Jones, cinema verite' style, this masterpiece not only exposes the mistreatment of our 9/11 heroes, but also shows how a growing number of people around the world are questioning the official version of events that day.
Featuring interviews with Willie Nelson, Rosie O'Donnell, Jesse Ventura, George Carlin, Martin Sheen, as well as confrontations with many political figures including Bill Clinton, David Rockefeller and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
This movie will be available in high quality streaming flash and multiple format download first exclusively for Prison Planet.tv members when it is released on July 4th.
http://www.prisonplanet.tv/
Watch the tow trailers in fullscreen at the following links:
Ed Jagels put two dozen innocent people behind bars on charges that they molested their own kids -- while ignoring evidence that his friends were throwing orgies with teenage boys. So why is one of America's most reckless prosecutors still in power?
By Kimberley Sevcik
(c) 2005, Rolling Stone
The day Jeff Modahl's daughters were spirited away from their school in the back of a squad car, no one would tell him where they were taken. He spoke to plenty of people in Bakersfield, California, who knew: The sheriff. The district attorney. The Department of Children's Services. "Your girls are safe," one official after another assured him. "But we can't let you talk to them." Earlier in the week, Modahl, a soft-spoken thirty-year-old mechanic with the build of a heavyweight wrestler, had called Children's Services to report that he suspected the girls' baby sitter of touching them inappropriately. Officials told him that they were investigating his charge, but until they had finished questioning Carla, 10, and Teresa, 12, no one in the family would be allowed to speak to them.
The morning sun was still low and tentative when police knocked on Modahl's door two weeks later and arrested him. Panicked and confused, Modahl repeatedly asked the officers what he was being charged with, but they refused to tell him. He sat on the couch, his hands cuffed behind his back, as they ransacked the house, rummaging through drawers and closets, confiscating all of his family photographs.
The cops had been dispatched by Ed Jagels, the county's new chief prosecutor, as part of a sweeping investigation into allegations that dozens of local children were being molested. The son of a prominent attorney and an heiress who lunched with Nancy Reagan and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Jagels bears a passing resemblance to Paul McCartney, with tamer, more Republican hair. Buoyed by family money, swaggering self-confidence and a prep-school pedigree, he had surprised everyone by moving from his native Pasadena to the hardscrabble town of Bakersfield and running for district attorney at age thirty-two.
When Jagels took office in 1983, it seemed as though the entire country was in the grip of a growing hysteria over child molestation. People saw pedophiles and satanic cults at every turn, and Jagels recognized an opportunity for glory when he saw one. From his office on the fourth floor of the Kern County Courthouse in downtown Bakersfield -- a shrine to conservative manhood with its Remington bronze, its stuffed pheasant, its photographs of high-profile Republicans -- Jagels directed what would become the largest prosecution of child molesters in the nation's history. He assembled a task force specifically designated to investigate sex crimes against children and assigned his most ambitious young attorneys to the cases. "This place was like Mayberry before Ed came along," says Dennis Beaver, a former Kern County prosecutor. "It was full of sweet, older guys who left work early to get to the local watering hole." Under Jagels, police and social workers didn't just follow up on accusations of molestation -- they sought them out like desperate salespeople working on commission. Investigators drove children around and asked them to point out the "bad people." They whisked kids away from their parents in the middle of the night without explanation, deprived them of sleep and interrogated them like prisoners of war, feeding them scenarios of sexual abuse until they broke down and "confessed." Kids described being hung from hooks and sodomized, being forced into group orgies and videotaped, watching their captors kill babies and drink the blood. No physical evidence was found to corroborate any of their testimonies: no hooks or holes where hooks might have been, no pornographic videotapes, no dead bodies in the fields behind the churches where the sacrifices had allegedly taken place. Yet Jagels identified eight pedophilia rings in Kern County between 1983 and 1987 and sent twenty-nine people to prison for molesting children, some for sentences as long as 400 years.
The campaign of fear and intimidation orchestrated by Jagels became a nightmare for parents like Jeff Modahl. Two years passed between the day Modahl was arrested and the day he saw his daughters again at the county courthouse. From the witness stand, Carla smiled down on her father, her tone eerily buoyant as she described the various ways he had sexually abused her: how he had touched her breasts, put his fingers inside her, had sodomized her repeatedly. When his older daughter Teresa was put on the stand, she broke down crying, insisting that she had never been molested. There were no other testimonies against Modahl, no physical evidence presented. On the strength of Carla's accusations, Modahl was sentenced to eighty years in prison.
Not long after his incarceration, Modahl received a letter from Carla, written in the careful, deliberate handwriting of a child with something important to say. "Dear Dad," she wrote. "I lied in court. I'm sorry for lying about this, Dad. I sure do miss you and love you so much. I wish you could come home soon." In her letter, Carla explained that a social worker had tricked her, grilling her every day for weeks and promising her that she would be reunited with her father if she would simply "admit" that Modahl had abused her. The deception prompted a motion for a retrial. Clutching a copy of her letter, Carla testified that her father had never touched her and begged to have him released.
But it was too late. The judge didn't believe her recantation. Modahl was taken back to prison and Carla was taken back to her foster home. That evening, she took two handfuls of the medication she was on for manic depression and was rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. She was twelve years old. It was the first of seventeen suicide attempts she would make.
By that time, though, the cases against Modahl and other convicted parents were beginning to unravel. An investigation by the California attorney general revealed that Jagels and his team were guilty of multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct. Before some of the children appeared in court, prosecutors took them shopping for toys and new clothes, rehearsing their testimony with them until they sounded convincing. At Modahl's trial, the DA's office deliberately withheld two key pieces of evidence: a medical exam revealing that Carla had not been sodomized and a tape of a social worker inventing explicit descriptions of sexual abuse by Modahl and pressuring Teresa to affirm them. Prosecutors also pressured Carla's foster parents to put her on Thorazine, the pharmaceutical equivalent of a straitjacket, keeping her hazy and compliant during the false testimony they elicited from her.
"It's clear that at a certain point Jagels knew these prosecutions were wrong, but he continued anyway," says Michael Snedeker, an attorney who helped to free Modahl and seventeen others whom Jagels wrongly prosecuted for child molestation. "He saw where that train was going, and he rode it long and hard, all the way to the end."
Today, the Bakersfield molestation trials -- and the dozens of similar molestation cases that rippled across America in the 1980s -- are widely acknowledged to have been a witch hunt, a sort of mass hallucination born of fear and misconception. Since 1991, all but five of the twenty-nine convictions secured by Jagels have been overturned. Yet Jagels continues to stand by all of the wrongful prosecutions, without exception. He has fought the release of every parent, insisting, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that justice was done.
He has also continued to rule Kern County with an iron fist. During his twenty-two years in office, Jagels has become the most feared man in Bakersfield -- and one of the most ruthless prosecutors in the country. In the ongoing war on crime that he is waging, defendants are guilty until proven innocent, the Constitution is treated as an impediment to law enforcement and vendettas are subject to prosecution. Under Jagels, Kern County has the highest incarceration rate in the state, a fact proudly trumpeted on the DA's Web site. The city's reputation even extends to nearby Los Angeles, where residents joke about the danger of visiting Bakersfield: "Go on vacation, leave on probation."
"Ed Jagels will stop at nothing to do someone in if they cross him," says a former prosecutor under Jagels who asked not to be identified. "He is really poison. They call him J. Edgar Jagels. Hoover had so much dirt on people and so much power, you couldn't take him out. That's the way Ed is."
Bakersfield was an unlikely place for a guy like Ed Jagels to end up. Populated by the ancestors of Dust Bowl refugees who still make their living off the land, it feels closer in spirit and landscape to Oklahoma than California. No ocean breezes or redwood forests to be found here. No surfers or yoga junkies or war protesters either. What you will find is a bleak moonscape of oil fields; a chorus of radio-talk-show hosts ranting about illegal immigrants and welfare moms; a store called Second Amendment Sports, which does a brisk business; and, along the highway that leads into town, a billboard of a radiant Jesus that urges be an organ donor. give your heart to the lord. The downtown streets feel frozen in the 1950s: the family shoe stores, the swivel-stooled burger joint, the coffee shop where the waitresses call all their customers "hon." Merle Haggard was raised in a boxcar in a section of town called Oildale, where residents post beware of dog signs on their cracked windows, and Buck Owens made his mark here singing about thwarted love in honky-tonks with corrugated tin walls. Teen births and high school dropout rates around Bakersfield are among the highest in the state.
Most people didn't think that Jagels stood a chance in hell when he ran for DA in 1982. He was an outsider in Kern County, a guy far more comfortable in wingtips and power ties than work boots and a feed cap. His opponent, on the other hand, was a prominent judge, born in Bakersfield and endorsed by both the local newspaper and the sheriff's department. But the campaign took a sudden turn when an associate of Jagels lied to obtain a confidential case file that showed the judge had issued a lenient ruling that may have contributed to a four-year-old girl's death. Using the file, Jagels attacked the judge, speaking the law-and-order language that residents wanted to hear. "Kern County has roots in the Bible Belt, and a lot of people here have a fundamentalist attitude toward crime and punishment," says Kathleen Faulkner, an attorney in Bakersfield for eighteen years. Jagels sailed into office as the tough-on-crime candidate.
In most cities, people would be hard-pressed to tell you the name of their chief prosecutor, but half of Bakersfield seems to have a story about Jagels ruining the reputation or career of someone they know, based on some trivial charge that was ultimately dropped. "You don't have to do anything at all in this town to be convicted of a crime," says a former employee of Jagels'. "I tell my kids, 'Get out of this county after high school or you'll wind up in prison.'" As DA, Jagels decides who to charge with what crime, as well as whether to offer a plea bargain, or grant immunity, or push for the death penalty, and no one has veto power over his decisions. Wrongful prosecutions are so commonplace that a used-record dealer in town hands out bumper stickers that read Ed Jagels Hates Me, Too.
When he's threatened, Jagels goes for the jugular. A few years ago, a neighbor banged on his door one night, calling for his scalp. "I'm going to kill you and your entire family!" the man screamed, apparently misdirecting his rage at having been prosecuted for child molestation in another county. Jagels pulled a Glock out of the closet, charged down the stairs and ran the intruder off. "Ed is completely fearless," says Bryanna Jagels, his wife at the time. "Never mind that he's five foot eight. There's not a cowardly bone in his body."
Some who know Jagels insist that his hard-charging style is all about protecting victims. And if securing a conviction means he has to bend the rules - withholding evidence, bartering with jailhouse snitches, intimidating witnesses - well, so be it. In his mind, the ends justify the means. "I think Ed is actually a good person, in the same way that Don Corleone is a good person," says Bryanna. "You see Don Corleone in a Mafia movie, and he's killing this person and that, but you know that down deep, he thinks he's doing it for the right reasons."
In reality, the only victims Jagels encountered in many cases were the ones he prosecuted. Dozens of working-class families were torn apart by his crusade to lock up child molesters. Alvin McCuan, a sheet-metal worker, was stabbed while in prison. Teresa Cox, a nineteen-year-old newlywed at the time of her conviction, got divorced while in prison and became addicted to meth when she was freed after six years behind bars. Howard Weimer, who had won awards as a foster parent, wasn't released until he was seventy-five - too old to go back to work. He and his wife now scrape by on $1,000 a month in Social Security.
The children who were forced to testify have suffered too, burdened with the guilt that their words deprived innocent people of their freedom. When Eddie Sampley was only seven years old, he was interrogated by a sheriff's deputy and a social worker in the living room of his home. They tried to bully him into saying that he had been touched by a neighbor named John Stoll. "I remember them yelling at me, crouching down so they could look me right in the eye," Sampley says. They described what Stoll had supposedly done to other kids, using words and descriptions that made Sampley feel dirty and uncomfortable. "I wasn't supposed to be talking about these things," he recalls. "I was supposed to be riding my bike and playing G.I. Joe like all the other kids."
Sampley is twenty-nine now, a signmaker with a three-year-old daughter. He comes across as an archetypal guy's guy. His apartment is decorated with Budweiser collectibles, his refrigerator stocked with beer, red meat and condiments. He's easygoing and good-natured, the kind of person you'd fall into conversation with in a bar. But when he talks about how he was coerced by the investigators working for Jagels, his voice becomes pinched and his pale blue eyes narrow. They visited him seven or eight times, Sampley recalls. "You need to tell us what happened," they told him. "It's not going to go away if you don't tell us. We are not going to leave." Finally, they hauled him into an interrogation room in the county courthouse. In tears, Sampley finally told them what they wanted to hear. He "confessed" to everything they were suggesting. "I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone," he says.
Days before the trial, Sampley was brought into the district attorney's office and introduced to Stephen Tauzer. Tauzer was Jagels' right-hand man, the assistant DA entrusted with the job of putting Stoll and other alleged child molesters behind bars. Tauzer sat across from Sampley and ordered the boy to recount the stories of molestation that had been foisted upon him. As he listened, Tauzer made suggestions and amendments. "We need to make sure you say it this way in the trial," he explained. Sampley's memories of the scene are distilled to a few images from his child's mind: Tauzer's white hair, his pen scratching against his notepad, the tape recorder that Tauzer rewound every time Sampley revised the story to correspond to Tauzer's directions.
After Sampley took the stand and delivered the testimony coached by Tauzer, Stoll was convicted on seventeen counts of sexual abuse and sentenced to forty years in prison. Inmates convicted of pedophilia live in constant danger of being killed; in the prison hierarchy, they are considered the bottom feeders. To protect himself, Stoll devised an alias: He researched the case of a drug dealer who had gotten the same sentence as he did, and that became his autobiography. "I would have lost my mind if I had to live in protective custody, in constant isolation," says Stoll. "Reinventing myself was the only way to make prison remotely tolerable."
Last spring, an evidentiary hearing was held to determine if Stoll had been wrongly convicted. Once again, Sampley took the witness stand - but this time he wept as he recounted how he had been pressured to testify as a child. For two decades he had been steeped in guilt that no one could assuage. "I told a couple of girlfriends who I got close to that I had lied about being molested, and that there was a man sitting in prison for it," Sampley says. "All they could say was, 'Well, there's nothing you can do about it now.'" At the hearing, after Sampley finished recanting his childhood testimony, he looked Stoll straight in the eye and pleaded for his forgiveness.
Four days later, on his sixty-first birthday, Stoll was released from the Kern County jail, the same place where he had first been taken into custody twenty years earlier. As his attorneys drove him away from Bakersfield and over the county line, everyone in the car cheered. Stoll called Sampley from the restaurant where he went to celebrate, just as he was cutting into his first filet mignon in two decades. "Hey, Eddie! I'm talking to you on a cell phone, and I'm about to eat a big ol' steak!" Stoll yelled. Sampley burst into tears. "I felt happier than I'd been in years," he says.
But like others whose lives were destroyed, Sampley is still waiting for the man who put at least two dozen innocent people behind bars to be held accountable. "Ed Jagels is the one who's the criminal," Sampley says. "He's the one who should be in jail."
In a strange karmic twist, the finger-pointing and false accusations and paranoia about pedophilia that Jagels started back in the 1980s are now being directed at him. Every barfly and drug-store cashier in Bakersfield seems to have a take on his sexual preferences: There are people who insist he's gay, people who say he's a child molester, people who claim to know someone who knows someone with photographs of Jagels in compromising positions with young boys. A few years ago, a divorce decree in the name of Jagels' first wife, Stacey, was circulating around town, claiming that Jagels' "sadomasochistic behavior" and "lewd and deviant" relationships with young men drove her to leave him. It was riddled with grammatical errors and is now believed to be fraudulent. In the end, no one has anything resembling proof to support these theories -- just as Jagels had no material evidence against the people he locked up for molesting kids.
The wildest theory started during the same era that Jagels was waging his misdirected crusade against child molesters. Between 1981 and 1984, three prominent men in Bakersfield were murdered by their teenage lovers. At his trial, one boy testified that he had sex with 150 closeted gay men in Kern County, a group of judges, prosecutors and other pillars of the community who became known in local lore as the Lords of Bakersfield. For years, rumors about the dark cabal filtered through town: the wild parties at the house of Ted Fritts, publisher of the Bakersfield Californian, where teenage boys mingled with graying power brokers; the park at the edge of town where homeless kids would swap sex for money or drugs.
But while such accusations were being directed at his friends and associates, Jagels was busy building his political reputation by convicting ordinary citizens. In those days, thanks in large part to all the attention he received for his handling of the high-profile molestation cases, Jagels was the golden boy of California Republicans. People were talking about Ed Jagels being the next attorney general, Ed Jagels being the next governor. The men implicated as the Lords of Bakersfield were part of his crowd - his campaign manager, members of his own staff. They comprised the good-ol'-boys' network that runs the town, and he had nothing to gain by going after them.
Then, twenty years later, another murder reignited the rumors. In September 2002, Stephen Tauzer -- the prosecutor who served as second-in-command to Jagels -- was discovered dead in his garage with multiple stab wounds to his head. It turned out that Tauzer, who was fifty-seven at the time, had been involved for several years with a teenager named Lance Hillis. Hillis was addicted to crystal meth, and many in Bakersfield believe Tauzer was giving the boy drug money in return for sex. Whatever the nature of their relationship, Tauzer repeatedly used his influence as a prosecutor to prevent Hillis from being sent to jail. Sentenced to a rehab center and high on meth, Hillis stole a car and fled the facility -- only to slam head-on into an oncoming truck. He died instantly. A month later, the boy's father, Chris Hillis, murdered Tauzer.
Hillis told prosecutors that he had twice called Ed Jagels and asked him to tell Tauzer to stop meddling and let the law decide his son's fate. If Jagels did intervene, however, he didn't do it forcefully enough to stop Tauzer. "Jagels was protecting his friend rather than doing the right thing," says Kyle Humphrey, the attorney who represented Chris Hillis. "My client believes that if Jagels had stepped in and reprimanded Tauzer, his son would be alive today."
