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successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure
uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other
possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are
viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside. |
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New! September 16, 2002 - Video of Bush at Booker Proves 9-11 Attack Was No Surprise - This is not the picture President stunned by a horrific event and confronted with an unexpected national emergency. This is the picture of treason. Iraq said it would allow the return of U.N. weapons inspectors "without conditions" to "remove any doubts Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction." Comment: Soured Bush's milk, I bet. How's he gonna have a war without Iraq to attack??? Now, maybe the UN ought to demand inspectors be admitted "without conditions" to Area 51 and Wright Patterson? ISRAEL OCCUPIED BY ALIENS - Dozens of weird incidents have been reported in Israel since 1993 - Some people have even claimed that UFOs have landed on their lawns. Circles were found on the landing sites, and ufologists discovered silver-colored metal pieces or an oil-like red in the circles. - Analysis of the substances showed that the silver-colored metal was pure silicon, which does not exist in nature. Cadmium was found in the oil. Often, scientists found strange traces near the landing sites. That is not all. People say that they saw bald-headed creatures coming out of the flying objects. The creatures were very tall, and they rushed into houses, acting very aggressively. Hanna Sameh from the settlement of Burgatu (two miles from Kadima) was doing some housework in the kitchen. All of a sudden, she heard her dog barking very loudly. The woman could see the dog in the window, and she did not believe her eyes. The dog was raised in the air; then it flew by the window and slammed into a wall. Hanna opened the door in order to see what was happening outside. When she stepped out of her house, she could not take another step further. She saw a tall, bald man. The man was gazing at her pickup truck. “What have you done to my dog?” – asked the woman. “It was bothering me, as you are now. I can do the same to you; get out of here,” – answered the weird stranger. Aliens were seen in the settlement of Moshe Poret, not far from Kadima. They landed there and destroyed all the domestic animals. Memuneh Guet woke up in the middle of the night and found her little dog whining on the floor. The women picked up her dog and saw that someone ripped its eyes out! There was no blood at all. The dog died several minutes later. Then the woman rushed to her barn and found all of her sheep dead. Someone drilled little holes in their heads. The corpses of the sheep did not decay for four months. Dozens of such incidents have been reported in Israel since 1993. There is the impression that aliens have a plan for Israel. However, no one knows the purpose of their activity. UFO PREVENTS BLAST AT CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR PLANT - When troublesome events started to occur, some people saw a spaceship hovering above the fourth generating unit of the Chernobyl plant. Eyewitnesses say that an UFO was there for six hours and that hundreds of people saw it. People started writing about it only two years after the catastrophe. Of course, such information appeared in magazines on ufology. As it is generally believed, serious people don’t read such magazines and journals. From the Congressional Record March 17, 1993: The Bankruptcy of The United States - Speaker-Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (Ohio) addressing the House: "Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11.. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any Bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government. We are setting forth hopefully, a blueprint for our future. There are some who say it is a coroner’s report that will lead to our demise. It is an established fact that the United States Federal Government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933, 48 Stat. 1, Public Law 89-719; declared by President Roosevelt, being bankrupt and insolvent. H.J.R. 192, 73rd Congress m session June 5, 1933 - Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard and Abrogate The Gold Clause dissolved the Sovereign Authority of the United States and the official capacities of all United States Governmental Offices, Officers, and Departments and is further evidence that the United States Federal Government exists today in name only. [...] Unwittingly, America has returned to its pre-American Revolution, feudal roots whereby all land is held by a sovereign and the common people had no rights to hold allodial title to property. Once again, We the People are the tenants and sharecroppers renting our own property from a Sovereign in the guise of the Federal Reserve Bank. We the people have exchanged one master for another. This has been going on for over eighty years without the "informed knowledge" of the American people, without a voice protesting loud enough. Now it’s easy to grasp why America is fundamentally bankrupt. Why don’t more people own their properties outright? Why are 90% of Americans mortgaged to the hilt and have little or no assets after all debts and liabilities have been paid? Why does it feel like you are working harder and harder and getting less and less? We are reaping what has been sown, and the results of our harvest is a painful bankruptcy, and a foreclosure on American property, precious liberties, and a way of life. Few of our elected representatives in Washington, D.C. have dared to tell the truth. The federal United States is bankrupt. Our children will inherit this unpayable debt, and the tyranny to