Sun Jan 10, 2010
German Business Journal Questions 9/11- “We do not believe you!”
“We do not believe you!” – The magazine “FOCUS Money” questions the official version of 9/11
“More and more doubts”
Berlin, Jan. 8, 2010
http://www.911video.de/news/080110/en.html
http://dprogram.net/2010/01/10/german-business-journal-questions-911-we-do-not-believe-you/
“FOCUS Money”, is presenting most of the crucial arguments and contradictions on five glossy pages. Among other questions the article suggests that the collapse of the World Trade Center could have been a controlled demolition.
In addition, the article suggests serious doubts about the “madness” of the critics, which are usually called “conspriracy theorists”.
The magazine states, that it is “not only serious politicians who do not want to believe the official version any more “, but also, “there are also thousands of scientists, who question 9/11″.
Author of the article is Oliver Janich. He works as a freelance journalist for the Financial Times Germany, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Euro& Finance and is a regular columnist in Focus Money.
Focus-Money is a weekly business magazine and is currently the second-popular business publication with a weekly circulation of 145,788 copies sold. However, the actual range is much higher and amounts to approximately 450,000 to 720,000 readers. The magazine is published by the Burda-Verlag in Munich.
The first page of the article shows pictures of 9/11 skeptics: Charlie Sheen, Sharon Stone, Rosie O’Donnell William Rodriguez (next to GW Bush), former Governor Jesse Ventura, Richard Gage, Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth and many others.
The rest of the article is packed with information. Evidence of controlled demolition of the buildings, criticism of the fire theory, the questions on the interceptors, WTC 7 and the Pentagon. There is talk of the “impossible flight maneuvers,” the resignation of Senator Max Cleland who is quoted as saying “It’s a fraud, a national scandal” and of the myriad of lies to the Commission, hindering the investigation. The mysterious death of Barry Jenning, a former Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department of the City of New York is also mentioned. He had saved many people from WTC 7 , and covered in dust gave a live interview on ABC and then much later for “Loose Change” maker Dylan Avery.
When the article covers the question of “stand down orders” there are some stunning details: The article states that
Col. Donn de Grand made the following statement:
“A US-General repeatelely ignored stand-down orders that were given by Dick Cheney and had a plane shot down that flew in the direction of White House, a fact that would explain the lack of debris at Shanksville. Furthermore, Col. Grand-Pre said later in a radio interview, that a majority of the US-military leadership would basically agree to a coup in order “to bring the truth to light”
Only a few months ago in early September, there was already a fair article on 9/11 in a german TV magazine
http://www.911video.de/news/020909/
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Tue Sep 15, 2009
Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years - and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?
Tuesday, Sep 15 2009
Mail Online
By Sue Reid
Last updated at 10:59 PM on 11th September 2009
The last time we heard a squeak from him was on June 3 this year.
The world's most notorious terrorist outsmarted America by releasing a menacing message as Air Force One touched down on Saudi Arabian soil at the start of Barack Obama's first and much vaunted Middle East tour.
Even before the new President alighted at Riyadh airport to shake hands with Prince Abdullah, Bin Laden's words were being aired on TV, radio and the internet across every continent.
Genuine picture: Osama Bin Laden in October 2001
It was yet another propaganda coup for the 52-year-old Al Qaeda leader. In the audiotape delivered to the Arab news network Al Jazeera, Bin Laden said that America and her Western allies were sowing seeds of hatred in the Muslim world and deserved dire consequences.
It was the kind of rant we have heard from him before, and the response from British and U.S. intelligence services was equally predictable.
They insisted that the details on the tape, of the President's visit and other contemporary events, proved that the mastermind of 9/11, America's worst ever terrorist atrocity, was still alive - and that the hunt for him must go on.
More...
The monster who wants to be a martyr: 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is now aiming for execution
Behind all terror attacks against Britain, Bin Laden's Holy Warrior
Bin Laden has always been blamed for orchestrating the horrific attack - in which nearly 3,000 people perished - eight years ago this week. President George W. Bush made his capture a national priority, infamously promising with a Wild West flourish to take him 'dead or alive'.
The U.S. State Department offered a reward of $50million for his whereabouts. The FBI named him one of their ten 'most wanted' fugitives, telling the public to watch out for a left-handed, grey-bearded gentleman who walks with a stick.
Fake? Bin Laden two months later, when he was supposedly dead
Yet this master terrorist remains elusive. He has escaped the most extensive and expensive man-hunt in history, stretching across Waziristan, the 1,500 miles of mountainous badlands on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Undeterred, Barack Obama has launched a fresh operation to find him. Working with the Pakistani Army, elite squads of U.S. and British special forces were sent into Waziristan this summer to 'hunt and kill' the shadowy figure intelligence officers still call 'the principal target' of the war on terror.
This new offensive is, of course, based on the premise that the 9/11 terrorist is alive. After all, there are the plethora of 'Bin Laden tapes' to prove it.
Yet what if he isn't? What if he has been dead for years, and the British and U.S. intelligence services are actually playing a game of double bluff?
What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake - and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror?
Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.
Of course, there have been any number of conspiracy theories concerning 9/11, and it could be this is just another one.
But the weight of opinion now swinging behind the possibility that Bin Laden is dead - and the accumulating evidence that supports it - makes the notion, at the very least, worthy of examination.
The theory first received an airing in the American Spectator magazine earlier this year when former U.S. foreign intelligence officer and senior editor Angelo M. Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, stated bluntly: 'All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.'
9/11: Bin Laden originally insisted in official press statements that he had played no role in the atrocity
Prof Codevilla pointed to inconsistencies in the videos and claimed there have been no reputable sightings of Bin Laden for years (for instance, all interceptions by the West of communications made by the Al Qaeda leader suddenly ceased in late 2001).
Prof Codevilla asserted: 'The video and audio tapes alleged to be Osama's never convince the impartial observer,' he asserted. 'The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between the colours and styles of his beard are small stuff.'
There are other doubters, too. Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University's religious studies' department and the foremost Bin Laden expert, argues that the increasingly secular language in the video and audio tapes of Osama (his earliest ones are littered with references to God and the Prophet Mohammed) are inconsistent with his strict Islamic religion, Wahhabism.
He notes that, on one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among Wahhabi followers.
Bin Laden in 1998 (l) and, allegedly, in 2002: Skeptics have pointed to a thicker nose and the ring on his right hand as proof it is an impostor
This week, still more questions have been raised with the publication in America and Britain of a book called Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?
Written by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, it is provoking shock waves - for it goes into far more detail about his supposed death and suggests there has been a cover-up by the West.
The book claims that Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on December 13, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan.
His burial took place within 24 hours, in line with Muslim religious rules, and in an unmarked grave, which is a Wahhabi custom.
The author insists that the many Bin Laden tapes made since that date have been concocted by the West to make the world believe Bin Laden is alive. The purpose? To stoke up waning support for the war on terror inIraq and Afghanistan.
To understand Griffin's thesis, we must remember the West's reaction to 9/11, that fateful sunny September day in 2001. Within a month, on Sunday, October 7, the U.S. and Britain launched massive retaliatory air strikes in the Tora Bora region where they said 'prime suspect' Bin Laden was living 'as a guest of Afghanistan'.
This military offensive ignored the fact that Bin Laden had already insisted four times in official Al Qaeda statements made to the Arab press that he played no role in 9/11.
Indeed, on the fourth occasion, on September 28 and a fortnight after the atrocity, he declared emphatically: 'I have already said I am not involved. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge... nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.'
Within hours of the October 7 strikes by the U.S. on Tora Bora, Bin Laden made his first ever appearance on video tape. Dressed in Army fatigues, and with an Islamic head-dress, he had an assault rifle propped behind him in a broadly lit mountain hideout. Significantly, he looked pale and gaunt.
Although he called President George W. Bush 'head of the infidels' and poured scorn on the U.S., he once again rejected responsibility for 9/11.
'America was hit by God in one of its softest spots. America is full of fear, from its north to its south, from its west to its east. Thank God for that.'
Then came a second videotape on November 3, 2001. Once again, an ailing Bin Laden lashed out at the United States. He urged true Muslims to celebrate the attacks - but did not at any time acknowledge he had been involved in the atrocity.
And then there was silence until December 13, 2001 - the date Griffin claims Bin Laden died. That very day, the U.S. Government released a new video of the terror chief. In this tape, Bin Laden contradicted all his previous denials, and suddenly admitted to his involvement in the atrocity of 9/11.
The tape had reportedly been found by U.S. troops in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, after anti-Taliban forces took over the city. A label attached to it claimed that it had been made on November 9, 2001.
Bush made Bin Laden's capture a national priority, claiming he could get his man - dead or alive
The tape shows Bin Laden talking with a visiting sheik. In it, he clearly states that he not only knew about the 9/11 atrocities in advance, but had planned every detail personally.
What manna for the Western authorities! This put the terrorist back in the frame over 9/11. The Washington Post quoted U.S. officials saying that the video 'offers the most convincing evidence of a connection between Bin Laden and the September 11 attacks'.
A euphoric President Bush added: 'For those who see this tape, they realise that not only is he guilty of incredible murder, but he has no conscience and no soul.'
In London, Downing Street said that the video was 'conclusive proof of his involvement'. The then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, added: 'There is no doubt it is the real thing. People can see Bin Laden there, making those utterly chilling words of admission about his guilt for organising the atrocities of September 11.'
Yet Professor Griffin claims this 'confessional' video provokes more questions than answers. For a start, the Bin Laden in this vital film testimony looks different.
He is a weighty man with a black beard, not a grey one. His pale skin had suddenly become darker, and he had a different shaped nose. His artistic hands with slender fingers had transformed into those of a pugilist. He looked in exceedingly good health.
Furthermore, Bin Laden can be seen writing a note with his right hand, although he is left-handed. Bizarrely, too, he makes statements about 9/11 which Griffin claims would never have come from the mouth of the real Bin Laden - a man with a civil engineering degree who had made his fortune (before moving into terrorism) from building construction in the Middle East.
For example, the Al Qaeda leader trumpets that far more people died in 9/11 than he had expected. He goes on: 'Due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the explosion from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. That is all we had hoped for.' (In reality the Twin Towers' completely fell down).
The words of the true Bin Laden? No, says Griffin, because of the obvious mistakes. 'Given his experience as a contractor, he would have known the Twin Towers were framed with steel, not iron,' he says.
