Depleted Uranium a tool to depopulate the world

Sepp Hasslberger | April 9, 2006

War, Epidemics, Depopulation - Rough Times Ahead

Having read this article of Justin Raimondo yesterday, I caught a glimpse of a vision of destruction. Something that might await us just around the bend, like starting in less than two-weeks' time, when Iran is scheduled to open their new oil bourse where black gold will be traded in Euro, not in Dollars.
If you consider the dangers of man made pandemics, such as AIDS and the successor to last year's SARS, the Bird Flu, the scourge of depleted uranium or even just of the normal application of pharmaceutical medicine, which has become one of the major causes of death, it does not take a vivid imagination to see destruction awaiting a significant part of the planet's population...

... unless, of course, we should manage to wake up in time and take back control from those who would lead us to the brink of extinction to forward their policy objective of a marked reduction in population numbers.

Think about it.

Population Reduction

(original found here)

NEWS BRIEF: "UC Regents lose control of nuclear weapons program: Five admirals, Carlyle Group and Rand takeover", SF Bay View, Part 6, by Leuren Moret, 11/10/2004

"Research on population control, preventing future births, is now being carried out secretly by biotech companies ... During a presentation about his case, Chapela revealed that a spermicidal corn developed by a U.S. company is now being tested in Mexico. Males who unknowingly eat the corn produce non-viable sperm and are unable to reproduce. Depopulation, also known as eugenics ... was proposed under the Nazis during World War II. It is the deliberate killing off of large segments of living populations and was proposed for Third World countries under President Carter’s administration by the National Security Council’s Ad Hoc Group on Population Policy..."

While it is true that depopulation was proposed for Third World countries under Carter's administration, the original concept was proposed several years earlier, by Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford. Let us return to this article, above:

"National Security Memo 200, dated April 24, 1974, and titled “Implications of world wide population growth for U.S. security & overseas interests,” says:

“Dr. Henry Kissinger proposed in his memorandum to the NSC that ‘depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World.’ He quoted reasons of national security, and because '(t)he U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less-developed countries ... Wherever a lessening of population can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resources, supplies and to the economic interests of U.S.' ..."

"Depopulation policy became the top priority under the NSC agenda, Club of Rome and U.S. policymakers like Gen. Alexander Haig, Cyrus Vance, Ed Muskie and Kissinger ... the United States shared the view of former World Bank President Robert McNamara that the 'population crisis' is a greater threat to U.S. national security interests than 'nuclear annihilation'. In 1975, Henry Kissinger established a policy-planning group in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Population Affairs. The depopulation 'GLOBAL 2000' document for President Jimmy Carter was prepared.

"It is no surprise that this policy was established under President Carter with help from Kissinger and Brzezinski – all with ties to David Rockefeller. The Bush family, the Harriman family - the Wall Street business partners of Bush in financing Hitler - and the Rockefeller family are the elite of the American eugenics movement. Even Prince Philip of Britain, a member of the Bilderberg Group, is in favor of depopulation ... "If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels"

"Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been proposing, funding and building Bio-Weapons Level 3 and Level 4 labs at many places around the U.S. – even on university campuses and in densely populated urban locations. In a Bio-Weapons Level 4 facility, a single bacteria or virus is lethal. Bio-Weapons Level 4 is the highest level legally allowed in the continental U.S."

Incredibly, this article reveals that an aggressive attack on the populations of Third World Countries originated through Henry Kissinger in April, 1974 (still Secretary of State under President Ford), through President Jimmy Carter, and ending at Defense Secretary Rumsfeld of the Bush Administration. Thus, you can say that depopulation of Third World Countries has been a major part of American foreign policy for the past 30 years and is continuing today; further, you can say that this policy is completely bi-partisan, as it was supported strongly by both Democrats and Republicans through numerous administrations.

We have long stated that the Illuminati plans a 66% decrease in the population of the world. New Age author, Bill Cooper, writes about the severe depopulation plans in his book, "Behold A Pale Horse", and every former Satanist with whom I have worked since 1991 has stated that the Illuminati plans this degree of death. Once we discovered the Pentagon's New Map which is currently guiding our invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, The Solomon Islands, and Indonesia's Aceh Province, we realized that Kissinger's depopulation plan probably is aimed at all "Non-Integrating" countries of the world, and is continuing today.

This SF Bay View article finishes by speaking of one of the greatest depopulation weapons ever deployed -- Depleted Uranium munitions.

"Two excellent examples of existing U.S. depopulation policy are, first, the long-term impact on the civilian population from Agent Orange in Vietnam ... The second is the permanent contamination of the Middle East and Central Asia with depleted uranium, which ... will destroy the genetic future of the populations living in those regions ... ." (http://www.sfbayview.com/110304/ucregents110304.shtml)

As you read of our fierce battles in Iraq, remember that a very large percentage of the munitions we are exploding is Depleted Uranium. Thus, we are daily spreading more D.U. in Iraq, adding to the nearly 3,000 tons we have already expended.

This SF Bay View article does not mention another major weapon being used to achieve depopulation -- the AIDS Virus.

Let us quickly review this depopulation subject by turning to New Age author, Bill Cooper, in his monumentally important book, "Behold A Pale Horse":

"To reduce population quickly ... you have to pull all males into the fighting and kill significant numbers of fertile, child-bearing age females." [Page 171]

This revelation that the Illuminati is carrying out a deliberate campaign to reduce populations in Third World Countries brings to mind a terrifying British report last week, stating that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed so far, before we attacked Fallujah. Listen:

NEWS BRIEF: "Where is the world's shame and rage?: Civilian casualties in Iraq", By Scott Ritter, senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, reported in Dawn International, 02 November 2004, http://www.dawn.com/2004/11/02/int14.htm

"The full scale of the human cost already paid for the war on Iraq is only now becoming clear. Last week's estimate by (British Lancet Medical Journal) investigators, using credible methodology, that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them women and children - have died since the US-led invasion, is a profound moral indictment of our countries ... Civilian deaths have always been a tragic reality of modern war. But the conflict in Iraq was supposed to be different - US and British forces were dispatched to liberate the Iraqi people ... Reading accounts of the US-led invasion, one is struck by the constant, almost casual, reference to civilian deaths ... The fact that most bombing missions in Iraq today are pre-planned, with targets allegedly carefully vetted, further indicts those who wage this war in the name of freedom. If these targets are so precise, then those selecting them cannot escape the fact that they are deliberately targeting innocent civilians at the same time as they seek to destroy their intended foe ... We invaded Iraq to free Iraqis from a dictator who, by some accounts, oversaw the killing of about 300,000 of his subjects - although no one has been able to verify more than a small fraction of the figure. If it is correct, it took Saddam decades to reach such a horrific statistic. The US and UK have, it seems, reached a third of that total in just 18 months."

The bottom line of this revelation is that the Illuminati is using many weapons right now to decrease the population, from AIDS to Depleted Uranium, to biotech weapons, to massive conventional warfare against civilian populations

EDGE NEWS

The Secret Behind China's Economy

State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False

Jason Leopold / t r u t h o u t | April 18 2006

Eleven days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo.

The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq.

On January 12, 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries," the memo dated July 7, 2003, says.

Moreover, the memo says that the State Department's doubts about the veracity of the uranium claims may have been expressed to the intelligence community even earlier.

Those concerns, according to the memo, are the reasons that former Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to cite the uranium claims when he appeared before the United Nations in February 5, 2003, - one week after Bush's State of the Union address - to try and win support for a possible strike against Iraq.

"After considerable back and forth between the CIA, the (State) Department, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association), and the British, Secretary Powell's briefing to the U.N. Security Council did not mention attempted Iraqi procurement of uranium due to CIA concerns raised during the coordination regarding the veracity of the information on the alleged Iraq-Niger agreement," the memo further states.

Iraq's interest in the yellowcake caught the attention of Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Association. ElBaradei had read a copy of the National Intelligence Estimate and had personally contacted the State Department and the National Security Council in hopes of obtaining evidence so his agency could look into it.

ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) in December 2002, warning senior officials he thought the documents were forgeries and should not be cited by the administration as evidence that Iraq was actively trying to obtain WMDs.

ElBaradei said he never received a written response to his letter, despite repeated follow-up calls he made to the White House, the NSC and the State Department.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who made the rounds on the cable news shows that month, tried to discredit ElBaradei's conclusion that the documents were forged.

"I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said. "[The IAEA] has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."

As it turns out, ElBaradei was correct, the declassified State Department memo now shows.

Monday's declassified State Department memo was obtained over the weekend by The New York Sun under a Freedom of Information Act request the newspaper filed last July. The Sun's story Monday morning, however, did not say anything about the State Department's warnings more than a week before Bush's State of the Union address about the bogus Niger documents.

The memo was drafted by Carl Ford Jr., the former head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in response to questions posed in June 2003 by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, about a February 2002 fact-finding trip to Niger that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson undertook to investigate the uranium claims on behalf of the CIA.

It was Wilson's criticism in mid-2003 of President Bush's use of the 16 words in his State of the Union address and Wilson's subsequent allegations that the White House knowingly twisted pre-war Iraq intelligence that led to the leak of his wife's undercover CIA status.

Libby was indicted on five counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice about how he found out about Plame Wilson and whether he told anyone in the media that she worked for the CIA.

The memo had originally been drafted in June in response to Libby's questions about Wilson. But after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times July 6, 2003, in which he disclosed that he had personally investigated the Niger uranium claims and found that they were false, Powell requested further information from his aides. Ford went back and retrieved the June memo, re-dated it July 7, 2003, and sent it to Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage.

The Sun reported that the memo contained no direct reference to Plame Wilson's CIA status being marked as "secret" despite the fact that the word "secret" is clearly marked on every page of the INR memo.

The memo does not say that the State Department alerted the White House on January 12, 2003, about the bogus uranium claims.

But the memo's author, Carl Ford, said in a previous interview that he has no doubt the State Department's reservations about the Niger intelligence made its way to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

One high-ranking State Department official said that when the department's analysts briefed Colin Powell about the Niger forgeries Powell met with former Director of the CIA George Tenet and shared that information with him.

Tenet then told Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley, that the uranium claims were "dubious," according to current and former State Department and CIA officials who have direct knowledge of what Tenet discussed with the White House at the time.

The White House has long maintained that they were never briefed about the State Department's or the CIA's concerns related to the Niger uranium claims.

"I refuse to believe that the findings of a four-star general and an envoy the CIA sent to Niger to personally investigate the accuracy of the intelligence, as well as our own research at the State Department, never got into the hands of President Bush or Vice President Cheney. I don't buy it," said a high-ranking State Department official. "Saying that Iraq sought uranium from Niger was all it took, as far as I'm concerned, to convince the House to support the war. The American people too. I believe removing Saddam Hussein was right and just. But the intelligence that was used to state the case wasn't."