enforce paying it. America has become completely bankrupt in world leadership, financial credit and its reputation for courage, vision and human rights. This is an undeclared economic war, bankruptcy, and economic slavery of the most corrupt order! Wake up America! Take back your Country." What happened to James Trafficant, Jr? "Former U.S. Rep. James Traficant Jr leaves federal court in Cleveland in the custody of U.S. Marshals after he was sentenced to eight years in prison Tuesday, July 30, 2002. He was convicted in April of bribery, tax evasion and racketeering." Do we, for one minute, believe he was guilty? No, but we see why other elected representatives do NOT speak out on behalf of their constituents. They were shown what would happen to them if they did. Goodbye Cruel World - A Report by Top US Scientists on Climate Change Suggests That Catastrophe Could Be Imminent - We live in a world that has become so desensitised by watching calamities unfold on global television - both natural and human-induced - that it takes something really spectacular even to get our attention. And it usually has to be visually dramatic to register, much less elicit a deep emotional response - such as the tragic events of September 11. - ...a frightening report published by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - the nation's most august scientific body. Yet, because there was no visually provocative content, the report had received only a couple of short paragraphs tucked away inside a few newspapers. Here is what the academy had to say: it is possible that the global warming trend projected over the course of the next 100 years could, all of a sudden and without warning, dramatically accelerate in just a handful of years - forcing a qualitative new climatic regime which could undermine ecosystems and human settlements throughout the world, leaving little or no time for plants, animals and humans to adjust. - there is a possibility that temperatures could rise suddenly in just a few years' time, creating a new climatic regime virtually overnight. - According to the study: "An abrupt climate change occurs when the climate system is forced to cross some threshold, triggering a transition to a new state at a rate determined by the climate system itself and faster than the cause." What is really unnerving is that it may take only a slight deviation in boundary conditions or a small random fluctuation somewhere in the system "to excite large changes ... when the system is close to a threshold", says the NAS committee. An abrupt change in climate, of the kind that occurred during the Younger-Dryas interval, could prove catastrophic for ecosystems and species around the world. During that particular period, for instance, spruce, fir and paper birch trees experienced mass extinction in southern New England in less than 50 years. The extinction of horses, mastodons, mammoths, and sabre-toothed tigers in North America were greater at that time than in any other extinction event in millions of years. The committee lays out a potentially nightmarish scenario in which random triggering events take the climate across the threshold into a new regime, causing widespread havoc and destruction. Ecosystems could collapse suddenly with forests decimated in vast fires and grasslands drying out and turning into dust bowls. Wildlife could disappear and waterborne diseases such as cholera and vector-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever, could spread uncontrollably beyond host ranges, threatening human health around the world. The NAS concludes its report with a dire warning: "On the basis of the inference from the paleoclimatic record, it is possible that the projected change will occur not through gradual evolution, proportional to greenhouse gas concentrations, but through abrupt and persistent regime shifts affecting subcontinental or larger regions - denying the likelihood or downplaying the relevance of past abrupt changes could be costly." Comment: Notice the use of the term "regime shifts." Of course, they are using it in a special way, but when we consider the complete refusal of the Bush Gang to acknowledge ecological necessities, and the likelihood that a war will certainly increase stress on the environment, we come to the idea that the Bush Agenda, if pursued as outlined, will certainly force the climate system across this threshold. The ex-presidents' club - The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very centre of the Washington establishment, but amid the frenetic politicking that has occupied the higher reaches of that world in recent weeks, few have paid it much attention. Elsewhere, few have even heard of it. [...] For 14 years now, with almost no publicity, the company has been signing up an impressive list of former politicians - including the first President Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker; John Major; one-time World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi and several south-east Asian powerbrokers - and using their contacts and influence to promote the group. Among the companies Carlyle owns are those which make equipment, vehicles and munitions for the US military, and its celebrity employees have long served an ingenious dual purpose, helping encourage investments from the very wealthy while also smoothing the path for Carlyle's defence firms. But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $3.