'He would also known that steel and iron do not begin to melt until they reach 2,800 deg F. Yet a building fire fed by jet fuel is a hydrocarbon fire, and could not have reached above 1,800 deg F.'
Griffin, in his explosive book, says this tape is fake, and he goes further.
'A reason to suspect that all of the post-2001 Bin Laden tapes are fabrications is that they often appeared at times that boosted the Bush presidency or supported a claim by its chief 'war on terror' ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
'The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign.'
Griffin suggests that Western governments used highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings of Bin Laden.
So if they are fakes, why has Al Qaeda kept quiet about it? And what exactly happened to the real Bin Laden?
The answer to the first question may be that the amorphous terrorist organisation is happy to wage its own propaganda battle in the face of waning support - and goes along with the myth that its charismatic figurehead is still alive to encourage recruitment to its cause.
As for the matter of what happened to him, hints of Bin Laden's kidney failure, or that he might be dead, first appeared on January 19, 2002, four months after 9/11.
This was when Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf told America's news show CNN: 'I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney patient. The images of him show he is extremely weak.'
In his book, Professor Griffin also endorses this theory. He says Bin Laden was treated for a urinary infection, often linked to kidney disease, at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001, two months before 9/11. At the same time, he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to Afghanistan.
How could Bin Laden, on the run in snowy mountain caves, have used the machine that many believe was essential to keep him alive? Doctors whom Griffin cites on the subject think it would have been impossible.
He would have needed to stay in one spot with a team of medics, hygienic conditions, and a regular maintenance programme for the dialysis unit itself.
And what of the telling, small news item that broke on December 26, 2001 in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd? It said a prominent official of the Afghan Taliban had announced that Osama Bin Laden had been buried on or about December 13.
'He suffered serious complications and died a natural, quiet death. He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the grave,' said the report.
The Taliban official, who was not named, said triumphantly that he had seen Bin Laden's face in his shroud. 'He looked pale, but calm, relaxed and confident.'
It was Christmas in Washington DC and London and the report hardly got a mention. Since then, the Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him.
Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?
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Fri Jul 10, 2009
Madsen: 'Whistle blown on secret 9/11 unit'
RussiaToday
July 09, 2009
The US government has allegedly set up a special security wing with the sole task of distancing Washington from any involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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Mon Apr 06, 2009
Study: 'highly engineered explosive' found in WTC rubble
Raw Story Full article with links
04/04/2009
Filed by Stephen C. Webster
A team of scientists claim to have unearthed startling data from dust and debris gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001.
In a study published by the Open Chemical Physics Journal -- a peer-reviewed, scientific publication -- Steven E. Jones and Niels Harrit level a stark allegation: that within the dust and rubble of the World Trade Center towers lays evidence of "a highly engineered explosive," contrary to all federal studies of the collapses.
"We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center," reads the paper's abstract. "One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC)."
They claim their analysis has uncovered "active thermitic material": a combination of elemental aluminum and iron oxide in a form of thermite known as "nanostructured super-thermite."
Thermite, used in steel welding, fireworks shows, hand grenades and demolition, can produce a chemical reaction known for extremely high temperatures focused in a very small area for a short period of time.
According to the Navy's Small Business Innovation Research, super-thermite "is restricted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), which controls the export and import of defense-related material and services."
"This finding really goes beyond anything that has previously been shown," said Jones in a media advisory. "We had to use sophisticated tools to analyze the dust because this isn't just a typical explosive, RDX or CD4 or something -- this is a highly engineered material not readily available to just anyone."
"The cost and production rate of super-thermite composites has limited the use of these materials in DoD applications," claims the Navy's SBIR.
Dr. Steven E. Jones, a former physicist at Brigham Young University and a founding member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, presented a paper in 2005 discussing alternatives to the government's theory that massive structural damage combined with burning jet fuel to weaken the towers' support infrastructure, causing a rapid "pancake" collapse.
###
Excerpt added by Boston 911 Truth:
Dr. Steven Jones - Boston 911 Conference
Full Presentation - 12/15/07.mov - 58 min - May 1, 2008
Chronos Films & Media - www.ChronosFilms.com
Dr. Steven Jones presents new evidence in the ongoing investigation of the collapse of the WTC Towers at the Boston 9/11 Conference (12/15/07). This is the complete presentation.
###
In September 2006, under heavy criticism in the media and by several colleagues, the university placed Jones on paid administrative leave and his paper was removed from the BYU database.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which investigated the WTC tower collapses, maintains there was no recovered evidence of explosive materials. An electronic FAQ to the government's theory is available online.
"We get a lot of calls from people who have heard these theories," NIST spokesman Michael Newman told Newsday. "But we conducted what was probably the most complex investigation of a building collapse in history."
"We based our conclusion on the talents of the world's best engineers and scientists, state of the art computer models and 236 pieces of steel recovered from the site," reads the NIST FAQ.
"The collapse of the WTC towers was not caused either by a conventional building fire or even solely by the concurrent multi-floor fires that day," NIST says. "Instead, NIST concluded that the WTC towers collapsed because: (1) the impact of the planes severed and damaged support columns, dislodged fireproofing insulation coating the steel floor trusses and steel columns, and widely dispersed jet fuel over multiple floors; and (2) the subsequent unusually large, jet-fuel ignited multi-floor fires weakened the now susceptible structural steel."
"No building in the United States has ever been subjected to the massive structural damage and concurrent multi-floor fires that the towers experienced on Sept. 11, 2001," the agency claims.
This latest report, Jones told Visibility 9/11, "explodes the official story that 'no evidence' exists for explosive/pyrotechnic materials in the WTC buildings. The red/gray chips are the 'loaded gun' of 9-11."
Raw Story Full article with links
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Sat Apr 04, 2009
David Ray Griffin to speak at Boston University, April 11, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
9/11: Time for a Second Look “9/11 conspiracy guru” David Ray Griffin to speak at Boston University, April 11, 2009
Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive calls David Ray Griffin “the guru of the 9/11 conspiracy movement” and describes his theories about 9/11 as “a cul-de-sac… [leading] nowhere.” Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University, on the other hand, believes that “David Ray Griffin's provocative questions about 9/11 deserve to be investigated and addressed.” No single proponent of alternative theories concerning the events of September 11, 2001 has received more attention – supportive and critical – than David Ray Griffin, who will be giving a public lecture at Boston University’s Morse Auditorium on Saturday, April 11, 2009 at 7pm. Dr. Griffin’s appearance at Boston University will be his first ever in Boston, after which he will embark on his second European tour, where he will present the most thorough, up-to-date and popularly accepted alternative critique of the 9/11 story to audiences in London, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Lausanne, Lucerne, Hamburg, Stockholm, Trondheim, and Oslo. The BU event is co-sponsored by the Boston University School of Theology and the Boston 9/11 Truth Committee.
(see video trailer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_MzN5DWQc
David Ray Griffin is Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Emeritus, at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, where he remains a co-director of the Center for Process Studies.
He has published (as author or editor) 34 books, primarily in theology, philosophy, and philosophy of religion, with special emphases on the problem of evil and the relation between science and religion.
Seven of his books deal with 9/11: The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (2004), The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (2005), Christian Faith and the Truth about 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action (2006), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (2006, co-edited with Peter Dale Scott), Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (2007), 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press, and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (2008).
In 2008 Griffin also made presentations on 9/11 at the European Parliament and the Japanese Diet.
In his latest book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 911, the Cover -Up, and the Expose, Dr. Griffin once again invokes the tragic events of December 7, 1941, laying out further evidence for why he believes the attack of September 11, 2001 was an “inside job” — a false flag attack — that can be traced to the highest levels of the US government. In defense of his thesis, Griffin:
–points out the continued failure of the mainstream press to investigate any of the questions and anomalies which appear to contradict the official account of 9/11, and claims the media dishonestly uses the term "conspiracy theory" to prevent criticism of the government’s conspiracy theory involving 19 “radical” Muslims.
–deconstructs, using expert testimony, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) five “crucial claims” about the World Trade Center (WCT) collapses, showing that NIST, in fact, provides no supporting evidence for any of its claims. He further points out that NIST and the 911 Commission ignored vast amounts of relevant evidence for controlled demolition of all three WTC buildings (WTC 1, 2, 7) that collapsed on 9/11, among which are the sudden, symmetrical collapses at near-freefall speeds (in the case of WTC7 into its own building footprint), pools of molten metal under the debris pile for weeks indicating temperatures considerably higher than jet-fuel and office-materials fires could possibly generate, and residue of explosives found in WTC dust.
–presents what he suspects to be motives that high level government officials had for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. Griffin contends that the 9/11 Commission suppressed any mention of these possible motives, as well as the fact that key members of the Bush Administration were signatories to the radical plan drawn up in 2000 by the neo-conservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC), for increased militarization and global dominance. The PNAC report suggested the necessity for a “New Pearl Harbor” event to persuade the American public in favor of its stated goals, hence, the title of Griffin’s first and latest exposé, The New Pearl Harbor (Revisited).
Griffin’s 9/11 books have been endorsed by Michael Chossudovsky, William Sloane Coffin, Harvey Cox, Richard Falk, Catherine Austin Fitts, David Griscom, Jim Hightower, British MP Michael Meacher, Mark Crispin Miller, Rosemary Ruether, Marcus Raskin, Paul Craig Roberts, Peter Dale Scott, Gerry Spence, Lorie Van Auken, Howard Zinn, and former CIA officials Robert Baer, Bill Christison, and Ray McGovern.
Four of these books have been given special recognition: The New Pearl Harbor and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortion received the 2006 Helios Foundation Award for 2006. Debunking 9/11 Debunking was a Bronze Medal Winner in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. The New Pearl Harbor Revisited was named a “Pick of the Week” in 2008 by Publishers Weekly.
His essays and interviews about 9/11 have appeared in such disparate publications as Zion’s Herald1, Hustler Magazine2, Global Outlook3, LA Times Magazine4, Conversations in Religion and Theology5, Penthouse Netherlands6, Whole Earth Times7, Tikkun8, and Le Monde Diplomatique.
Griffin has been featured on “The Richard & Judy Show” (London)10, C-Span (twice)11, ABC News Radio12, “Tucker” on MSNBC13, CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation)14, the BBC’s “Heaven and Earth,”15 and in over 400 radio talk-shows16, including Democracy Now!17. Many videos of his talks and interviews are available on the Internet18.