A spokeswoman for Tenet said Monday that the former head of the CIA wouldn't comment on the newly declassified document but promised that Tenet would tell the "full story" about how the infamous 16 words wound up in Bush's State of the Union address in Tenet's book, "At the Center of the Storm," expected to be published in late October.

Many career State Department officials interviewed Monday said they were upset that the so-called "16 words" made their way into the State of the Union address and they are pleased that the INR memo has been declassified so as to prove that their colleagues sounded early warnings about the dubious Niger intelligence.

A State Department official who has direct knowledge of the now declassified INR memo said when the request came from Cheney's office for a report on Wilson's Niger trip it was an opportunity to put in writing a document that would remind the White House that it had been warned about the Niger claims early on.

Many other State Department officials believed that the existence of a memo that would, in essence, disagree with the White House's own assessment on Niger would eventually hurt the administration.

"This was the very first time there was written evidence - not notes, but a request for a report - from the State Department that documented why the Niger intel was bullshit," said one retired State Department official.

"It was the only thing in writing, and it had a certain value because it didn't come from the IAEA. It came from State. It scared the heck out of a lot of people because it proved that this guy Wilson's story was credible. I don't think anybody wanted the media to know that the State Department disagreed with the intelligence used by the White House. That's why Wilson had to be shut down."

Bush: 'I'm The Decider and I Decide What Is Best'

UK Police State, Surveillance Society Out Of Control

Border Security System Left Open

Wired News | April 12, 2006

By Kevin Poulsen
A computer failure that hobbled border-screening systems at airports across the country last August occurred after Homeland Security officials deliberately held back a security patch that would have protected the sensitive computers from a virus then sweeping the internet, according to documents obtained by Wired News.

The documents raise new questions about the $400 million US-VISIT program, a 2-year-old system aimed at securing the border from terrorists by gathering biometric information from visiting foreign nationals and comparing it against government watch lists.

The Aug. 18 computer failure led to long lines at international airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami and elsewhere, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, officials processed foreign visitors by hand, or in some cases used backup computers, according to contemporaneous press reports.

Publicly, officials initially attributed the failure to a virus, but later reversed themselves and claimed the incident was a routine system failure.

Story Extras

Click here for full-sized diagramBugs on the Border
US-VISIT consists of a hodgepodge of older mainframe databases, fronted by Windows 2000 workstations installed at nearly 300 airports, seaports and border crossings around the country. Government investigators have found the mainframes pretty secure, but confirm that security holes are present on the PC end of the system. Click here (.jpg) for the complete diagram.




Click here to download PDFThe Worm That Ate DHS
CBP officials have released six pages of heavily redacted documents about the Aug. 18 computer failure. Click here (.pdf) for the inside story in black and white (mostly black).
But two CBP reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the virulent Zotob internet worm infiltrated agency computers the day of the outage, prompting a hurried effort to patch hundreds of Windows-based US-VISIT workstations installed at nearly 300 airports, seaports and land border crossings around the country.

"When the virus problems appeared on (CBP) workstations Thursday evening, the decision was made to push the patch, immediately, to the ... US-VISIT workstations. Most workstations had received the patch by midnight and US-VISIT was back in operation at all locations," reads a CBP summary of the incident.

The Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT program office declined to comment on the documents.

Former White House cybersecurity adviser Howard Schmidt says the incident is typical of a large agency struggling with complex networks and evolving threats. "We've got catching-up to do in all areas, particularly areas having to do with national security and public safety," says Schmidt. "I hope you and I, 10 years from now, look back and say, 'Wow, I'm glad we survived that.'"

Launched in January 2004, and expanded since then, US-VISIT is a hodgepodge of older databases maintained by various government agencies, tied to a national CBP-run network of Windows 2000 Professional workstations installed at U.S. points of entry. The system has processed more than 52 million visitors, and allowed border officials to intercept more than 1,000 wanted criminals and immigration violators, according to DHS. Some US-VISIT locations are now testing gear to read new RFID-equipped passports.

While the idea of US-VISIT is universally lauded within government, the program's implementation has faced a steady barrage of criticism from congressional auditors concerned over management issues and cybersecurity problems. Last December, the DHS inspector general reported that the program might be vulnerable to hackers.

The nearly 6-year-old Windows 2000 operating system was a particularly burdensome choice on Aug. 9, when Microsoft announced a vulnerability in the software's plug-and-play feature that allowed attackers to take complete control of a computer over a network. In an unusually quick mating of vulnerability with attack, it took only four days for a virus writer to launch an internet worm, called Zotob, that spread through the security hole.

Operating somewhat more slowly, it took CBP officials until Aug. 16 -- a full week after Microsoft released a patch for the hole -- to start pushing the fix to CBP's Windows 2000 computers. But because of the array of peripherals hanging off of the US-VISIT workstations -- fingerprint readers, digital cameras and passport scanners -- they held off longer on fixing those machines, for fear that the patch itself might cause a disruption.

"The push was not made to the US-VISIT workstations during the initial install due to concerns with the possible impact of the patch on the unique workstation configurations," reads one of the CBP reports.

Officials -- not unreasonably, say security experts -- wanted to test the patch before installing it. But as a consequence, hundreds of computers networked to sensitive law enforcement and intelligence databases were left with a known vulnerability -- a security hole rated "critical" by Microsoft because it allows attackers to take control of a machine remotely.

It wasn't until Zotob made itself at home on the CBP network Aug. 18 that the agency launched a fevered effort to secure the US-VISIT terminals, which sit on local area networks that are in turn connected to CBP's wide area network.

Even as officials raced to install the patches, the US-VISIT computers were failing at major U.S. entry points around the country, including airports in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Laredo, Texas, according to press reports at the time.

A DHS spokesman told the Associated Press the next day that a virus caused the outages. But in December, a different DHS spokesman told CNET News.com that there was no evidence that a virus was responsible, and that it was merely one of the routine "computer glitches" one expects in any complex system.

The newly released documents call that claim into question.

The government did not part with the pages lightly. After an initial FOIA request was rebuffed, Wired News filed a federal lawsuit, represented by Megan Adams, a law student at the Stanford Law School Cyberlaw Clinic. Only then did CBP release six pages of heavily redacted documents, including one page that is completely blacked out. (The lawsuit is ongoing.)

The redactions leave it unclear whether the virus itself shuttered the system, or whether the patch, or the process of installing it, contributed to the outage. For example, one sentence reads, "Initial reports confirmed that the US-VISIT workstations were (redacted) impacted" by the virus. The blacked-out portion might as easily read "severely" as "not."

Other redactions appear less tactical: A public Microsoft security bulletin is included, but with the bulletin number (MS05-039) blacked out.

Perhaps most significantly, the pages do not reveal how the Zotob virus made its way onto the private CBP network -- an ominous migration that demonstrates that computers used in protecting U.S. borders are accessible, via some path, from the public internet, and could be subject to tampering.

"That machine was reachable from some network, that was connected to some other network, that was connected to the internet," says Tim Mullen, a Windows security expert and CIO of security firm AnchorIS. "There was some series of connections that manifested itself in those machines getting compromised."

A September report by the DHS inspector general found computer security at CBP wanting. In a scan of 368 devices on CBP networks, investigators identified 906 security vulnerabilities rated as medium or high risk. They criticized CBP for failing to implement a comprehensive security testing program, among other issues.

"Our vulnerability assessments identified security concerns resulting from inadequate password controls, missing critical patches, vulnerable network devices and weaknesses in configuration management," the report concludes. "These security concerns provide increased potential for unauthorized access to CBP resources and data."

In a second report in December focused on US-VISIT, the inspector general concluded that the mainframe databases at the backend of the system were generally secure. But investigators found vulnerabilities elsewhere in the system's architecture that "could compromise the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive US-VISIT data."

In particular, the report found system vulnerabilities at the U.S. points of entry where the US-VISIT workstations are operating. It blames the weaknesses on poor communications between administrators in the field and those at US-VISIT's Virginia data center. In February, the Government Accountability Office -- Congress' investigative arm -- followed up with its own investigation of the program, faulting US-VISIT for not having an overall security plan.

Besides management issues, the system has been criticized as a slapdash effort at stringing older technology together into a modern security screening system. "Biometrics have been introduced into an antiquated computer environment," the 9/11 Commission noted of the program. "Replacement of these systems and improved biometric systems will be required."

Schmidt agrees, though he says the problem is hardly limited to US-VISIT. "We have to start moving at industry speed, not government speed, when it comes to the deployment of new technologies," says Schmidt. Instead of running Windows 2000, "I'd be racing to run the beta of the next generation of operating system ... and not worry about legacy stuff that we know isn't going to be supported too much longer and has had issues."

Prior to infecting CBP, the Zotob virus reportedly caused disruptions at The New York Times, ABC and CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, as well as some offices on Capitol Hill. In late August, the FBI announced the arrest of two men in connection with the worm: 18-year-old Farid "Diabl0" Essebar in Morroco, and a 21-year-old Turkish man named Atilla Ekici, known online as "Coder."

Fort Pierce wants to install crime surveillance cameras throughout city

TC Palm | April 14 2006

FORT PIERCE — Electronic eyes peering down on public rights-of-way in some of the most violent areas in the city present a much-needed additional tool to help law enforcement reduce crime, city officials say.

During this month's annual City Commission workshop, Police Chief Eugene Savage will propose a crime surveillance pilot program costing between $200,000 and $400,000. No date has been set for the workshop.

If approved, Savage said he would recommend installing several cameras in a small section of the city to evaluate whether they are effective in fighting crime.
The exact location of the cameras would be kept secret, Savage said.

"If it's overt and people know where they are, the criminals won't do anything in that area. They'll just move a couple of blocks away," he said.

Police said they are not decided whether the cameras would be monitored live or whether the images would be taped and retained.

In Tampa, where surveillance cameras have been in place for about 10 years, signs are posted to warn people they're being watched.

"They do that to get people to behave," Savage said. "We want the same thing, but we have areas we need to clean up. I would prefer we start this process covertly and then let them know they're being surveilled."

Savage said police are looking at targeting the area primarily from Orange Avenue north and from U.S. 1 north.

"We're looking to install cameras in areas with high drive-by shootings, immigrant robberies and drug-related areas that perpetuate crime," he said.

Law enforcement tried to thwart drug activity about three years ago in the northwest area by installing speakers on the street, which played classical music. But that was short-lived.

"It served its purpose to a degree," Savage said. "Some of the drug dealers moved, but people started getting used to the classical music. We were kind of entertaining them. I got rid of it because its usefulness ran out."

If the cameras become reality, Fort Pierce will be one of only a few cities in the state, including Tampa and West Palm Beach, using police surveillance to monitor public activity.