A few months after Tauzer's murder, the Bakersfield Californian ran a six-part investigation drawing parallels to the Lords of Bakersfield murders twenty years earlier. Running the piece was a gutsy move for the newspaper. Although Ted Fritts is no longer the publisher -- he contracted AIDS, and died in 1997 -- the Californian is still put out by his family. After years of being a virtual mouthpiece for the DA's office, the paper confronted Jagels about his role in both the Tauzer case and the Lords rumors. When Jagels refused to be interviewed, the paper ran a list of the questions submitted to him in writing, asking if he had "helped cover up and protect" those suspected of engaging in sex with minors. Jagels refused to respond, saying the questions were "so loaded with malice, innuendo and false assumptions that they are, for the most part, statements of implied wrongdoing, rather than legitimate investigatory questions."
The response angered many in Bakersfield. "Ed Jagels needs to get over it," one reader wrote to the paper. "Rather than dealing with the controversy in a professional, mature manner, Jagels has pouted, tightening his lips and the lips of many of his staff members." The story also prompted speculation that Jagels had launched his frenzied pursuit of ordinary citizens to divert attention from the illicit sexual behavior of the city's ruling elite. "As soon as I read about Tauzer and the Lords of Bakersfield, I began to think that the 1980s molestation trials were overcompensation - covering up their tracks by going after other people," says Kyle Beckman, who served as an investigator for the district attorney's office under Jagels.
Despite the bad publicity and salacious rumors, despite the widespread anger toward Jagels, nothing has yet loosened his grip on power. He has been re-elected five times, and during the past twenty years he has had only one challenger -- an attorney who was once jailed for biting someone in court. "No one wants to take Jagels on in the DA race, because they would lose," says attorney Kyle Humphrey. Jagels is backed by the sheriff, the highway patrol and the prison guards, and law-enforcement officers go door to door campaigning for him. In a law-and-order place like Kern County, that's all the endorsement he needs. "This is an oil and ag town -- people work hard here," says Dominic Eyherabide, a public defender who has squared off against Jagels in court. "Nobody sits around at night wondering if Ed Jagels is doing a good job, as long as he keeps pounding his chest saying he's tough on crime."
A subdued man with a prepubescent stamp collector's build, Jagels burnishes his macho image by going out on raids with the cops dressed in perfectly coordinated sportswear, a gun shoved into his holster. Last spring, he showed up to nab a trio of bear poachers. Another time, he hooked up with the rural-crime task force, outfitted in virgin Levi's and work boots, as they rounded up a bunch of stolen farm equipment. Jagels makes sure the media are notified about his outings so that he appears on the nightly news, immortalized on video.
Even when he's caught abusing his power, Jagels knows how to play to his constituency. Last October, a federal judge reversed a death sentence that Jagels obtained against a murder suspect, citing the DA for concealing the reduced sentences he gave to jailhouse snitches in return for their testimony. Jagels dismissed the judge as an unpatriotic liberal: "What do you expect from a court that thinks the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional?" he told reporters.
In fact, Jagels seems to devote more energy to public relations than to fighting crime. Former employees say that the DA doesn't spend a lot of time in the office, preferring to delegate tasks to his assistants. "I think of Ed Jagels as kind of an aristocrat," says Eyherabide. "He doesn't really need this job because of his family money. All of his rhetoric about keeping the streets safe for the people of Bakersfield - it feels like a form of noblesse oblige."
Jagels tends to take off early for the weekend to go hunting, or to one of his three vacation homes in the mountains or at the beach. He travels to exotic locales -- to Kenya, Tanzania, Alaska -- to hunt big game. The stuffed wild boar, Cape buffalo and kodiak bear displayed in his homes testify to his prowess. Once, Bryanna Jagels walked into the couple's ski house in the Sierra Nevadas to find the carcass of a cheetah mounted in the living room. She picked up the phone and called her husband.
"There's a cheetah on the wall," she said.
"Yep," Jagels replied.
"That's an endangered species, Ed."
"Yep," Jagels said, giggling mischievously.
"Ed is very anti-PC," says Bryanna. "I love that about him. It takes a lot of guts to be such a nonconformist."
Bryanna remains surprisingly supportive of her husband, given that she considers herself one of his victims. A statuesque woman with a wicked sense of humor, she spent five years of her marriage addicted to the painkiller OxyContin, often popping as many as sixty a day. Last fall, when she was arrested for giving fraudulent information to a doctor to obtain a controlled substance, she confronted Jagels and accused him of tipping off the cops. "It's my job," he told her. "I can't play favorites."
Jagels told the media that he would stand by his wife and see her through her ordeal. One week later he served her with divorce papers. They were dated November 25th, a few days before he announced his support for her. He also threatened to use his power as DA to give the court additional information on her criminal activities unless she relinquished custody of their five-year-old son, Jeffrey. Doing so would have been illegal, a conflict of interest, but Bryanna believes that the threat alone was enough to lengthen her sentence. "I'm the best example of how cruel and mean the justice in this county really is," she says. "It's personal." She went from dining at exclusive social clubs and bouncing between her husband's four homes to sharing a bedroom with meth addicts in a cramped rehab center whose carpet smelled distinctly of cat urine.
"There were five dogs and cats in that house, and they only came inside to use the bathroom," she says. "Living in that place was like entering Dante's ninth circle."
And yet, after all this, Bryanna thinks that Jagels was trying to save her life. If she hadn't been arrested and forced into rehab, she swears that she'd be dead by now. "Ed is a tough-love person," she says. "He doesn't know how to love any other way."
Word on the street in Bakersfield is that Jagels might not run for DA next year. The torrent of bad publicity over his split with Bryanna and the murder of Stephen Tauzer has taken its toll. You can see it in his face: Once alert and boyish, it looks weary now, defeated, the burden of twenty-two years of vengeance reflected in his sagging cheeks, his pinched mouth, the dark smudges beneath his eyes. He is no longer the Republican Party's golden boy, no longer a contender for state office. "I have a feeling that Ed Jagels will just disappear quietly," says Bryanna. "It's kind of sad. So many people thought he was destined for greatness."
Jagels has also been hurt by the lawsuits brought against Kern County by the innocent men and women he falsely prosecuted for molestation. They have already cost the county $5 million, and John Stoll is suing for $50 million. Stoll walked out of jail last year with seven teeth in his mouth, the clothes on his back and $200. Most members of his family were dead. His son Jed had long ago ceased talking to him, force-fed so many stories of molestation that he still believes they're true. "You can't put a price tag on my life," says Stoll. "You can't give me back my son, or what I lost in those twenty years."
Last year, Kern County was ordered to pay $4.25 million to Jeff Modahl and six others prosecuted as part of the same alleged pedophilia ring. Modahl used his share of the money to buy a seven-acre farm in Nebraska, where he lives with his new wife, Johanna, and their three-year-old son, Jeffrey. His daughters Carla and Teresa have moved to Nebraska as well, just a fifteen-minute drive from their father. This past Thanksgiving was the first they'd spent together as a family in twenty years.
"When I was sitting in my prison cell, I never dared imagine that I would have such a good life again," says Modahl. And yet: Every few weeks, Modahl wakes up in the middle of the night, his heart thundering, convinced that the whole thing -- his daughters, his farm, his wife and son and ten grandchildren -- is nothing more than a dream. He lies in the dark, holding his breath, afraid that his new life will evaporate the moment he opens his eyes. That when he looks up he will see not the slowly revolving ceiling fan he installed over the bed last summer but the steel bridge of a prison bunk.
"It's been five years, and I still can't shake off that fear," he says. "I wonder if I ever will."
The American occupation of Iraq follows the same course as that of British rule after the First World War. At first there was imperial over-confidence following military victory and a conviction that what Iraqis did was of no importance. Then there was the shock and surprise of an Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920 and the Americans after 2003. In both cases the occupiers responded by establishing an Iraqi national government but with limited powers. In 1930 under the Anglo-Iraqi treaty Iraq achieved nominal independence and joined the League of Nations but Britain retained two large bases and remained the predominant power in 1raq. Iraqi governments were tainted and lacked legitimacy because of Iraqis’ perception that their rulers were foreign pawns until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958.
America is now behaving in much the same way. It is negotiating a security agreement to replace the present UN mandate. It is to all intents and purposes a treaty that will determine future relations between Iraq and the US. It is not being called a treaty only because President Bush does not want to submit it to Senate approval. But in effect it continues the occupation under another name. The US will keep possession of over 50 bases though there will be a few Iraqi soldiers manning an outer perimeter so the US can say they will be in Iraqi hands. American soldiers and contractors will have legal immunity. The US will be free to carry out operations against ‘terrorists’ without informing the Iraqi government so it can arrest Iraqis or carry out military campaigns as and when it feels like it. Some of the Iraqi negotiators have been horrified by the extent of the American demands which would mean long term American control. But the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, whatever his private misgivings, believes that at the end of the day he relies on American backing. His coalition of Shia religious parties, Sunni representatives and the Kurds feel the same way.
The Iraqi-American security agreement, which Bush wants signed by July 31, is a better barometer of where real power lies in Iraq than military developments on the ground. It comes just as the Iraqi government is trying to regain control of the largest cities in the country. It has launched three military offensives since the end of March against Shia militias and Sunni insurgents, sending its army into Basra, Sadr City in Baghdad and Mosul. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers have moved into Shia districts once dominated by the Mehdi Army which follows the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In the Sunni Arab city of Mosul the government claims it is crushing the last remnant of al-Qa’ida in Iraq and has arrested over 1,000 suspects. The aim of the prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is to show that the Iraqi state, feeble and dependant on the US since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is back in business. The operations in Basra and Mosul have bombastic names – ‘Charge of the Knights’ and ‘Roar of the Lion’ – in a bid to underline Maliki’s intention to show that the Iraqi army is the strongest non- American military power in Iraq.
At first sight the government seems to be succeeding after initial failures. The attack on the Mehdi Army in Basra on March 25 at first made no headway and Iraqi soldiers even ran out of food after a couple of days fighting. They had to be heavily reinforced by American advisers calling in US air strikes and British artillery fire. But, after a few weeks, government soldiers were taking over in districts long held by the Mehdi Army. In Sadr City—with a population of two million it is less of a district of Baghdad than a twin city—the Americans again bore the brunt of the fighting. Some 1,000 Iraqis, 60 per cent women and children according to the UN, were killed in seven weeks. In both Basra and Sadr City the clashes ended because Muqtada al-Sadr called his men off the streets under ceasefires brokered by the Iranians. The Iraqi army moved in though without the Americans. Maliki may not have won the decisive military victory he claimed, but his government looked stronger at the end of the fighting than at the beginning.
The crucial political and military question in Iraq is whether the Iraqi government’s success will be long lasting or temporary. Will it lose control once again if al-Sadr orders his militiamen back into the streets? Are al- Qa’ida and other Sunni insurgents simply lying low and waiting for American troops to leave? Again and again in the last five years, the US and its Iraqi allies have genuinely believed that they were winning on the ground only to see their supposed successes evaporate when their opponents launched a counter-attack. But for the moment at least Maliki’s grip on central government is stronger than ever. A year ago the Americans and the Kurds wanted him replaced, as did the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the biggest Shia party in his governing coalition. But Washington soon began to stress privately that it wanted Iraq to appear as politically stable as possible during an election year in the US, while the Kurds and ISCI came to believe that they could get most of what they wanted with Maliki in power. For the first time since the fall of Saddam Hussein, many Iraqis think the present government might last.
This may be misleading. The government’s position looks stronger than it is because its opponents are waiting for the Americans to leave or draw down their forces. Al-Sadr does not want to fight now because he sensibly wishes to avoid a direct military confrontation with the US army, which his lightly armed militiamen are bound to lose. This has been his strategy ever since his militiamen fought ferocious battles with the US Marines in Najaf in 2004. The Iranians are playing a more and more overt role in Iraq this year and do not want to see an intra-Shia civil war between ISCI and the Sadrists. The Iraqi Minister of Defense says that the Iraqi army will not be strong enough to stand on its own against insurgents until 2012. A further weakness of the government is that it faces crucial provincial elections in October which its constituent parties may well lose. One US military intelligence estimate is that in a fair poll the Sadrists would win 60 per cent of the vote in overwhelmingly Shia southern Iraq. The surprise government offensive at the end of March may have been launched in order to make sure that the vote can be fixed in favor of the government parties. A more Machiavellian explanation is that ISCI expected the Iraqi army to fail and wanted to lure the American army into a military confrontation with the Sadrists.
The government parties supporting Maliki now make up what some Iraqis called ‘the Council of Five’. There are the two Kurdish parties—the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdkistan—the Dawa party to which Maliki himself belongs, ISCI and the Islamic Party of the Sunni. Their aim seems to be to be eliminate their domestic Iraqi opponents while they still have the backing of American firepower. It is a brutal plan but it might come off. Maliki could become the Iraqi version of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Like Putin, Maliki controls the state machine, a large if unreliable army and benefits from the high price of oil so he has control of over $40 billion in unspent reserves. Iraqis do not trust their own government but, like Russians when Putin first came to power in 1999, they are desperately war weary. Many people will support anybody who provides peace and security. But the analogy should not be carried too far. Putin’s enemies were fictional or in distant Chechnya, while Maliki’s opponents are real, dangerous and close by.
I was in Mosul, a city of 1.4 million people on the Tigris river in northern Iraq, on the day the government forces started their ‘Roar of the Lion’ offensive at 4 am on May 10. As had happened in Basra and Sadr City a few weeks earlier there were thousands of government troops and police guarding every street and alleyway. The entire civilian population had disappeared indoors or had fled the city. The operation, supposedly aimed at depriving al Qa’ida of its last bastion in Iraq, had been promised by Maliki some months earlier after a previous chief of police of Mosul was assassinated by a suicide bomber with explosives hidden under his police uniform. But its actual timing had caught people in Mosul by surprise so they had no time to stock up on food. Nobody was venturing onto the streets because of a curfew. In the first hours of the operation US troops shot dead men, a woman and a child in a car which failed to stop at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Mosul because, according to a US military statement, the two men were armed and one man inside the car made ‘threatening movements.’
I have been visiting Mosul ever since the Kurds and Americans captured it in 2003. Each time I go there the Kurdish authorities, who effectively run the city, allocate more armed guards to protect what ever official I am travelling with. We began the journey from Arbil in a convoy of white pick up trucks, each with a heavy machine gun in the back manned by alert- looking soldiers, some with black face masks, escorting Khasro Goran, the deputy governor of Mosul, to his office in the old Baathist headquarters on the left bank of the Tigris. The official border between Kurdistan and Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, is the Zaab river, very low this year because of poor rainfall. But the real frontier is further down the road at a small village called Ghazik after which the road becomes increasingly dangerous. At a bridge near Ghazik police were stopping trucks and cars whose drivers had not heard of the curfew declared late the previous day. A few miles further on in a Chaldean Christian village called Bartilla we turned into a fort and exchanged our pick-ups for more heavily armoured vehicles with small windows like spy holes with thick bullet proof glass.
People in Nineveh province were taking the curfew very seriously. There are kilns processing gypsum along the road through the plain east of of Mosul city but none of them was working. Even the dreary tea houses serving food to truck drivers were closed. The Kurdish minority in east Mosul city live close to a small hill on top of which there is the mosque of Nebi Yunis, where the Prophet Jonah is supposedly buried. Usually the Kurdish districts of the city are filled with street traders but during the present operation the metal grill of every shop was down. The operation was being carried out by 15,000 troops, the three brigades of the 2nd and 3rd divisions that are normally stationed in Mosul and an extra brigade from Baghdad. I could see the black vehicles of Interior Ministry special commandos with a yellow tiger’s head insignia on their doors. American drones and helicopters passed over head but I did not see any American troops patrolling the city. There was the occasional burst of machine gunfire in the distance but no street fighting.
On the face of it the government had control of Mosul. This was not difficult to do because, unlike Baghdad and Basra, insurgents had never taken over entire districts. But everything in Nineveh province is a little different from what it looks. “The province is more like Lebanon,” said Saadi Pire, the former leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in the city, “than anywhere else in Iraq.” It is divided between the Sunni Arabs, the Kurds and Christians, but many of the Kurds belong to the Yazidi sect which believes in a mixture of Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. Their chief divinity is the peacock angel who rules the cosmos with six other angels. Last year a Yazidi girl who converted to orthodox Islam to marry her boyfriend was beaten to death by her relatives and in revenge Muslim Kurds dragged 23 Yazidi workers off a bus near Mosul and shot them dead. The government in Baghdad might claim that it was pursuing al Qa’ida in Mosul, but real power struggles in northern Iraq revolve around sectarian and ethnic differences. The Sunni majority in Mosul certainly see the ‘Roar of the Lion’ operation as being directed against them. Any al- Qa’ida in Mosul had long left the city for the country or had temporarily moved across the nearby Syrian border. Everybody I spoke to in Mosul expected they would be back.
In Baghdad there is also a sense that we are seeing a lull rather than end to violence. Places I used to know well still get destroyed. I used to eat in a restaurant in the al-Mansur district of west Baghdad called the Samad. It opened soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein, served good food and somehow survived the next five years of violence. But at 5pm on 8 May some policemen parked their vehicle outside the restaurant and went inside to eat. A few minutes later a large car bomb parked beside the police car blew up and destroyed the Samad, killing seven people and wounding a further 19. The explosion caused a massive traffic jam. Ambulances and the fire brigade could not get through and the building beside the Samad caught fire and burned to the ground. Though the Iraqi government is claiming that al Qa’ida has been driven from Baghdad and Anbar province to the east, this is not really true. In January I went to see Colonel Ismail Zubaie, the police chief of Fallujah, who was a former insurgent fighting al-Qa’ida who had cut his brother’s throat. He seemed to be in full control of Fallujah. But in May fighters from al Qa’ida confronted Colonel Ismail’s uncle, who was a teacher, and shot him dead. The next day they sent a suicide bomber to blow up the tent where his relatives were receiving mourners. The operation, clearly an elaborate attempt to kill Colonel Ismail, shows that al Qa’ida remains well organized and with agents everywhere in the Sunni community.