During the week prior to his lecture in Boston, Dr. Griffin will also give lectures in Wayne, PA, Vassar College, Portsmouth and Keene, NH.
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Tue Mar 03, 2009
BBC Censors Bhutto's Bin Laden Murder Claim
On 2nd November 2007 the late Benazir Bhutto gave an interview to David Frost on his show Frost all over the World in which she claims that Omar Sheikh murdered Osama Bin Laden. The show originally aired on Al Jazeera. However when the BBC got hold of it they sleekly edited out this claim. See the unedited clip below.
Following complaints - by amongst others the guy who posted the video below - the edited segment was finally restored on the BBC version of the interview (just a few days ago, I think). See the edit below, it begins at around 2:20.
BBC
Several questions. Firstly, and most obviously, why did the BBC edit the interview? Clearly we don't know. But it's suspiscious. If they knew the story to be false then they should have aired it and written a piece declaring it as such. The BBC is, after all, a news organisation. They're meant to employ journalists to tell us what's going on in the world. But instead of this they edit Bhutto's allegation as if it did not exist.
STOP PRESS!
The BBC have explained why they edited the interview. I did a search on the BBC website for 'Bhutto Bin Laden murder'. Whilst there's no story in relation to Bhutto's allegation, there is an editorial about it. Following accusations of censorship Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC news website, defends the editing of the interview by saying that the item producer was under "time pressure" to get the interview out. He says that Bhutto's allegation "appeared so unexpected that it seemed she had simply mis-spoken." Thus the allegation was edited to "avoid confusion."
If the producer of the interview was truly under "time" pressure to get the interview out then surely it would have been quicker to not edit it. Editing something obviously takes more time than not editing it. And it "appeared" unexpected? It "seemed" that she had mis-spoken? You have to be kidding me. Is Bhutto's allegation true or isn't it? That's the only relevant question here. The BBC doesn't receive over £3billion a year in licence fees to base its version of 'truth' on how an allegation appeared or seemed. I almost can't believe I'm coming out with this phrase, but 'it's a disgrace'. Even the admission that the interview was edited to "avoid confusion." It doesn't matter whether it's confusing or not. What matters is whether or not it's true. Yet even in Harrmann's editorial, the importance of this question completely passes him by. He doesn't even acknowledge that whether or not Bin Laden was or was not murdered by Omar Sheikh is something that requires an answer.
Omar Sheikh
You will probably recall this name. British born Sheikh was arrested by Pakistani police in February 2002 for the murder of the Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl. He was charged and sentenced to death in Pakistan in July 2002. The sentence has yet to be carried out.
There's also reason to believe that Omar Sheikh was a British agent working for MI6. Michael Meacher, Oldham MP and former cabinet minister under Blair, claims that Sheikh was recruited by MI6 along with anything up to 200 other British muslims. Sheikh and the others were sent to overseas terrorist training camps under the protection of the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, to act on behalf of UK and US interests in - amongst other things - an effort to overthrow the Afghan communist regime and its Soviet backers. Futhermore Pakistan President General Musharraf also claimed that Sheikh was a British agent in his book Line of Fire.
It will come as no surprise to find that the BBC in their profile of Sheikh completely fail to mention this. Something else the BBC fails to mention:
Omar Sheikh was responsible for transfering $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, just days before the attacks. This transfer was made at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of Pakistan's ISI. This transfer was confirmed by Dennis Lomel, director of the FBI's financial crimes unit.
Was Omar Sheikh still a British agent when he made the wire transfer to Atta? Did MI6 know about the transfer? Were they in any way complicit?
Bin Laden Murdered Claims Bhutto
This would hardly be a pithy little tit-bit story, would it? Yet there's no such story on the BBC website. And they made every attempt to withhold it from us. Herrmann's defense of the charge of censorship does nothing but confirm it. The BBC did censor it. And you have to ask yourself why.
But is Bhutto's allegation true? Did Sheikh murder Bin Laden? I have no idea. But it's an important question. If he did then Sheikh would have to have killed Bin Laden prior to his arrest in February 2002. And if he did, then every video and audio message by Bin Laden since at least this time can be known to be a fabrication. This further means that every news agency which carried the messages were knowingly or unknowingly complicit in an effort to convince us of a threat which did not exist. And who produced the fake audio and video messages if Bin Laden was dead?
If Sheikh didn't kill Bin Laden then we should at least know. This question deserves an answer. Even a flat out rebuttal would suffice. Yet the BBC says Nothing. At least nothing other than the allegation "appeared so unexpected that it seemed she had simply mis-spoken." Which manages neither to affirm or deny the claim.
Remember that Britain invaded Afghanistan on the grounds that Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. At least that was the cover story for the invasion. If Bin Laden was murdered or killed in late 2001 (and there's good reason to think he was: even the BBC admit that no one has seen him since that time) then could Britain's continued presence in Afghanistan be publicly justified?
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Thu Dec 18, 2008
Silverstein case ruling limits airlines' liability for 9/11
Judge limits liability of aviation defendants to replacement costs of WTC towers
December 12, 2008
NEW YORK (Associated Press) -- A judge says developer Larry Silverstein cannot recover more from the aviation industry than the $2.8 billion value of the World Trade Center if his lawsuits succeed.Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein made the determination in a ruling filed Thursday. The decision carried Wednesday's date. Hellerstein rejected Silverstein's claims that his company would be entitled to as much as $16.2 billion from American Airlines, United Airlines and other aviation defendants.
A lawsuit on behalf of Silverstein's companies claimed that negligence by the airlines allowed the terrorists to hijack planes that struck the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The aviation defendants denied liability. A call to Silverstein's lawyer wasn't immediately returned.
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Wed Dec 17, 2008
9/11 Victims' Families Challenge Legitimacy Of Guantánamo Military Commissions
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38038prs20081210.html
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today released a statement from 31 9/11 victims' family members challenging the legitimacy of the Guantánamo military commissions and their ability to achieve justice.
Below is the full text of the statement:
9/11 FAMILY MEMBERS CHALLENGE LEGITIMACY OF GUANTÁNAMO MILITARY COMMISSIONS
As family members who lost loved ones on 9/11, we feel compelled to speak out about this week's proceedings at Guantánamo. Recently, the Guantánamo military commissions office announced that victims' family members would be permitted, on a lottery basis, to attend the Guantánamo legal hearings of those accused of planning the 9/11 attacks. The lottery system inherently results in the granting of media attention to the select few who are chosen, and whose views are not necessarily representative of all victims' families. The media coverage of Monday's commission hearings included statements attributed to attending family members that the tribunals provided a fair hearing for these prosecutions and that family members "were struck by the extensive rights accorded the accused men."
While we support everyone's right to their individual opinions about these proceedings, including, of course, other family members who have suffered the devastation we have, we also feel obliged to make clear that many of us do not believe these military commissions to be fair, in accordance with American values, or capable of achieving the justice that 9/11 family members and all Americans deserve.
We believe that the secretive and unconstitutional nature of these proceedings deprive us of the right to know the full truth about what happened on 9/11. These prosecutions have been politically motivated from the start, are designed to ensure quick convictions at the expense of due process and transparency, and are structured to prevent the revelation of abusive interrogations and torture engaged in by the U.S. government. Unfortunately, any verdict borne of these proceedings will lack legitimacy and leave us wondering if true justice has been served. No comfort or closure can come from military commissions that ignore the rule of law and stain America's reputation at home and abroad.
We are strongly encouraged by the incoming administration's promise to end this shameful system, and we are hopeful for a fresh start for these and all other Guantánamo prosecutions in U.S. courts worthy of American justice. It is time for our nation to stop betraying its own values – and the values of so many who died on 9/11.
Anne M. Mulderry, Kinderhook, New York, mother of Stephen V. Mulderry
Terry Kay Rockefeller, Arlington, MA, sister of Laura Rockefeller
J. William Harris, Arlington, MA, brother-in-law of Laura Rockefeller
Loretta Filipov, Concord, MA, wife of Alexander M. Filipov
Alissa Torres, New York, NY, wife of Luis Eduardo Torres
Bob McIlvaine, Oreland, PA, father of Bobby McIlvaine
Wright Salisbury, Lexington, MA, father-in-law of Edward Hennessy, Jr.
Barbara and Jim Fyfe, Durham, NC, parents of Karleton Douglas Beye Fyfe
Robyn Bernstein, Bolton, MA, daughter of Roberta Bernstein Heber
Patricia J. and James L. Perry, M.D., Seaford, NY, parents of NYPD officer John W. Perry
Rita Lasar, New York, NY, sister of Abraham Zelmanowitz
Valerie Lucznikowska, New York, NY, aunt of Adam Arias
Marion Kminek, Cape Coral, FL, mother of Mari-Rae Sopper
Kate Walsh Calton, Tampa, FL, wife of James Walsh
Beverly Eckert, Stamford, CT, wife of Sean Rooney
Monica Gabrielle, wife of Richard Gabrielle
Lorie Van Auken, wife of Kenneth Van Auken
Dr. Robin S. Theurkauf, wife of Thomas Theurkauf
Andrea N. LeBlanc, Lee, NH, wife of Robert G. LeBlanc
Frank Tatum, Stillwater, NY, son of Diane Moore Parsons
Antonio Aversano, Hadley, MA, son of Louis F. Aversano, Jr.
Nissa Youngren, Rochester, NY, daughter of Robert G. LeBlanc
Paula Shapiro, Pala, CA, mother of Eric Adam Eisenberg
Patricia Casazza, wife of John Casazza
Mindy Kleinberg, wife of Alan Kleinberg
Sheila Rooney, Fayetteville, NY, sister of Sean Rooney
Rosemary Dillard, wife of Eddie A. Dillard
Blake Allison, Lyme, NH, husband of Anna S.W. Allison
Roxanna K. Myhrum, Cambridge, MA, niece of Sean Rooney
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Career Army officer sues Rumsfeld, Cheney, saying no evacuation order given on 9/11
http://rawstory.com
12/17/2008 @ 2:29 pm
Filed by Stephen C. Webster
A career Army officer who survived the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, claims that no evacuation was ordered inside the Pentagon, despite flight controllers calling in warnings of approaching hijacked aircraft nearly 20 minutes before the building was struck.
According to a time-line of the attacks, the Federal Aviation Administration notified NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked at 9:24 a.m. The Pentagon was not struck until 9:43 a.m.