Nationwide, cities such as New York City, Chicago and Baltimore also use them. The use of video cameras has sparked national debate among civil libertarians who say the cameras are an infringement on privacy rights. Law enforcement agencies, however, contend the use of video cameras are an innovative tool to smart policing.

Commissioner Eddie Becht said he'd have to weigh the citizens' expectations of privacy concerning where the cameras are going to be installed before he could make a decision on whether cameras are a good idea.

"If I'm standing in front of the Sunrise Theatre, I don't think I'd have an expectation of privacy," Becht said. "If the cameras are going to peer down into somebody's back yard, I'd have a problem with that. I really don't like law enforcement knowing my business, but I'll tolerate that if there's a real deterrent."

Mayor Bob Benton said he would have trouble supporting the surveillance system using tax dollars and would instead prefer to put more police officers on the streets.

"That is very expensive," he said. "Somebody needs to show me that it works."

Savage said a typical police officer salary with benefits, equipment and training costs taxpayers between $65,000 and $70,000. Currently, the city employs 110 police officers.

"We can get the additional personnel, but this allows us to police smarter," Savage said of the surveillance cameras.

Commissioner R. "Duke" Nelson, who has pushed for the cameras for the past several years after seeing them implemented in Tampa, said public surveillance already is being used at area Wal-Marts and the cost benefits will save citizens in the long run.

"We're trying to curtail behavior of individuals because when people think you're watching them, they tend not to do things wrongfully or illegally," Nelson said. "It's a deterrent."What: A pilot program using surveillance cameras in city neighborhoods.

Cost: $200,000 to $400,000 for initial startup, excluding maintenance and monitoring costs.

Area targeted: High-crime areas from Orange Avenue north and from U.S. 1 north.

Monitoring: Wireless transmission from cameras to specially equipped police vehicles.

OTHER CITIES

Tampa and West Palm Beach have had experience with surveillance cameras.

Tampa

The Tampa Police Department uses about 12 surveillance cameras in its crime-ridden entertainment district Ybor City. The city has been using them for about 10 years but drew national cries of "Big Brother" about five years ago when it turned to face recognition technology, said Cpl. Mike Morrow, in charge of overseeing the system.

For the most part, people ignore the cameras and forget they are there, Morrow said.

"They are part of the environment," he said.

However, Morrow couldn't point to any data showing the cameras reduce crime.

"Cameras give our police department flexibility to manipulate our manpower to be effective in other areas," Morrow said. "You can't specifically say the cameras have reduced crime."

Morrow said footage from the cameras has resulted in arrests for robbery, burglary, stabbings and assault.

West Palm Beach

West Palm Beach Assistant Police Chief Guillermo Perez said the city last year had planned a crime surveillance pilot program employing four cameras in the city's downtown entertainment district. However, it took eight months to get the cameras installed and the company hired to do the installation couldn't get the cameras to work.

Perez said the city now plans to install 25 video cameras within the next six months in the city's downtown and troubled neighborhoods. He said the program initially was met with resistance but that declined with concerns about terrorism. In last year's London subway bombings, the perpetrators were caught on surveillance tapes.

"It's not like we're out there to violate anyone's civil rights," Perez said. "We're just trying to safeguard the public." Perez said monitoring of the cameras would be done in patrol cars by officers who have cameras located on their respective beats. They will be able to view the camera transmissions on laptops.

"We would eventually set up a command center," he said. "Officers will be fully trained as far as what they can and cannot do regarding civil liberties."

CIVIL LIBERTIES ISSUES

What the Treasure Coast chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says about public surveillance cameras:

"As far as the ACLU is concerned, there is no objection to cameras in specific high profile real potential terrorist targets," said T. A. Wyner, president of the Treasure Coast Chapter of the ACLU. "It's this idea of blanket surveillance of public spaces and streets. I think it's a bad idea. What really needs to be done before we go any further is, will the cameras record to tape and the images be retained? What is the criteria for other governmental agencies and the public to access the tapes? What rules are in place to enforce protection of civil liberties and punish those who violate them? Before we allow this to happen, we have to consider the idea that we'll be in a society where everyone is under constant surveillance. Isn't that where this is headed?"

Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away

WILLIAM J. BROAD, NAZILA FATHI and JOEL BRINKLEY / NY Times | April 13 2006

Western nuclear analysts said yesterday that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions, even as a senior Iranian official said Iran would defy international pressure and rapidly expand its ability to enrich uranium for fuel.

The official, Muhammad Saeedi, the deputy head of Iran's atomic energy organization, said Iran would push quickly to put 54,000 centrifuges on line — a vast increase from the 164 they said Tuesday that they had used to enrich uranium to levels that could fuel a nuclear reactor.

Still, nuclear analysts called the claims exaggerated. They said nothing had changed to alter current estimates of when Iran might be able to make a single nuclear weapon, assuming that is its ultimate goal. The United States government has put that at 5 to 10 years, and some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020.

Iran's announcement brought criticism from several Western Nations and to a lesser degree from Russia and China. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for "strong steps" against Iran, using the country's clear statement of defiance to persuade reluctant countries like Russia and China to support tough international penalties. But Russian officials said they had not changed their opposition to such penalties. Nuclear analysts said Iran's boast that it had enriched uranium using 164 centrifuges meant that it had now moved one small but significant step beyond what it had been ready to do nearly three years ago, when it agreed to suspend enrichment while negotiating the fate of its nuclear program.

"They're hyping it," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, a private group that monitors the Iranian nuclear program. "There's still a lot they have to do." Anthony H. Cordesman and Khalid R. al-Rodhan of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington called the new Iranian claims "little more than vacuous political posturing" meant to promote Iranian nationalism and a global sense of atomic inevitability.

The nuclear experts said Iran's claim on Wednesday that it would mass-produce 54,000 centrifuges echoed boasts that it made years ago. Even so, they noted, the Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs.

It took Tehran 21 years of planning and 7 years of sporadic experiments, mostly in secret, to reach its current ability to link 164 spinning centrifuges in what nuclear experts call a cascade. Now, the analysts said, Tehran has to achieve not only consistent results around the clock for many months and years but even higher degrees of precision and mass production. It is as if Iran, having mastered a difficult musical instrument, now faces the challenge of making thousands of them and creating a very large orchestra that always plays in tune and in unison.

On Wednesday, Mr. Saeedi, the Iranian nuclear official, said Iran was moving rapidly toward its atomic goals. "We will expand uranium enrichment to industrial scale at Natanz," he was quoted as saying by the ISNA student news agency in a reference to Iran's main enrichment facility. Mr. Saeedi said Iran would start operating the first of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by late 2006, with further expansion to 54,000 centrifuges. "We have no problem in doing that," he told ISNA. "We just need to increase our production lines."

The news from Iran, which holds 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, has made oil markets very nervous in recent days and contributed to a spike in oil prices to nearly $70 a barrel on Tuesday. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange closed at $68.62 a barrel yesterday, just $2 short of their record after Hurricane Katrina.

Since the beginning of the year, the diplomatic crisis has prompted fears that Iran might be tempted to restrict its oil sales, provoking a price spike that would cause economic havoc around the world. Iranian officials have repeatedly said they might use their country's "oil weapon" in a confrontation with the West. But, as is often the case in Iranian politics, such statements were just as rapidly offset by more reassuring comments from the Oil Ministry that Iran would not use its oil exports as a bargaining chip with the West.

More realistically, many traders fear that any international penalties against Iran might hurt Iran's oil industry, slow investments, or remove sorely needed barrels from oil-hungry markets.

The Russian stance against penalties highlighted the obstacles Washington faces in its effort to force a halt to Iran's nuclear program. A senior aide to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said yesterday that any effort to employ broad penalties against Tehran would backfire because "Iran's current president will use them for his benefit, and he will use them to consolidate public opinion around him."

The United States is urging members of the United Nations Security Council to approve travel and financial restrictions on Iran's leaders, and administration officials view Russia, which has close trade ties to Iran, as the linchpin of those efforts.

Secretary of State Conodoleezza Rice said yesterday that the Security Council must consider "strong steps" to induce Iran to change course. "The Security Council will need to take into consideration this move by Iran," she said about Tuesday's announcement. "It will be time when it reconvenes on this case for strong steps to make certain that we maintain the credibility of the international community."

In Iran on Tuesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced in an elaborate ceremony that Iranian scientists had enriched uranium to 3.5 percent — a level of purity that, if enough could be made, might fuel a nuclear reactor. While Iran hailed the step as a first, the nuclear experts said Tehran had in fact been doing periodic enrichment experiments with centrifuges for seven years, since 1999.

Amid the tensions, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, arrived in Tehran yesterday for talks with Iranian nuclear officials. Despite the provocative nature of Iran's statements, he still held out hope that the government could be persuaded to compromise. "We hope to convince Iran to take confidence-building measures including suspension of uranium enrichment activities until outstanding issues are clarified," Dr. ElBaradei told journalists at the Tehran airport, Reuters reported.

Iran's state-run television was dominated by programs about the atomic claim in what seemed like an organized effort to mobilize public support for the nuclear program. One channel showed a reporter stopping people on the street to ask if they had bought pastry to celebrate the news. Another showed nuclear sites and uranium mines. Television news said schools celebrated the success and rebroadcast the announcement of Iran's president hailing the enrichment step.

While Iran has sharply raised its atomic claims in the past two days, nuclear analysts said it appeared to be roughly where it was expected to be on the road to learning how to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, and still had years of work ahead of it to attain its ambitious goals.

Mr. Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security said he was not surprised that the Iranians had got a group of 164 centrifuges up and running and had begun to introduce uranium gas into them for enrichment.

"There's still a lot they have to do," he said, to perfect the operation of the cascade of centrifuges. A report that he and his colleagues made public late last month suggested that Iran would need 6 to 12 months to master that process, and Mr. Albright said in an interview that he stood by that rough estimate as accurate.

His March report said Iran had parts for perhaps 1,000 or 2,000 centrifuges beyond the ones already in operation, and that Iran is not likely to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon until 2009 at the earliest.

Several Western nations criticized Iran's recent announcements as needlessly provocative.

Foreign Minister Jack Straw of Britain said they were "deeply unhelpful," and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said Iran was "going in precisely the wrong direction." Russia and China joined the chorus, but their criticisms were qualified.

"For China, we are concerned about the events and the way things are developing," said Wang Guamgya, China's ambassador to the United Nations. But he added, "In spite of this, I believe diplomatic efforts are still under way."

In Moscow, a Foreign Ministry spokesman called Iran's push to expand uranium enrichment "a step in the wrong direction."

But Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov later tempered that. He inveighed against any possible military action against Iran and advised against a rush to judgment, saying Iran had "never stated that it is striving to possess nuclear weapons."

Jad Mouawad contributed reporting from New York for this article.