The Americans lost only 21 soldiers killed in Iraq in May which are the lowest monthly casualties since February 2004. But these do not mean that the chief Republican contender senator John McCain is correct in believing that with enough resolution the American army is on the road to victory. Paradoxically, the Americans are now benefiting from their failure to turn Iraq into a virtual American colony in 2003-4. Iran and Syria no longer fear, as they once did, that as soon as the US had gained complete control of Iraq it would try to overthrow their governments. There may be those in the White House who still privately dream of doing just that, but Iraq’s neighbors no longer feel they must destabilize Iraq in order to avert the American threat to themselves. American casualties are also down because the Sunni Arab and the Shia Arab communities in Iraq are not only divided but fighting low level civil wars. Part of the old anti- American Sunni resistance has turned on al Qa’ida and allied itself to the Americans. The Sunni were driven out of most of Baghdad by the Shia militias in the sectarian civil war of 2006-7 and are increasingly marginalized. Among the Shia, once known for their impressive unity after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, internecine battles between the Shia parties in government and the Sadrists have become bloodier and more frequent.
The main supporters of Nouri al-Maliki’s government are the US and Iran. This has never been admitted by Washington but from the Iranian point of view the present Shia-Kurdish government in Baghdad is as good as it is going to get. It does not want to overthrow Maliki, but it does want to reduce American influence on him. The fighting in Basra and Sadr City between the Mehdi Army and the Iraqi government backed by the American army between March and April was in each case brought to an end by Iranian mediation. This has become very public. To arrange the ceasefires in Basra and Baghdad President Jalal Talabani twice went to see Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on the Iraq-Iran border, though President Bush has denounced the Quds brigade as terrorists orchestrating attacks on US forces in Iraq. Iranian influence in Iraq is stronger than ever and the Iranians are increasingly willing to flaunt it. When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad visited Baghdad this years his visit was announced in advance and he drove through the city by car. When President George W Bush comes to Baghdad it is a kept a secret until the last moment, he moves only by helicopter and he has never ventured outside the Green Zone.
Suppose Barack Obama wins the US presidential election America could withdraw its forces from Iraq over the next eighteen months without provoking an explosion of violence but only if it first had an agreement with Iran and Syria. An increase in Iranian influence in Iraq has been inevitable since 2003. Once the US had decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein the beneficiaries were always going to be the Shia religious parties, because they represented the majority of Iraqis, and they would be supported by Iran. Many of America’s problems in Iraq over the last five years have happened because Washington believed it could prevent or dilute the triumph of Iran and the Shia in Iraq.
Iranian strategy in Iraq is to keep the pot boiling but not over-boiling. They do not want the present government displaced. “The Iranians are very good at creating crises in Iraq and then solving them,” one Kurdish leader told me. Iran wants a weak Iraq, incapable of posing a threat to Tehran, and allied to itself. It wants a Shia government in power in Baghdad and the Americans out. “The three great powers of the Gulf historically are Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia,” the same Kurdish leader told me. “If Iran and Iraq act together then they will dominate the Gulf.” It may not be as easy as that. The Iraqis like the Iranians no more than they do the Americans. Muqtada al-Sadr, who is calling for an American withdrawal, has always been an Iraqi nationalist as suspicious of Iran as of the US. Paradoxically, the Shia governing parties in Baghdad, ISCI and Dawa, have traditionally had closer links with Iran than the Sadrists. ISCI was founded by the Iranians in Tehran in 1982 to be their puppet if they succeeded in defeating Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. It is still heavily influenced by them, but at the end of the day neither ISCI nor the Sadrists want the Americans nor the Iranians to treat Iraq as a client state.
Probably the most astute politician in Iraq is Muqtada al-Sadr, who has chosen not to tell his militiamen to fight for the enclaves they controlled in Basra and Baghdad. Instead in the last days of May he called tens of thousands of his followers into the streets to protest against the a new bilateral pact between the US and Iraq that is being secretly negotiated and would govern the future political, military and economic relationship between Washington and Baghdad. “Why do they want to break the backbone of Iraq?” asked Sheikh Mohammed al-Gharrawi addressing crowds in Sadr City. “The agreement wants to put an American in each house. This agreement is poison mixed in poison, not poison in honey because there is no honey at all.”
This opposition to the occupation can only grow if Senator McCain wins the US presidential election and tries to win an outright military victory in Iraq. The US can only stay in Iraq so long as it is allied to a large part of the Sunni or Shia communities. The occupation has always depended on ‘divide and rule’. If the US is ever faced with a united opposition by both Shia and Sunni in Iraq then it will have to leave. Everybody in Iraq overplays their hand at one time or other. The US position in Iraq has slightly improved over the last year but the improvement is limited. But by trying to impose a security pact on Iraq that would turn Iraq into a client state the Washington is fueling a fresh insurgency. It is discrediting the Iraqi government and the ruling parties who will be seen as foreign pawns. If McCain wins the presidential election and tries to put the security agreement into operation then neither the occupation nor the resistance to it will end.
Today on his radio show, CNN host Glenn Beck expressed his disdain of the recent Supreme Court ruling granting terror suspects the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, exclaiming that if he were President, he would do away with detaining and prosecuting terrorism suspects altogether. Instead, a President Beck would “shoot them all in the head [if] we think that they are against us.”
BECK: We’re going to shoot them all in the head. If we think that they are against us, we’re going to shoot them and kill them, period. Because that’s the only thing we’ve got going for us is we can put them away and get information. If we can’t put them away and they’re going to use our court system, kill them.
Listen here:
If Beck were President since 9/11, he would have killed many innocent people. Here are some of those held in Guantanamo who have either been cleared of charges or were mistakenly detained. For example:
– The “Tipton Three” who were forced into false confessions and later released.
– Huzaifa Parhat, an ethnic Uighur Chinese national swept up by the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, who was improperly classified as an “enemy combatant.” Parhat has been recommended for release by U.S. officials, while a military tribunal found no evidence that Parhat was a member of any radical group.
Not only would such a policy undoubtedly kill innocents, but as former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora has said, the belligerent treatment of terror suspects increases the recruitment of “insurgent fighters into combat.”
It really is amazing to hear the corporate media pontificate over the comments of Charlie Black, McCain’s top strategist. Black told Fortune Magazine another terror attack “would be a big advantage” for McCain. CNN’s Jack Cafferty was shocked, simply shocked over the comment and said Black’s admission was “breathtaking in its stupidity,” while other pundits, commentators, and sundry over-paid script readers were left scratching their heads in stupefied bemusement.
One has to wonder if Cafferty and his ilk have ever read a history book.
Not only does government exploit terror attacks for political gain, it in fact creates most terror. Examples abound, from the Nazis arranging the Gleiwitz incident staged prior to the invasion of Poland to the Israelis undertaking Operation Susannah, also known as the Lavon Affair. More recent examples include Russia’s FSB (the former KGB) bombing apartment buildings, slaughtering more than 300 people, and blaming it on Chechen rebels in order to create the necessary political climate required to get Vladimir Putin elected.
Another example is the Mossad created phony “al-Qaeda” terror cell hastily organized in Palestine. In fact, al-Qaeda, sketched out by Zbigniew Brzezinski and engineered by the CIA, Pakistan’s ISI, and Saudi intelligence, was specifically designed to provide an excuse for various governments, most notably the United States and Britain, to use false flag terror as a cynical pretext for otherwise unpalatable and illegal military operations abroad and as an excuse to enact draconian “anti-terror” legislation domestically. Al-Qaeda and other fake Islamic jihadist groups have produced an abundance of patsies and useful idiots, including Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, Mohammad Omar, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Khaled Jehani, Mohammed Atta, Zacarias Moussaoui, Sheik Abdel Omar Rahman, all with documented connections to intelligence agencies and covert operations.
Is it possible Mr. Cafferty never heard of Operation Gladio or Operation Northwoods? Gladio was organized by CIA director Allen Dulles and staffed by former Nazis who should have long before found their way to the gallows at Nuremberg. Gladio specialized in terror, subsequently blamed on the communists, and culminated in the murder of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
Northwoods was a false flag terror plan organized by the Pentagon to be launched against Cuba. “The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere,” the Northwoods document explains. It was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by the Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer. Northwoods included staged riots, blowing up ammunition dumps inside military installations, sabotaging ships, staging fake airline hijackings, undertaking fake terror operations in Miami, and sinking refugee boats en route from Cuba. Lucky for the Cubans, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara rejected this insane plan.
The CIA has engaged in false flag and more garden variety terrorism for more than 60 years in such places as Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Indonesia, Chile, Laos, Cambodia, Guatemala, Iran, Zaire, and many other locations around the world. “Despite its name, the Central Intelligence Agency’s main purpose is, and has always been, carrying out covert operations involving economic warfare, rigged elections, assassinations and even genocide,” writes Mark Zepezauer (The CIA’s Greatest Hits). “The litany of illegal, murderous CIA activity is enough to chill the bones of anyone who cares about liberty and justice.”
Charlie Black was simply and predictably tapping into the CIA created edifice of murder and genocide when he mentioned "radical Islamic extremism" and hitched this up to a possible terrorist attack. It is, really, the same old parlor trick the neocons have used for more than a decade.
Charlie Black, working for the neocon candidate, John McCain, was simply and predictably tapping into this CIA created edifice of murder and genocide when he mentioned “radical Islamic extremism” and hitched this up to a possible terrorist attack. It is, really, the same old parlor trick the neocons have used for more than a decade. It’s nothing new and Jack Cafferty should know better.
But if he does and dare mentioned it, he would be dismissed in short order. For CNN careerists, it is better to follow the straight and narrow path set down by their corporate masters – established long before by the CIA’s own Operation Mockingbird — and sell the semi-somnolent and perpetually distracted American public black and white illusions, reassuring palliatives, scary Freddy Kruger Muslim monsters, and never, ever point to the man behind the curtain.
Mr Black later said his remarks were "inappropriate"
A top adviser to John McCain has apologised for saying a terrorist strike on the US would benefit the Republican presidential candidate.
Charlie Black said he regretted the remarks to Forbes magazine in which he said a new attack on US soil would be a "big advantage" for Senator McCain.
Mr McCain said he found it hard to believe Mr Black had made such comments with which he "strenuously disagreed".
Democrat Barack Obama's campaign said Mr Black's comments were a "disgrace".
Followers of Mr McCain - a former US Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner-of-war who has travelled the world while serving in the Senate - say his extensive grounding in foreign affairs gives him an advantage over the less experienced Mr Obama.
Thus, they argue, he benefits any time national security matters are the news of the day.
I agree a terrorist attack would benefit John McCain but with one proviso...that this may well be the aim of the terrorists
But questioned about Mr Black's comments, Mr McCain told reporters: "I cannot imagine why he would say it. It's not true.
"I've worked tirelessly since 9/11 to prevent another attack on the United States of America. My record is very clear."
Mr Black said: "I deeply regret the comments. They were inappropriate.
"I recognise that John McCain has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."
Mr Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, said: "The fact that John McCain's top adviser says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change."
Hillary returns
The row came as Mr McCain tried to focus on energy issues.
He said that if elected, he would offer a $300m (£150m) reward to anyone who developed a more efficient electric car battery.
Meanwhile, Mr Obama's team has announced that he will be attending a campaign event with his former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire on Friday.
In what observers say is an attempt to bring the party together after the divisive primary battle between the two candidates, the event will be taking place in the town of Unity, where both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton received 107 votes in January's New Hampshire primary.
The rally will be the first time Mrs Clinton has appeared on the campaign trail on behalf of Mr Obama since she ended her presidential bid on 7 June.
This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:
I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.
Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.
Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:
I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
It is obvious watching the BBC’s trailer of its "The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower," set to air on Sunday, 6 July, that "Auntie Beeb" will attempt to make it appear Building 7 at the WTC complex came down as a result of fire (see trailer below). In other words, it appears the BBC will push — and defend — the government explanation hastily cooked up after attention was focused on the mysterious collapse by researchers, a collapse diligently ignored by the 9/11 Commission in its final report, or that is to say its final whitewash.
The Barry Jennings interview with an introduction by Jason Bermas. The clip here will appear in Bermas’ upcoming documentary, Fabled Enemies.
The BBC interviewed Dylan Avery, writer and director of the documentary "Loose Change," and during the interview the BBC disputed Avery’s claim that there were dead bodies in the lobby of Building 7 as the result of an explosion prior to the collapse of either WTC buildings. In order to make his point, Dylan showed the BBC video footage of one Barry Jennings, the New York City Housing Authority worker who made the claim of dead bodies strewn in the rubble. The Jennings interview included here was to appear in Loose Change, but Mr. Jennings had reservations after receiving threatening phone calls. He was worried about losing his job and requested the interview not be included.
Jennings, and Mike Hess, New York’s corporation counsel and a good buddy of then mayor Rudolph Giuliani, went to the Office of Emergency Management (OEM) on the 23rd floor of WTC 7, but when they arrived found the office evacuated, a situation at odds with the whitewash report. "After the South Tower was hit [at 9:03], OEM senior leadership decided to remain in its ‘bunker’ and continue conducting operations, even though all civilians had been evacuated from 7 WTC," the report states (Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, pp. 305). The whitewash commission’s description runs counter to a report published in The London Independent on September 13, 2001, indicating that Jennings and Hess arrived at the OEM by the time the South Tower was hit, indicating the center was evacuated earlier than officially claimed.
The BBC trailer for "The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 — The Third Tower."
According to Hess, when they used the stairs — the elevator was inoperable — to go down to the eighth floor, “there was an explosion” and they were “trapped on the eighth floor with smoke, thick smoke, all around us, for about an hour and a half.” The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claims the two men went down the stairs after 9:59, when the first collapse occurred, and were trapped around the time the second tower collapsed at 10:28, a claim at odds with the version published in the London Independent. "After the second plane hit they scrambled downstairs to the lobby, or what was left of it. ‘I looked around, the lobby was gone. It looked like hell,’ Mr Jennings said."
In the video here, Jennings says the lobby of WTC 7 was so destroyed he did not recognize it as such, it was "total ruins," and the fireman escorting him instructed Jennings and Hess not to look down because "we were stepping over [dead] people… and you know you can feel when you are stepping over people." Jennings’ story indicates, contrary to the official version of events, that a bomb or bombs had gone off in WTC 7, well before either WTC buildings collapsed (the south tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. and the north tower followed at 10:28 a.m.). For the government and the corporate media, the Jennings narrative is problematic, to say the least.
As the BBC’s role is to obfuscate what really happened at WTC 7 and push the official version, now increasingly under scrutiny, we can expect the world’s largest media corporation to ignore Jennings’ narrative, recorded last year by Avery and Loose Change co-creator, Jason Bermas.
"This is vital information because it is in direct conflict with the official claim that no one was killed inside building 7. The 9/11 Commission report did not even mention building, yet here we have a key witness who told them he saw dead people inside the building after explosions had gutted the lower level," wrote Steve Watson on June 19, 2007.
What makes all this information even more explosive is the fact that this individual [now revealed to be Barry Jennings] was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission as they conducted their so called investigation.
The fact that the building was not even mentioned in the report in light of this information thus becomes chilling and indicates that officials have lied in stating that they have not come into contact with evidence of explosive devices within the buildings.
Avery and Bermas successfully contacted the individual after discovering a TV interview he did on 9/11 while they were trawling through news footage from the day in research for the Final Cut.
As this video documents, there were bombs in the buildings, a fact scrubbed from the official whitewash narrative, essentially a fairy tale.
Jennings’ description of dead bodies in the bombed out lobby of WTC 7 underscores multiple accounts of bombs in the buildings, from firefighters, law enforcement officers, and other extremely credible witnesses, including the New York Fire Department Chief of Safety, the Assistant Fire Commissioner, and an FBI agent quoted by USA Today (see video at left). For a comprehensive review of these accounts and many others, see Firefighters and law enforcement officers believe that bombs inside the WTC brought down the buildings on the Global Research site.
It will be interesting to see how the BBC handles this aspect of the WTC 7 collapse. More than likely, they will ignore Avery’s evidence and push the ludicrous fairy tale that fire so weakened the building it had to be "pulled," as Larry Silverstein so infamously claimed in the PBS’ propaganda piece, "America Rebuilds." As should be obvious to all who pay attention, the textbook demolition of WTC 7 undermines the entire official fairy tale of what happened on the morning of September 11, 2001, and that is why it was not included in the whitewash commission’s report, although NIST has since lamely attempted to blame the collapse on the improbable failure of a single column that supposedly lead to the subsequent failure of the building’s 27 core columns, precipitating a total collapse.
Fairy tales aside, it should be obvious what happened to WTC 7 — it was fitted with a bomb or bombs and was intended to collapse at approximately the same time as the other buildings. This plan failed miserably and the September 11 conspirators had no choice but to bring the building down late in the afternoon — to "pull it," as Silverstein explained — and hurriedly cobble together a fantastic and unbelievable explanation that fire had weakened the steel frame structure and precipitated its collapse.
Mr. Jennings story demolishes the official fairy tale version and it will be interesting to see how the BBC and the corporate media deal with his story. More than likely, they will continue to ignore the facts — the WTC buildings were brought down through demolition, not as a result of fire, and Mr. Jennings’ story serves as a capstone in the ongoing effort to bring out the truth and ultimately bring to justice the perpetrators.
President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he thinks Senator Barack Obama may be elected, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told FOX News Sunday morning.
Kristol added that if Senator John McCain was going to win the presidency, Bush would “think it more appropriate” to let him deal with the issue.
Senators McCain and Obama have often sparred about whether military force or diplomacy should be the primary way of dealing with Iran, according to
McCain has criticized Obama for his willingness to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but a Gallup poll shows 59 percent of Americans support a meeting with the leader, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Bush said that McCain is “not going to change when it comes to taking on the enemy” when he declared his support for the candidate at a White House press conference in March.
WALLACE: So, you’re suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama’s going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?
KRISTOL: I don’t know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can’t — it’s hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force.
This video is from Fox’s Fox News Sunday, broadcast June 22, 2008.
Note: The Video on the left was added to this blog. It was not included in the BBC Report. The video is Senator John McCain singing BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN, then laughs like it's a big joke to murder Iranian people.