On behalf of retired Army officer April Gallop, California attorney William Veale has filed a civil suit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Air Force General Richard Myers, who was acting chairman of the joint chiefs on 9/11. It alleges they engaged in conspiracy to facilitate the terrorist attacks and purposefully failed to warn those inside the Pentagon, contributing to injuries she and her two-month-old son incurred.
"The ex-G.I. plaintiff alleges she has been denied government support since then, because she raised 'painful questions' about the inexplicable failure of military defenses at the Pentagon that day, and especially the failure of officials to warn and evacuate the occupants of the building when they knew the attack was imminent" said Veale in a media advisory.
Gallop also says she heard two loud explosions, and does not believe that a Boeing 757 hit the building. Her son sustained a serious brain injury, and Gallop herself was knocked unconscious after the roof collapsed onto her office.
The suit also named additional, unknown persons who had foreknowledge of the attacks.
"What they don't want is for this to go into discovery," said Gallop's attorney, Mr. Veale, speaking to RAW STORY. "If we can make it past their initial motion to dismiss these claims, and we get the power of subpoena, then we've got a real shot at getting to the bottom of this. We've got the law on our side."
The lawsuit's full text follows.
MORE...
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Sun Nov 23, 2008
Grad student declares BU "illegitimate" for blocking legitimate inquiry into 9/11, war on terror, Bush/Cheney impeachment
From the April 2008 Idaho Observer
http://proliberty.com/observer/20080410.htm
http://www.studentfortruth.blogspot.com/
Boston University graduate student Christian Tutschka’s efforts to initiate legitimate inquiry into impeachable offenses committed by President Bush and vice-President Dick Cheney have been blocked by the university’s faculty. On March 31, 2008, Tutschka wrote a letter to the university’s president declaring the institution’s illegitimacy, supporting his contention with BU’s own mission statement to "serve the future" and higher education’s purpose to "...tolerate all points of view..." and subject them "...to vigorous criticism..." The university’s response was not to honor their student’s legitimate concerns by facilitating the inquiry he seeks, but to try fitting Tutschka with a "psychological jacket" intended to brand him as mentally unstable. As you will see, Tutschka is quite lucid. Following is the letter he sent to BU President Robert A. Brown. In it, Tutschka, a member of Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth, places the university in a position where it must either concede and approve the time and resources necessary to facilitate legitimate inquiry into questions about 9/11, the subsequent war on terror and the war crimes Tutschka and others are alleging against Bush and Cheney...or...refuse to open its doors to such inquiry. Thus far, Boston University has chosen the latter.
Letter to President of Boston University, March 31, 2008
Dear President Brown,
My name is Christian Tutschka and I am a M.A. candidate in the International Relations and Environmental Policy (IREP) Program here at Boston University.
I believe Boston University is an illegitimate "university" or "institution of higher learning." Beginning today I will suspend my participation in the IREP program at BU until I once again believe BU is a legitimate institution. The following will explain this decision:
The Role and Purpose of the "University"
BU Website: "Forging our future… More than any other institution in our society, the modern university exists to serve the future. Boston University does this by educating individuals for fulfilling, productive lives and by creating solutions to pressing or anticipated problems through research."
John Silber, Former BU President (1971-1996): "A university - whether publicly or privately funded - cannot pursue the truth and advance knowledge unless it can proceed in freedom with toleration of all points of view and with vigorous criticism of each" (Excerpt from Silber’s essay, "On the Purpose of a University," which was, until recently, on display at Mugar Library).
Given this role and purpose, the "university" acts as a "power center" of our society. A societal "power center" is an institution dedicated to serving society with the ability to influence the direction of a society.
The Failure of BU as a "University"
BU has failed to perform its role and purpose due to the following three reasons:
1) Impeachment: There is clear evidence that members of the Bush administration have committed not only impeachable offenses, but crimes against humanity, some of which include: lying to the public about the threat of the Iraqi regime, the illegal invasion and occupation of two sovereign nations (which has cost the lives of over 4000 U.S. soldiers[ii], left thousands permanently disabled and has killed over 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians[iii]), using illegal weapons of mass destruction, failing to protect civilians in war zones, condoning torture, illegal spying on Americans, … and the list goes on.[iv]
The fact that Congress has not initiated impeachment proceedings against members of the Bush administration is evidence that each member of Congress is a political criminal for failing in their Constitutional duty to protect the Constitution and act as a check against an abusive and tyrannical executive branch.
In effect, our system of government has, over the years, become completely corrupt and all of our public officials in Washington, D.C. are corrupt political criminals. When this occurs, it is the duty of the other "power centers" of society to demand their removal. BU has failed to do this.
2) 9/11: There are many legitimate professionals in various disciplines that question the findings presented in the 9/11 Commission Report concerning the events of 9/11 due to the uncontroversial evidence—much of it not investigated by the Commission—that demonstrates various events could not have occurred as described in the Report.[v]
As 9/11 was the event that launched the global "war on terrorism" which continues to affect the global community, these professionals are demanding a new, independent investigation. BU has failed to publicly demand a new, independent investigation and rather has promoted the conclusions of the flawed 9/11 Commission Report.
3) My Experience: When sharing some of these ideas with some professors, I have been ignored, dismissed, and even reprimanded. This is incompatible with free, critical thought which is necessary for determining truth and serving society.
Furthermore, I have witnessed statements and behaviors from professors regarding these issues that have left me shocked and disappointed. Some statements contained such false understandings or flawed reasoning that the consequences could be described as dangerous given that these individuals are professional educators. As the list is long, I have not included it here, but I can provide it per request.
The Challenge for Re-Legitimization
I will consider BU to be a legitimate "university" if:
1) Congress has initiated impeachment proceedings against members of the Bush Administration and a new, independent investigation of the events of 9/11 commences and BU has been instrumental in causing this….
OR
2) I receive satisfactory answers to all of the following questions:
For the Physics and Engineering Professors:
1. How could World Trade Centers 1 and 2, both 110-story steel-framed structures, collapse in an average of about 10 seconds which is a rate at or exceeding free-fall speed from fire and the impact of the planes? The 9/11 Commission Report explains these collapses as "pancake collapses," however this type of collapse would take considerably longer. Also, the "pancake collapse" theory cannot account for the destruction of the interior steel-beam core, or the complete pulverization of the buildings.[vi]
2. How could World Trade Center 7, a 47-story steel-framed structure, collapse in under 7 seconds in a controlled-demolition style at around 5:20 p.m. on the afternoon of 9/11 when it was not hit by a plane and received considerably less damage than other WTC buildings which were left partially standing? The 9/11 Commission Report did not even mention the collapse of WTC 7.[vii]
For the Law Professors:
3. How can the various acts of the Bush administration not be considered impeachable offenses and crimes against humanity?
4. How can members of Congress not be considered "political criminals" for not initiating impeachment proceedings against members of the Bush administration (both Representatives for not initiating the process and Senators for not demanding that they do)?
5. How is this country not turning into a type of totalitarian "police state," complete with concentration camps,[viii] given the various unconstitutional acts passed by Congress and the various unconstitutional National Security Presidential Directives, Homeland Security Presidential Directives, and Executive Orders passed by the Bush administration?[ix]
For the Military and Intelligence Professors:
6. Why were there military drills that occurred on 9/11, some simulating very similar events as which occurred on 9/11? (The drills: Amalgam Virgo, Vigilant Guardian, Northern Guardian, Vigilant Warrior, Northern Vigilance, Amalgam Warrior, Global Guardian, Crown Vigilance, Apollo Guardian, National Reconnaissance Office, AWACS, Fort Meyer - Virginia, TRIPOD II - Manhattan, Timely Alert II.)[x]
7. Professor Michel Chossudovsky has compiled a wealth of evidence concerning the links between the CIA, Osama bin Laden, "Al Qaeda," and the Pakistani ISI which supports the claim that Osama bin Laden and the "Al Qaeda" network are agents of the U.S. military/intelligence complex.[xi] Given this evidence, how can one claim that Al Qaeda is anything but a manufactured "scapegoat enemy" working, at least in part, for the U.S. military/intelligence complex?
For the History Professors:
8. The U.S. entered major conflicts in the 20th Century only after being provoked. There is evidence that some of these provocations were either "false-flag attacks" (Sinking of the RMS Lusitania, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident), or were allowed to happen (Pearl Harbor).[xii] Given this history, how is it possible that 9/11 could not also be a false-flag attack to launch the global "war on terror" and justify the invasion of Middle Eastern states?
9. How is the Bush Family, going back to grandfather Prescott Bush and his involvement in building Hitler’s Nazi regime, not a crime family?[xiii]
For the BU Administration:
10. Within hours of the attacks on 9/11, the Bush Administration blamed Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. There was no investigation carried out before this claim was made. Did BU demand an official independent investigation into the events of 9/11 before or after this claim was made? If not, why not?
11. If I am mistaken, and BU is indeed a legitimate "university," I would like BU to explain to me how my reasoning is flawed.
If I do not receive a response from Boston University regarding this letter, or this letter is dismissed or ridiculed in any way, I will consider this a violation of the role and purpose of a university. Furthermore, if I am dismissed from Boston University as a consequence of this letter and the decision stated in this letter, I will also consider this a violation of the role and purpose of a university and I will take appropriate action against Boston University.
Sincerely,
Christian Tutschka
[Letter, references and comments at www.studentfortruth.blogspot.com ]
[i]
Note: Tutschka spoke with BU Physics Professor and Associate Dean Scott Whitaker about the letter on the morning of April 2. Attending the meeting was Margaret Ross, a psychologist and director of Behavioral Medicine at the BU Student Health Services. Whitaker and Ross were concerned by what Tutschka meant by "appropriate action."
"I assured them that I am nonviolent and my actions would be legal and civil," Tutschka said.
According to Tutschka, Ross commented that she was interested in the 9/11 issue and invited the protesting student to come talk to her about it at a later date. He also recalled that Whitaker evaded taking a position on questions concerning 9/11 or the impeachment issue.
We found this letter and the institutional actions that prompted it to be extremely revealing of a major mechanism of control in this country: Higher education. Tutschka posed legitimate questions to relevant department heads at BU and they chose to remain silent about a series of events that have justified the mass murder of innocents, the wanton destruction of property and nations, the displacement of millions of people and escalating public debt.