America’s Secret Police?
Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.

Mark Hosenball / Newsweek | April 14 2006

A threatened turf grab by a controversial Pentagon intelligence unit is causing concern among both privacy experts and some of the Defense Department’s own personnel.

An informal panel of senior Pentagon officials has been holding a series of unannounced private meetings during the past several weeks about how to proceed with a possible merger between the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a post-9/11 Pentagon creation that has been accused of domestic spying, and the Defense Security Service (DSS), a well-established older agency responsible for inspecting the security arrangements of defense contractors. DSS also maintains millions of confidential files containing the results of background investigations on defense contractors’ employees.

The merger was initially suggested by a government commission set up to recommend military base closures last year. The commission said that the Pentagon could achieve some savings by relocating both CIFA, now housed in a building near Washington’s Reagan National Airport and DSS, headquartered in nearby Alexandria, Va. The panel suggested moving the two agencies to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., where FBI training and laboratory facilities are also based.

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission also suggested that the Pentagon could “disestablish” CIFA and DSS and “consolidate their components into the Department of Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.”

Pentagon officials began discussions about merging the two after the commission issued its recommendations. An initial round of meetings about the merger, however, failed to come up with a plan. In the meantime, CIFA, a mysterious and secretive unit created in 2002 and charged with making Defense counterintelligence efforts more effective, became the subject of two public controversies.


The first erupted late in 2005 when documents surfaced indicating that CIFA (whose mission, according to its own officials, is supposed to be limited to analysis of counterintelligence data produced by other agencies) was discovered to have put together a database that included reports on anti-administration demonstrators, including peace activists protesting alleged “war profiteering.” (NEWSWEEK’s Michael Isikoff reported on this in depth earlier this year in this story.) CIFA and Pentagon officials subsequently assured Congress in writing that CIFA’s activities would be more carefully focused in the future on genuine potential terror threats to defense facilities and personnel and that data collected on legitimate peaceful protestors would be destroyed.

Another controversy over CIFA took hold during the corruption scandal surrounding former San Diego congressman Randall (Duke) Cunningham, who before he resigned in disgrace earlier this year, had been a member of both the House Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. Federal prosecutors alleged Cunningham used his congressional influence to direct CIFA to grant defense contracts to a company called MZM. Earlier this year, Cunningham and MZM’s former president, Mitchell Wade, both pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges. (The CIFA contracting probe has been covered in depth by investigative blogs Warandpiece.com and TPMMuckraker.com, as well as The Washington Post.) Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gregory Hicks said the CIFA contracting issue was the focus of a continuing “review by appropriate organizations within the Department [of Defense] and it would be premature to discuss any possible outcomes of that review.”
As stories about the CIFA scandals circulated earlier this year, talk about merging the controversial unit with the less controversial DSS appeared to stall. But in the past few weeks, Pentagon officials said, such discussions have regained momentum, with an informal committee led by Robert Rogalski, a deputy to Stephen Cambone, the under secretary of Defense for intelligence, meeting regularly to discuss the agencies’ consolidation.

But both Pentagon insiders and administration critics remain queasy about the merger idea. Some veteran officials recall that DSS itself became the subject of unwelcome public attention during the Clinton administration when political appointees in the Pentagon press office got hold of the DSS security file on Linda Tripp, the disgruntled bureaucrat who blew the whistle on President Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The file contained reports about an embarrassing incident from Tripp’s past that were leaked to the media. The Pentagon Inspector General investigated, and security procedures surrounding the security files supposedly were improved.

Both Pentagon insiders and privacy experts fear that if CIFA merges with, or, in effect, takes over DSS, there would be a weakening of the safeguards that are supposed to regulate the release of the estimated 4.5 million security files on defense-contractor employees currently controlled by DSS. Those files are stored in a disused mine in western Pennsylvania.


According to one knowledgeable official, who asked for anonymity because of the extreme sensitivity of the subject, since its creation CIFA has on at least a handful of occasions requested access to the secret files stored in the mine without adequate explanation. As a result, the source said, DSS rejected the requests. A merger between CIFA and DSS would weaken those internal controls, the source said.

A CIFA merger with DSS could also alter the job responsibilities of the 280 inspectors employed by DSS to inspect security arrangements and procedures at defense contractors’ offices. According to the official source, these inspectors are responsible for making sure that contractors have taken proper measures to protect classified information. But if DSS merges with CIFA, there are fears that CIFA will pressure the DSS inspectors to expand their mandate to include inspecting contractors to see if they are protecting information that could be considered “sensitive but unclassified”—a term the Bush administration has tried to use to expand restrictions on access to government records. Security professionals regard that expansion as too elastic and open to misinterpretation. By acquiring control of the DSS inspector force, a merged CIFA-DSS would also have something that CIFA at the moment claims not to have, which is a force of field investigators. Today CIFA has to rely for raw field reports on other defense and military intelligence agencies, such as branches of Army, Navy and Air Force intelligence.
Defense analyst and washingtonpost.com blogger Bill Arkin, who first brought allegations about CIFA’s domestic spying to light, says that in its efforts to trying eliminate waste and better coordinate intelligence activities, “we are creating an American military secret police that is clearly acquiring way too much information and way too much power.”

But Cindy McGovern, a spokeswoman for DSS, maintains that even if CIFA does merge with DSS, officials will not be able to get access to secret security files unless they have a “legitimate need and we verify that ... People who have access to these records need to have a verified need, a legitimate bona fide need.” Asked how many times CIFA requests for access to DSS files were turned down because of lack of adequate justification, McGovern said she did not have that information at hand. Hicks, the Pentagon spokesman, said there was “no clear answer” to this question, adding: “There are protocols in place to request information that CIFA follows, but there is no quick grasp as to how many times or instances that has been sought.”

In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Hicks added: “The Defense Security Service takes the release of personnel files and the information contained therein very seriously ... For the purposes of disclosure and disclosure accounting, the Department of Defense is considered a single agency. Notwithstanding, disclosures of DSS records within DOD are only authorized when a justifiable official need for the information exists. These same safeguards would apply in the event of a merger with CIFA.”

Foreign Government Manipulates US Domestic Policy With Help of the Bush Mafia and Their PR Cronies

Operation Rescue To Bush: “Renounce Support For Rape Exceptions”
April 11th, 2006

Jefferson City, MO – Operation Rescue will be in Jefferson City, Missouri, today with the Truth Truck fleet as President George W. Bush makes two appearances there. The Truth Trucks are large panel trucks covered with billboard-sized photos of aborted babies.

Operation Rescue has this message for President Bush:

“Mr. President, your recent statement that you support rape exceptions to bans on abortion is not a pro-life sentiment. Babies conceived in rape* are no less human or deserving of life than those conceived through consensual relationships. Abortion further traumatizes rape victims and contributes to slower emotional healing than those victims who give birth. Your statement sends mixed signals about the sanctity of life, the humanity of the pre-born, and your overall concern for the well-being of women.

“We call on you today to renounce your support for the killing of innocent pre-born baby boys and girls who are conceived through rape, and to put your support behind state abortion bans like the one recently passed in South Dakota and the one currently being considered in Missouri.”

Operation Rescue is in Missouri to encourage citizens of the “Show Me State” to support the Missouri abortion ban, SB 1248, which is currently being considered by the State Legislature.

*Operation Rescue holds that incest is a form of rape and includes it when referencing rape exceptions to abortion laws.
Read Missouri’s Proposed Abortion Ban

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

Resurrect the Missouri Abortion Ban That Would Make Abortionists Felons
April 12th, 2006

Jefferson City, MO – Operation Rescue has chosen Holy Week to attempt to “resurrect” an abortion ban introduced in Missouri earlier this year. The bill, SB 1248, would ban abortions in the State of Missouri and make the commission of an abortion a Class B felony.

Two Truth Trucks with large images of aborted children with the caption “Stop Abortion Now!” have been circling the capital city since Tuesday. Today, a group of pro-lifers will gather to pray for the passage of the bill and to speak as private citizens to members of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy, and the Environment, where the bill has been stalled since March 9, 2006.

“We were told that this bill had great support initially, but opponents sent it to the Commerce, Energy and Environment Committee where it was hoped that it would die in obscurity,” said Operation Rescue Troy Newman. “What better time to attempt to ‘resurrect’ the bill than Holy Week when the minds of most people are turned to the life-giving resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ.”

“Whoever assigned SB 1248 to that committee is simply playing politics with innocent lives,” said Newman. “We know there is support for this bill. For the sake of the thousands of children this bill would save, it deserves a fair up or down vote, not political back-room shenanigans. There is little hope that the bill will pass out of committee without an outcry from the public.”

If the politicking with innocent lives concerns you, these are the people who are holding the Missouri abortion ban hostage:

Missouri State Senate Commerce and Environment Committee Members

David Klindt, Chair
State Capitol Building, Room 319
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-1415
FAX: (573) 751-8342
E-mail: david_klindt@senate.mo.gov

Kevin Engler, Vice-Chair
State Capitol Building, Room 428
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-3455
FAX: (573) 522-9318
E-mail: kevin.engler@senate.mo.gov

Matt Bartle
State Capitol Building, Room 431
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-1464
FAX: (573) 751-8442
E-mail: matt_bartle@senate.mo.gov

John Griesheimer
State Capitol Building, Room 227
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-3678
FAX: (573) 526-2609
Click to Email (E-mail Form Page)

Chris Koster
State Capitol Building, Room 225
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-1430
FAX: (573) 751-9751
Click to E-mail (E-mail Form Page)

Luann Ridgeway
State Capitol Building, Room 419
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-2547
E-mail: luann.ridgeway@senate.mo.gov

Joan Bray
State Capitol Building, Room 434
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-2514
FAX: (573) 526-2612
E-Mail: jbray@senate.mo.gov

Victor Callahan
State Capitol Building, Room 328
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-3074
FAX: (573) 751-4551
E-mail: victor_callahan@senate.mo.gov

Tim Green
State Capitol Building, Room 330
Jefferson City, Missouri 65101
(573) 751-2420
FAX: (573) 751-1598
E-Mail: timothy_green@senate.mo.gov

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China: new measures for population control

Drugs companies 'inventing diseases to boost their profits'

London Times | April 11, 2006
By Mark Henderson

PHARMACEUTICAL companies are systematically creating diseases in order to sell more of their products, turning healthy people into patients and placing many at risk of harm, a special edition of a leading medical journal claims today.

The practice of “diseasemongering” by the drug industry is promoting non-existent illnesses or exaggerating minor ones for the sake of profits, according to a set of essays published by the open-access journal Public Library of Science Medicine.

The special issue, edited by David Henry, of Newcastle University in Australia, and Ray Moynihan, an Australian journalist, reports that conditions such as female sexual dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and “restless legs syndrome” have been promoted by companies hoping to sell more of their drugs.

