George Galloway talks about Israel and Palestine with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
For Part 2, click here
For Part 3, click here
Newswire:
Monday, October 30, 2006
George Galloway talks about Israel and Palestine with the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
For Part 2, click here
For Part 3, click here
Like habeas corpus last week, Keith eulogized the death of "stay the course" last night by taking a look back at all the good times we've had together. From Reagan, Bush 41 and Dana Carvey to Bill Frist, Joe Lieberman and Bush 43, Keith takes us on a stroll down memory lane to pay tribute to the passing of one of our (least) favorite mainstay rhetorical strategies.Video WMP
You knew Holy Joe had to be in there somewhere amongst the sea of Republicans...
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
By Robert Fisk | The Independent
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples. More...
UK, EU crackdown on "spreading propaganda," mirrors U.S. assault on Internet freedom
Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com
Bush administration efforts to infiltrate, misdirect, regulate and pollute the Internet with Neo-Con propaganda, as well as their openly stated agenda to target American bloggers as terrorists, is now being aped by the British government across the pond as well as other major European countries.Home Secretary John Reid met with ministers from the six largest European Union countries and, according to a BBC report, "agreed to work together to make the internet a "more hostile" place for terrorists." More...
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Crooks and Liars
Keith issued arguably his most powerful Special Comment yet tonight. This time he takes on the GOP's newest fearmongering ad which quotes Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri superimposed over pictures of explosions with the sound of a ticking bomb in the background. As if that wasn't enough, it's topped off with the cryptic message echoing LBJ's 1960 "Daisy" ad that ran just once: These are the stakes.
In my opinion, the most important point Keith makes concerns the recent uproar over the video CNN showed this week of a sniper attack on US troops in Iraq. House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter and Congressman Brian Bilbray have come out strong against it calling it a "terrorist snuff film" yet they seem to have no problem with a RNC ad which is really nothing short of a terrorist propaganda film itself.
WakeUpFromYourSlumber Blog
Everybody, especially our [s]elected officials, talk about how freedom isn't free.
The desired implication, of course, is that 'we the [working] people' must sacrifice our lives to maintain it. But, did you ever ask yourself why?
If people are 'born free', then why must we fight to remain free? More importantly, exactly WHO or WHAT are we supposed to be fighting?
Or better yet, why (if Americans are so free) do we work all our lives to attain 'financial freedom'?
Is this the same freedom that we fight for with guns and F16s? What's the deal?
I smell a rat. More...
Monday, October 23, 2006
Bush claims he needs NSA wire tapping to break up terrorist networks but terrorists are not using the phone network Bush is tapping. They are using private voice over IP internet phones (VoIP) that can't be tapped. This video explains how it works
By Matthew Parris | The Times
HARK — CAN YOU hear it? Borne on the wind, can you hear the sounds of construction — of hammers hammering and woodsaws sawing? And do you detect a note of panic? I do. The good ship Neocon is going down. She has struck the Iraqi rocks, the engine room is awash, and on the deck in anxious pursuit of something to float them away is a curious assembly.
Her Majesty’s Brigade of Neocon Columnists and Leader Writers mingles with much of the elite of British politics. The new Labour Cabinet and its courtiers and most of the Opposition’s front bench rub shoulders with Fleet Street’s finest. Is that David Aaronovitch I see, hammer in hand? Jack Straw is handing him the nails. There’s Michael Gove scribbling notes while Danny Finkelstein rips a blank sheet from a discarded do-it-yourself regime change manual, and ponders a hastily sketched design. Willie Shawcross has the saw and Tim Hames and Margaret Beckett are ripping planks from the deck. Gordon Brown skulks behind the mast as those unlikely bedfellows, Matthew d’Ancona, of The Spectator, and Johann Hari, of The Independent, assemble what timber they can find.
They are building a lifeboat for their reputations. The task is urgent. It is no small thing to find oneself on the wrong side of an argument when the debate is about the biggest disaster in British foreign policy since Suez; no small thing to have handed Iran a final, undreamt-of victory in an Iran-Iraq war that we thought had ended in the 1980s; no small thing to have lost Britain her credit in half the world; no small thing — in the name of Atlanticism — to have shackled our own good name to a doomed US presidency and crazed foreign-policy adventure that the next political generation in America will remember only with an embarrassed shudder. More...
Sean Smith, the Guardian's award-winning war photographer, spent nearly six weeks with the 101st Division of the US army in Iraq. Watch his haunting observational film that explodes the myth around the claims that the Iraqis are preparing to take control of their own country.