Tutschka’s point is well made: When government fails to check and balance its abuses, then the nation’s "power centers"—universities, churches and trade organizations—must step in to do the checking and balancing. For any of these institutions, in this case an accredited university, to fail us in this critical regard, they become accessories to the crimes alleged.
This courageous and principled, 27-year-old graduate student has inadvertently created a model for us all to follow.
• Based upon the FACT that 9/11 was not adequately investigated and the government’s explanations for the tragic events of that day are not supported by the laws of natural science, the evidence or witness testimony;
• based upon the FACT that the government’s unsubstantiated explanation for 9/11 justified its preconceived desire to wage a general war on terrorism and target specific countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran;
• based upon the FACT that the war on terror has been used to justify the most comprehensive government trespass on civil liberties in our nation’s history;
• based upon the FACT that the Bush administration has used it’s war on terror to justify unprecedented levels of public indebtedness that is destroying our nation’s economic stability...
...we should send open letters to the churches, schools, professional organizations, labor unions and civic clubs and compel them, as our country’s power centers, to take a public stand on these issues for the good of our nation and our world. In the absence of these organizations taking a stand for truth, justice and the law, we should discontinue our membership. Others will see the logic and may be compelled to discontinue their membership in these organizations as well.
The Bush administration and its corporate friends in oil, chemical, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, military industries and the media is encouraged to continue its campaign to justify the spread of death, destruction and misery, based upon the lies of 9/11, because our power centers remain silent.
At this time, our choice is to demand that the organizations to which we claim membership publicly demand investigations and indictments of these matters where appropriate. If they fail to do so, we must be prepared to sever our ties to them—at whatever cost.
Christian Tutschka, an intelligent and passionate young man with a bright future, made that choice. He decided that is was more important to make a stand for his country’s future—the future of his generation—than it was to silently tolerate these heinous crimes in hopes that this spreading evil won’t affect him. The best way we can honor his decision is by duplicating his efforts. (DWH)
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Sun Nov 09, 2008
Egg Harbor Township man sues government to stop $700 billion bailout
By DAN GOOD Staff Writer, 609-272-7218
Press of Atlantic City
Published: Sunday, November 09, 2008
Larry Bumgarner didn't think his vehicle would make it to Camden. Due to front-end damage, his 1995 Isuzu Rodeo grumbles like a blender grinding rocks. Overloaded washing machines don't pulse this much. Any minute of the two-hour round trip could have been the vehicle's last, but the money needed to fix the vehicle was wadded in Bumgarner's jeans pocket. The 56-year-old Egg Harbor Township resident had something better to spend his unemployment check on - suing the United States of America.
"I had to do something," he said. "I just couldn't take it no more."
Bumgarner, laid off from his casino server job in September, is fed up with the economy, so on Oct. 24 he drove to Camden and filed a complaint in U.S. District Court, seeking relief from September's $700 billion government bank bailout.
"This one's for the lower middle class," he says.
It cost him $350 to file his 21-page claim. He says the government, by passing H.R. Bill 1424, is forcing citizens into debt servitude by having them foot the bill for the bailout - something that he says violates citizens' constitutional rights. His claim will appear before court Nov. 17, but it could be months before a decision is reached.
He's defending himself as a pro se, which means he's doing this without the help of lawyers.
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Fri Nov 07, 2008
Senior Corporate Executives Warned to Leave N.Y. on 9/11: Source
Foreign Policy Journal Exclusive!
November 3, 2008
by Jeremy R. Hammond
Foreign Policy Journal has learned that senior executives of a major U.S. international corporation may have been warned to leave New York on September 11, 2001.
According to an inside source, one of the senior executives of the corporation told him beforehand that “something big” was going to occur and so other corporate executives would be travelling out of New York.
The source, who spoke to the Journal on the condition of anonymity, worked at a European branch of the media giant Warner Bros. He served as the number two under the managing director of that office, a man with whom he had developed a close personal friendship. His boss was also friends with one of the senior executives at the head office in Los Angeles. According to the source, he had been told by his director that the executive in L.A. had formerly worked for the CIA and still kept in touch with the agency.
It is not an uncommon practice for the CIA to recruit business executives, particularly individuals who do a lot of international travelling and might be able to use their business contacts to gather information.
The CIA is also known to have recruited journalists and media executives. According to Carl Bernstein, the former Washington Post reporter who worked with Bob Woodward breaking open the Watergate story during the Nixon administration, executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA included Henry Luce of Time Inc., founder of Time and Life magazines. C.D. Jackson, a Time Inc. vice-president and publisher of Life magazine until his death in 1964, approved arrangements to provide the CIA with cover under Time-Life, according to an article Bernstein wrote for Rolling Stone magazine in 1977.
When the managing director of the overseas Warner Bros. office passed away, the individual who spoke with the Journal was contacted by the senior executive from L.A. about the plans for the memorial service. Senior executives from the company would attend, including from the Warner Bros. parent corporation, Time Warner, headquartered in New York.
When he answered that one of the potential dates for the service was September 11, he was told that would be no good because “something big is happening that day” and the top executives from the New York office would all be travelling out of the city.
When asked further about this big event, the executive replied that it was a confidential matter and disclosed no further details, except to say that it was “not corporate”.
The source told the Journal, “I had no reason to think that the ‘event’ could be anything more than perhaps a junket, an out of town think tank exercise or whatever – I remember that these possibilities ran through my mind.”
But after 9/11, thinking back upon the conversation, he grew more curious and tried to ascertain where the board members had been that day. They had indeed been out of New York, he says, travelling not to one location, but each to their own destination. Destinations included overseas locations such as Paris, London, and Amsterdam.
Foreign Policy Journal has not been able to verify the location of individuals on 9/11 or other aspects of the story concerning any potential warning received or given by any Time Warner executives, but did confirm the source’s position at the foreign branch office, the name and position of that office’s managing director, and the name and position of the senior executive from the Los Angeles office.
There have been numerous other indications that individuals within the U.S. had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
One such indication was the evidence of insider trading in the days just prior. Short selling and trading in put options, which are essentially bets that stock will drop, skyrocketed over a period of days before 9/11 only in companies that were directly affected.
For instance, purchases were made on 4,744 put options for United Airlines between September 6 and 7. On September 10, purchases were placed on 4,516 put options for American Airlines. United and American were the two airlines that had planes hijacked and destroyed in the attacks. There was no similarly unusual trading in other airlines.
Other companies directly affected also experienced a spike in the purchase of put options, such as Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Merril Lynch, both of which had offices in the World Trade Center.
Numerous countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Spain, opened investigations into what had apparently been insider trading based on foreknowledge of the attacks.
Together, these purchases were worth millions. Yet with the reports of insider trading and foreknowledge circulating in the media, whoever was responsible chose not to collect the money.
One of the banks involved in the purchases was Alex Brown, the U.S. branch of the German Deutsche Bank, which was headed until 1998 by A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard. He afterwards joined the CIA, and was Executive Director of the agency at the time of the attacks.
Trading is monitored through special software in real time by the CIA, so the agency would have been aware of the suspicious activity in the days just prior to the attacks.
Despite all this, the FBI announced that its own investigation had turned up no evidence that anyone had tried to profit from inside knowledge that the attacks would occur.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, which echoed the conclusion of the FBI, 95 percent of the purchases on United and American Airlines shares on September 6 and 10, respectively, were made by a single U.S. based institutional investor.
Robert Baer is a former CIA case officer and author of “Sleeping with the Devil” and “See No Evil”, which served as the basis for the film “Syriana” starring George Clooney. Baer told Stewart Howe and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of the L.A. branch of the organization We Are Change, “I know the guy that went into his broker in San Diego and said ‘cash me out, it’s going down tomorrow.’” Baer added that “his brother worked at the White House.”
Baer also indicated that the 9/11 Commission Report had been a cover-up of what really happened and questioned why certain other oddities about 9/11 had not been investigated, such as “the famous white van”, which he said was “an intriguing story” that “deserves a book”.
He was referring to the case of the five Israelis who were witnessed on 9/11 celebrating beside their white van at the sight of the smoking towers from a parking lot in New Jersey. They were later arrested and detained. Upon arrest, the driver of the van told the arresting officers, “We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem.”
The van was registered to an Israeli-owned company called Urban Moving Systems, whose owner immediately closed shop and fled to Israel. At least two of the five Israelis witnessed videotaping and celebrating the attacks were learned to be operatives of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
In other reporting that may or may not have been related to the five Israelis with the white van, it became known publicly that an enormous Israeli spy ring had been uncovered operating within the United States.
Reports of investigations into Israeli spying within the U.S. had emerged early in 2001. After 9/11, Fox News reported that according to investigators the Israeli intelligence operatives of a large spy ring may have gathered information in advance about the attacks of 9/11, but that the evidence for this was classified.
As part of the operation, Israelis posed as art students. Under the guise of selling art, they targeted government officials at their offices or homes, including members of the military, the DEA, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence personnel.
One group of the Israeli “art students” lived at 4220 Sheridan St. in Hollywood, Florida, just down the street from the 3389 address where Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers lived.
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Sat Oct 11, 2008
Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists
Md. Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists
Surveillance's Reach Revealed
By Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 8, 2008; A01
The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.
The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.
"The names don't belong in there," he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "It's as simple as that."
The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists "fringe people."
Sheridan said protest groups were also entered as terrorist organizations in the databases, but his staff has not identified which ones.
Stunned senators pressed Sheridan to apologize to the activists for the spying, assailed in an independent review last week as "overreaching" by law enforcement officials who were oblivious to their violation of the activists' rights of free expression and association. The letter, obtained by The Washington Post, does not apologize but admits that the state police have "no evidence whatsoever of any involvement in violent crime" by those classified as terrorists.
Hutchins told the committee it was not accurate to describe the program as spying. "I doubt anyone who has used that term has ever met a spy," he told the committee.
"What John Walker did is spying," Hutchins said, referring to John Walker Jr., a communications specialist for the U.S. Navy convicted of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. Hutchins said the intelligence agents, whose logs were obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland as part of a lawsuit, were monitoring "open public meetings." His officers sought a "situational awareness" of the potential for disruption as death penalty opponents prepared to protest the executions of two men on death row, Hutchins said.
"I don't believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government," he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.
Hutchins did not name the commander in the Division of Homeland Security and Intelligence who informed him in March 2005 that the surveillance had begun. More than a year later, after "they said, 'We're not getting much here,' " Hutchins said he cut off what he called a "low-level operation."