Other minor problems that are a normal part of life, such as symptoms of the menopause, are also becoming increasingly “medicalised”, while risk factors such as high cholesterol levels or osteoporosis are being presented as diseases in their own right, according to the editors.

“Disease-mongering turns healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources and causes iatrogenic (medically induced) harm,” they say. “Like the marketing strategies that drive it, disease-mongering poses a global challenge to those interested in public health, demanding in turn a global response.”

Doctors, patients and support groups need to be more aware that pharmaceutical companies are taking this approach, and more research is needed into the changing ways in which conditions are presented, according to the writers.

Disease-awareness campaigns are often funded by drug companies, and “more often designed to sell drugs than to illuminate or inform or educate about the prevention of illness or the maintenance of health”, they say.

Particular conditions that are highlighted in the journal include sexual function in both men and women. The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction, one paper claims, has been highly exaggerated to provide a new market for drugs, while the makers of anti-impotence medicines, such as Viagra and Cialis, have been involved with their presentation as lifestyle drugs that can boost the sexual prowess of healthy men.

Ordinary shyness is routinely presented as a social anxiety disorder and treated with antidepressants, while newly identified conditions such as “restless legs syndrome” — a constant urge to move one’s legs — are presented as being much more common than they really are.

Richard Ley, of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, rejected the accusations, pointing out that Britain has firm safeguards against disease-mongering. Many of the authors’ criticisms, he said, were aimed squarely at countries such as the United States, where pharmaceuticals can be openly advertised directly to patients.

“Drug companies are not allowed to communicate directly with patients, and we do not invent diseases,” he said.

“We provide information that there are treatments out there that might help certain conditions, but at the end of the day it is down to health professionals to decide if they are appropriate.

“The best safeguard is that the doctor who knows the product and knows the patient’s history is the one who decides what to prescribe.”

TRICK OR TREAT?

MENOPAUSE
Symptoms include hot flushes, night sweats and loss of libido
Criticism too often “medicalised” as part of a “disorder” when it is a normal phase of life

IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME
Symptoms include constipation, cramps and diarrhoea
Criticism promoted by drug companies as a serious illness needing therapy, when it is usually a mild problem

SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION
Symptoms impotence in men, lack of libido or difficulty becoming aroused in women
Criticism drugs such as Viagra marketed not only for treating genuine erectile dysfunction caused by medical problems but as lifestyle improvers

OSTEOPOROSIS
Symptoms thinning of the bones, particularly among postmenopausal women
Criticism portrayed as a disease in its own right, when it is really a risk factor for broken bones

RESTLESS LEGS
Symptoms urge to move legs because of unpleasant feelings, often at night
Criticism prevalence of a relatively rare condition exaggerated by the media, along with the need for treatment

White House Claims No Agenda To Attack Iran
But Easter Bunny is real and not fictitious

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | April 12 2006

The White House reacted with shock and revulsion to a report that, God forbid, they were planning another pre-emptive strike on a misbehaving Middle Eastern backwater. I mean don't be ridiculous, that never happens does it? I'm also waiting patiently for the Easter Bunny to deliver my eggs this weekend.

Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker journalist, claimed that plans had been finalized to use use B61-11 bunker busting tactical nuclear weapons to take out Iran's uranium enriching facilities. This followed a London Telegraph report in detailing , "a secret meeting at the Ministry of Defence where military chiefs and officials from Downing Street and the Foreign Office discussed the consequences of an American-led attack on Iran, and Britain's role in any such action."

"Wild speculation," McClellan and Bush snapped back.

Rumsfeld described the reports as "fantasy land."

"Ill informed," Dan Bartlett, a senior adviser to President George W Bush stated.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw characterized talk of a nuclear strike as "completely nuts."

In a year's time, or whenever the neo-Fascists decide to plunge America into its next crisis, we will remind ourselves of those words.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.



As far back as September 2004, Israel announced that it had purchased 500 1-ton bunker-busters from the United States that can destroy 6-foot-thick concrete walls. This story is not new and who could argue that such devices have any other real pressing purpose except to target Iran's underground facilities?

In an piece for the Asia Times, F William Engdahl points out that the intended invasion of Iran was by no means a recent blueprint, but a decades old dream carefully laid out in strategy documents.

"In 1996, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, two neo-conservatives later to play an important role in formulation of Bush administration's Pentagon policy in the Middle East, authored a paper for then newly elected Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That advisory paper, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", called on Netanyahu to make a "clean break from the peace process". Perle and Feith also called on Netanyahu to strengthen Israel's defenses against Syria and Iraq, and to go after Iran as the prop of Syria.

Today's World Tribune carries a piece detailing a CFR meeting, a group many see as the hidden hand behind US foreign policy, in which the inevitability of military strikes was openly discussed.

"In just the past few weeks I've been convinced that at least some in the administration have already made up their minds that they would like to launch a military strike against Iran," Joseph Cirincione, director of the Washington-based Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said."

RAF doctor refused to fight 'illegal' Iraq war

Kim Sengupta / London Independent | April 12 2006

An RAF doctor on trial for refusing to serve in Iraq told a court martial yesterday that he refused to go because the war was against "international law, the Nuremberg principles and the rules of armed conflict".

Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, the first member of the armed forces to be charged with disobeying orders to deploy in Iraq, said he had come to his decision after researching the legal advice given to Tony Blair by the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith.

The officer, who has dual British and New Zealand nationality, told the hearing that he had "two great loves in my life, medicine and the Royal Air Force. To take the decision that I have saddens me greatly but I feel that I have no other choice."

Flt Lt Kendall-Smith, 37, has been charged with five counts of disobeying lawful commands in 2005 when he was asked to deploy to Basra inIraq. There are no set time limits on any prison sentence he may face if convicted.

The officer, who held a post as a tutor in moral philosophy at a New Zealand university, had previously served in Oman, Kuwait and Qatar in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. After studying the arguments for and against the invasion he declared that he did not want to be complicit in an illegal war and tried to resign from the RAF. Giving evidence at the opening day of the court martial at Aldershot barracks in Hampshire, Flt Lt Kendall-Smith said: "The illegality of the use of force against Iraq was the only reason I could not follow this order."

Asked by his counsel, Philip Sapsford QC, why he had not taken the usual course of shortening his RAF contract and insisted on resigning, he said he could not sign the appropriate form as he had decided that "I would, in fact, refuse the orders as a duty under international law, the Nuremberg principles and the law of armed conflict".

At an earlier pre-trial hearing Assistant Judge Advocate Jack Bayliss had ruled that the doctor could not use the defence that he acted according to his conscience in refusing military orders. The judge maintained that the US and British forces were now there on the invitation of the Iraqi government.

During yesterday's hearing Judge Advocate Bayliss clashed repeatedly with the defendant and his counsel. At one point when Flt Lt Kendall-Smith began to refer to copious notes in front of him on the witness box about the legal standing of the war, the judge snapped: "I will not allow diatribes on international law. It is already clear in your evidence that you believe the war is illegal."
Later the judge stated: "I will not let this court be used as a grandstand." Flt Lt Kendall-Smith replied: "I am not grandstanding. It's in the context of the presentation of my position in my case to outline misconceptions put before this court ... if I am unable to speak how can I put my position to the court?" Judge Advocate Bayliss said: "I am not prepared to be argued with by a witness defendant in my court."

David Parry, opening the case for the prosecution, told the court martial that Flt Lt Kendall-Smith had applied for early release from the RAF a month prior to his refusal to go to Iraq.

"The background to this case appears to be a sense of grievance felt by the defendant, first that he couldn't immediately resign from the RAF, and secondly that he remained eligible for deployment overseas," he said.

Flt Lt Kendall-Smith vehemently denied in the witness box that his decision to leave the RAF was influenced by any other factor than serving in Iraq. He claimed that he had already been verbally notified of the deployment, triggering his decision to resign.

The hearing continues.

His words

As a commissioned officer I am required to consider... every order that is given to me and I am required to consider the legality of each order... Since my initial operational deployments, I have studied... the commentaries and... notes, including one prepared by the Attorney General and in particular the note to the Prime Minister dated 7 March 2003.

I believe the occupation of Iraq is illegal... and for me to comply... would put me in conflict with both domestic and international law. The illegality of the use of force against Iraq was the only reason I could not follow this order... [and] was the only reason for my resignation.

I would, in fact, refuse the orders as a duty under international law, the Nuremburg principles and the law of armed conflict...

To take the decision I have taken saddens me but I feel I have no choice.

I was subjected, as was the entire population, to propaganda depicting force against Iraq to be lawful but it was not until the middle of 2004 that I researched and found that not to be the case.

Journalist Censored Over Charlie Sheen / September 11th Article

Dear Mr. Jones,
As a regular op-ed columnist for the *Winnipeg Free Press* since October, 2004, I have had only two submissions refused by my editor, both of which concerned the Bush administration and information first discovered on your websites. Both of my rejected columns are attached; please feel free to publish them or to contact me at will.

Sincerely,

Dallas Hansen



Sept. 11 is my generation's Nov. 22

Dallas Hansen | April 11, 2006

If you were alive and old enough to remember November 22, 1963, you'll know exactly where you were and what you were doing when President John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. If, like me, you weren't yet born, you might remember seeing, for the first time, Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, a controversial work that, in Mr. Stone's words, was created to offer a “counter-myth” to the Warren Commission report that pinned the Kennedy assassination on ex-Marine and former Soviet defector Lee Harvey Oswald.

If you're old enough to be reading this column you'll certainly remember where you were and what you were doing when you learned jet airliners had been deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

While Mr. Oswald was plucked from his seat and arrested at a Dallas movie theatre exactly eighty minutes after the president was murdered, Mr. Bin Laden was fingered as the grand architect of the WTC attacks before Tower 1 collapsed, 102 minutes after impact.

Speaking of the building's collapse, actor Charlie Sheen, who was born in New York City and has appeared in two Oliver Stone films, was a recent guest (March 20) on The Alex Jones Show―a nationally syndicated talk radio program devoted mainly to conspiracy theories.

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Sheen, “like 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75% of their targets―that feels like a conspiracy theory. It raises a lot of questions.... When the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother, 'Call me insane, but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?'”

Conspiracy theory and wild speculation has thrived since the day of the attacks, but the Sheen interview marks a turning point, a paradigm shift, in the popular consciousness―much like the 1969 New Orleans trial of Clay Shaw, where prosecutor Jim Garrison, played in Mr. Stone's JFK by Kevin Costner, showed to the jury Abraham Zapruder's home movie of JFK's head being blown “back, and to the left,” supposedly indicating a second gunman on the grassy knoll. After the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations report, which concluded that, “Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy,” American opinion was already inured to the notion that the government might've killed their own chief executive.