More than 100 Israeli F16 and F15 jets were involved in the exercise
Israel has carried out an exercise that appears to have been a rehearsal for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, US officials have told the New York Times.
More than 100 Israeli fighter jets took part in manoeuvres over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece in the first week of June, US officials said.
Iran insists its programme is peaceful, but Israel sees Iran's development of the technology as a serious threat.
Tehran is defying a demand from the UN that it stop the enrichment of uranium.
The UN Security Council approved a third round of sanctions against Iran over the issue in March 2008.
'Signals'
Several US officials briefing the New York Times said the exercise was intended to demonstrate the seriousness of Israel's concern over Iran's nuclear activities, and its willingness to act unilaterally.
"They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know," a Pentagon official is quoted as saying by the newspaper.
"There's a lot of signalling going on at different levels."
The exercise involved Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots, the newspaper reported.
The helicopters and refuelling tankers flew more than 1,400km (870 miles), roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's main uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.
The New York Times reported that Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise.
A spokesman for the Israeli military said the air force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel".
Warnings
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned on 4 June that drastic measures were needed to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.
He said Iran must be shown there will be devastating consequences if it did develop such weapons.
Israeli deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz - a former defence minister - said earlier this month that military strikes to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons looked "unavoidable".
In 1981, Israeli jets bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak, 30km (18 miles) outside Baghdad.
Israel said it believed the French-built plant was designed to make nuclear weapons that could be used against Israel.
It’s crazy, but it’s coming soon – from the same folks who brought us Iraq.
Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin.
This time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:
“We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.”
Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?
A member of Olmert’s delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that “the meetings focused on ‘operational matters’ pertaining to the Iranian threat.” So bring ‘em on!
A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?
You say you missed Olmert’s account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for including the quote in his article of June 8, “The Iran Trap.”
We can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert’s confident words about “Israel’s best friend” that week. Your attention – like mine – may have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence – the so-called “Phase II” investigation (also known, irreverently, as the “Waiting-for-Godot Study”).
Better late than never, I suppose.
Oversight?
Yet I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up succinctly:
“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
But as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous attack on Iran.
My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met considerable resonance in foreign media.
We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.
In a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers “beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.
Former U.N. senior weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the president’s praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to speak. Nor can we now.
The “Iranian Threat”
However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president’s “bubble.”
By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.
But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?
Well, this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.
This time no one is saying we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include – officially, at least – any U.S. boots on the ground.
Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline, the performance of the president’s staff has been spotty.
Think back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline.
“Wait, what did you just say?” the president interrupted. “You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?…That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”
A poll in January showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting $4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February, and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing the day before the president’s press conference.
Here’s the alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.
The lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between St. Helena’s High School and Mount St. Ursula.
Cheney’s Brainchild
Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if that is the correct word.
Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.
Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a “policy decision” regarding “what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks,” according to Carpenter.
Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, “mini-nukes.”
Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the “fear of the military leadership” that Iran would have “escalation dominance” in any conflict with the U.S.
Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that “escalation dominance” means, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”
The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.
Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.
The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).
In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.
Controlled Media
The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.
Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the “threat” from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.
At least this time we are spared the “mushroom cloud” bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.
In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.
But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.
So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that “just-following-orders” is no defense when war crimes are involved.
And still less when the “supreme international crime” – a war of aggression is involved.
Senior officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president, vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.
Where Are You, Conyers?
In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:
“To take away the excuse that we didn’t know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?’ when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative…none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that ‘somehow it escaped our notice.’”
In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.
On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.
A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers’ committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: “The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith.”
Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.
And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, “Constitution in Crisis,” containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.
Conyers’ complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won’t hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.
How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.
Afraid of the media?
During the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and during an interview in December on “Democracy Now,” Conyers was surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.
Ironically, this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid – witness their virtual silence on Kucinich’s very damning 35 Articles of Impeachment.
The only way to encourage constructive media attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things – like preparations for another “war of choice.”
I would argue that perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman urges – with impeachment “forthwith.”
Does Conyers not owe at least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in the Middle East?
Scott McClellan has been quite clear in reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has taken a similar decision with respect to Iran – with Olmert as his chief counsel, no less.
It is getting late, but this is due largely to Conyers’ own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.
What the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now surrounded by fancy lawyers and held in check by the House leaders.
In October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:
“This inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored…Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free.”
Someone needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does, he must summon the courage to “do what must be done.”
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was Army intelligence/infantry officer and a CIA analyst for 27 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Talk show host Michael Reagan files copyright infringement claim to prevent audio clip of him calling for the murder of anti-war activist from circulating the Internet
(San Diego, CA) Last week, radio talk show host Michael Reagan called for his listeners to track down and murder anti-war activist, Mark Dice. After Dice downloaded the show's free podcast and posted the 3 minute and 21 second clip on YouTube, Reagan filed a copyright infringement claim to remove the clip in an attempt to prevent it from circulating.
Friday June 13th Dice received a call from Reagan's producer demanding the clip be removed, claiming they hold the copyright, and Dice explained that it falls under fair use laws, and the clip is evidence of a crime.
The clip was available at the following URL, until Wednesday June 18th at 3:43pm Pacific Time. http://www.youtube.com/watc... Reagan also removed the entire hour of his show from his podcast directory so others can't download that part of his show and hear his statements. Hour number two of the June 10th show is now missing from the directory, located at http://www.radioamerica.org...
Audio clips of Reagan's statements may still be available on other YouTube accounts if someone searches for it. Dice has a copy of the podcast, and will make it available to reporters upon request.
Reagan's statements were made after he heard that Dice and others were sending letters and DVDs to troops stationed in Iraq which support the idea that U.S. officials allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen on purpose and aided in their execution for political leverage. According to a 2006 Scripts Howard News Service poll, 36% of Americans believe this.
Transcript of Reagan's statements:
"Excuse me folks, I'm going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullets.�
Reagan continued, "How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don't blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.�
The statements were made June 10th and came to Dice's attention a few days later. Dice immediately filed a report with the FBI, the FCC, and is considering legal action against Reagan.
He is demanding that Reagan be fired immediately. "Calling for the murder of someone because you disagree with their political stance is absolutely unacceptable, un-American, and illegal,� says Dice.
Radio America, which syndicates Reagan's show, told Dice that no disciplinary action will be taken.
Reagan called Dice and apologized but Dice says, "The Pandora's box that Reagan has opened can never be closed. The ramifications of his threats and suggestions are enormous and frightening. In an age where a few clicks of a keyboard can result in anyone's home address being found, his comments open the door for stalking, vandalism, and worse.�
"What kind of a country have we become when a radio host with millions of listeners can call for the murder of someone, and not lose their job?� Dice asks. "He didn't say that he hoped I am killed, or that he thought I should be killed, he specifically said I should be found and shot, and that he would pay for the bullets. This is a violation of California's penal code 422.�
Dice's entire YouTube account, over 60 of his videos have been deleted. His channel was www.YouTube.com/TheResistance and had thousands of subscribers and his videos had been viewed over a million times.
Dice is the author of a book titled, The Resistance Manifesto, which details how people involved in secret societies hold tremendous power in American politics. He has been featured in major media outlets around the world for various issues ranging from political activism to boycotts and pop culture criticism.
# # #
Contact:
Mark Dice
Mark@TheResistanceManifesto.com
www.MarkDice.com
Radio America, Reagan's Syndication Company
703-302-1000
www.RadioAmerica.org
Jim Roberts, President of Radio America 703-302-1000 ext 215.
Preparations for the DNC are made in Denver as the military exercises drills in the city. All captured by We Are Change Colorado.
Exclusive footage of the chase was caught by We Are Change Colorado members Jonathan, Turtle, Jason, Josh, Rob, Shannon, Nick, and Brian.�A week of excitement exclusively captured by the crew in Denver.�Here is the 3 part video of the week’s training exercises in Denver for all to see.�We Are Change Colorado has information on where the detention facilities will be for the DNC, as well as staging area and police HQ.�Get ready for Martial Law, Colorado.
Week Long Military Urban Warfare Drills Hijack Denver Streets in Preparation for Terror
Asking people about the un-marked, black military helicopters in the streets of Downtown Denver we were no longer met with blank stares and scoffs, but with finger pointing and wild eyed expressions of disbelief earlier today.
Special operation forces have been conducting landings, and maneuvers inside the downtown city limits of the mile high city for the past 2 days. According to the (AP) these exercises will be ongoing until Friday.
MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.-based U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Lt. Steve Ruh says the flights are a culmination of a two-week training exercise that is part of the “war on terror.” One official told KDVR-TV the flights are not security preparations for the Democratic National Convention in August.
These exercises have been conducted at multiple locations throughout the city. Two major staging grounds are a large abandoned rubber factory on the south side of Denver, and also the former Children�s hospital at Downey and 21st street. These facilities have been placed under military control with the blessing of the city according to Lt. Ruh spokesperson for the unnamed branch of the military conducting these ops city wide.
The image of helicopters loading and unloading Special Forces units in Black Hawk helicopters will ultimately prove costly for the city. One night is bad enough in a free Constitutional Republic, but for an additional 2 -3 days the city will undoubtedly be met with harsh criticism from the public.
Admittedly watching the helicopters take off and fly did stir images of American strength and pride, but these quickly vanished when a recent report from journalist Paul Joseph Watson comes to mind revealing soldiers are being asked if they would "kill Americans". One can�t help but wonder if those soldiers flying over head are the ones that said �Yes�.
That answer quickly came when in an extremely low pass from a MH-6 "Little Bird" with troops hanging off the sides dropped a red glow stick adorned with a military issue U.S. Army patch onto our position atop a parking garage our camera�s had positioned themselves to catch the action. Now whether or not this glow stick meant we just got �fragged� by a drill grenade, or if it was just a friendly gesture by our boys in the military is unknown, but coming with in feet of our position you can rest assured they are deadly accurate from that height.
The video below is a compilation piece from the two above mentioned facilities these operations were being conducted at, interviews, and car chases to the un-disclosed drill location all gathered by the 4 film teams of WeAreChangeColorado.org.
Those black helicopters that some insist only exist inside the warped minds of tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy kooks are making themselves pretty visible over Denver and Florida today.
With no notification whatsoever and under the pretext of "terrorism training," choppers are buzzing around Denver and even causing damage to people's property by flying well below legal altitudes.
At what point does martial law training become martial law? When officials think it's routine for the military to be swooping around skyscrapers and homes in American cities what's the difference?
Now NBC reports black helicopters over Florida in preparation for Bush's visit.
[NAPLES: We're getting a lot of emails and calls from viewers asking about a pack of black military helicopters flying around Southwest Florida.
While the U.S. Secret Service won't talk much about pre-visit preparations for the President, we can tell you the helicopters are part of the advance team in charge of security for the visit on Friday.
President Bush will attend a fundraiser in Naples.]
But a caller to the Alex Jones Show this afternoon reported seeing black helicopters over an area in Florida nowhere near Naples.
Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states' rights, Oklahoma's House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.
Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's own language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."
The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states' rights and gotten too big for its breeches.
Charles Key, the Republican state representative who authored the resolution, told WND that he introduced it because he believes the federal government's overstepping of its bounds has put our constitutional form of government in danger.
Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key
"The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time," he said. "The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread."
Specifically, Resolution 1089 says the following:
"The State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."
The resolution resolves that Oklahoma will "serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."
It also instructs that "a copy of this resolution be distributed to the president of the United States, the president of the United States Senate, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate of each state's legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation."
The resolution does not, as some have speculated, amount to secession, but it does send a warning signal to Washington: Oklahoma does not intend to be bullied by big brother government.
The Sooner State became a hotbed of federal vs. state authority clashes earlier this month when a federal judge blocked a portion of Oklahoma's tough immigration laws, ruling that plaintiffs would likely establish that the state mandates preempted federal immigration laws.
The statute prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving tax-supported services and makes it a state crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants. It also mandates that businesses take measures to verify the work eligibility of employees and independent contractors.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and individual chambers of commerce in Oklahoma challenged the latter mandates, set to go into effect July 1, in court.
On June 4th, U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron issued an injunction against enforcing the July 1 mandates.
"We've just had a federal judge say that our immigration law's employer provisions are unconstitutional, claiming it as federal government territory," said Key in response. "That goes right to the issue of (Resolution 1089). The federal government doesn't have the right to have sole domain over that issue or many of the issues it has spilled over into."
Though House Joint Resolution 1089 received great support in Oklahoma's House of Representatives, it has now hit a roadblock. In the state's Senate, where the seats are split, 24-24, between Republicans and Democrats, the resolution was sent to the Senate's rules committee, where it languished without action until the legislature adjourned.
According to Key, the Senate has worked out agreements on how to manage the political tie, including power given to the Democratic senators to not hear certain bills. Those senators, says Key, refuse to even hear Resolution 1089.
In the House, where Republicans enjoy a 57-44 majority, Resolution 1089 received a hearing and was supported overwhelmingly on both sides of the aisle.
"I was on the Democratic side of the floor," said Key, "and one member went off talking about how far we've gotten, how bad (federal overreaches of power) are getting – it's the kind of thing you hear in coffee shops."
Key said his bill "is making a difference" in the way legislators in Oklahoma are talking and thinking about state's rights. "I think it will make even more of a difference," he said, "when I bring it up again." He vows to put the pressure on Oklahoma's Senate to pass a resolution like 1089, and he plans to begin communicating the cause with legislators around the country, urging them to bring up the issue in their states.
Key passed a similar resolution in 1994, when he was serving a previous tenure in the legislature. But that attempt was only a House resolution. He authored 1089 as a joint resolution because, he said, he wanted to increase its exposure. "As people who believe in this constitutional form of government," he said, "we need to bring this issue to a national level and debate."
Comment: What happened to the American people? Are we to spineless to save a babies life? People get mad as they pound their chest & engage in fist fights when their favorite sports team loses but they are totally pathetic when it comes to taking action as some scumbag beats a baby to death. It's very sad if you ask me.
(06-15) 16:56 PDT -- A man parked his truck on a country road outside Turlock on Saturday night, removed a baby boy from a car seat and then beat the child to death in the street, fighting off passers-by who tried to stop him, until he was gunned down by a police officer whose helicopter landed in a nearby pasture, police said Sunday.
The 27-year-old suspect, who lived in Turlock (Stanislaus County), died almost immediately where he fell. The child, who according to police appeared to be 12 to 24 months old, was taken to a hospital but died before arrival.
Police officials declined to identify the man and said they were not yet certain who the child was - or in what way, if any, he was related to his attacker. The Stanislaus County coroner's office told police that the agency may have to identify the boy through a DNA test because he was beaten beyond recognition.
No information was immediately available about the child's mother.
The suspect "had tunnel vision," said Stanislaus County sheriff's Deputy Royjindar Singh, a department spokesman. "As people tried to intervene, to tackle him, he just went back to what he was doing. Anything and everything he could do to the baby, that's what he was doing."
Singh said investigators were working hard to answer a series of questions about the shocking case, including why the suspect stopped in the roadway, where he was coming from and where he was going. Singh said he did not know whether the suspect was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The beating and subsequent shooting by police happened near a dairy ranch along two-lane West Bradbury Road, between South Blaker Road and South Central Avenue, in an unincorporated area about 10 miles west of downtown Turlock and 20 miles south of Modesto. The rural road, which extends straight west from Highway 99, has no streetlights.
Singh said an elderly couple driving along West Bradbury Road just after 10 p.m. made the first 911 call to police, reporting that the suspect's four-door Toyota pickup truck was parked facing west in the eastbound lane. According to the caller, the suspect was behind the truck, where he was brutally beating the boy.
The couple had poor cell phone reception and did not give authorities a precise address, delaying the response by a few minutes, Singh said. But soon, he said, others called as well, and some witnesses stopped and tried to halt the attack on the child, who was shaken, punched, kicked and stomped on the pavement.
"One (person) tried to intervene, and the suspect pushed him off and continued assaulting the baby," Singh said.
By 10:13 p.m., a county dispatcher had confirmed the correct location and broadcast it, Singh said, but it was so remote that the first officers to arrive were aboard a Sheriff's Department helicopter that had been patrolling over Turlock. The pilot, a sheriff's deputy, and the tactical flight officer, a Modesto city police officer, landed in a cow pasture just off the roadway at about 10:19 p.m., Singh said.
The flight officer then ran about 20 yards toward the suspect and, while standing behind the pasture's fence, ordered him to stop beating the child, who was on the ground, Singh said.
"He refuses to comply with the orders, and the officer fires," he said, "resulting in the death of the suspect."
Firefighters from a nearby station arrived a few minutes later and tried desperately to resuscitate the child. The boy was then rushed to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock. Despite this effort, Singh said that the child died before arrival at the hospital.
By the time the ambulance had left the scene, Singh said, almost a dozen people had witnessed some part of the incident, with at least two trying to physically stop the suspect.
"The two officers on the helicopter, they were pretty shook up about it," Singh said. "We have to kind of expect this in our line of work. But for people who were just driving home, they weren't prepared for this. They're watching a helpless baby die in front of them and they're trying to intervene, but all their efforts aren't doing anything."
In an interview with former UN ambassador John Bolton today, Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett asserted that Iran’s Shahab missile “could actually hit — I think — some military installations in the United States.” “Absolutely,” replied Bolton, clarifying that it was “U.S. forces stationed in the region” that could be threatened by such a missile. Watch it:
The current range of Iran’s Shahab missiles is said to be 1,200 miles, but the United States and Iran are much more than 1,200 miles apart. The approximate distance between Tehran and Washington, D.C. is actually 6,340 miles.
Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and The Washington Times has found.
In one of the human experiments, involving the anti-smoking drug Chantix, Veterans Administration doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior.
"Lab rat, guinea pig, disposable hero," said former US Army sniper James Elliott in describing how he felt he was betrayed by the Veterans Administration.
Elliott, 38, of suburban Washington, D.C., was recruited, at $30 a month, for the Chantix anti-smoking study three years after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He served a 15-month tour of duty in Iraq from 2003-2004.