But Sen. James Brochin (D-Baltimore County) noted that undercover troopers used aliases to infiltrate organizational meetings, rallies and group e-mail lists. He called the spying a "deliberate infiltration to find out every piece of information necessary" on groups such as the Maryland Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Baltimore Pledge of Resistance. When Hutchins called their members "fringe people," the audience of activists who filled the seats in the hearing room in Annapolis sighed.
Some activists said yesterday that they have received letters; others said they were waiting with anticipation to see whether they were on the state police watch list.
Laura Lising of Catonsville, a member of the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty, received her notification yesterday. She said she wants a hard copy of her file, because she does not trust the police to purge it. "We need as much protection as possible," she said.
Both Hutchins and Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries.
The police also entered the activists' names into the federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, which tracks suspected terrorists. One well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a "primary crime" of "terrorism-anti-government" and a "secondary crime" of "terrorism-anti-war protesters."
Sheridan said that he did not think the names were circulated to other agencies in the federal system and that they are not on the federal government's terrorist watch list. Hutchins said some names might have been shared with the National Security Agency.
Although the independent report on the surveillance released last week said that it was part of a broad effort by the state police to gather information on protest groups across the state, Sheridan said the department is not aware of any surveillance as "intrusive" as the spying on death penalty and war opponents.
The police notified the protesters at the recommendation of former U.S. attorney and state attorney general Stephen H. Sachs, who was appointed by Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) to review the covert monitoring. In a report last week, Sachs also recommended regulations that forbid such spying on protest groups unless the state police chief believes it is justified.
"I can't imagine getting a letter that says, 'You've been classified as a terrorist; come in and we'll tell about it,'" said Sen. Bryan W. Simonaire (R-Anne Arundel). Two senators noted that they had been arrested years ago for civil disobedience. Sen. Jennie Forehand (D-Montgomery) asked Sheridan, "Do you have any legislators on your list?" The answer was no.
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Fri Oct 10, 2008
Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
Who Owns The Federal Reserve?
The Fed is privately owned. Its shareholders are private banks
By Ellen Brown
Global Research, October 8, 2008
webofdebt.com
"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."
– The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s
The Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. The deal was particularly controversial because Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, sits on the board of the New York Fed and participated in the secret weekend negotiations.1 In September 2008, the Federal Reserve did something even more unprecedented, when it bought the world’s largest insurance company. The Fed announced on September 16 that it was giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG) for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. The Associated Press called it a "government takeover," but this was no ordinary nationalization. Unlike the U.S. Treasury, which took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, the Fed is not a government-owned agency. Also unprecedented was the way the deal was funded. The Associated Press reported:
"The Treasury Department, for the first time in its history, said it would begin selling bonds for the Federal Reserve in an effort to help the central bank deal with its unprecedented borrowing needs."2
This is extraordinary. Why is the Treasury issuing U.S. government bonds (or debt) to fund the Fed, which is itself supposedly "the lender of last resort" created to fund the banks and the federal government? Yahoo Finance reported on September 17:
"The Treasury is setting up a temporary financing program at the Fed’s request. The program will auction Treasury bills to raise cash for the Fed’s use. The initiative aims to help the Fed manage its balance sheet following its efforts to enhance its liquidity facilities over the previous few quarters."
Normally, the Fed swaps green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes for pink pieces of paper called U.S. bonds (the federal government’s I.O.U.s), in order to provide Congress with the dollars it cannot raise through taxes. Now, it seems, the government is issuing bonds, not for its own use, but for the use of the Fed! Perhaps the plan is to swap them with the banks’ dodgy derivatives collateral directly, without actually putting them up for sale to outside buyers. According to Wikipedia (which translates Fedspeak into somewhat clearer terms than the Fed’s own website):
"The Term Securities Lending Facility is a 28-day facility that will offer Treasury general collateral to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s primary dealers in exchange for other program-eligible collateral. It is intended to promote liquidity in the financing markets for Treasury and other collateral and thus to foster the functioning of financial markets more generally. . . . The resource allows dealers to switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable."
"To switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable" means that the government gets the banks’ toxic derivative debt, and the banks get the government’s triple-A securities. Unlike the risky derivative debt, federal securities are considered "risk-free" for purposes of determining capital requirements, allowing the banks to improve their capital position so they can make new loans. (See E. Brown, "Bailout Bedlam," webofdebt.com/articles, October 2, 2008.)
In its latest power play, on October 3, 2008, the Fed acquired the ability to pay interest to its member banks on the reserves the banks maintain at the Fed. Reuters reported on October 3:
"The U.S. Federal Reserve gained a key tactical tool from the $700 billion financial rescue package signed into law on Friday that will help it channel funds into parched credit markets. Tucked into the 451-page bill is a provision that lets the Fed pay interest on the reserves banks are required to hold at the central bank."3
If the Fed’s money comes ultimately from the taxpayers, that means we the taxpayers are paying interest to the banks on the banks’ own reserves – reserves maintained for their own private profit. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself. Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?
Not Private and Not for Profit?
The Fed’s website insists that it is not a private corporation, is not operated for profit, and is not funded by Congress. But is that true? The Federal Reserve was set up in 1913 as a "lender of last resort" to backstop bank runs, following a particularly bad bank panic in 1907. The Fed’s mandate was then and continues to be to keep the private banking system intact; and that means keeping intact the system’s most valuable asset, a monopoly on creating the national money supply. Except for coins, every dollar in circulation is now created privately as a debt to the Federal Reserve or the banking system it heads.4 The Fed’s website attempts to gloss over its role as chief defender and protector of this private banking club, but let’s take a closer look. The website states:
* "The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations – possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year."
* "[The Federal Reserve] is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms."
* "The Federal Reserve’s income is derived primarily from the interest on U.S. government securities that it has acquired through open market operations. . . . After paying its expenses, the Federal Reserve turns the rest of its earnings over to the U.S. Treasury."5
So let’s review:
1. The Fed is privately owned.
Its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.
2. The fact that the Fed does not get "appropriations" from Congress basically means that it gets its money from Congress without congressional approval, by engaging in "open market operations."
Here is how it works: When the government is short of funds, the Treasury issues bonds and delivers them to bond dealers, which auction them off. When the Fed wants to "expand the money supply" (create money), it steps in and buys bonds from these dealers with newly-issued dollars acquired by the Fed for the cost of writing them into an account on a computer screen. These maneuvers are called "open market operations" because the Fed buys the bonds on the "open market" from the bond dealers. The bonds then become the "reserves" that the banking establishment uses to back its loans. In another bit of sleight of hand known as "fractional reserve" lending, the same reserves are lent many times over, further expanding the money supply, generating interest for the banks with each loan. It was this money-creating process that prompted Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, to call the Federal Reserve "a total money-making machine." He wrote:
"When the Federal Reserve writes a check for a government bond it does exactly what any bank does, it creates money, it created money purely and simply by writing a check."
3. The Fed generates profits for its shareholders.
The interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed’s operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders. A mere 6% a year may not be considered a profit in the world of Wall Street high finance, but most businesses that manage to cover all their expenses and give their shareholders a guaranteed 6% return are considered "for profit" corporations.
In addition to this guaranteed 6%, the banks will now be getting interest from the taxpayers on their "reserves." The basic reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve is 10%. The website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York explains that as money is redeposited and relent throughout the banking system, this 10% held in "reserve" can be fanned into ten times that sum in loans; that is, $10,000 in reserves becomes $100,000 in loans. Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.8 puts the total "loans and leases in bank credit" as of September 24, 2008 at $7,049 billion. Ten percent of that is $700 billion. That means we the taxpayers will be paying interest to the banks on at least $700 billion annually – this so that the banks can retain the reserves to accumulate interest on ten times that sum in loans.
The banks earn these returns from the taxpayers for the privilege of having the banks’ interests protected by an all-powerful independent private central bank, even when those interests may be opposed to the taxpayers’ -- for example, when the banks use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that threaten to collapse the U.S. economy. Among other special benefits, banks and other financial institutions (but not other corporations) can borrow at the low Fed funds rate of about 2%. They can then turn around and put this money into 30-year Treasury bonds at 4.5%, earning an immediate 2.5% from the taxpayers, just by virtue of their position as favored banks. A long list of banks (but not other corporations) is also now protected from the short selling that can crash the price of other stocks.
Time to Change the Statute?
According to the Fed’s website, the control Congress has over the Federal Reserve is limited to this:
"[T]he Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute."
As we know from watching the business news, "oversight" basically means that Congress gets to see the results when it’s over. The Fed periodically reports to Congress, but the Fed doesn’t ask; it tells. The only real leverage Congress has over the Fed is that it "can alter its responsibilities by statute." It is time for Congress to exercise that leverage and make the Federal Reserve a truly federal agency, acting by and for the people through their elected representatives. If the Fed can demand AIG’s stock in return for an $85 billion loan to the mega-insurer, we can demand the Fed’s stock in return for the trillion-or-so dollars we’ll be advancing to bail out the private banking system from its follies.
If the Fed were actually a federal agency, the government could issue U.S. legal tender directly, avoiding an unnecessary interest-bearing debt to private middlemen who create the money out of thin air themselves. Among other benefits to the taxpayers. a truly "federal" Federal Reserve could lend the full faith and credit of the United States to state and local governments interest-free, cutting the cost of infrastructure in half, restoring the thriving local economies of earlier decades.
Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and "the money trust." She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com .
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This Time, the World Is Not Buying It
This Time, the World Is Not Buying It
by Paul Craig Roberts [bio herein below]
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
The success of the Bush Regime's propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propagandafor a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.
As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag. It certainly worked with Americans.
The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims.
There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned. Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships. We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops. We don't know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and theneocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.
What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to
achieve their undeclared agenda. That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity. America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime. The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime's criminal actions.
Even Obama, who promises "change" is too intimidated by the neocon's
success in brainwashing the American population to do what his
supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us. This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement.
The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed "Russian invasion" to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault. Only this time, the rest of the world didn't buy it.
The many years of lies - 9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, "the United States doesn't torture," the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children's soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated "terrorist plots," the determined assault on civil liberties - have taken their toll on American credibility.
No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.