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden. [...] Carlyle has said that it does not lobby the federal government, thus avoiding a conflict of interest when, for example, Carlucci met Rumsfeld in February when several important defence contracts were under consideration. But critics see that as a matter of definition. "It should be a deep cause for concern that a closely held company like Carlyle can simultaneously have directors and advisers that are doing business and making money and also advising the president of the United States," says Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit-making Washington think-tank. "The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together. What hat is former president Bush wearing when he tells Crown Prince Abdullah not to worry about US policy in the Middle East? What hat does he use when he deals with South Korea, and causes policy changes there? Or when James Baker helps argue the presidential election in the younger Bush's favour? It's a kitchen-cabinet situation, and the informality involved is precisely a mark of Carlyle's success." MEDIA WAR WITHOUT END - The nation's Fourth Estate is functioning largely as a fourth branch of government. In the wake of September 11, the White House has repeatedly sent news executives and working journalists an unsubtle message: Exercise too much independence and you'll risk accusations of giving aid and comfort to the terrorist enemy. While a few American journalists made feisty noises during the first tumultuous weeks of autumn, for the most part they eagerly went along to get along with the war-makers. From Jim Keith's most excellent book: Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness Edward Bernays wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion (1928), Propaganda (1928) and The Engineering of Consent (1955). One extract from Propaganda:
Bernays, a participant in the crafting of American psychological warfare programs, was put in charge of the CBS communications network. Ninety-eight percent of the 1,700 daily newspapers in America are owned by fewer than 15 corporations, with Time, Inc. taking in about 40% of the total revenues. The three major TV networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC still have the majority of the television watching audience. According to G. William Domhoff in The Higher Circles:
Intelligence agency penetration of the media began at the same time as the forming of the American media conglomerates in the first half of this century. One of the first and most successful control operations of the media was launched in 1919 with the creation of RCA by Westinghouse, Morgan Guaranty and Trust, General Electric, and the United Fruit Company. In 1929, David Sarnoff, a close associated of Tavistock, was appointed head of RCA. Shortly afterward, British Intelligence set up the "Black Chamber" intelligence operation in the RCA building in New York, under the direction of Sir William Stephenson and General Marlborough Churchill. General Chruchill would later be instrumental in founding the Macy Organization, which would be used as a funding conduit for CIA MKULTRA mind control operations. All three major American Television networks were offspring of RCA. The information war entered a new realm of effectiveness in the 1930s when the Rockefeller Foundation launched secret psychological war projects to shape public opinion. According to Christopher Simpson, author of Science of Coercion:
At about the same time that the Rockefeller's media manipulation programs went into overdrive, the Office of Strategic Servies and the Office of War Information began recruiting the best and the brightest from American intelligentsia for initiation into the ranks of spookdom, as well as inserting their agents into powerful positions in the mass media, in politics, and in the universities. A survey of Office of War Information alumni working in the media in the early 1950s included:
During the 1950s, American mass media interlocked directly with the CIA, the Agency feeding information to journalists in exchange for their own intelligence developed domestically and abroad. Reporters were employed by the CIA to deliver communques as well as money to contacts, and to toe the Agency line in their own dispatches. The CIA even ran a training program teaching reporting skills to agents. It is virtually impossible to determine the exact number of American journalists who are currently on the CIA or other intelligence agency payrolls - much less who are informally slipped information or are being influenced. In 1977, Carl Bernsetin, in an article for Rolling Stone, guessed the number at that time to be about 400. Bernstein also noted a longstanding relationship of the Agency with CBS network, and former CIA director Allen Dulles' friendship with CBS president, CFR member William Paley. The president of CBS News from 1954 to 1961, CFR member Sig Mickelson, acted as Paley's liaison with the CIA, having a direct telephone line that bypassed the network switchboard. The chief directors and news anchors of CBS have also been CIA connected. Over the years the CBS network provided cover for CIA employees, including at leas one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of news film to the CIA; established a formal channel of communications between the Washington bureau chief and the agency, and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to be routinely monitored. The New York Times and its publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, provided cover for at least ten CIA agents during the 1950s and 60s. The Washington Post... ditto. Henry Luce, founder of Time andLife, a close friend of Allen Dulles... The New York Herald-Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Heart, the AP, UPI, and the Mutual Broadcasting System, Reuters, and the Miami Herald - all provided cover for the CIA. The New York Times itself, in 1997, reported that the CIA owned more than fifty radio stations, wire services, magazines, and newspapers. More than one thousand books have been subsidized or produced outright by the CIA, and put in print by American publishers. Given these clues that only reveal the tip of the iceberg, would it be too much to venture that the American media, that bastion of freedom and independence, holds CIA credentials? As Journalist John Swinton - one of the most respected of the breed of his time - described the situation when he gave a toast at the New York Press Club circa 1888:
See also: Cable News Network has instructed reporters and anchormen to tailor their coverage of the US war against Afghanistan to downplay the toll of death and destruction caused by American bombing, for fear that such coverage will undermine popular support for the US military effort. - A memo from CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson to international correspondents for the network said: "we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. - adding that it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.” He said. “You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.” - To ensure that every CNN report always includes a justification of the war, Davis prescribed specific language for anchors to read after each account of civilian casualties and other bomb damage. See also: The media are facing an "unprecedented" degree of control of information from the US and UK military and defence agencies, according to Sky's head of news, Nick Pollard. "I'm told by people on the ground in Washington that it's unprecedented to get this little information from the Pentagon," he said. "If such a thing is possible, there are almost no leaks. It's a measure of the determination of the Pentagon and the ministry of defence to control the information flow. See also: Do you trust CNN's motives? - Trust or faith in the corporate media to deliiver the goods is rooted in authoritarianism. What gives the "real" media credibility or authority? Why should we trust that they are telling us the truth? Is it because the mainstream press is officialy sanctioned by the government and brought to us by Coca-Cola? After all, the major media outlets ALL have offices at the Pentagon. And of course the Pentagon wouldn't lie to us would they? Are the corporate media more credible because they have the massive capability to broadcast their view of the world across the globe, with the latest in expensive technology? Comfortability with authority is the only thing to explain our passive and uncritical acceptance of their "take" on the world. "Take" being operative here because this seems to be all they want to do. We are in awe of their power and authority, meanwhile dismissing what Jane out on the street with a video camera says because she is not "real media". In January, activists marched down Market Street to Senator Feinstein’s office to demand a Congressional Inquiry of 9-11. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been used to justify the U.S. bombing and occupation of Afghanistan, the Israeli assaults on Palestine, future attacks on Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, the Philippines, Colombia, and other countries. We have been told that the world will never be the same since September 11th, but we have not been told the truth about who was responsible for the attacks nor why. - Shocking as the events of September 11th were, vital questions remain unanswered, while the whole mainstream media joined the bandwagon towards war. Dissent, however widespread, was studiously ignored. - Allowing Ex-CIA Snider to Investigate 9-11 Is like allowing Ex-CEO Lay to Investigate Enron Rebel Labour MPs will defy Blair by forcing a Commons vote on Iraq next week in the hope that their public revolt will persuade him to soften his hawkish stance. - Instead of discussing a motion about the Government's policy on Iraq, the Commons will debate a technical motion for the House to adjourn. MPs do not normally vote at the end of such a debate. But the Labour rebels, angry at being denied a full vote on plans for military action against Saddam Hussein, will call a division and vote against the technical motion. - Malcolm Savidge, the MP for Aberdeen North, accused Mr Straw of adopting the "strident language" of hawks in the US administration. "There is no reason why we should not have a vote on the adjournment of the House. It would be a way of saying we are not happy and we need further discussion." Mr Savidge said one of the most important votes in the last century was on such a motion. In May 1940, the Government won the vote but its reduced majority forced Chamberlain to resign and let Churchill succeed him. Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who held talks at the weekend with President George Bush at Camp David, gave the clearest indication yet of when a war might be waged in January or February. New! September 15, 2002 - A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'. This 'American grand strategy' must be advanced for 'as far into the future as possible', the report says. It also calls for the US to 'fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars' as a 'core mission'. The report describes American armed forces abroad as 'the cavalry on the new American frontier'. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must 'discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role'. The PNAC report also: l refers to key allies such as the UK as 'the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership'; describes peace-keeping missions as 'demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations'; l reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA; spotlights China for 'regime change' saying 'it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia'. This, it says, may lead to 'American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China'; calls for the creation of 'US Space Forces', to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent 'enemies' using the internet against the US; hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons -- which the nation has banned -- in decades to come. It says: 'New methods of attack -- electronic, 'non-lethal', biological -- will be more widely available ... combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool'; Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: 'This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. 