Months after he began taking the drug, Elliott suffered a mental breakdown, experiencing a relapse of Iraq combat nightmares he blames on Chantix.
"They never told me that I was going to be suicidal, that I would cease sleeping. They never told me anything except this will help me quit smoking," Elliott told ABC News and The Washington Times.
On the night of February 5th, after consuming a few beers, Elliott says he "snapped" and left his home with a loaded gun.
His fiancee, Tammy, called police and warned, "He's extremely unstable. He has PTSD."
"Do you think that he is going to shoot or attack the police?" the 911 dispatcher asked.
Police used a Taser gun to stun Elliott and placed him under arrest.
It wasn't until three weeks later that the Veterans Administration advised the veterans in the Chantix study that the drug may cause serious side effects, including "anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide."
"How this study continued in the face of these difficulties is almost impossible to understand," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Doctors at the Veterans Administration say they acted as quickly as they could.
"This didn't justify an emergency warning at that level," said Dr. Miles McFall, co-administrator of the VA study.
Dr. McFall said there is no proof that Elliott's breakdown was caused by Chantix and he sees no reason to discontinue the study. Some 140 veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder continue to receive Chantix as part of a smoking cessation study.
Dr. McFall says the VA decided to continue the Chantix study because "it would be depriving our veterans of an effective method of treatment to help them stop smoking."
Caplan, one of the country's leading medical ethicists, said he was stunned by the VA's decision to continue the Chantix experiment.
"Why take the group most a risk and keep them going? That doesn't make any sense, once you know the risk is there," he said.
Chantix is one of the drugs being used in an estimated 25 clinical studies using veterans by the VA.
Pfizer maintains that "the benefits of Chantix outweigh the risks" and that it continues to do further studies on the drug.
The FAA has prohibited commercial airline pilots from using Chantix because of its possible side effects.
Media Blackout Shattered: Clearchannel's KFI Los Angeles Breaks Reagan Death Threat Story, Mocking And Laughing
By Martin Hill
The 2nd most listened to talk radio station in America finally carried the story of Michael Reagan making death threats and being investigated by the FBI. They thought it was a real laugh riot.
::::::::
Media Blackout Shattered: Clearchannel's KFI Los Angeles Breaks Reagan Death Threat Story, Mocking And Laughing
By Martin Hill
Inland Empire 911 Truth
June 16, 2008
I called KFI this morning at 5:42 and talked with Bill Handel's screener about the death threats Michael Reagan made to anti-war activist Mark Dice. After 9 minutes on the line, she came back and told me they will cover it on the 8:30AM news.
Attorney Bill Handel's program aired the story at 8:46AM in a mocking manner, with Handel calling Mark Dice a "crackpot" and announcing that his friend Michael Reagan was being investigated by the FBI. They continued playing the death threat audio clip from 8:54 to 9AM, Yucking it up. Here is KFI's podcast page. http://www.kfi640.com/pages... If the audio isn't posted on their site I will try to post it on our youtube account tomorrow.
E-mail Bill Handel in order to demand fair coverage of this important story on tomorrow's show. If he gets a lot of feedback on this issue, he will air it, forcing Mitt Romney's Bain Capital Clearchannel to cover the story. KFI's news tip line is (323) 225-5534. Bill Handel's show airs 5:00AM- 9:00AM Pacific Time Monday through Friday; his call in number is (800) 520-1534. E-mail Bill at bill@kfi640.com
Members of INLAND EMPIRE 911 TRUTH and WE ARE CHANGE L.A. protested Michael Reagan's syndicator AMERICA RADIO this afternoon in Los Angeles at 3PM. (Video to be posted tommorow).
Stay tuned for developments and watch for this important story to appear on other Clearchannel stations. Also, be sure to call your local radio station to tell them to air the story.
-------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --
CONTACT KFI http://kfi640.com/pages/Sta...
KFI AM 640
3400 W Olive Ave Ste 550
Burbank CA 91505
Business Hours: Monday-Friday 8:30AM-5:30PM
Main: (818) 559-2252
Programming: (818) 566-6476
KFI Newsroom: (323) CALL-KFI (225-5534)
Listener Line: (800) 520-1KFI (1534)
To contact KFI about a news story or event, please email KFI NEWS.
To communicate a show idea, topic or guest, please email each show directly.
Note regarding submitting comments to KFI AM 640:
Emails and letters sent to KFI AM 640 directly will generally be placed in the station's public inspection file, available for public review at the station during business hours. Posting a message to a chat room, bulletin board or other general user forum is not a good way to communicate directly with the station and the station does not include these postings in its public inspection file.
FAQ
How do I call KFI to be on the air? For live, local shows, call (800) 520-1KFI (1534). If you get through, you will talk to a screener. A screener filters calls to find those most appropriate for the show at that moment. The screener may or may not transfer you to the host and put you on the air.
KFI AM 640 Sales
Phone: (818) 566-6178
Email: Darren McMillan, General Sales Manager, KFI AM 640 darrenmcmillan@clearchannel.com
My company would like to advertise on KFIAM640.com. Who should I contact?
CCLA Integrated Media
Phone: (818) 566-6324
Email: Michele Laven, Director of Integrated Media, Clear Channel Los Angeles michelelaven@clearchannel.com
I want to send a press release or news item to the station. Who should I contact?
KFI NEWS
Phone: (818) 566-6397
Fax: (818) 729-2514
Email: Chris Little, KFI NEWS Director, KFI AM 640 kfinewsdirector@kfi640.com
How can I register a formal complaint about a show?
KFI AM 640 Programming
Write: 3400 W Olive Ave Ste 550, Burbank CA 91505
Email: Robin Bertolucci, Program Director, KFI AM 640 programming@kfi640.com
KFI Info:
From Wikipedia:
KFI is a talk radio station owned by Clear Channel Communications, the largest U.S. radio owner. ...KFI also has an extensive news department, and produces news updates for other Clear Channel stations in the Los Angeles market. KFI employs 20 broadcast journalists. [3] KFI's newscasts air at :59 and :29 past the hour, with brief headlines approximately halfway between the fuller newscasts during local programming. The newscasts primarily focus on local news with relevant national and international stories included. KFI also has traffic reports four times an hour. ... KFI is a member of the Fox News Radio network and Fox News reporters appear on the station (but not its commentators, who have shows on competing stations in the market). However, the entire Fox News Radio newscast is not aired. For its efforts, KFI was named the Radio & Records News & Talk Radio Station of the Year in 2004.
In the Spring 2006 quarter Arbitron rating, KFI was the most listened to radio station in Los Angeles, averaging approximately 1.5 million listeners during any given weekday. In the Los Angeles market, this is extremely rare for an AM station, and more rare for an English-language station. The station is now the most listened to AM radio station as well as the most listened to news/talk radio station in the country, beating out WABC in New York City.
Huckabee video: "Some suggest that the fact that Bain Capital owns a major stake in Clear Channel is on Sean's network, maybe there's a correlation. I don't know." from http://www.mydd.com/story/2... "Clearchannel just recently went up for auction. Mitt Romney's Bain Capital bought it along with Thomas H Lee Partners, but I'm not sure who owns them. The rumor on the Street was that there might be regulatory problems because the firms own positions in other media companies, but I'm not sure which ones." http://rochesterturning.com...
Authors Bio: Catholic paleo-libertarian from California
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Radio talk show host Michael Reagan's weak, perfunctory and disingenuous "apology" to Mark Dice for encouraging the activist be murdered for sending 9/11 truth material to U.S. troops only further necessitates the case for legal action to be taken in order to end the spiraling cycle of Neo-Con intimidation and smear.
Furthermore, it now appears that Radio America representatives have failed to inform the President of Radio America about Reagan's comments in an attempt to protect him from any potential discipline.
According to Mark Dice's website, "Radio America has said that they will NOT fire Reagan for his comments. The communications director refused to answer whether the president of the company was aware of Reagan's comments, leading us to believe that they are keeping this information from him, in order to protect Reagan."
Had Reagan prostrated himself and vigorously displayed remorse for his disgusting comments during the interview with Dice yesterday then Dice may have considered taking the high road, but the fact that Reagan still views his statements as no more obscene that Mark Dice's efforts to inform the soldiers underscores the fact that further action needs to be taken.
You won't have heard about it in the corporate media so we'll happily reprint Reagan's original statement once again.
Last week on his nationally syndicated show, Reagan stated, "We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.”
Mark Dice's decision to report the death threat to the FBI and pursue an FCC investigation of Reagan led to the talk show host offering his "apology" yesterday before scurrying out of the country.
In reality, the interview with Dice was merely exploited by Reagan as an opportunity to make himself appear as the victim while hardly allowing Dice to get a word in.
Listen to the interview via You Tube. (At The Top Left Hand Corner Of This Page) In 2 parts.
Isn't it ironic that after 19 minutes of Reagan continually fading down and interrupting Dice, he has the gall to claim, "You're talking over me!"
In response to Dice's analogy of what would happen if a left-wing radio host called for the "unequivocal tracking down and murder" of an individual, Reagan claimed that Mike Malloy and Randy Rhodes had called for the murder of George Bush - a complete lie and another probable case of slander in and of itself.
The interview was pre-recorded and so Dice's most powerful statements were most likely edited out. There is a notable piece of editing when Dice questions Reagan's claim that he is still in the country despite telling Dice in an earlier private conversation that he was imminently leaving the country. During this sequence, Dice is completely cut off while Reagan talks over him.
Reagan invoked death threats against his father Ronald Reagan, who died four years ago, and also calls made to his cellphone by "your people" as an excuse to downplay the serious nature of his comments.
The only time when Reagan shut his mouth completely was when Dice read out California's Penal Code 422, which clearly illustrates that Reagan's comments fit the bill for terroristic threats.
Reagan's macabre obsession with violent murder was no more evident than in an August 2006 radio segment when he encouraged Arab babies in the Middle East be blown up by shoving "a grenade up their butts," while also stating that "there'll be peace when everybody in the Middle East is dead."
Reagan's foul, Hitlerian, racist and criminal statements can no longer be defined as free speech. When a national talk show host publicly calls for killing babies and puts out a contract on someone's life with 4 million people listening, action must be swift and severe.
At the very least, Reagan should be fired and never allowed to broadcast again. Don Imus was fired for much less and became the subject of national media obsession, yet not one mainstream news outlet has reported on Reagan's disgraceful comments.
It’s not anything new and revealing that America has gone insane. We all know that. But now our favorite bloated Federal Bureaucracy (as if we could pick one over any other), the Transportation Security Administration has taken one step beyond common decency.
It’s bad enough that TSA has turned the experience of flying into a total nightmare. But now they want to ogle our private parts! Yes, that’s right voyeurism is part of the TSA "experience." No you don’t get to uh… enjoy it. They do.
In the interests of providing even more "security" TSA is installing charming scanning booths that see-through clothes! Oh boy, now the filthy little TSA pervs can see what goodies you have hidden.
Of course, they claim they are looking for weapons, explosives… toothpaste. But I don’t buy it. Are we seriously to believe that the happy snickering face, safely hidden in another room, drooling over the scanner wouldn’t be arrested as a Peeping Tom… in a "normal" world that is?
I thought sex offenders went to the slammer and then had to register their whereabouts after they were released. Why bother? They’re down at the airport. And they are getting paid to do it!
Do the inspectors have to put in a quarter to view the passengers? If so, who supplies all the quarters? Oh… let’s be democratic and let the victims pay for their own "security." Sorry miss, you are going to have to give us a quarter so we can check out your… check out your… uh… naughty bits. The TSA perverts will get to see a lot more than those nail clippers they’re going to confiscate!
Oh but not to worry. While the TSA dirty old men … and women, let’s be fair… examine your "features" your face will be blurred out. Oh right! That makes me feel real secure! It’s not my face I want to keep private! Come on, they don’t call them "privates" for nothing.
And we thought the pat-down search was humiliating.
Now, I’m no constitutional expert or lawyer. But then that probably allows me to understand the constitution rather than become totally confused while seeking ways to reinterpret it to suit some diabolical agenda. But, it seems to me, security scanners that see through clothes are mighty close to violating the Fourth Amendment.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Hm… would you feel secure in your person while standing in a peep booth at the airport during your holiday trek across country to grandmother’s house? Do you think see through scanners might be unreasonable searches? And where’s the probable cause, warrant and oath or affirmationdescribing the place to be searched? Do we have to go to the dirty bookstore to find it? Do you suppose you might feel violated?
Rest assured wayfaring strangers, TSA promises that there will be no dirty pictures stored in their computers banks. Oh yeah?! Do they think we’re stupid?
In these days of domestic spying in the Rabidly Paranoid States of America, it’s only a matter of time before some Democratic Dictator decides that we need to keep all photos of everybody’s tattoos, surgical scars, colostomy bags and genitalia on file. One never knows what evils lurk inside a colostomy bag!
As things are right now, the pat down or peep show humiliation exam is a random check. Hm… you don’t suppose that attractive women with large breasts just might be "randomly" chosen at a slightly higher "random" rate than grandmothers?
Possibly TSA Peep Show Booths will inspire a revolution in fashion. Let’s go retro and bring back Valkyrie breastplates and chastity belts for women and codpieces for men… all made out of metal of course. That’ll put the kibosh on their jollies.
For now, travelers beware. If you’re not the type to display your "assets" to total strangers, choose the pat-down option while you still have the choice. Or, better yet, avoid the big airports where TSA is installing their adult toys, like Los Angeles or Miami or New York or Washington or Dallas or… pick one. It’s a safe bet they have TSA Peep Show Booths. Best to fly to Podunk and hitch a ride… don’t forget to chip in for the gas.
Oh heckers! I’ve got the solution! In the future all airline passengers will be required to fly naked. There. That should make TSA happy… the filthy little preeverts!
June 16, 2008
Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean.
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Tom Chartier [send him mail] played lead guitar in legendary Los Angeles punk band The Rotters for 26 years until their final appearance in January of 2004. He has lived in Tokyo and Los Angeles. Currently he resides somewhere in the Caribbean.
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Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are not happy campers today that’s for sure. He admits he was wrong about WMD’s in Iraq and now this.
QUESTION: A lot of the consequences you mentioned for pulling out seem like maybe they never would have been there if we hadn’t gone in. How do you square all of that?
BUSH: I square it because imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, who had relations with Zarqawi.
You know, I’ve heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived [in Iraq] and — you know, the stir-up-the-hornet’s- nest theory. It just doesn’t hold water, as far as I’m concerned.
The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were …
QUESTION: What did Iraqi have to do with that?
BUSH: What did Iraq have to do with what?
QUESTION: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.
BUSH: Nothing. . . . .Except for it’s part of — and nobody’s ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a — Iraq — the lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully materialize,
I seem to remember Dick Cheny, Condi and Bush trying link Iraq to 9/11 way back when:
Russert: Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that’s developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack
Martini Republic: So, to sum up, we had to invade Iraq because Saddam didn’t have any WMDs and didn’t have any connection to 9/11. And his handlers reportedly cannot understand why his approval ratings remain in the toilet.
When "Sorry" Is Not Good Enough Reagan has to be made an example of by the courts and the FCC for contracting murder against American citizens for their political viewpoints
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet
Monday, June 16, 2008
With Michael Reagan set to offer his "apology" today to Mark Dice, for whom last week he all but put out a contract on his life for sending 9/11 truth material to U.S. troops, some are asking whether Reagan should be made an example of by the FCC and the courts in order to put a halt to a culture of Neo-Con intimidation that is chilling free speech in America.
Last week on his nationally syndicated show, Reagan stated, "We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.”
Imagine if Alex Jones encouraged on-air assassinations of Neo-Con figureheads. He'd be SWAT teamed quicker than you can say "double standard".
Neo-Cons claim that our free speech should be restricted because we are expressing radical opinions yet they think its perfectly within the remit of their free speech to advocate lining people up in front of firing squads and blowing their brains out.
Anti-war activists and 9/11 truth demonstrators go to great lengths to emphasize the fact that they are non-violent and are simply peaceably trying to educate people, and the track record of their behavior bears that sentiment out.
Yet we are the ones constantly demonized, smeared and castigated by the establishment media as a vile irritant at best and at worst - terrorist sympathizers.
Imagine if someone like Keith Olbermann or an Air America radio host had openly called for the murder of "conservative" activists and volunteered to fund the contract hit. The FCC would shut them down in an instant, the FBI and Secret Service would descend and the corporate media would be all over the story.
Yet nearly a week after Reagan's disgusting comments and not one single mainstream media source has covered the issue. Just one "liberal" blog - Raw Story - has mentioned the story.
As we have documented, Reagan has quite clearly broken the law. His comments fit perfectly California's Penal Code 422 description for terroristic threats.
"Punishment for (Terrorist) Threats Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person with the specific intent that the statement made verbally in writing or by means of an electronic communication device is to be taken as a threat even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out which on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal unconditional immediate and specific as to convey to the person threatened a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year or by imprisonment in the state prison."
Whether Reagan genuinely regrets his comments or not, he is ostensibly set to apologize to Mark Dice today in an attempt to offset criminal charges.
Is an apology enough? She Reagan be made an example of to put a stop to the culture of Neo-Con intimidation tactics that are chilling free speech?
Mark Dice
Some say that Mark Dice should simply cease communicating with Reagan and pursue the FCC and FBI route that he embarked upon immediately after the comments were made.
Why isn't this enough?," writes Sherry Baker, "Death threats are not a trivial thing. He wasn't joking. He offered to buy the bullets for some crazy to do the job. He described in detail how Dice should be killed (no blindfold.. let's add some extra torture the neocons are so fond of to the scenario is Reagan's creed, apparently)."
"Reagan and Dice both live in California and California law enforcement needs to get off their collective butt and do something. "I want you to imagine if Dice went on a national radio show and said Reagan should be killed and went on to explain in detail how serious he was and how it should happen."
"Do you think for one minute Reagan wouldn't be all over Dice with lawyers and threats and outrage shrieked on every stupid Fox News program he could waddle onto and blither, jowls quivering in outrage?"
Over at 9/11 Blogger, "Reprehensor" reckons Dice is only doing Reagan a favor by going on his show.