Mr. Sheen was particularly intrigued by a comment made by Larry Sliverstein, owner of WTC 7, the 47-storey Salomon Smith Barney tower that collapsed at 5:20 p.m.

“I remember,” said Mr. Silverstein in the 2002 PBS documentary, America Rebuilds, “getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

“Pull,” in the demolition industry, is slang for “demolish.”

Were Alex Jones and Charlie Sheen the most prominent or credible doubters of the 9/11 Commission Report's explanation of the three skyscrapers' collapsing, it wouldn't be much of a debate. But some of the Commission's doubters carry credentials too legitimate to ignore.

Steven E. Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, has published a paper, Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse, suggesting that “WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down, not just by impact damage and fires, but through the use of pre-positioned cutter-charges.”

Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist for the Department of Labor during George W. Bush's first term and now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University has offered his opinion that, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling."

Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, and author of Supply-Side Revolution: An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington, and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, among other books, pointed out, in a February 6 essay published at counterpunch.org, “We know the government lied about Iraqi WMD, but we believe the government told the truth about 9/11.”

According to Dr. Robert M. Bowman Lt. Col., USAF, ret. who holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech, the NORAD exercises―a mock drill which simulated planes crashing into buildings on the east coast―conducted on the morning of September 11 were a deliberate cover to confuse NORAD personnel.

"The exercises that went on that morning,” said Mr. Bowman on Alex Jones's show, “simulating the exact kind of thing that was happening so confused the people in the FAA and NORAD....that they didn't they didn't know what was real and what was part of the exercise.”

So, if not Mr. Bin Laden, who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks?

"If I had to narrow it down to one person,” said Mr. Bowman, “I think my prime suspect would be Dick Cheney."

With―according to an August, 2004 Zogby poll―half of New Yorkers suspecting government leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," and an informal CNN Showbiz Tonight poll showing that 83 per cent of respondents agree with Charlie Sheen that “the US government covered up the real events of the 9/11 attacks,” it seems this debate will likely outlive us all.

“September 11,” said Mr. Sheen, “wasn't the Zapruder film. It was the Zapruder film festival.”

MSM Willfully Ignores Charlie Sheen's Challenge

Torture's Roots Run to Washington

Erik Cooke / Op Ed News | April 12 2006

The recent United Nations report that the United States military is torturing detainees at the Guantánamo military base is profoundly troubling. The implications are dark, dangerous, and immediate for the detainees, the people of the U.S., and the state of international human rights. Declaring individuals enemies of the state and subjecting them to indefinite detention in torture camps, despite legal obligations to the contrary, is perilously close to despotism and does not reflect the aspirations or actions of a democratic regime.

As troubling as these accounts of U.S. government sanctioned brutality are, they are not surprising to the people of Latin America. Since 1946, the U.S. has put its official seal of approval on torture by Latin American militaries at the Army’s School of the Americas (SOA). There, the U.S. has trained more than 60,000 members of Latin American militaries in torture, psychological warfare, interrogation, and counterinsurgency. Graduates of the SOA (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) have frequently been connected to human rights violations and the repression of social movements in Latin America. These graduates have been implicated in the disappearance, massacre, rape, and torture of thousands of Latin Americans. There is no denying the U.S. approved the techniques used by these graduates; in 1996 the school’s training manuals were declassified shedding light on the torture techniques taught at the school.

SOA graduates are integral to the long, brutal line of torture and secret detention by regimes throughout Latin America. The unimaginable horrors suffered by our sisters and brothers in Latin America are tragic examples of vicious government repression, and contrary to every ideal of peace and human rights. We must never forget the suffering of thousands at the hands of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, the systemic torture under General Ríos Montt in Guatemala, or the atrocities that continue to be committed by the Colombian military.

Torture is not only a breach of international and U.S. domestic law, but also a violation of basic human rights to which every human being, regardless of nationality or criminal status, is fundamentally entitled. Torture strips away the humanity of those who commit it and the dignity of those who endure it.

The U.S. government must heed the mounting calls to close the detention center at Guantánamo. It should also renew a commitment to upholding human rights by disavowing torture in all its forms. The U.S. additionally must end the training of Latin American militaries in torture practices, particularly as epitomized in the training at the SOA. U.S. policymakers have the ability to right these wrongs and send a message of hope and dignity to our citizens and friends throughout the world.

In February 36 nonviolent peace activists were convicted for trespassing and one for aiding and abetting while protesting against the SOA and its legacy. There is something seriously awry when peace activists are jailed for speaking out against a legacy of torture while not a single high-ranking government official has been punished for these crimes against humanity. Hopefully, our government will realize the error of its ways sooner rather than later.

Physicist says heat substance felled WTC
Extremely hot fires caused structures to fail, BYU expert says

Suzanne Dean / Deseret Morning News | April 11 2006

EPHRAIM — A Brigham Young University physicist said he now believes an incendiary substance called thermite, bolstered by sulfur, was used to generate exceptionally hot fires at the World Trade Center on 9/11, causing the structural steel to fail and the buildings to collapse.

"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.

The government requires standard explosives to contain tag elements enabling them to be traced back to their manufacturers. But no tags are required in aluminum and iron oxide, the materials used to make thermite, he said. Nor, he said, are tags required in sulfur.

Jones is co-chairman, with James H. Fetzer, a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a group of college faculty members who believe conspirators other than pilots of the planes were directly involved in bringing down New York's Trade Towers.

The group, which Jones said has 200 members, maintains a Web site at www.st911.org. A 40-page paper by Jones, along with other peer-reviewed and non-reviewed academic papers, are posted on the site.

Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.

At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster.

He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter."

He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane.

But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.

Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.

Jones said a piece of building wreckage had a gray substance on the outside that at one point had obviously been a dripping molten metal or liquid. He said that after thermite turns steel or iron into a molten form, and the metal hardens, it is gray.

He added that pools of molten metal were found beneath both trade towers and the 47-story WTC 7. That fact, he said, was never discussed in official investigation reports.

And even though WTC 7 was not connected to the Trade Towers — in fact, there was another building between it and the towers —and even though it was never hit by a plane, it collapsed. That suggests, he said, that it came down because a thermite fire caused its structural steel to fail.

Jones said his studies are confined to physical causes of the collapses, and he doesn't like to speculate about who might have entered the buildings and placed thermite and sulfur. But he said 10 to 20 people "in the know," plus other people who didn't know what they were doing but did what they were told, could have placed incendiary packages over several weeks.

Mike Tyson pays respects to Mao

BBC | April 3 2006

Former world champion heavyweight boxer Mike Tyson has spoken of feeling humbled during a visit to the mausoleum of Mao Zedong in Beijing.

"I felt really insignificant next to Chairman Mao's remains," he was quoted by a Chinese daily as saying.

Tyson apparently read some of the late Chinese leader's writings while in prison for rape in the 1990s.

Emerging from the mausoleum, he shouted "I love you" to Chinese onlookers.

He told the Beijing News that the visit had been a great honour.

The former champion, 39, was in the Chinese capital after a visit to Shanghai where he promoted a new night club.

One of his trademarks during his boxing career was an arm tattoo of the communist dictator.

Mike Tyson became the youngest champion in heavyweight history when he took the title aged 20 in 1986

Revealed: victims of UK's cold war torture camp

'Atzlan': The End Of America

Air Force cargo plane crashes in Delaware

U Of Texas Professor Says Mass Death Is Imminent

Jamie Mobley / The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise | April 3 2006

AUSTIN -- A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

"Every one of you who gets to survive has to bury nine," Eric Pianka cautioned students and guests at St. Edward's University on Friday. Pianka's words are part of what he calls his "doomsday talk" - a 45-minute presentation outlining humanity's ecological misdeeds and Pianka's predictions about how nature, or perhaps humans themselves, will exterminate all but a fraction of civilization.

Though his statements are admittedly bold, he's not without abundant advocates. But what may set this revered biologist apart from other doomsday soothsayers is this: Humanity's collapse is a notion he embraces.

Indeed, his words deal, very literally, on a life-and-death scale, yet he smiles and jokes candidly throughout the lecture. Disseminating a message many would call morbid, Pianka's warnings are centered upon awareness rather than fear.

"This is really an exciting time," he said Friday amid warnings of apocalypse, destruction and disease. Only minutes earlier he declared, "Death. This is what awaits us all. Death." Reflecting on the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times," he wore, surprisingly, a smile.

So what's at the heart of Pianka's claim?

6.5 billion humans is too many.

In his estimation, "We've grown fat, apathetic and miserable," all the while leaving the planet parched.

The solution?

A 90 percent reduction.

That's 5.8 billion lives - lives he says are turning the planet into "fat, human biomass."

He points to an 85 percent swell in the population during the last 25 years and insists civilization is on the brink of its downfall - likely at the hand of widespread disease.

"[Disease] will control the scourge of humanity," Pianka said. "We're looking forward to a huge collapse."

But don't tell local "citizen scientist" Forrest Mims to quietly swallow Pianka's call to awareness. Mims says it's an "abhorrent death wish" and contends he has "no choice but to take a stand."

Mims attended the educator's doomsday presentation at the Texas Academy of Science's annual meeting March 2-4. There, the organization honored Pianka as its 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist - another issue Mims vocally opposes.

"This guy is a loose cannon to believe that worldwide genocide is the only answer," said Mims, who filed two formal petitions with the academy following the meeting.

Joining the crusade, James Pitts, who recieved a Ph.D. in physics from UT-Austin, became the second to publicly chastise Pianka when he filed a complaint Saturday with the UT board of regents. He insists a state university is no place to disseminate such views.

He writes:

"Pianka's message does not fall within the realm of his professional competence as a biologist, because it is a normative claim, not a descriptive one. Pianka is encouraged to use his ecological expertise to predict the likely consequences of certain technological and reproductive strategies, but to evaluate some as good, bad, or worthy of prevention by genocide is the realm of philosophy or political science, not science. His message falls no more within his professional competence than it would for a physicist to teach religion in class or a musician to encourage racism.Â"

But Pianka, a 38-year UT educator, maintains he's not campaigning for genocide. He likens mankind's story to an unbridled party on a luxury cruise liner. The fun's going strong on the upper deck, he says. But as crowds blindly absorb the festivities, many fail to notice the ship is sinking.

"The biggest enemy we face is anthropocentrism," he said, describing the belief system in which humans are the central element of the universe. "This is that common attitude that everything on this Earth was put here for [human] use."

To Pianka, a human life is no more valuable than any other - a lizard, a bison, a rhino. And as humans reproduce, the demand for resources like food, water and energy becomes more than the Earth can sustain, he says.

Ken Wilkins, a Baylor University biology professor and associate dean, agrees the inevitability of a crashing point is unarguable.

"The human population is growing," he said. "We will see a point when we reach the carrying capacity - there aren't enough resources."