'This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.' Comment: Just what we've been saying all along. "What does a Hawk read during breakfast? Why Jane's Defense " What does a Hawk read during breakfast? Why Jane's Defense Weekly, of course. - From May, 2001 Issue: Since 1997, when the Uninhabited Combat Air Vehicle (UCAV) was a gleam in the eye of a few advanced researchers, the concept has made remarkably rapid and solid progress, writes Bill Sweetman. - Within a few months, the DARPA/Boeing team expects to start detailed design of the third UCAV prototype, the X-45B, using funds added to the program by Congress. Coming soon: attack of the killer UCAVs ( The US Air Force (USAF) is considering a plan to test the Stinger air-to-air missile aboard the General Atomics RQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) this winter, following its **successful integration of the Hellfire air-to-surface weapon.** Wonder if they were testing on September 11, 2001???? UK faces huge new threat from floods as global warming takes hold, a new official report concludes. It breaks new ground by recommending people will eventually have to give up their cars to avoid catastrophe. - The report which will be published by the Government's Energy Savings Trust later this week says some five million people living in 1.8 million homes – one in every 13 in the country – risk being inundated by rising seas and increased rainfall in the starkest official assessment yet of the human cost of climate change in Britain. It adds that over three-fifths of the country's best farmland will also be threatened with flooding. In all, it concludes, buildings and land worth £222bn are under threat. - The report – which was given privately to ministers on Thursday evening – follows months of intense flooding in Britain and across Europe. Summer of 2002 rates third hottest on record - the National Climatic Data Center reported yesterday that June through August was the warmest summer since the 1930s and drought affected about half the country.- Warmest was 1936 and second was 1934.- Heavy rainfall eased drought but led to severe flooding in southern and central Texas in early July. Strong thunderstorms also brought widespread flooding to western Minnesota and North Dakota and resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in crop losses in June. Liberty Wins -- So Far - It's true that the Bush administration, like its predecessors in wartime, has pressed for sweeping increases in executive authority, based on the novel argument that the president has the unilateral power to detain and investigate American citizens and alien residents without oversight from Congress or the courts. But the more surprising development is that the courts and Congress, unlike their predecessors in wartime, are rejecting the president's most extreme claims. - In a series of court cases, federal judges have insisted on the importance of judicial oversight of the president's powers of detention and deportation. And in the debates over the USA Patriot Act and the homeland security bill, libertarians on the right have joined with civil libertarians on the left in persuading Congress to repudiate the Bush administration's more draconian proposals for expanded surveillance authority. In this sense, the greatest protector of American liberty during the past year turned out to be something so basic that we often take it for granted: the checks and balances provided by the separation of powers in the Constitution. In October, France expanded the powers of the police to search private property without a warrant. Germany has engaged in religious profiling of suspected terrorists, a practice that was upheld in a court challenge. In Britain, which has become a kind of privacy dystopia, Parliament passed a sweeping anti-terrorism law in December that authorizes a central government authority to record and store all communications data generated by e-mail, Internet browsing or other electronic communications, and to make the data available to law enforcement without a court order. In May, the European Union authorized all of its members to pass similar laws requiring data retention. Around a quarter of a million people thronged central Rome for a citizen's protest against planned legal reforms by the government of Silvio Berlusconi, which opponents say are designed to scupper his own trial on corruption charges. - Police estimated that 250,000 had turned out for the citizen's protest organised by Oscar-winning film-maker Nanni Moretti. - Moretti, who leads a grassroots citizens' movement which sees itself as a non-parliamentary opposition, said he hoped the size of Saturday's demo would galvanise the centre-left opposition, which he criticised for internal bickering that only played into Berlusconi's hands. - Francesca, a woman in the 60s, said she had come from Milan to take part in a demonstration for the first time in her life. "We are outraged," she said. "More than a dozen MPs in our parliament should be in prison. Starting with Berlusconi. We don't want him humiliating Italy." Comment: Gee! America should pay attention to this. How about we impeach the whole administration??? What a concept! [M]uch of the world regards Washington as a terrorist regime. In recent years, the US has taken or backed actions in Colombia, Nicaragua, Panama, Sudan and Turkey, to name a few, that meet official US definitions of "terrorism" - that is, when Americans apply the term to enemies. This year, the U.N. Security Council has demanded several times that Israel end its incursions into Palestinian cities, which have continued despite the calls. Israel also refused to agree terms with a U.N. team set up to investigate the facts about killings during Israeli actions inside a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin. "Why should the world request Iraq to adhere to Security Council resolutions, while Israel is allowed to be above international law?" Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "We see no justification for igniting a new war in the Middle East. We strongly believe that striking Iraq, which no longer occupies the lands of others, while keeping silent about the Israeli occupation ... represents blind bias and a distorted vision of the real situation," he added. Arab countries say they oppose the use of force against Iraq but Shara's speech was the strongest statement in New York so far of the Arab view that U.S. policies toward Iraq and Israel, a U.S. ally, show a double standard. - "It is indeed odd that the United States considers Israel acting in self-defense in occupied territories that are acknowledged to be occupied by Security Council resolutions which the United States played a role in drafting," he added. Washington's main argument against Iraq is that it is developing weapons of mass destruction and may hand them over to extremists for use against the United States. But Shara said: "It is regrettable that some parties only focus on certain Arab or Muslim countries, ignoring in the meantime the nuclear arsenal that Israel possesses." Israel is reported to have 200 nuclear warheads but Israeli officials refuse to confirm or deny their existence. Challenging the U.S. policy of "regime change" in Iraq, Shara said only the Iraqi people should decide their future, without any interference in their internal affairs. Britain warned Iraq's President Saddam Hussein on Sunday that time was running out for him to abandon weapons of mass destruction or face the overthrow of his "dreadful, brutal regime." Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin strongly condemned President Bush's policy toward Baghdad on Sunday and said he saw no danger from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. "I consider (Bush's) whole policy unacceptable," Yeltsin told Reuters. "It is a simple diktat of the United States without agreement from the United Nations or the world community. That is just impermissible." - Yeltsin said that before leaving Berlin on Monday, he planned to meet former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday that Israel was prepared for an attack by Iraq as a conflict with Baghdad loomed after Washington said it would act against Saddam Hussein with or without world support. Israel locks down West Bank cities ahead of Jewish holiday - Israel and the Jewish diaspora will start celebrating Yom Kippur, the day of atonement for 24 hours starting at sundown on Sunday. The White House is planning to launch a war against Iraq. Yet there has been no real public or congressional debate about why an invasion is justified, no convincing explanation of why a war is needed. The international community is virtually unanimous in its opposition to an attack on Iraq, leaving the United States without allies. A full-scale war against Iraq would isolate the US from the rest of the world, undermine the effort against terrorism, and senselessly kill tens of thousands of civilians. The Bush Administration is determined to initiate an illegal and ill-considered invasion. We the people must be just as determined to stop a war that threatens to tear the world apart. Eunice Stone - the Georgia woman who prompted Friday's terror scare - was "flat-out lying" when she told authorities she overheard three Muslim men at a restaurant laughing about September 11 and making suspicious comments, one of the men said late Friday. - "How many other people witnessed this event that supposedly took place, first of all? Did they ask the server who served us? Did they ask anybody else that was in the restaurant? How is it that one person can pick up a phone and make any statement that they will and we end up [in custody]?" said Ayman Gheith at a rest area shortly after they were released. "What she has said is obviously a lie." - Asked about his "suggestion" that the woman might have lied, he said, "I'm not suggesting, I'm telling you she's flat-out lying." Authorities took the woman's account extremely seriously. They shut down a 20-mile stretch of Alligator Alley -- the major east-west connector in south Florida -- for most of the day, bomb squad units searched the men's two cars and federal authorities interrogated all three men extensively. Comment: I wonder how liable that woman is gonna be for any damages? The worst parody of journalism Friday was actually on CNN, where the high-paid-low-rated anchor Paula Zahn speculated, without a jot or tittle of evidence, that the three men were coming to Florida to blow up the Turkey Point nuclear reactor. Now you know why CNN promotes her sex appeal rather than her news judgment. - Friday's coverage [of the Florida "terror"] was the source of a staggering amount of misinformation. The Bush administration is balking at a request from Congress that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld testify in public before the Congressional committee investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, government officials said today. - In an interview with The New York Times this week, Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama and a member on the joint committee investigating the attacks, said that the "failures in the intelligence are so widespread, so deep, that we owe the American people a searching job." - "We were told that there would be cooperation in this investigation, and I question that," he said. Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, during a news conference Saturday, said Iraq would only allow inspectors back in if there is no military action by the United States and if U.N. sanctions are lifted. - "If there is a solution which maintains Iraq's sovereignty, dignity and legitimate rights and prevents aggression, we are ready," Aziz said. - Aziz denied Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction and accused President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of exaggerating the threat posed by Iraq to the region. - The White House, however, quickly dismissed Iraq's conditional offer to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back inside the country, saying the Iraqis know "what they need to do." Comment: Bush is determined to have a war. Iraq's "conditions" are only reasonable. Scott Ritter: since I made my documentary film in 2000 the FBI has investigated me as an agent of Iraq. The FBI has also opened up an investigation into my wife calling her a KGB spy. So there is this form of harassment taking place. - I have never given Iraq a clean bill of health! Never! Never! I've said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact. To say that Saddam's doing it is in total disregard to the fact that if he gets caught he's a dead man and he knows it. Deterrence has been adequate in the absence of inspectors but this is not a situation that can succeed in the long term. In the long term you have to get inspectors back in. Earth to Bush: No Iraq War - Human rights activists pre-empted President Bush’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly early Thursday morning by unfurling a 50-foot by 30-foot banner over the East River. The banner, which read "Earth to Bush: No Iraq War," was hoisted in the air by four giant helium-filled weather balloons. The protesters sought to illustrate the virtually unanimous global opposition to the administration’s planned invasion of Iraq. - "The White House has no answer to this basic question: What act of aggression has Iraq committed against us that justifies going to war?" said Jason Mark, an organizer with Global Exchange, an international human rights organization. "There has been no Iraqi attack, no Iraqi connection to September 11, no threat against us. Iraq does not pose a clear and present danger to the U.S. Since deterrence is working, why should we launch a war that will undoubtedly lead to massive human suffering? An attack on Iraq would constitute an attack on the Charter of the United Nations." After months of open expressions of contempt for international law and disregard for the opinions of other nations (allies and enemies alike), the U.S. president deigned to appear before the United Nations on September 12. In the hectoring tones of an annoyed parent scolding a fussy child, George Bush explained that he would be happy to go to war with the endorsement of the Security Council but that he does not consider such endorsement necessary. The United Nations can have a role, the president conceded, but if it makes the wrong decision it will be "irrelevant." The Ruckus Society provides environmental and human rights organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals. Before dawn on 11 September last week, I watched six American television channels and saw the twin towers fall to the ground 18 times. The few references to the suicide killers who committed the crime made not a single mention of the fact that they were Arabs. [...] "The challenge for the administration is to offer a coherent and persuasive explanation of how the Iraq danger is connected to the 9/11 attacks" is about as far as The Washington Post got in smelling a rat, and that only dropped into the seventh paragraph of an eight-paragraph editorial. [...] But maybe all this no longer matters. When Mr Rumsfeld can claim so outrageously – as he did when asked for proof of Iraq's nuclear potential – that the "absence of evidence doesn't mean the evidence of absence", we might as well end all moral debate. When Mr Rumsfeld refers to the "so-called occupied West Bank", he reveals himself to be a very disreputable man. When he advances the policy of a pre-emptive "act" of war – as he did in The Independent on Sunday last week – he forgets Israel's "pre-emptive" 1982 invasion of Lebanon which cost 17,500 Arab lives and 22 years of occupation, and ended in retreat and military defeat for Israel. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister signaled Saturday that his country would be willing to allow its territory and facilities to be used for military action against Iraq -- but only if such action is backed by a U.N. Security Council resolution. - However, Saudi Arabia still explicitly opposes toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and any unilateral military action by the United States against Iraq. U.S. authorities have given their approval for the first commercial flight to the moon, the group sponsoring the mission announced. Chinese authorities held the boss of a fast food restaurant for questioning on Sunday as they investigated a food poisoning outbreak that state media said had killed 41 people and put hundreds more in hospital. Readers may like to copy and paste the following questions into an email or fax to their representatives. You might also want to mail them to family and friends who might still be snowed by the Bush Gang/Media Brainwashing Propaganda. Senator Ron Paul: "...Soon we hope to have hearings on the pending war with Iraq. I am concerned there are some questions that won't be asked- and maybe will not even be allowed to be asked. Here are some questions I would like answered by those who are urging us to start this war:
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