"If you go on Reagan's show tomorrow, you will legitimize him, and possibly jade the judgment of the FCC, who must decide if they will act against Reagan."
"We couldn't do anything about Geraldo's conflation of 9/11 Truthers with terrorists, because FOX News is primarily a cable broadcast, it doesn't go out over public airwaves, and the FCC normally doesn't do anything about cable broadcasts."
"Reagan is different. Let him be hoisted by his own petard, his big mouth."
"Don't set a precedent by giving Reagan a way out. If rabid radio jocks are going to suggest that people get shot, they must answer to the FCC."
The final decision is ultimately down to Mark Dice. If Dice feels that Reagan is genuinely repentent then the temptation to accept his apology and discontinue legal action just to avoid the hassle would be there for all of us in a similar situation.
However, if Dice chooses to dig in and help set a precedent for the protection of free speech by making an example out of Reagan via the right channels, then he can count on the full support of an army of truth activists who are sick and tired of being threatened, harassed and intimidated simply for exercising their first amendment rights.
"While I understand different political opinions can result in heated arguments, Reagan’s statements are completely unacceptable, un-American, and extremely dangerous. Reagan has elevated the hate and rhetoric aimed at those who disagree with this war to new and unprecedented level. He must be fired immediately and no other radio or TV network should let his voice be heard, or his face be seen," writes Dice.
"Despite Reagan’s apology, the Pandora’s box that he opened can never be closed. The ramifications of his threats and suggestions are enormous and frightening. In an age where a few clicks of a keyboard can result in anyone’s home address being found, Reagan’s comments open the door for stalking, vandalism, and worse. Any threats made will be forwarded immediately to the FBI and the appropriate legal action will be taken," he concludes.
Talk show host Michael Reagan calls for murder of anti-war activist
His death threats were aired Tuesday, June 10th during the second hour.
(San Diego, CA) Radio talk show host Michael Reagan called for the murder of political activist, Mark Dice, after hearing that Dice is mailing letters and DVDs to troops in Iraq. Reagan wants to pay for the bullets.
“Excuse me folks, I’m going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.”
Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”
Dice is demanding that Reagan be fired immediately. “Calling for the murder of someone because you disagree with their political stance is absolutely unacceptable, un-American, and possibly illegal,” says Dice.
Dice has filed a report with the FBI and is considering legal action against Reagan.
Dice’s organization, The Resistance, has launched a campaign to send documentary films and declassified documents to U.S. troops who are stationed in Iraq to inform them that the 9/11 attacks were aided by elements within the U.S. government.
# # #
Contact:
Mark Dice
Mark(at)TheResistanceManifesto.com
Contact Michael Reagan's Sydication company, Radio America
Update on Michael Reagan Situation By Mark Dice
6-15-08
Mike personally called me an apologized for his outrageous and dangerous remarks which aired live Tuesday June 10th. He admitted that he crossed the line, and invited me on his show and will apologize to me and to his audience Monday, June 16th at 3:30 pm Pacific Time.
While I understand different political opinions can result in heated arguments, Reagan’s statements are completely unacceptable, un-American, and extremely dangerous. Reagan has elevated the hate and rhetoric aimed at those who disagree with this war to new and unprecedented level. He must be fired immediately and no other radio or TV network should let his voice be heard, or his face be seen.
Despite Reagan’s apology, the Pandora’s box that he opened can never be closed. The ramifications of his threats and suggestions are enormous and frightening. In an age where a few clicks of a keyboard can result in anyone’s home address being found, Reagan’s comments open the door for stalking, vandalism, and worse. Any threats made will be forwarded immediately to the FBI and the appropriate legal action will be taken.
I will take advantage of Reagan’s offer to come on his show and talk to his 4 million listeners and let them hear the facts surrounding the war on terror, and the peaceful methods of The Resistance and the 9/11 Truth Movement. I will expose Reagan and others as anti-American, and unpatriotic.
I want to thank everyone for their support and for standing up for the Constitution of the United States, and for peacefully and civilly taking the appropriate action to send a message to Reagan and others that this kind of conduct will not be tolerated.
Topic: Media
MICHAEL REAGAN SHOULD BE FIRED AND ARRESTED FOR DEATH THREATS
So neocon mouthpiece Michael Reagan is being pressured to apologize for making specific death threats against a man who exercised his right to free speech and spoke out against the lies concerning Iraq and 9/11. It's NOT ENOUGH. Reagan broke the law and he should pay.
by Sherry Baker
(Libertarian)
Sunday, June 15, 2008
The neocon regime and its supporting masses of sheeple can be characterized in many ways but honesty isn't one of them.
However, violence, disrespect for the law and the U.S. Constitution are high on the list.
They will use any excuse to destroy the basic rights of the citizens of this country, or human beings in general (as in "torture of anyone we THINK might be a terrorist' is just fine.. and after all, we are CHRISTIANS so don't say we are doing anything illegal or immoral..") and do it in the name of keeping law and order, of protecting us. The murder of over a million Iraqis and the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers due to an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation show their total lack of morality when it comes to matters of life and death.
So should we really be surprised that neocon talk show host Michael Reagan has threatened the life of 9/11 and Iraq War truther Mark Dice ([link edited for length])?
Dice's big sin, according to Ronald Reagan's adopted spawn Michael, was to want to send information about the true nature of the Iraq invasion to the troops. So Reagan convicted Dice of being a traitor obviously, Reagan has god-like powers in his own mind and decided Dice must be executed.
And Reagan hasn't been arrested.
Hell, he hasn't even been fired.
Although with the deluge of outraged callers and e-mails , I hear he is quivering enough to have invited Dice on the show to apologize.
Why isn't this enough?
Death threats are not a trivial thing. He wasn't joking. He offered to buy the bullets for some crazy to do the job. He described in detail how Dice should be killed ( no blindfold.. let's add some extra torture the neocons are so fond of to the scenario is Reagan's creed, apparently).
Reagan broke the law.
Here's the proof, California's Penal Code 422, which states in part: Punishment for (Terrorist) Threats Any person who willfully threatens to commit a crime which will result in death or great bodily injury to another person with the specific intent that the statement made verbally in writing or by means of an electronic communication device is to be taken as a threat even if there is no intent of actually carrying it out which on its face and under the circumstances in which it is made is so unequivocal unconditional immediate and specific as to convey to the person threatened a gravity of purpose and an immediate prospect of execution of the threat and thereby causes that person reasonably to be in sustained fear for his or her own safety or for his or her immediate family's safety shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year or by imprisonment in the state prison.
In case you missed it, this is what Reagan said specifically: "We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullets. How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don't blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice."
Reagan and Dice both live in California and California law enforcement needs to get off their collective butt and do something.
I want you to imagine if Dice went on a national radio show and said Reagan should be killed and went on to explain in detail how serious he was and how it should happen.
Do you think for one minute Reagan wouldn't be all over Dice with lawyers and threats and outrage shrieked on every stupid Fox News program he could waddle onto and blither, jowls quivering in outrage?
There's a lot of talk about at a "minimum" Michael Reagan should apologize for threatening to kill Mark Dice on his radio show. But it shouldn't be enough.
It is time for all of us to stand up and say we will fight for free speech, but we will uphold the law and that means death threats are NOT to be ignored, just because you are a talk host show with big ratings.
If such outrageous behavior is passed off as "entertainment" or not serious, where do we draw the line? What has happened to our civilization? Doesn't the law count at all? And I am talking about the REAL extant law, not the phony baloney "homeland security" fascist rewrite-the-law-as-we-go-along agenda of the Bush regime.
Don Imus, a man I consider tiresome, tacky and boring, was publicly vilified for making a tasteless, stupid, racially clichd remark about " nappy headed ho's" that he clearly thought was just a funny outrageous sarcasm. It wasn't funny and it was catastrophically in bad taste. But it hardly threatened a life.
And he as treated as though he should be publicly flogged, if not executed , and held up to ridicule and rants on every national news show. And fired.
Where are the media when Reagan attacks free speech and threatens a life on his radio show?
We have to become the media the new media. Get the word out. Complain to the FCC ( step by step directions are here [link edited for length]).If you live in California, rant like hell at the attorney general to DO SOMETHING, enforce the law. Call up or write Radio America and complain to the management ( [link edited for length]).
BOYCOTT the station until they say, no, their talk show hosts can NOT break the law and threaten lives on the air.Take action. Don't just sit there baa baa baa-ing along and waiting for some great miracle to happen to save this country. You and I and all those who are willing to stand up and speak up and fight back are the only "miracle" out there. Here's an opportunity to not be a sheeple. Just do it...
Security scanners which can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said .
Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports
Tue Jun 10, 5:11 PM ET
Security scanners which can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.
A random selection of travelers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York's Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.
The booths close around the passenger and emit "millimeter waves" that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.
While it allows the security screeners -- looking at the images in a separate room -- to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.
The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.
TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in April, first in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.
The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.
But the new machines have provoked worries among passengers and rights activists.
"People have no idea how graphic the images are," Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.
The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing "should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane."
Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the images made "will not be printed stored or transmitted."
"Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image."
Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines.
"The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down," she told AFP.
TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed across the country by the end of 2008. In Europe, Amsterdam's Schipol airport is already using the scanners.
The ongoing negotiations between Iraqi leaders and the Bush administration over the future role of the military occupation “have turned into an increasingly acrimonious public debate.”
The Bush administration’s demand for 58 permanent bases in Iraq — a near doubling of the current 30 bases — are causing Iraqis to warn that the status of forces agreement would be “more abominable than the occupation.” The administration is reportedly holding hostage “some $50bn of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement.”
The reason the White House is so hell-bent on signing a long-term agreement may have less to do with Iraq and more to do with Iran. According to press reports of the ongoing negotiations, the Bush administration is seeking the “power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq.” Ali al Adeeb, a leading member of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s Dawa party, confirmed:
The Americans insist so far that is they who define what is an aggression on Iraq and what is democracy inside Iraq…if we come under aggression we should define it and ask for help.
The administration’s request would seemingly allow the U.S. to brand Iran as an enemy of Iraq and attack Iran in the name of defending Iraq pursuant to a legal obligation under the status of forces agreement.
Other details from press accounts confirm that the Bush administration has one eye on Iran in the course of its negotiations with Iraqis. The Washington Post explains that the administration is seeking “the prerogative for U.S. forces to conduct operations without approval from the Iraqi government.” Moreover, the U.S. wants control over Iraq’s airpsace:
The American negotiators also called for continued control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, according to [Sami al-Askari, a leading Shiite politician], positions he said added to concerns that the United States was preparing to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran.
ROCK HILL, S.C. (June 10) - When school officials in Rock Hill, South Carolina, tell graduation ceremony crowds to hold their applause until the end, they mean it -- Police arrested seven people after they were accused of loud cheering during the ceremonies.
Six people at Fort Mill High School's graduation were charged Saturday and a seventh at the graduation for York Comprehensive High School was charged Friday with disorderly conduct, authorities said. Police said the seven yelled after students' names were called.
"I just thought they were going to escort me out," Jonathan Orr told The Herald of Rock Hill. "I had no idea they were going to put andcuffs on me and take me to jail."
Orr, 21, spent two hours in jail after he was arrested when he yelled for his cousin at York's commencement at the Winthrop University Coliseum.
Rock Hill police began patrolling commencements several years ago at the request of school districts who complained of increasing disruption. Those attending graduations are told they can be prosecuted for bad behavior and letters are sent home with students, said Rock Hill police spokesman Lt. Jerry Waldrop.
All the cases, except for one that includes a resisting arrest charge, will be handled in city court and are punishable by a maximum of 30 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Orr said he thinks people should be allowed to cheer.
"For some people, it might be the only member of their family to graduate high school, and it was like a funeral in there," Orr said.
William Massey, 19, was arrested but said he plans to fight the charge. He said he simply "clapped and gave a little whoop" when his fiancee's name was called. Massey said there were warnings before the ceremony but none that said he could be arrested.
He said not everyone who cheered was arrested.
"There's a lot more people that did it than six or seven," said Massey, who graduated from Fort Mill last year.
Fort Mill Principal Dee Christopher says school officials don't ask that offenders be arrested but that he plans to keep a police presence at future graduation ceremonies.
"We think it's important for every graduate's name to be heard and for every person in the arena to be able to see that student cross the stage. ... That's why we have disruptive guests removed," he said.
Last year in Galesburg, Illinois, five students were denied diplomas from the city's lone public high school after enthusiastic friends or family members cheered for them during commencement. Students could get their diplomas after completing eight hours of public service for the school district.
Riot police fire rubber bullets at protesters outside an FTAA meeting in Miami in 2003 (AP Photo).
Political activists planning protest rallies at the upcoming Democratic Convention in Denver have their stomachs in knots over a rumor about a crowd control weapon - known as the “crap cannon” - that might be unleashed against them.
Also called “Brown Note,” it is believed to be an infrasound frequency that debilitates a person by making them defecate involuntarily.
Mark Cohen, co-founder of Re-create 68, an alliance of local activists working for the protection of first amendment rights, said he believes this could be deployed at the convention in August to subdue crowds.
“We know this weapon and weapons like it have been used at other large protests before,” he said.
Cohen, who described Brown Note as a “sonic weapon used to disrupt people’s equilibrium,” cited eyewitness accounts of its use during free-trade agreement protests in Miami in 2003.
“I think these weapons were mostly intended for military use and so their use for dealing with innocent protesters seems highly inappropriate,” he said. “The idea that they might be field testing them on people who are doing nothing more than exercising their first amendment rights is disturbing.”
His group is preparing against a possible attack by Brown Note and other crowd-control measures by dispatching street medics at the convention trained in treating injuries in demonstration situations.
“It’s all we can do,” Cohen said.
So is the Brown Note a real threat?
Dr. Roger Schwenke - an expert acoustician who appeared on the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” in 2004 to test the phenomenon - told FOXNews.com there is no scientific evidence that proves such frequencies cause involuntary defecation.
“When we conducted the low frequency experiment for the Brown Note episode of MythBusters, we tested a variety of low frequencies and no involuntary gastro-intestinal motility was caused,” he said.
But Schwenke acknowledged the low-frequency exposure did cause an adverse effect. Several people — including himself — reported “abdominal discomfort,” he said, “which was easily alleviated by moving a moderate distance away from the source.”
Adding to the Brown Note rumor is a refusal by Denver’s Mayor John W. Hickenlooper to release details of what was purchased with $18 million of a $50 million federal grant the city received to pay for convention security, despite a lawsuit filed by ACLU.
Cohen’s group is calling on the administration to disclose what measures will be taken.
In a statement released to FOXNews.com, city spokeswoman Sue Cobb said, “commenting on specific security preparations is not helpful to ensuring their effectiveness. I can say, however, that all of our security-related purchases for the Democratic National Convention will comply with federal and City requirements. We are working closely with the U.S. Department of Justice to ensure that the $50 million federal security grant is spent on personnel and equipment in the manner required by the grant.”
Denver’s police Department wouldn’t comment on the tactics that will be used during the convention, but a spokesman said that “we do support and encourage people to express their views safely and in a manner that respects the rights of others along with the laws and ordinances of our city.”
But Glenn Spangnuolo, also with Re-create 68, isn’t taking any chances. He said he has no doubt that Brown Note exists, and is preparing his group for confrontation. “Whether it causes someone to defecate in their pants or not, I don’t know that,” said Spagnuolo. “What I do know is that it causes a person to be disoriented and lose their equilibrium resulting in a nauseous feeling in their stomach.”
More troubling to Spagnuolo is the “Active Denial System” or “ADS,” a ray gun used to send high levels of microwave frequencies that cause a burning sensation the skin.
He described ADS as an “indiscriminate weapon” and said “there’s no long-term testing on what happens to the body when exposed to those kinds of microwave frequencies.”
Spagnuolo believes that Raytheon, the company that manufactures the weapon, is planning to test a limited-range civilian version on protesters in Denver before approving its use in places like Iraq.
Spagnuolo said he believes tactics like these are excessive. “I think spending millions of dollars on weapon technologies to be used on people in our community is completely wrong,” he said.
Now is time for Michelle Malkin to take back her comments and apologize to all "pinkos" she slandered on March 3. It is time for Allahpundit of the Hot Air blog to admit the dog was real and not a fake.
Recall neocon blogger and concentration camp apologist Michelle Malkin in huffy denial over the Marine who sadistically chucked a puppy into a ravine while on “duty” in Iraq.
“Watch the clip closely. The puppy doesn’t move. It’s clear to me that it’s either dead or a stuffed toy. The sound effects of a dog yapping seem to have been dubbed in,” Malkin wrote on March 3. For Malkin, the event was simply an excuse for “Gloria Steinem and the Berkeley City Council” to diss the troops. The YouTube posted clip was “a useful cultural Rorschach test” for those “who buy into the soldier-as-monster narrative [and] are up in arms — demanding that the soldiers be hunted down and shot” and for “Code Pinkos” who Malkin declared “will dig up every bad animal abuse video they can find involving American troops,” of which there is no shortage.
As it turns out, the disgusting puppy murder video is real and the dog is not “either dead or a stuffed toy,” as murder and torture apologist Malkin would have it. From AFP earlier today:
Two US Marines have been disciplined for their role in an Internet video that showed a puppy being thrown off a cliff by a soldier in Iraq, the military said in a statement Thursday.
A press release from the US Marines Corps base in Hawaii said Lance Corporal David Motari, who was seen in the video hurling the puppy into a rocky ravine, faced expulsion for the incident.
Motari, part of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment at Kaneohe Bay, is “being processed for separation,” the statement said. He also faced unspecified “non-judicial” punishment.
Another Marine, Sergeant Crismarvin Banez Encarnacion, whose role in the incident was unclear, received non-judicial punishment the Marines said.
Now is time for Michelle Malkin to take back her comments and apologize to all “pinkos” she slandered on March 3. It is time for Allahpundit of the Hot Air blog to admit the dog was real and not a fake.
Malkin should also apologize to CIA operative Gloria Steinem.