But resources aren't the only threat, Pianka says. It's the Ebola virus he deems most capable of wide scale decimation.

"Humans are so dense (in population) that they constitute a perfect substrate for an epidemic," he says.

He contends Ebola is merely an evolutionary step away from escaping the confines of Africa. And should an outbreak occur, Pianka assuredly says humanity will quickly come to a "grinding halt."

The professor's not the only one who can articulate this concept. Because Pianka includes his doomsday material in his coursework, Ebola and its potential play a notable role in some students' studies. A syllabus for one course reads:

"Although [Ebola Zaire] Kills 9 out of 10 people, outbreaks have so far been unable to become epidemics because they are currently spread only by direct physical contact with infected blood. However, a closely-related virus that kills monkeys, Ebola Reston, is airborne, and it is only a matter of time until Ebola Zaire evolves the capacity to be airborne."

It is here that some say Pianka ventures from provocative food for thought to, as Wilkins said, "very extreme material" that violate many people's views - including his own - about the treatment of human life. While many praise Pianka's boldness and scientific know-how, others say he crosses an ethical line in his treatment of Ebola's viability as a killer.

In an evaluation of Pianka's course - performed anonymously in keeping with university policy - one student offered:

"Though I agree that conservation biology is of utmost importance to the world, I do not think that preaching that 90 percent of the human population should die of Ebola is the most effective means of encouraging conservation awareness."

Mims says he's seen countless doomsday predictions come and go. But Pianka's is different, Mims said. Pianka, he insists, exhibits genuine cause for alarm.

Mims worries fertile young minds with a thirst for knowledge may develop into enthusiastic supporters of a deadly disease, advocating the fall of humanity.

"He recommended airborne Ebola as an ideal killing virus," Mims said. "He showed slides of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse and human skulls. He joked about requiring universal sterilization. It reminded me of a futuristic science fiction movie with a crazed scientist planning the death of humanity."

But as confident as Mims is in his assessment, he faces one unarguable fact: Most of Pianka's former students are bursting with praise. Their in-class evaluations celebrate his ideas with words like "the most incredible class I ever had" and "Pianka is a GOD!"

Mims counters their ovation with the story of a Texas Lutheran University student who attended the Academy of Science lecture. Brenna McConnell, a biology senior, said she and others in the audience "had not thought seriously about overpopulation issues and a feasible solution prior to the meeting." But though McConnell arrived at the event with little to say on the issue, she returned to Seguin with a whole new outlook.

An entry to her online blog captures her initial response to what's become a new conviction:

"[Pianka is] a radical thinker, that one!" she wrote. "I mean, he's basically advocating for the death for all but 10 percent of the current population. And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he's right."

Today, she maintains the Earth is in dire straits. And though she's decided Ebola isn't the answer, she's still considering other deadly viruses that might take its place in the equation.

"Maybe I just see the virus as inevitable because it's the easiest answer to this problem of overpopulation," she said.

Though listeners like McConnell may walk away with a deadly message, Pianka maintains this is inconsistent with his lecture. One UT official said Pianka is likely well within his rights as a tenured educator.

The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure - a set of guidelines recognized nationwide - guarantees college professors vast classroom liberties. But Neal Armstrong, vice provost for faculty affairs at UT, said even this freedom is not without limits.

"Faculty members have the right of free speech like anyone else," he said. "In the classroom, they're free to express their views. There is the expectation, though, that in public - especially when speaking on controversial topics - they must make every effort to be clear that they are not speaking on behalf of the university."

Students should be able to discern on their own the validity of views like Pianka's, Armstrong said. But if allegations of Pianka actively advocating human death were to be confirmed, he said "there might be some discussion about the appropriateness of that subject."

"I would hope that's not what's intended," he said. "I don't think that's appropriate for the classroom, but that's my personal statement."

Robert K. Jansen, chair of the section of integrated biology under which Pianka is classified, said his understanding of the doomsday material left no cause for concern.

"It's important for students to get all opinions, and they have to do that on a daily basis," he said. To hold a classroom's attention, Jansen says educators must often "speak their mind" in a fashion bold enough to garner a bit of shock.

The Texas Academy of Science uses a similar approach in defending its decision to honor Pianka with the Distinguished Scientist award. Though TAS offered no direct comment to the Gazette-Enterprise, an email sent from TAS President David Marsh to Mims in response to Mims first letter of protest reads:

"We select the DTS speaker based on his/her academic credentials and contributions to science. We do not mandate the subject he/she decides to address, nor will we ever. I would suggest that one of the purposes of any such presentation is to stimulate discussion - which indeed it did."

In his petitions, Mims inquires about the group's stance on Pianka's talk, asking if the recent honor should be interpreted as an endorsement by TAS. Marsh responded firmly, saying the award does not represent any formal backing of Pianka's ideas.

But despite the academy's flat denial of any wrongdoing, Mims maintains his stance. He said thus far, he's seen no response to the second petition.

"I completely agree with one assertion made several times by Dr. Pianka: 'The public is not ready to hear that he hopes 90 percent of them will be exterminated by disease,'" Mims said.

McConnell said the TAS audience, unlike Mims, was in awe of PiankaÂ's words. They offered a standing ovation, and enthusiastically applauded Pianka's position, Mims said.

"There was a good deal of shock and just plain astonishment at what he had to say," the student said. "Not many folk come out and talk about the end of the human population in as candid of a manner as he did. Dr. Pianka received a standing ovation at the end of his talk, if that says anything. What he had to say was radical, no question about it, but that is not to say that at least some of what he had to say is not true."

Though Pianka turned down requests for a sit-down interview, he maintains he is not advocating human death.

Does he believe nature will bring about this promised devastation? Or is humanity's own dissemination of a deadly virus the only answer? And more importantly, is this the motive behind his talks?

Responding to these very questions, Pianka said, "Good terrorists would be taking [Ebola Roaston and Ebola Zaire] so that they had microbes they could let loose on the Earth that would kill 90 percent of people."

As of press time, Pitts - who sent his appeal via email Saturday - had received no response from the university, but he says, "It's too early for any responses to have been made." Meanwhile, Pianka urges humanity to heed his call to be prepared, saying "we're going to be hunters and gatherers again real soon."

"This is gonna happen in your lifetime," he told his St. Edward's audience. "Do you wanna go there? We've already gone there. We waited too long."

· Read more about Pianka by visiting his lab page at uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/

· Read more about Forrest Mims at

www.forrestmims.org or visit the Citizen Scientist at http://www.sas.org/tcs/index.html

Editor's note: A correction was made to this story to reflect that while Pitts got his Ph.D. from the university, he is not a professor there.

Copyright © 2006 The Seguin Gazette-Enterprise

Amnesty International claims CIA used private airlines to hide CIA torture flights

Raw Story | April 4 2006

Amnesty International is set to release a report claiming that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used private aircraft operators and front companies to hide CIA rendition flights and "black site" detention facilities in foreign countries.

The report also details dozens of destinations around the world where planes associated with rendition flights landed and took off. In addition, the report lists the private airlines with permission to land at U.S. military bases worldwide.

Titled Below the Radar: Secret flights to Torture and �Disappearance�, Amnesty will reveal how the CIA exploited aviation practices to hide behind the identity of private plane operators and circumvent authorities. Countries that allow CIA planes to cross their airspace and use their airports often cite the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention. These states claim that they do not have the authority to question the reasons for the flight because there is a clause in the Convention that allows private, non-commercial flights to fly over a country, or make technical stops there, without prior authorization or notification.

According to the Chicago Convention, states do not have the authority to question the reasons for the private, non-commercial flights flying over a country, or making technical stops there.

Amnesty claims that the United States may have transferred hundreds of individuals for the purposes of interrogation by nations with "dubious human rights records." They are further set to claim that "rendition is part of an elaborate clandestine detention regime that includes the use of 'black sites' and 'disappearances,' as well as torture and inhuman treatment."

They are prepared to accompany the report with a call for participating companies to cease cooperation in the program.

RAW STORY plans to feature the full report, released at 7 pm EST, tomorrow, April 4.

Reconquista: Neocon Malkin Gets it Wrong

Dean Bertram: Jesus hoax born of a fascist's fantasies
In the legal drama over Dan Brown's best-seller, The Da Vinci Code, history remains the big loser
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

02mar06

THE history of Christianity is a lie. Before his crucifixion, Jesus Christ married and impregnated Mary Magdalene.

The "Holy Grail" of legend - the cup used at the Last Supper and rumoured to have once held the blood of Christ - was actually an esoteric symbol for the Magdalene, who had literally carried the bloodline of Jesus inside her.
The descendants of this suppressed union, furthermore, would become the Merovingians, a near-mythic dynasty of early medieval kings.

At the end of the 11th century, Crusaders discovered proof of this secret history when they conquered Jerusalem. They soon established an order known as the Priory of Sion. Its mission: to guard Christianity's biggest secret and to protect the holy bloodline.

The above synopsis should be instantly recognisable to any reader of Dan Brown's runaway bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. While a work of fiction, Brown suggests this cryptic history could well be true. Indeed, on an introductory page, he informs his readers that the "Priory of Sion is a real organisation".

According to Brown, parchments discovered in Paris's Bibliotheque Nationale confirm the group's existence, and list Isaac Newton and Leonardo Da Vinci among its many notable members.

Brown was not the first to air this theory. It achieved wide exposure in the 1982 "non-fiction" and best-selling book Holy Blood, Holy Grail by journalists Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln.

The Da Vinci Code openly references this earlier work and its influence is apparent throughout the novel's pages.

Herein, of course, lies the contention that is currently unfolding in London's High Court.

Baigent and Leigh are in the process of suing Random House, the publisher of both books, over an infringement of their copyright. They attest that Brown copied the "whole architecture" of their book. Brown maintains that it was only a minor influence on his novel.

Regardless of which party the High Court finds for, history remains the real loser. Both of these successful books have disseminated one of the wildest hoaxes of recent memory, and instilled a distorted view of the past into the minds of millions of their readers. With the risk of disappointing Brown's army of fans, it must be stated that the Priory of Sion cannot actually trace its roots to the 11th century, nor is it justified in its claims of an esteemed membership that includes some of the greatest artists and thinkers of European history.

In fact, Pierre Plantard, a small-time confidence man, founded the order in 1956. A minor player in both the French fascist and occult undergrounds, Plantard had concocted the story of a secret Merovingian bloodline for his own self-aggrandisement: he professed to be the bloodline's final descendant and the rightful king of France. Scholars have long since recognised that the parchments Brown refers to in The Da Vinci Code were forged by Plantard to support his ludicrous claims.

Plantard died in 2000, never having achieved his megalomaniacal dream of reinstituting the French monarchy with him at its head; but his ideas continue to fascinate conspiracy theorists, thriller aficionados, and shortly, no doubt, cinemagoers the world over.