The rest of the world reported the facts - an assault on Russian civilians by American- and Israeli-trained and -equipped Georgian troops. The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to
accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life. The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and be intimidated by the "unipower" was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed..
McCain declared: "In the 21st century nations don't invade other nations."
Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for
attacking a third.
President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain's claim that nations don't invade other nations. This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers' reveal. If in the 21st century countries don't invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?
Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times - Bush and McCain - called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as "nations don't invade other nations," or is President Bush going to beat him to it?
We all know the answer. The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.
Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia's membership in NATO.
The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia.
Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire. Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.
The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.
Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Honorable Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.
He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.
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Tue Oct 07, 2008
Dennis Kucinich on the Democrats’ Bailout Betrayal
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country"
~Dennis Kucinich
October 6, 2008
TruthDig.com
by Chris Hedges
The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the Democratic Party.
We are on our own. And don't expect any help from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who lobbied hard for the bill and voted for it. Ignore their rhetoric. Look coldly at the ballots they cast against us. We, as citizens, have only a handful of representatives left in Washington, most of whom were left sputtering in rage and frustration on the House floor. The sad irony is that some of them were Republican.
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country," Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the fight in the House against the bailout, told me by phone from Cleveland. "It is a direct attack on the American people's ability to be able to stabilize their homes and their neighborhoods. This single vote will define the careers of everyone. We are back to taxation without representation, to markets that are openly rigged."
"We buried the New Deal," he said of the vote. "Instead of Democrats going back to classic New Deal economics where we prime the pump of the economy and start money circulating among the population through saving homes, creating jobs and building a new infrastructure, our leaders chose to accelerate the wealth of the nation upwards. They did so in a way that was destructive of free-market principles. They ripped away all the familiar moorings. We are in an uncharted sea where the traditional roles of the political parties are being switched. The Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of the broad base of the American people. It was up to the Republicans to protect not just a so-called free market but the American taxpayer and attempt to block this. This is an outrage. This was democracy's Black Friday."
Obama arrived on the Senate floor Brutus-like to thrust a knife into the back of the working and middle class. He lobbied hard for the bill. He did so, according to some who met with him on Capitol Hill, because he feared that if he opposed the bailout and it triggered a market collapse it could cost him the election. Better to placate the thieves on Wall Street than stand up for the masses of enraged and swindled citizens.
Obama's betrayal is the betrayal of the Democratic Party. The Democrats gave us the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which ripped down the firewalls that were put in place by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The 1933 act, designed to prevent the kind of meltdown we are now experiencing, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). It set in place banking reforms to stop speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators. They achieved fundraising parity with the Republicans. They used institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a welfare gravy train. The Democrats, including Obama, are as compromised as the Republicans.
Obama's voting record in the Senate is in line with the corrupt Democratic mainstream, including Biden, who works on behalf of corporations and especially the credit card industry. Obama knows where power lies in the United States. It is not with the citizens, who with ratios of 100 to 1 pleaded with their representatives in Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not us, pick who runs for president. You cannot be a candidate without their blessing and money. These corporations, including the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation, determine who gets to speak and whatissues candidates can or cannot challenge, from universal, not-for-profit, single-payer health care to Wall Street bailouts to NAFTA. If you do not follow the corporate script you become as marginal and invisible as Ralph Nader or Bob Barr or Cynthia McKinney.
Obama has always served his corporate masters. He opposed Rep. John Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and supported continued funding for the war. He voted in July 2005 to reauthorize the Patriot Act. He did not support an amendment that was part of a bankruptcy bill that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872, which allows mineral companies to rape federal land for profit. He did not back the single-payer health care bill HR 676, sponsored by Kucinich and John Conyers. He advocates the death penalty and nuclear power. He backed the class-action "reform" bill-the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA)-that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms, which make up Obama's second-biggest single bloc of donors. CAFA would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits. Workers, under CAFA, would no longer have redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporations. CAFA moves these cases into corporate-friendly federal courts dominated by Republican judges.
Obama's support for the bailout, however, is his most egregious betrayal. He had a brief, shining moment to prove he could lead, to capitalize on a popular revolt that cut across the political spectrum. He never attempted to address or mobilize the aspirations and passions of the vast majority of Americans. He was as craven, servile and cowardly as the party he represents. He returned to the campaign trail after Friday's vote as a slick and polished sales representative for our corporate state, telling us to calm down and accept the inevitable.
"Some of the most powerful speeches against this were given by members of the Republican Party who are on the political right," Kucinich said. "They did a superb job in poking holes in the underlying assumptions of the bailout. They say what they believe. Give me somebody who says what they believe and I can figure out how to get them to a new place. When people say one thing and do another it is very hard to be able to move a debate."
So let us honor, in our moment of defeat, the handful of elected officials who valiantly defied their party leaderships in the House to stage a remarkable revolt that at first succeeded. Kucinich is one. There were others-Brad Sherman, Marcy Kaptur, Peter DeFazio, Lloyd Doggett and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott. They are about all that is left of the old Democratic Party, the party that once looked out for the poor and the working class. Send them a note of thanks. They deserve it. And if you live in their districts make sure you get to the polls in November. They did not sell you out.
"We had two take-it-or-leave-it propositions and the second one was worse than the first," Kucinich said, referring to the plan that came loaded with pages of tax cuts. "Tax cuts are antithetical to a bailout. We never solved the problem. There were never any hearings on the bill. This premise, that we could prop up the stock market with a $700-billion investment and create some liquidity, was flawed. The problem is that banks do not want to loan to each other. It is not a liquidity problem. Banks are afraid they are going to collapse in short selling. There is a war going on between security firms and banks. Banks are under assault. They are not loaning. The dynamic is driven by the Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Fed."
The root of the financial crisis, as critics of the bailout plan point out, is that millions of homeowners cannot pay their mortgages. The bailout, as the market decline on Friday following the vote illustrated, does not address the crisis. It solves nothing for the 10 million Americans who face foreclosure. It solves nothing for the growing numbers of unemployed and underemployed. It may well be the equivalent of tossing $850 billion of taxpayer money (including $150 billion in tax cuts) into a furnace and watching passively as our economy continues its plunge.
"We face a perfect financial storm," Kucinich warned. "The elements are the deficit spending for the war of 3 to 4 trillion dollars, the trillion and more tax cuts, the war itself and the lack of serious investment in the country. We are being hollowed out. We are going to see more unemployment and more people losing their homes. With $700 billion we could have made a real investment in the country, in jobs, in infrastructure and in homes. Instead, we got robbed."
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Thu Oct 02, 2008
Grand Larceny" on a Monumental Scale: Does the Bailout Bill Mark the End of America as We Know It?
OCTOBER 1, 2008—Tonight the Senate passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill by a vote of 74-25. This follows the rejection of the bill by the House on Monday. In an MSNBC poll, 62 percent of Americans oppose the giveaway, but the lobbyists are doing everything possible to assure the rejection is overturned. According to Bob Borosage, co-director of The Campaign for America's Future, House leaders "are bringing in the small business lobby and the banking lobby to buy the twelve Republican votes they need."
The Senate took up the bill in order to pressure House members who voted against it to change their positions when it returns to a vote on the House floor on Friday. This procedure may be unconstitutional, because revenue bills must originate in the House, but there is no time or political will for anyone to mount a challenge on constitutional grounds. As another means of inducement—or blackmail—the bill includes the repeal of the wildly unjust alternative minimum tax.
Every reputable economist commenting on the bill opposes it, including NYU's Nouriel Roubini, who says the plan is "totally flawed." He says the plan is:
"a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders, and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer."
My own view is that the plan is worse than that: a crime; grand larceny on a monumental scale.
Here's why: We know that the debacle started with homeowner defaults on subprime mortgages and that it has now spread to other types of mortgages as foreclosures spread. We know that the unhealthy use of subprime mortgages started during the Clinton administration, as did the bundling and sale of these mortgages into mortgage-backed securities sold in the financial markets.
What has not been reported is that the Bush administration turned these acts of reckless lending into a national program of mortgage fraud. Soon after George W. Bush became president in 2001, meetings at the White House between Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and administration officials became more frequent. According to mortgage industry insiders I have interviewed, direction soon began to come down from the banks to mortgage brokers to falsify borrower income information to allow them to qualify for loans that were otherwise out of reach.
The FBI has investigations underway to prosecute some of these cases of mortgage fraud. But they are not reaching above the brokers' level. The FBI is not gaining access—or at least they have not reported it publicly—to information about collusion at the political level or at the level of the banks which provided the leveraged funding for mortgage money.
But at the time the housing bubble was inflating, no one was watching. Note that when Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson testified before the Senate Banking Committee last week, he said he was shocked to learn when assuming office in June 2006 that no federal agency regulated mortgage lending. Rather this was an area left to the states.
What Paulson did not say was that when the states attempted to intervene, they were blocked by the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. In a February 14 article in the Washington Post written before he resigned, New York governor Eliot Spitzer wrote:
"In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules. But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation."
Why did the Bush administration do this? The only possible answer is that it had every intention of producing the housing bubble, one that had the effect of not only inflating the cost of homes and real estate but also pumping billions of dollars of borrowed cash into the economy through mortgage and home equity loans.
The bubble enriched huge numbers of executives, managers, and shareholders throughout the financial and real estate industries, and provided jobs to millions of people. The bubble also brought back foreign capital to U.S. markets that had been scared away by the dot.com bust of 2000-2001.
Everyone seemed to benefit, but it was those at the top who skimmed the greatest profits. And for an economy that had already given away millions of its best manufacturing jobs through NAFTA, Most-Favored-Nation trading policies with China, World Trade Organization agreements, etc., the bubble acted as a kind of substitute economic engine.
It also resulted in tax revenues that allowed the Bush administration to implement its 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the rich and provide funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Of course these tax revenues were not enough, as the national debt soared to over $9 trillion during the Bush years as well.
Economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research makes the point:
"The near hysterical discussion (count the times 'Great Depression' appears in news stories) of the bailout still largely fails to recognize the roots of the economy's current problems in the collapse of the housing bubble. Much of the discussion assumes that the problem is just bad subprime loans and that house prices will bounce back once the credit markets are working properly."
The point is critical, because what the Senate and House leaders are telling us, as are President George W. Bush, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, is that the bailout is to get the American economy moving again. Credit, they say, is the lifeblood of the economy, and without credit no one can make a move.