Of course, Malkin will not apologize. “The bottom line here is that Malkin will say anything, take any side or hold any view when it serves her agenda,” blogger Real Truth Online wrote on March 4. “When others step outside the box, think for themselves and support views that Malkin rejects, they are ‘loons’ who should be silenced. It matters not if the video evidence debunks her conclusions and opinions. If she thinks it, it’s fact.
Evidence doesn’t matter.”
Michelle Malkin, the neocon going by the handle Allahpundit, and all the other neocon camp followers, will support the troops no matter what they do, no matter how many dogs, farm animals, children, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and toddlers they torture, kill, and dismember. After all, most neocons hate all things Muslim, they viscerally loathe all “pinkos” and people who exercise the First Amendment.
Michelle, for your sake, drive the speed limit and obey all laws. Because the sort of psychopaths who throw puppies over cliffs — and, compartively speaking, puppy chucking is a minor incident considering soldiers are killing entire families for the sheer hellish pleasure of it — are now coming home to work for law enforcement around the country.
For these violent mental cases, basically no different than Jeffrey Dahmer, it does not matter that you support the troops, support criminal neocons, and spend your time making excuses for their behavior.
Be nice to them, Michelle, or suffer the consequences.
After being denied a speaking slot at the Republican convention this summer, former candidate Rep. Ron Paul, who is not supporting GOP nominee John McCain, has decided to stage his own parallel convention in Minneapolis.
"There is a growing surge of people out there just craving" for a return "to traditional American government, limited government that places personal liberty first and places an emphasis on personal responsibility and essentially gets out of the way after that," Paul spokesman Jesse Benton told the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. "The buzz we get from supporters is that they are very eager to come to St. Paul and very eager to send a strong message."
After being initially viewed as little more than a gadfly's revolt, Paul's campaign picked up substantial steam during the GOP primaries, when the libertarian leaning Texan raised about $35 million almost entirely online and garnered more than a million votes. Paul's secured at least 35 convention delegates, but Republican party big-wigs are denying him a speaking slot.
The Tribune-Review has the details on Paul's parallel convention:
Maverick GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul has booked an arena in Minneapolis for a "mini-convention" that could steal some of John McCain's thunder just days before he accepts the Republican nomination.
A Paul campaign aide said the Texas congressman hopes to pack about 11,000 supporters into the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota on Sept. 2, which coincides with the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Energy Center in neighboring St. Paul.
Benton tells MSNBC that Paul's decision to hold his own convention is about more than just not getting a speaking slot at the GOP's main shindig.
Paul's supporters are really "looking to build a national organization that is going to run at a grassroots level, be organized at a precinct level, and to identify candidates to support," Benton said, "real constitutionalist candidates."
Paul camp expects to have about 50 delegates to the national convention. They will attend the Paul convention and the campaign is encouraging them to go to the official GOP convention as "active and positive." But, Benton added, Paul's supporters are independent-minded and aren't going to be told what to do.
There's some evidence that Paul's influence is beginning to stretch beyond the presidential race already. Libertarian magazine Reason recently profiled several "Ron Paul Republicans" who are seeking congressional seats in House races across the country this year.
An Alex Jones Film. Coming to the Infowar July 4th, 2008 & online first at Prison Planet.tv.
This film follows the growing momentum of 9/11 truth, as people throughout the world take action against their globalist masters. Shot unlike anything you have ever experienced from Alex Jones, cinema verite' style, this masterpiece not only exposes the mistreatment of our 9/11 heroes, but also shows how a growing number of people around the world are questioning the official version of events that day. Featuring interviews with Willie Nelson, Rosie O'Donnell, Jesse Ventura, George Carlin, Martin Sheen, as well as confrontations with many political figures including Bill Clinton, David Rockefeller and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The world economy is suffering from high inflation, stemming from overly expansionary monetary policy in the United States, as indicated by negative real interest rates and the rapidly depreciating dollar. Low interest rates discourage savings, reduce bond yields and cause investors to seek higher yields in speculative commodities and foreign currency markets. Consequently, energy and food prices have exploded to levels threatening social and economic upheavals.
Oil prices, by climbing from US$20 a barrel in 2001 to $135 barrel in May this year, illustrate the extent of the dollar's depreciation and interest rates distortions. Whereas a $100 bill would have bought five barrels of oil in 2001, now it buys only 0.74 barrel, losing approximately 85% of its real value.
Inflation imposes a heavy tax burden on dollar holders, cuts
disproportionately the real incomes of workers and pensioners, redistributes wealth in favor of debtors at the expense of creditors, and stifles economic growth.
Given that the US dollar accounted for 41% of total international reserves at the end of 2007, (against 17% for euros), its fast depreciation makes it a risky asset for holders and could lead to a run from the dollar toward more stable currencies or more stable assets, such as gold, commodities, real estate and safer financial assets. A flight from the dollar could create a liquidity crisis, in turn disrupting international trade and world economic growth. Oil and food exporters, wary of the rapidly depreciating value of their foreign exchange reserves, would be induced to curtail exports, with attendant consequences for the real world economy.
The current inflationary episode is neither novel nor surprising, but its severity could prove to be exceptional and it could last for some time. Indeed, following the collapse of the gold standard in 1914, the world economy became vulnerable to recurrent monetary disruptions stemming from expansionary monetary policies in reserve currency centers, suffering deep contractions in trade and economic growth, most notably the Great Depression.
The present monetary conditions are similar in many respects to the ones that prevailed in the 1930s. Major reserve currency countries, now and then, fearing domestic recession and unemployment, were reluctant to contract monetary policy and incurred large balance of payments deficits, followed by competitive devaluations, speculative attacks and inflationary spirals.
In spite of the Bretton-Woods Agreement and successive reforms of the international financial system, a main deficiency of the post-1914 system remained the absence of monetary discipline and ultimately a reserve anchor (formerly gold) for monetary policy in reserve centers.
In this regard, the dollar and sterling, by becoming reserve currencies in the context of the 1922 Genoa (Italy) agreement, expanded monetary liquidity freely through protracted balance of payments deficits, until reaching non-convertibility with gold in September 1931 for sterling and August 1971 for the US dollar. Under the post-1914 mechanisms, known as the gold exchange standard, Bretton-Woods fixed parities, and flexible exchange rate systems, a reserve center was able to run extended balance of payments deficits without loosing foreign reserves, until market forces imposed a disorderly and costly adjustment, including widespread trade barriers and restrictions.
Frequent and drawn-out financial upheavals of the world economy led to the formulation of bold proposals for reforms of the international payments system, such as by John Maynard Keynes (1943), Robert Triffin (1960), Jacques Rueff (1963), Franco Modigliani and Askari (1971), and most recently Robert Mundell and Paul Volcker (2000). While the proposals varied in details, they shared broadly a common objective, namely safeguarding the world economy against disruptive financial instability and a common reserve currency, called bancor by Keynes, Fund (International Monetary Fund - IMF) deposits by Triffin, a reserve asset with constant purchasing power in terms of a basket of commodities (Modigliani and Askari), or purely restoring gold by Rueff.
A number of the proposals called for establishing a central bank for central banks, which for Triffin would be the IMF.
The consequences of the financial instability of the 1930s were most onerous and may have contributed to subsequent wars. The world economy is becoming increasingly globalized and financial markets are becoming increasingly integrated. However, with fully flexible exchange rates, combined with disorderly monetary expansion in the reserve centers, the world economy has now become more vulnerable to financial instability than at any time before.
Early warnings, such as rapidly rising inflation, tight oil markets and food riots, call for decisive reform of the international payments system. Reverting to beggar-thy-neighbor policies between major currency centers and emerging economic powers can become very costly to the world economy. While drawing lessons from shortcomings of past reforms is essential, a reform plan may evolve around three pillars: create a world central bank, create a world currency, and establish safeguards for member countries' monetary policy in the form of quantitative ceilings for money growth.
A world central bank is becoming a necessity in a global economy. Such an independent central bank, not subject to the political whims of a particular government, would be more likely to apply orthodox and safe central banking. Contrary to any country's central bank, a world central bank would have no obligation to accommodate budgetary deficits, war spending, domestic wage and price rigidities, speculative asset bubbles, or rescue ailing domestic banks. Its law should be as meticulously applied as any constitutional law of a Western democracy.
Most important, as prescribed by Triffin, little discretion should be allowed for this central bank in the conduct of its mandate. Namely, its reserve currency growth should never exceed fixed annual ceilings, and its operations, resembling those of any central bank (rediscount, open market, lending and so forth) should be strictly regulated.
Second, a world central bank would create a reserve currency, not be a fictitious unit account such as the IMF's Special Drawing Right (SDR), but a true legal tender represented by a currency bill, the same as a dollar, euro, sterling, or any other currency bill. Rueff was a strong proponent for a gold standard. Recently, Mundell maintained that gold could be used as a reserve asset in a reformed international monetary system for the 21st century.
While there are many schemes for introducing a common currency, as in the case of a common currency area (for example the euro), the easiest is to define a world currency in terms of gold (or preferably in terms of a selected basket of internationally trade commodities as the reserve currency would have a more stable purchasing power), as gold has possessed over the centuries the characteristic of money instead of any other commodity or paper money.
Once defined in terms of gold, its value will remain fixed and will be preserved through strict laws controlling its issuance, including quantitative annual ceilings that can never be exceeded. The world currency note will circulate along with national currencies, serve as a reserve asset, and become part of the international payments system.
By becoming a full-fledged reserve asset, a world currency would cushion the real value of international reserves against inflationary policies of reserve currency centers and wide fluctuations in exchange rates. It would restrain extended balance of payments deficits of currency centers, and may contribute significantly to promoting financial stability and sustained world economic and trade growth.
A third area for a world monetary reform is mandatory monetary discipline in member countries. While member countries in the euro zone have fully surrendered monetary sovereignty to the European Central Bank, reserve currency centers may have to surrender partially, not totally, their monetary prerogatives to a world central bank. Most indicated safeguards would be to establish rigorous annual ceilings on money supply not exceeding 5% a year (or a fixed multiple of a country's holdings of the constant purchasing power reserve currency above).
Observing this law would be like observing the constitutional law of electing a US president for a four-year term. As constitutional laws have ruled over two centuries in the US and have preserved economic and political freedom, similar laws have to prevail in a monetary area to reduce discretionary powers of central bankers and attain monetary stability.
Monetary instability has had serious consequences at the national as well as world levels. Promoting safeguards for monetary stability and surrendering part of the monetary sovereignty to a world central bank would be necessary for checking selfish policies and eradicating root causes of monetary instabilities.
Previous reforms of the world monetary system, as well as negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (predecessor to the World Trade Organization), were very slow and moved under forced conditions rather than through a planned and organized process. Often, conflicts of national interests undermined these reforms or severely limited their scope.
With long strides in trade liberalization, the formation of a monetary zone in Europe, and globalization of the world economy, it is hoped that progress in monetary cooperation will be easier now than in the past. The present system of flexible exchange rates and unchecked money expansion by reserve centers could turn into monetary chaos and disrupt trade and economic stability. Progress achieved in 1980-2000 against inflation has been wiped out by current expansionary policies in major reserve centers and has created unmanageable difficulties in oil and food markets.
It will be important, at the level of the United Nations, the IMF and world governments, to move as quickly as possible in redressing the prevailing monetary chaos and initiating a reform process for a world central bank, most likely the IMF, and the creation of a world reserve currency.
Standing put in the face of mounting inflation and financial disorder would inflict costly stagflation, contraction in trade and disorderly oil and food markets. Allowing a free hand for central bankers in waging monetary warfare, or pursuing exclusively domestic full employment irrespective of inflation and external imbalance, could be even more costly for the world economy than the monetary anarchy of the 1930s.
Without establishing a full-fledged world central bank, world currency and safeguards for reserve centers' monetary policy, any reform of the international financial system will suffer the same shortcomings as the successive regimes that prevailed in the post-1914 period.
Hossein Askari is professor of international business and international affairs at George Washington University. Noureddine Krichene is an economist at the International Monetary Fund and a former advisor, Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah.
About this time each year, the Bilderberg group convenes a weekend conference in a hotel or resort somewhere in North America or Europe in which 120 or so billionaires, bankers, politicians, industrialists, scholars, government officials, influentials from labor and education, and journalists assemble to discuss world affairs in private.
This year, the 56th Bilderberg meeting took place over the weekend at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Va., seven miles from Washington Dulles International Airport. As in previous years, Bilderberg critics are berating the mainstream press for observing a "blackout" of a group they believe directs a secret, shadow government.
The critics claim that Bilderberg grooms future American presidents and future British prime ministers, pointing to Bill Clinton's attendance in 1991 and Tony Blair's in 1993. Time magazine reported in 2004 that John Edwards impressed attendees at the Bilderberg session in Italy, after which John Kerry asked him to join his presidential ticket.
According to the 1980 http://www.google.com/searc... target="_blank">book Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was enthusiastic about sending staffers to Bilderberg, President John F. Kennedy drew heavily from Bilderberg alumni—Dean Rusk, George W. Ball, George McGhee, Walter Rostow, Arthur Dean, and Paul Nitze—to staff his administration, and many Carter administration officials had attended the retreat.
According to a list published by one critic, the attendees of Bilderberg 2008 include Henry Kissinger, Ben S. Bernanke, David Rockefeller, Vin Weber, Henry Kravis, Robert B. Zoelick, Donald Graham, Vernon Jordan, Charlie Rose, and their equals from Europe. Protestors staked out the elite at the hotel's entrance and recorded "surveillance" videos inside and outside the minimum-security facility before the event commenced.
About this much the Bilderberg critics are right: The mainstream media ignored Bilderberg 2008. According to Nexis, Wonkette and Raw Story noted the event and the critics' objections on the Web. A simple Web search produces Bilderberg detractors Alex Jones and Jim Tucker sounding their alarms.
And about this, too, the Bilderberg critics are right: The meeting of 120 prominent world figures probably constitutes some kind of news. Yet to be fair to the mainstream press, it's tough to report from a private gathering locked down tight by professional security.
Bilderberg organizers expect participants to keep the weekend's discussions off-the-record, stating in a press release this year that "the privacy of the meetings has no purpose other than to allow participants to speak their minds openly and freely." Bilderberg isn't the only international group that asks participants to zip their lips. The United Kingdom's Chatham House enshrined such a rule back in 1927, and similar requirements apply at some Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Strategy Group meetings, just to name a few. Private groups meet in almost every town in the world for confidential chats. It's the way of the world. Bilderberger gab does occasionally leak, as with John Edwards' 2004 talk, but the poshes and powerful generally zip their lips.
What do you suppose would result if, say, the Washington Post had assigned a reporter to Chantilly's luminary jamboree? The Associated Press sent a reporter to cover the 1978 Bilderberger session in Princeton, N.J., but all he filed was a scene piece describing "men in gray suits and sunglasses" chasing him away from the "off limits" grounds of the Henry Chauncey Conference Center. From that dispatch (by Steve Hindy):
Kissinger casually strolled around a small manmade pond Saturday, coming within a few feet of the road leading into the complex.
He circled the pond twice, first with a gray-haired pipe-smoking man and then with a younger man. Kissinger appeared grave and attentive while the men talked of things like "range limitations."
Kissinger looked annoyed and declined comment when approached by a reporter.
One of two Secret Service agents trailing the former secretary nodded sympathetically saying, "You've got to give it your best shot."
And yet the "mainstream press" can hardly be accused of blacking out Bilderberg. The New York Times has mentioned Bilderberg a couple dozen times since 1981, according to Nexis, including in a 2004 piece titled "A Secret Conference Thought To Rule the Word." Other pieces in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe refer to the group. Just last month, Anne-Marie Slaughter mentioned the Bilderbergers in her Post review of a new book, Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.
Of course, Bilderberg critics don't want to read mentions in the press. They want to see confirmation of their theories that the group operates in a sinister, behind-the-scenes fashion to exploit the powerless and throttle liberty.
How, exactly, are reporters supposed to do that when the critics rarely provide falsifiable evidence of Bilderberg malevolence? Would a shadow government, should it exist, really convene annually at a hotel to hash out the world's fate? Would it really issue a press release about its latest meeting? Would it routinely assume the security risks of inviting new blood in? (Couldn't the notorious Bilderberger Conrad Black negotiate his way out of prison by exposing the group? Or is Bilderberg so powerful that it controls the federal prison system, too?) It largely limits its attendees to North Americans and Europeans. Are the Japanese, Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, Australians, South Koreans, and Singaporean so timid that they stand aside and let the Bilderbergers have their way with the world without making a peep?
That's not to say the critics' inquiries never produce anything of value. I enjoy reading the documentary material they dig up and can only encourage them to dig deeper. Just last month, Barack Obama tapped a prominent Bilderberger, James A. Johnson, to vet possible vice presidential candidates. Johnson provided similar veep vetting for the Democratic Party in 2004—which, as noted above, resulted in the selection of a Bilderberg attendee. The AP also reports that Johnson helped Walter Mondale pick a veep nominee in 1984.
Who is Jim Johnson? He's the former head of Fannie Mae, a power on Wall Street, and a regular Bilderberg attendee. As recently as 2006, Johnson has been the treasurer of the nonprofit American Friends of Bilderberg Inc., according to the group's Form 990 on file at Guidestar.org. According to the fractured jargon of the filing, American Friends of Bilderberg is in the business of "Organizing & sponsoring conferences which study & discuss significant problems of the Western Alliance. Collaborating on the Bilderberg meetings held in Europe & North America." The group spent $112,533 in 2006.
Still, the fact that an active Democratic supporter has performed return duty as a veep vetter stops several stations short of arriving at a shadow government. It does, however, indicate that Johnson's political influence may be underscrutinized by the press and that his career is deserving of extra study and attention. A May 24Wall Street Journal story, "Power Broker Helps Obama Search for Running Mate," does just that. Although it makes no mention of Johnson's Bilderberg connection, it drops a gentle dig that associates Johnson's Fannie Mae service with the home-loan crisis.