Ron Howard's screen adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is due for release this May. Starring Tom Hanks, the buzz is that it will be capital-B big. When we watch Hanks decipher what is being billed as "the biggest cover-up in human history" it is worth remembering that he is acting out the convoluted fantasies of a petty French fascist.

Dean Bertram is a PhD candidate in the department of history at the University of Sydney.

A Cell for Kissinger and Haig: New Tenants for Abu Ghraib?

Ron Jacobs | March 16 2006

Remember those big headlines last week about Abu Ghraib? According to the media splash, the US was preparing to close those notorious chambers within three months. That would mean by June 2006. Well, guess what? Those stories were just another piece of disinformation. According to the US Department of Defense news service DefenseLink, "News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate."

Like everything else in Iraq, the actual timetable for any closure of the prison will be based on "the readiness of Iraq's security forces to assume control of them" and some kind of infrastructure improvements at other facilities. (DefenseLink 3/12/06) If previous reality holds true in this instance, that means that the Abu Ghraib facility will not be closing any time soon. Just like the reports of soon-to-come troop withdrawals rumored every few months, the stories of the closure of Abu Ghraib are just one more part of the government's attempts to keep us hopefully confused. Whether the media's intention is to deceive or clarify by reporting these statements, the objective reality is the former.

Once again, it becomes clear that the only way the troops will come home alive is by consistent and loud popular demand. Polls showing that most Americans favor such a withdrawal are obviously not enough. Neither are votes for antiwar legislators. More is needed.

Of course, if one listens to Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger--two architects of the last major US foreign disaster in Vietnam--they might think that the only way to get out of Iraq is by blowing the country and its inhabitants to hell. Indeed, Mr. Haig, who was a general, Secretary of State under Reagan, and an advisor to Richard Nixon (even serving as his Chief of Staff during the final months of Nixon's presidency), told an audience of a conference on the Vietnam War at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, ``Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it." This is from a man, who helped engineer (among other things) the Christmas bombings of 1972, the mining of Haiphong harbor and the bombing of Hanoi and the dikes of northern Vietnam, and the invasion of Cambodia. What does he suggest the US do in Iraq? Break out some tactical nuclear weapons? The mindset that Haig represents seriously believes that the US military was restrained in Vietnam and that a similar situation exists in Iraq. This is despite the fact that more ordnance has been dropped on those two countries than on any other country in history.

His fellow panel member, Henry Kissinger, would probably like that idea. After all, it was Mr. Kissinger who considered the use of nuclear weapons against northern Vietnam in 1969, but was convinced such an idea might be a bad move after hundreds of thousands of US residents filled the streets of DC and several other cities on November 15, 1969 in a national mobilization to end the war in Vietnam.

Both of these men should be in adjoining cells in the Hague. Instead, they are guests of honor at the JFK Library. It's not that they were besmirching Kennedy's legacy by being there. Indeed, Mr. Kissinger said he admired the Kennedys--a statement that should not surprise any serious student of US history given Kissinger's tenure as a consultant on security matters to various U.S. agencies from 1955 to 1968. Indeed, Kissinger's treatise on nuclear weapons and foreign policy was a major influence on the strategic policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Given that treatise's emphasis on the use of tactical nuclear weapons together with conventional forces and the current discussion of just such a policy, one could say that Kissinger's influence continues to steer US war policy.

According to a report on Boston TV station Channel 4 of the conference attended by Haig and Kissinger, he was met by antiwar protestors on his way to the meeting. In addition, during the question and answer session Mr. Kissinger was asked if he wanted to apologize for the hundreds of thousands of deaths in Vietnam. His answer was typical Kissinger, arrogant and dismissive: ``This is not the occasion,'' he said. ``We have to start from the assumption that serious people were making serious decisions. So that's the sort of question that's highly inappropriate.'' (CBS4boston.com 3/12/06) When asked about the possibility that the US bombing of Cambodia helped create the Khmer Rouge and the ensuing killing that followed, Mr. Kissinger dismissed the possibility. In fact, he minimized the extent of the US bombing, telling the audience that it only took place along a "five-mile strip" of that country. According to Globalsecurity.org this is simply not true:

"Many of the bombs that fell in Cambodia struck relatively uninhabited mountain or forest regions; however, as declassified United States Air Force maps show, others fell over some of the most densely inhabited areas of the country, such as Siemreab Province, Kampong Chhnang Province, and the countryside around Phnom Penh. Deaths from the bombing are extremely difficult to estimate, and figures range from a low of 30,000 to a high of 500,000. Whatever the real extent of the casualties, the Arclight missions over Cambodia, which were halted in August 15, 1973, by the United States Congress, delivered shattering blows to the structure of life in many of the country's villages."

It wasn't all warmongering at the conference. Former aide to Lyndon Johnson, Jack Valenti told the audience that Washington has forgotten the major lesson of Vietnam. That lesson, said Valenti, who is retired from the presidency of the Motion Picture Association of America, "No president can win a war when public support for that war begins to decline and evaporate." Of course, this fact didn't stop Messrs. Haig and Kissinger from trying their damnedest and it doesn't seem to be preventing their modern-day incarnations from doing the same.

Back to Abu Ghraib.

It is public knowledge that this prison has been the site of torture and murder of prisoners by the US military and intelligence agencies. It is also public knowledge that Abu Ghraib is but one of several such prisons operated by the US government around the world, with the one at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba being the most (in)famous. Back in 1970, the US public was told about similar prisons in Vietnam. These were known as tiger cages and were used to hold and torture so-called enemy no-combatants and political prisoners. Despite the fact that the tiger cages were exposed and decried by human rights organizations and some US congressmen, the cages were not shut down until the United States military and its southern Vietnamese cohorts were defeated in May 1975.

As I wrote this, a story appeared on my computer's news ticker that U.S. State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Colleen Graffy told BBC that Washington wants to close down Gitmo. Upon closer reading, however, such a closure is just something under discussion and will hopefully happen "over the years." (Reuters 3/12/06)

So, the question remains, how long will it be before today's cages are closed?

Iranophobia

Paul Craig Roberts | March 16 2006

If you were President George W. Bush with all available US troops tied down by the Iraqi resistance, and you were unable to control Iraq or political developments in the country, would you also start a war with Iran?

Yes, you would.

Bush’s determination to spread Middle East conflict by striking at Iran does not make sense.

First of all, Bush lacks the troops to do the job. If the US military cannot successfully occupy Iraq, there is no way that the US can occupy Iran, a country approximately three times the size in area and population.

Second, Iran can respond to a conventional air attack with missiles targeted on American ships and bases, and on oil facilities located throughout the Middle East.

Third, Iran has human assets, including the Shia majority population in Iraq, that it can activate to cause chaos throughout the Middle East.

Fourth, polls of US troops in Iraq indicate that a vast majority do not believe in their mission and wish to be withdrawn. Unlike the yellow ribbon folks at home, the troops are unlikely to be enthusiastic about being trapped in an Iranian quagmire in addition to the Iraqi quagmire.

Fifth, Bush’s polls are down to 34 percent, with a majority of Americans believing that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

If you were being whipped in one fight, would you start a second fight with a bigger and stronger person?

That’s what Bush is doing.

Opinion polls indicate that the Bush regime has succeeded in its plan to make Americans fear Iran as the greatest threat America faces.

The Bush regime has created a major dispute with Iran over that country’s nuclear energy program and then blocked every effort to bring the dispute to a peaceful end.

In order to gain a pretext for attacking Iran, the Bush regime is using bribery and coercion in its effort to have Iran referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions.

In recent statements President Bush and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld blamed Iran for the Iraqi resistance, claiming that the roadside bombs used by the resistance are being supplied by Iran.

It is obvious that Bush intends to attack Iran and that he will use every means to bring war about.

Yet, Bush has no conventional means of waging war with Iran. His bloodthirsty neoconservatives have prepared plans for nuking Iran. However, an unprovoked nuclear attack on Iran would leave the US, already regarded as a pariah nation, totally isolated.

Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel’s highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some "black opts" group will orchestrate the attack.

One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush’s illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world’s doubts of the explanation.

Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn’t it?

Fantasy? Let’s hope so.

Congressman writes White House: Did President knowingly sign law that didn't pass?

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday March 15, 2006


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Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) has alleged in a letter to White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card that President Bush signed a version of the Budget Reconciliation Act that, in effect, did not pass the House of Representatives.

Further, Waxman says there is reason to believe that the Speaker of the House called President Bush before he signed the law, and alerted him that the version he was about to sign differed from the one that actually passed the House. If true, this would put the President in willful violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The full text of the letter follows:

March 15, 2006

The Honorable Andrew Card

Chief of Staff

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. Card:

On February 8, 2006, President Bush signed into law a version of the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005 that was different in substance from the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Legal scholars have advised me that the substantive differences between the versions - which involve $2 billion in federal spending - mean that this bill did not meet the fundamental constitutional requirement that both Houses of Congress must pass any legislation signed into law by the President.

I am writing to learn what the President and his staff knew about this constitutional defect at the time the President signed the legislation.

Detailed background about the legislation and its constitutional defects are contained in a letter I sent last month to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, which I have enclosed with this letter.[1] In summary, the House-passed version of the legislation required the Medicare program to lease "durable medical equipment," such as wheelchairs, for seniors and other beneficiaries for up to 36 months, while the version of the legislation signed by the President limited the duration of these leases to just 13 months. As the Congressional Budget Office reported, this seemingly small change from 36 months to 13 months has a disproportionately large budgetary impact, cutting Medicare outlays by $2 billion over the next five years.[2]

I understand that a call was made to the White House before the legislation was signed by the President advising the White House of the differences between the bills and seeking advice about how to proceed. My understanding is that the call was made either by the Speaker of the House to the President or by the senior staff of the Speaker to the senior staff of the President.

I would like to know whether my understanding is correct. If it is, the implications are serious.

The Presentment Clause of the U.S. Constitution states that before a bill can become law, it must be passed by both Houses of Congress.[3] When the President took the oath of office, he swore to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," which includes the Presentment Clause. If the President signed the Reconciliation Act knowing its constitutional infirmity, he would in effect be placing himself above the Constitution.

I do not raise this issue lightly. Given the gravity of the matter and the unusual circumstances surrounding the Reconciliation Act, Congress and the public need a straightforward explanation of what the President and his staff knew on February 8, when the legislation was signed into law.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman Ranking Minority Member

Enclosure

[1] See Letter from Rep. Henry A. Waxman to Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Feb. 14, 2006).

[2] See Letter from CBO Acting Director Donald Marron to Rep. John M. Spratt, Jr. (Feb. 13, 2006).

[3] U.S. Constitution, Article I, � 7.

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