But credit is the lifeblood of the economy only because people are broke. Purchasing power in the U.S. has collapsed, and it is getting worse as the recession which has now begun worsens.
People can't get loans, not because the credit markets are stalled, but because they have no savings for down payments and can't afford to repay what they wish to borrow. If they could repay their loans, plenty of credit would be available. But there is no money—and no savings—within the economy for it to get moving again. The only possible source is more federal borrowing to prime the pump Keynesian-style. That is what the politicians claim the bailout will do. But it won't.
Then what is happening?
What is happening is that the Bush administration is engineering a massive raid on the Federal treasury to pay off the people within the financial industry who have been operating the housing scam because the politicians told them to do it. This is hush money.
The people in the financial institutions who are getting the money will be passing it on to the big banks that leveraged their criminal lending practices. The giant sucking sound you hear is almost a trillion dollars of future taxpayer earnings going into the vaults of the nations's biggest banks, such as Citibank, Bank of American, and—the pet bank of the Rockefeller family—J.P. Morgan Chase. Much will also go into the vaults of foreign investors such as the Bank of China.
And these banks have no intention of recycling the money into productive U.S. investments. Despite the political posturing, where much of it will go at the second or third tier is into executive salaries and bonuses. The fat cats are "gittin' out while the gittin's good."
What happens next?
Well, it is already happening. In the post-bubble era there will be no more economic engines for the American economy. A long term recession and depression are inevitable, and they are expected by those in the know. In fact, there has been a plan in the works for a very long time to bring down the U.S. economy, and it will be happening over the coming months.
This is why the government is also preparing to implement martial law, or something close to it, in case public unrest breaks out. We will likely also see a clampdown on free speech, the right to protest, and use of the internet. Federal facilities are being prepared all around the country to backstop state prisons and local jails that are already bursting at the seams.
This is the plan, so people need to begin to take whatever measures they can to cut their cost of living, get out of debt, and protect themselves and their families.
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared in numerous websites and print magazines. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, will soon be published. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, "the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years." His website is www.richardccook.com Comments or requests to be added to his mailing list or to purchase his special report on the 2008 election may be sent to EconomicSanity@gmail.com
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Tue Sep 09, 2008
Twenty-Six Things We Now Know Seven Years After 9/11
By Bernard Weiner
Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers
September 9, 2008
Each year around the anniversary of 9/11, I summarize what we ordinary citizens have learned since that awful day in 2001. This is the seventh annual look backwards, a 2008 update that contains new information and surmisings about those horrific events and what followed.
1. One 9/11 Size Fits All. What we now more fully understand is how the CheneyBush Administration utilized the murderous terrorism of 9/11 as the linchpin justification for their unfolding domestic and foreign agenda, much of it illegal, immoral and impeachable.
By and large, one can sum up that overall agenda as: Amass and control power in the U.S. and much of the world ("full-spectrum dominance"), and, in cahoots with their corporate supporters such as Halliburton and Blackwater, loot the federal treasury. All this was to be carried out secretly, with no accountability.
2. Iraq War Planning Began Before 9/11. We also know more about the nature of the lies (including forged documents) used by the Administration to sell the Iraq War, which attack already was in the planning stages well before 9/11.
The first faked document, by CIA forgers at the behest of White House officials, was a 2005 letter (back-dated 2001) supposedly coming from the then-Iraqi intelligence chief to his boss Saddam Hussein mentioning alleged "facts" that established a tie-in between 9/11, Al-Qaida and Iraq and about Saddam's supposed purchase of uranium. The official, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, who had been an informant for the U.S. during the run-up to the war, actually had written his CIA handlers at the time, reported author Ron Suskind, that there were no WMD, no 9/11 or Al-Qaida connections; that letter was deep-sixed by the CIA and the official was taken into protective custody, hidden away in Jordan and given $5million for services rendered (which later included his signature on the phony letter).
The second fake document, which was used by the Brits and Americans in the run-up to the war, supposedly was from the African nation of Niger. It was an amateurish botch job (incorrect letterhead, signature of a minister of state who no longer was in that office, etc.) that came from the Italian Secret Service, but the idea for it might have originated elsewhere, perhaps from a clandestine American service. It was designed to bolster the fiction that Iraq was purchasing uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. Since the yellowcake theory was of great value to the CheneyBush plans to bomb Iraq -- as Ambassador Joe Wilson had made plain in his various articles --the tendency worldwide was to believe that the U.S. might well have been involved in having the phony letter written.
3. Domestic Spying Started Before 9/11. Similary, we know more about the illegal and widespread domestic spying ordered by CheneyBush seven months BEFORE 9/11. We still don't fully understand the reasons for this top-secret, massive data-mining, to be carried out without proper legal warrants. But the point is that the CheneyBush Administration, for its own reasons, and long before 9/11, asked the giant communications companies to furnish them with the private records of its customers, which then were passed on to the relevant governmental security departments.
All this new information has made fringe theorists about 9/11 all the more numerous: If CheneyBush did all those illegal things to fool the population -- the forgeries, the lies, the coverups, the deceptions, the police-state tactics BEFORE 9/11 -- how far, they ask, might they have gone to order or carry out or be in some complicit relationship with the 9/11 attacks?
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Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?
by David Ray Griffin
www.opednews.com
Much of America's foreign policy since 9/11 has been based on the assumption that it was attacked by Muslims on that day. This assumption was used, most prominently, to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is now widely agreed that the use of 9/11 as a basis for attacking Iraq was illegitimate: none of the hijackers were Iraqis, there was no working relation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and Iraq was not behind the anthrax attacks. But it is still widely believed that the US attack on Afghanistan was justified. For example, the New York Times, while referring to the US attack on Iraq as a "war of choice," calls the battle in Afghanistan a "war of necessity." Time magazine has dubbed it "the right war." And Barack Obama says that one reason to wind down our involvement in Iraq is to have the troops and resources to "go after the people in Afghanistan who actually attacked us on 9/11."
The assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11 also lies behind the widespread perception of Islam as an inherently violent religion and therefore of Muslims as guilty until proven innocent. This perception surely contributed to attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim, which was lampooned by a controversial cartoon on the July 21, 2008, cover of The New Yorker.
As could be illustrated by reference to many other post-9/11 developments, including as spying, torture, extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, America's new doctrine of preemptive war, and its enormous increase in military spending, the assumption that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by Muslim hijackers has had enormous negative consequences for both international and domestic issues.1
Is it conceivable that this assumption might be false? Insofar as Americans and Canadians would say "No," they would express their belief that this assumption is not merely an "assumption" but is instead based on strong evidence. When actually examined, however, the proffered evidence turns out to be remarkably weak. I will illustrate this point by means of 16 questions.
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Filmmaker Urges International Tribunal to Probe 9/11
Russian television is to give prime time airing 9/11 film on the eve of this week's seventh anniversary of the attacks in New York and DC!
Public showing of Italian Truth film could lead to international tribunal.
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DEUTSCHE WELLE
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3626100,00.html
Italian film-maker Giulietto Chiesa, who was in Berlin for a screening of his documentary ("ZERO")
which questions the official US version of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has called for an international tribunal to probe events.
Chiesa was in Berlin at the weekend for a screening of his film which features, among others, novelist Gore Vidal and playwright Dario Fo as well as retired American professor of philosophy David Ray Griffin who advances conspiracy theories that contradict mainstream accounts of events
of 11 September, 2001.
Federal Aviation Administration controllers, US Air Force pilots, military commanders and physicists also appear in the critical documentary, which the director hopes will create "political awareness" of the "faulty" official investigation into the events by the 9/11 Commission. "Some of the individuals appearing in the film are former FBI and CIA agents, people who have in a sense taken a very big risk in speaking out. I am very grateful to them because they have done a big job," said Chiesa.
"The film would not have been possible without them," he said, adding that ZERO had been seen in France and Belgium at individual screenings, and by more than 20,000 people in Italy. But the film so far has not gained a distributor in Europe.
Pushing for an international tribunal
Chiesa, one of Italy's most respected journalists and a La Stampa foreign correspondent for more than 20 years, told his Berlin audience an 9/11 international tribunal could serve a useful purpose.
"If feelings were strong enough a positive result could be obtained, but it would not happen immediately. So far it's been the US administration that has won the information fight and obtained their result -- unfortunately," Chiesa said. "Our task is to inform millions of people of the true situation.
Everybody should be involved in this struggle with a tribunal or commission helping once we win approval for the idea," he said.
In an interview with German news agency dpa, Chiesa, a European parliamentary deputy, said Russian television is to give prime time airing to his film on the eve of this week's seventh anniversary of the attacks in New York and Washington.
"That means that some 30 million Russian citizens will learn the truth about what happened, which is a very big result for me."
Chiesa, whose documentary was first screened to a large German audience at the Goethe Institute in Munich in May, was clearly delighted at his reception in Berlin. "It's important that so many people have shown up," he said.
One of a panel of six experts debating the 9/11 topic in Berlin, Chiesa said he was eager for his film to gain more public support and become a "multiplicator" across Germany. "If that happens it means we are making politics in the right sense of the word."
Critics question government version of attacks Andreas von Buelow, a controversial former German minister of technology, and ex-state secretary in the Defense Ministry, was among the Berlin participants who said further investigation was needed into 9/11. He told dpa it was "one of life's characteristics that governments are prone to lie in order to achieve their agendas. The Americans told us that in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had something to do with al-Qaeda, which was absolutely untrue. Even the CIA knew this," he said.
"Then, they told us that Saddam Hussein was preparing weapons of mass destruction, which was also untrue, so they have been lying all over the place and are still fighting there. Meanwhile a million people have been killed."
Asked if there was any prospect of a policy change once the next US president was elected, he replied bluntly "No!"
Juergen Elsaesser, 51, a Berlin-based journalist and author whose latest book is titled "Terror Target Europe: The Dangerous Double Game of the Secret Services," spoke of the huge contradictions in the official US version of the 9/11 events.
"Critics find themselves accused of conspiracy theories, but the biggest conspiracy is to be found in the official 9/11 version of the US government which maintains that Osama bin Laden, from a cave in Afghanistan, along with 19 young Arabs, combined to carry out the most perfidious attack in the history of mankind," he said.
"That just doesn't add up. For me the most important contradiction is how the air defences of the greatest military power on the planet failed to prevent such attacks occurring and that no interceptor fighter planes or rocket systems were ever activated."
**
DPA News Agency
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