Without a doubt, Bilderberg ends up stimulating speculations that it's a nefarious organization. In an earlier generation, some theorists regarded the Council on Foreign Relations as a similar shadow government for its furtive ways. But as the CFR opened up in recent decades, holding many sessions on the record, it has become as threatening as the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Maybe there's a lesson in there for the Bilderbergers. Letting the press in for a closer look at what goes on would go a long way to reduce the shouting while preserving the group's right to think out loud. Or maybe all the heavy security and skulking about is a deliberate marketing ploy by Bilderberg to differentiate its yacht cruise from the ocean voyage that is Davos.
******
I expect mail. Lots of mail. Maybe enough to break my inbox. Send to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum, in a future article, or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co. Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Bilderberg in the subject head of an e-mail message and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.
Here's the trouble with running a squeaky clean campaign: there's very little margin for ethical error.
James A. Johnson, former Fannie Mae CEO and consummate Washington insider, is leading Sen. Barack Obama's vice-presidential search process. He just conducted an early round of interviews on Capitol Hill today. But Johnson also is proving a ripe target for Republicans looking to spot hypocrisy in Obama's pledge to reject business as usual in Washington.
The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Johnson had received mortgages worth more than $7 million from beleaguered lender Countrywide Financial, including at least two loans below market average. The article noted that the transactions may have been perfectly aboveboard -- but several could prove too cozy, depending on how much they overlapped with Johnson's Fannie Mae tenure.
"There is nothing illegal about a mortgage firm treating some borrowers better than others," the Journal article noted. "But if Fannie Mae officials received special treatment, that could cause a political problem for the government-sponsored, shareholder-owned company."
Countrywide was severely battered by the subprime mortgage crisis and is in the process of being bought out by Bank of America Corp. for a fraction of its former value. The lender also is under federal investigation for possible securities fraud, the Journal noted.
The Republican National Committee responded as if it had won the lottery. "Barack Obama routinely rails against lobbyists and corporate insiders, yet his campaign is stocked with both. Now it turns out that the man leading his vice presidential selection team is receiving highly questionable loans," spokesman Alex Conant declared in a statement. "With millions of Americans struggling to pay their mortgages, it raises serious questions about Obama's judgment when we learn members of his campaign leadership are receiving favors that the average American would never get."
Sen. John McCain piled on during an interview this afternoon with Carl Cameron of Fox News. "I think it suggests a bit of a contradiction, talking about how his campaign is gonna be not associated with people like that. Clearly he is very much associated with that," McCain said, according to statement circulated by his campaign.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor shot back, "It's the height of hypocrisy for the McCain campaign to try and make this an issue when John Green, one of John McCain's top advisors, lobbied for Ameriquest, which was one of the nation's largest subprime lenders and a key player in the mortgage crisis. As President, Senator Obama will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis-the kind of change that works for the American people."
In a town where even the lowliest campaign aides bill themselves as "political advisers" on cable news, Johnson is a master of discretion who rarely gives interviews, much less overstates his usefulness. He also vetted running mates for John Kerry and Walter Mondale.
But as adroitly as Johnson has navigated the political world, he also has risen to the highest levels in the business one. After an early career spent teaching at Princeton University and running the public affairs office of Target Corp., Johnson went to work for Mondale, a fellow Minnesotan, when he was vice president.
In 1985, Johnson rose to the highest ranks of Wall Street when he was named managing director of Lehman Brothers.
In 1991, he moved to Fannie Mae, serving as CEO of the mortgage-guarantee behemoth for most of the Clinton administration. He later became vice-chairman of Perseus LLC, a private banking firm, and joined the boards of Goldman Sachs, Gannett Co. Inc., and United Health Group, among other high-profile companies.
He chaired the Kennedy Center for the Arts and is a member of exclusive clubs such as American Friends of Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Published: June 7 2008 01:22 | Last updated: June 7 2008 01:22
When Cynthia McKinney speaks the words of Martin Luther King Jr, they resound through the church with some of King’s cadence. “A time comes,” declares the former US congresswoman from Georgia, “when silence is betrayal.” The congregation answers with whoops and calls of “That’s right!” King was talking about America’s war in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, before the packed pews of the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, McKinney is speaking of the American government’s war on its own people. The shock and awe phase of this conflict, we had been told earlier, began on September 11 2001, when the Bush administration launched attacks on New York and Washington, or at least waved them through.
According to a show of hands that February afternoon, several hundred people in the immaculate church believe this to be true. Some came in T-shirts bearing the words “9/11 was an inside job”. One wore a badge demanding that you “Examine your assumptions”. Quite a few bought the DVDs on sale in the foyer, most of which bore photographs of the Twin Towers spewing smoke. They had all come to hear the message of Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, one of the dozens of groups across the US which campaign to persuade us that everything we think we know about 9/11 is wrong.
Marion Cotillard, actress
“There was a tower in Spain which burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed”
Last winter, “Investigate 9/11” banners seemed to be popping up all over the place. Bill Clinton was heckled by “truthers” in Denver while campaigning for his wife. Truthers picketed the Academy Awards in LA – despite this year’s winner of the best actress Oscar, Marion Cotillard, reportedly being one of them. But then, she’s French. Literature lovers in that country pushed Thierry Meyssan’s L’Effroyable imposture (The Appalling Fraud) – which asserts that 9/11 was a government plot to justify invading Iraq and Afghanistan and increase military spending – to the top of the bestseller list in 2002.
Country music star Willie Nelson is assuredly not French, but a week or so before the Oscars he described as naive the notion that the “implosion” of the Twin Towers was caused by crashing jets. Meanwhile the European Parliament screened the Italian documentary Zero, in which Gore Vidal, Italian playwright Dario Fo, and Italian MEP Giulietto Chiesa blame the US government, not al-Qaeda, for 9/11. The following month, Japanese MP Yukihisa Fujita raised his own doubts about the official story at a seminar in Sydney. A busy season for the “9/11 Truth” movement.
The events of 9/11 were recorded in many thousands of images, from crisp agency photographs to amateur camcorder footage. Every recorded trail of smoke, every spray of sparks is pored over by an army of sceptics, collectively described as the 9/11 Truth movement. They believe that the key to the mystery is hidden somewhere within the pictures, just as some people think that clues are contained in the Zapruder film which captured the moment of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Allied against them is a smaller group of rival bloggers who have taken it upon themselves to debunk what they claim are dangerous conspiracy theories.
Gore Vidal, writer
“If there ever was great cause for impeachment, it would be over 9/11”
There is some evidence that the truthers are swaying the rest of us. A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 revealed that only 16 per cent of Americans polled believed the Bush administration was telling the truth about 9/11. More than half thought it was “hiding something”. This is not the same as believing the government actually launched the attacks, but a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll the same year found that more than a third of those questioned suspected that federal officials assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so that the US could go to war.
The truthers certainly believe that they are on a roll. The crowd in the Immanuel Presbyterian Church seemed electrified. As the donated sound system pumped out angry rap, a giant video screen showed images of protesters demanding a new investigation into 9/11. The symbols and the language were borrowed from the civil rights struggle, but the truthers are an eclectic group, including anti-Bush, anti-war liberals and anti-government libertarians. A young man in a “Vote Ron Paul” T-shirt scuttled through the hall, filming us as we took our seats on wooden pews.
First up was Richard Gage, a San Francisco architect who founded Architects, Engineers & Scientists for 9/11 Truth, which now claims to have 379 professional members. Gage told us that the collapse of the Twin Towers could not have been due merely to gravity, the impact of the airliners and the resulting jet fuel fires – which would not have been hot enough to weaken the steel sufficiently. Behind him on the video screen was the south tower of the World Trade Center. Smoke poured from its upper floors. A respectful silence fell over the audience, followed by gasps as the building appeared to dissolve before our eyes.
To the truthers, the third building in the World Trade Center complex to collapse on September 11 is evidence that the mainstream media is in on the plot
While I have seen this footage countless times, it seems that I had clearly never understood what I was seeing. The destruction of the Twin Towers, along with the collapse of the nearby 47-storey World Trade Center 7 building, had all the hallmarks of controlled demolition, according to Gage. They all came straight down, almost at the speed of a free-falling object, right into their own footprints. Steel-framed buildings had never collapsed because of fires before. On this day three did, one of which, “Building 7”, was not even hit by an aircraft.
Gage, who had worked himself into a fever, exhorted the audience to stand up and be counted: “A country is at stake.” Then he welcomed on to the stage the star of the evening, Steven Jones. A softly spoken physicist, Jones is the movement’s designated martyr and seems to promise what the truthers so desperately need: scientific credibility.
Jones entered into truther lore in 2006 when he was put into early retirement by Brigham Young University in Utah after giving public lectures on his paper “Why indeed did the WTC buildings collapse?”, which he published on the website of the university’s physics department. Jones contended that the towers were demolished by cutter charges which had been placed throughout the buildings, probably involving an incendiary called thermite. BYU’s College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the structural engineering faculty, followed by the university administration, disowned him.
Still, Jones is no fool. He has published more than 50 scholarly papers, including pieces on cold nuclear fusion in journals such as Scientific American and Nature. He invented a cooker which uses solar power and has donated models to poor families in the developing world. Jones tells us he believes laboratory testing of dust from Ground Zero will reveal residue from a thermite reaction.
As soon as the seminar is over, Jones is mobbed by people asking him to pose for photos and offering their own views on the 9/11 plot, as well as others such as the presence above our heads of chemtrails (deadly toxins sprayed by unidentified aircraft, which some believe are part of a secret global depopulation programme). This is the world Jones now inhabits – it seems a long way from a Utah physics department. I ask him later by phone if he has any regrets about publishing that fateful paper: “No regrets. I’ve thought of Galileo a few times. He got a little worse than I did, I suppose.”
Jones is typical of many 9/11 researchers in that the subject has taken over his professional life. Down the coast in Santa Barbara is another of the movement’s luminaries. On the beach at Isla Vista, one of the most expensive real-estate spots in the US, lives David Ray Griffin, a former theology professor. As his dogs scratch excitedly on the sliding door, Griffin explains that America’s primary faith is not Christianity, but nationalism. “Other countries do really terrible things. Our leaders never would. And that [belief] has been the biggest impediment to getting people to look at the evidence, because they just know a priori that that is ridiculous.”
Michael Meacher, UK politician
“It is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11”
Griffin now thinks the evidence to the contrary is incontrovertible. Until 2002, he had busied himself far from the rancour of public controversy writing rather obscure philosophical books and teaching philosophy of religion at the Claremont School of Theology. But the course of his research changed abruptly when he heard a visiting British theologian question the official account of 9/11. Two years later, Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor, with a foreword by British MP Michael Meacher, became a touchstone in the 9/11 Truth movement. He has since written others, including one detailing the “omissions and distortions” of the 9/11 Commission, the report of which fits the definition of “conspiracy theory” neatly, he says. “They started with the conclusion that al-Qaeda did it and didn’t even consider the alternative that it was an inside job.”
Griffin was a script consultant on Loose Change Final Cut, part of the internet phenomenon that set off the current explosion of low-budget 9/11 DVDs. The previous version was viewed more than 10 million times on Google Video, according to Vanity Fair. In 2002, armed only with a laptop and off-the-shelf video production software, Dylan Avery, an 18-year-old resident of Oneonta, New York, set about making a fictional film about discovering, with his friends, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government. At some point in his research, Avery had a “Dude, this snap! is real!” moment and Loose Change entered the realm of agit-prop documentary. Final Cut makes a bold new allegation: the Twin Towers were packed with deadly asbestos, which would have cost billions to clean up. “If you bring down the buildings,” says Griffin, “not only do you not have to pay ... to clean them up, somebody is going to make billions of dollars on the insurance.”
September 11 as insurance job? This seems to expand the circle of conspirators somewhat. Griffin ventures another possible explanation: the psychological impact. “You had these massive explosions, which rather looked like a nuclear blast,” he says. “That’s always been the deep fear of America. In the run-up to the Iraq war, that’s what they were talking about – we cannot wait until we have a nuclear cloud.”
Griffin offers one further speculation, this time on a question which is controversial even among 9/11 sceptics: what hit the Pentagon? Thierry Meyssan was the first to claim that it was not Flight 77 – an American Airlines 757 carrying 64 passengers – but a cruise missile that hit the west wall of the Pentagon at 9.37am on September 11. Websites have followed suit, pointing to the apparent lack of plane debris on the Pentagon lawn and the fact that the hole left in the outer ring of the building looks too small to accommodate the wingspan of a 757. Retired US Air Force captain Russ Wittenberg from Pilots for 9/11 Truth asserted that no inexperienced pilot could have performed the manoeuvre the 9/11 Commission concluded that al-Qaeda conspirator Hani Hanjour pulled off that morning: a 330° turn, 2,200ft descent, a full-throttle dive and then a 530 miles per hour plunge at ground level into the Pentagon. Call it “the magic plane theory”: doubters believe that, just as the bullet that killed Kennedy appeared to defy the laws of physics, so the plane that struck the Pentagon was like no other in existence.
And just as Nasa was forced to counter claims the moon landings were faked, these and other claims have forced the US State Department into the debunking business. Its Identifying Misinformation website states that debris from Flight 77 was indeed recovered, as were the remains of passengers and crew. Many witnesses saw the plane come in, and a number of passengers made phone calls to their loved ones telling them their flight had been hijacked.
There is also another obvious problem: if a missile hit the Pentagon, what happened to Flight 77? “There was a rumour that an airliner had gone down on the Ohio/Kentucky border and that was taken very seriously early on by the Federal Aviation Authority,” says Griffin. It later rejected the story. But Griffin claims the only evidence that Flight 77 was aloft after that was an alleged phone call from Barbara Olsen to Ted Olsen, the solicitor-general of the United States.
So how does he explain that phone call? Ted Olsen is a Bush administration insider, he says. Another possible answer, though, is “voice-morphing technology”. This would also explain the flurry of phone calls from United Airlines Flight 93, which, as the official story has it, crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers revolted against their hijackers.
Glossary of doubt
No-planers
People who claim that it wasn’t an aircraft, but a missile, that hit the Pentagon on September 11 2001. Some have taken it a step further and argued that no aircraft hit the twin towers, either. What the world saw that day, these sceptics argue, was either video trickery or cruise missiles disguised through image technology as aircraft.
Mihops
Truthers who believe the US government “Made it happen on purpose”, “it” being the destruction of September 11.
Lihops
A more moderate strain of truther who believe the government “Let it happen on purpose”.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth
Started by James Fetzer, the group advocates looking at all possible explanations of what happened on September 11, no matter how improbable.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice
The more moderate splinter group of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, led by Steven Jones. Endorses an “evidence-based approach” to questioning the 9/11 story.
It’s not just supporters of the official story who roll their eyes at these claims. They put Griffin in the camp of the “no-planers”, at least as far as the attack on the Pentagon is concerned. The no-planers enrage the rest of the truthers, who accuse them of sabotaging the credibility of the movement. The claim that no plane hit the Pentagon is a Trojan horse, they say – disinformation that serves the conspirators. Some – such as former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler – have even asserted that no planes, but missiles disguised by “cloaking technology”, hit the Twin Towers. Shayler, incidentally, proclaimed himself the Messiah last year.
If the 9/11 truth movement is fighting a kind of asymmetric war against official sources of knowledge, it is also battling itself. As the movement morphs into an international activist group, it recognises that if it is to convince middle Americans, it must distance itself from its exotic fringe. Once, it was the Mihops versus the Lihops. These factions, who sound like warring species from an H.G. Wells story, are those who believe the government Made It Happen On Purpose and those who think it Let It Happen On Purpose. The Mihops are in the ascendancy.
The genesis of all this can be traced back to a schism that followed the first real attempt to bring scholarly credibility to the 9/11 sceptics. In 2005, Steven Jones was invited to form a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth by James Fetzer, a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Minnesota and the author of some 20 books on the philosophy of science and artificial intelligence. Fetzer teaches critical thinking, and is nothing if not critical. He has been campaigning for more than a decade to prove that the Zapruder film is a hoax perpetuated by the same government intelligence agencies that orchestrated JFK’s assassination.
But within a year, Jones had written to all members of Scholars announcing that he and others no longer wanted to be associated with Fetzer, who was, in the rebels’ opinion, holding them up to ridicule. Fetzer had backed a theory by Judy Wood, a former assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Clemson University, proposing that the Twin Towers were brought down by a “directed energy” weapon developed as part of the US government’s Star Wars programme. It prompted a stampede to a new group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, headed by Jones. Confusing the two groups would be like mistaking Monty Python’s Judean People’s Front for the People’s Front of Judea: this was a major doctrinal split.
Fetzer’s view is that any serious inquiry into what happened on 9/11 should look at all possibilities. Supporters of the directed energy hypothesis keep popping up at 9/11 Truth lectures to heckle what Python fans might call the “splittist” thermite theorists. Among the advocates of the Star Wars theory is Morgan Reynolds, perhaps the first prominent US government official to claim that 9/11 was an inside job. At the time of the attacks, Reynolds was chief economist at the US Department of Labor.
Some Star Wars supporters, in turn, accuse proponents of the thermite hypothesis of being government shills. One, on CheckTheEvidence.com, alleges that Jones’s public denunciation of Star Wars theories is actually a Trojan horse; he notes that Jones once worked at Los Alamos, where directed energy weapons are researched. This line of conjecture also entangles Norman Mineta, US transportation secretary on September 11 2001. Mineta was the man who grounded all civilian aircraft on that morning. But he was also once vice-president of Lockheed Martin, a founding member of the Directed Energy Professional Society ... In this outer reach of the blogosphere, no one is ever more than six degrees of separation from the heart of the conspiracy.
Jones did, in fact, do post-doctoral research at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility for the University of Wyoming, but he says it was peaceful and non-weapons-related. He says the more out-there theories, including those of the no-planers, are harming the movement. “First, they discourage others who are trying to do serious work, and they tend to be quite vocal about their heckling,” he says. “More serious is that when we’re really trying to look at an evidence-based approach, we get lumped in with these people and then dismissed as a whole.”
Two days before Jones’s lecture in LA, his erstwhile colleague was taking his own campaign on the road on the other side of the country. After ad
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