Contains some strong language.
Slideshow: Sean Smith in Iraq
Special report: Iraq
YouTube.com
Why was the head of the Pakistani Intelligence Service (the ISI, comparable to the U.S. CIA) in Washington D.C. meeting with top Bush Administration officials on September 10, 2001, the same day he wired $100,000 to alleged "lead hijacker" Mohamed Atta?
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Bush junta deploys Osama campaign videos to frighten sheep into tacitly supporting unitary decidership
Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com
The Bush junta has potentially unveiled its "October surprise" in a desperate last gasp effort to salvage its power monopoly, a rash of lavishly funded campaign videos in which Osama Bin Laden is used to threaten Americans with terror attacks unless they vote Republican in the mid-term elections.The Associated Press reports,
"The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland."
"The ad displays an array of quotes from bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, that include bin Laden's Dec. 26, 2001 vow that "what is yet to come will be even greater."
The Neo-Fascists have employed their most loyal servant - Osama Bin Laden - to star in campaign videos threatening the American people with armageddon unless they tacitly approve the occupational dictatorship of George W. Bush. More...
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
By John Perry | OpEdNews.com
The gutless purveyors of fraud trying to shout down the 9/11 Truth movement are not going to like this news. The "official" story is on life support, and the prognosis is not good.
A new New York Times/CBS poll reveals that only 16 percent of Americans think they're being told the whole truth about 9/11, down from 21 percent in May of 2002. Over this same period, the number who believe the administration is "hiding something" has actually decreased from 65 to 53 percent, which might seem odd, but only until you take into account that the ranks of those who think the Bush crime family is "mostly lying" has skyrocketed from 8 to 28 percent. Feelings are getting stronger. Skepticism is giving way to certainty. The 9/11 Truth Movement is growing exponentially.
This growth appears to be striking nerves in the "debunker" community. They're no longer just laughing feebly and attempting to toss us into the imaginary dustbin of negative connotations with labels like "conspiracy theorists", "paranoid liberals" and "clown shoe conspiradroids" (which I'm sure somebody spent hours coming up with and thinks is really clever).
It now seems that we are beginning to move from stage one of nineteenth century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's three stages of truth, which is ridicule, to stage two, which is violent opposition (stage three is acceptance of the truth as being self-evident). This is apparent in the fact that many in the "debunking" crowd have now taken to equating us with people who deny the Holocaust. That's right folks, we're "9/11 deniers".
These goons can't even make their propaganda make sense. How can a movement of millions seeking the truth about and justice for 9/11 possibly be called deniers? Why would we be seeking answers for something that we're supposedly denying? More...
Monday, October 16, 2006
Luciana Bohne, Online Journal Associate Editor
There is no longer any doubt that Bush's policy in Iraq is facilitating genocide. The recent Lancet study makes that very clear.
Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq was a premeditated and documentable conspiracy to subvert the peace -- a crime for which the Nazi elites were hanged. The war crimes Nuremberg Tribunal, Protocol, and Principles would have no qualms calling the invasion of Iraq "the supreme crime," a crime from which all other war crimes have derived, including genocide.
The war against Iraq was, as far as international law is concerned, the mother of all crimes. It violated the Constitution two, three times over, starting with violating the UN Charter, which is the "supreme law of [our] land," according to the Constitution, and encompasses the principles of the Nuremberg Judgment. The occupation violated the Geneva Conventions against mistreatment of prisoners. It violated the Geneva and Hague Conventions on the occupier's obligations 1) by failing to provide Iraqis with security and basic services, while at the same time disbanding the Iraqi army, 2) by failing to safeguard the sites of their national patrimony (National Library, museums, etc), 3) by attempting to sell off Iraqi assets, banks, services to foreign bidders 4) by altering Iraq's tax laws without representation (Bremer's "Orders"). Now comes evidence of national dying on a genocidal scale from the Lancet study.
We live in a grotesque rogue state. Its disregard for law and human life endangers the planet, yet the larger the crime grows the less we are able to fathom it. A terrible numbness envelops us. We are becoming one of "them" -- the freaks at the helm. Or, are we hoping that "elections" will deliver us from evil? We have to realize, sooner rather than later, that the only thing that stands between the horror and their victims is our willingness to oppose it. This empire thing will not stop by electing the Democrats: they
have never opposed this war. They will send more troops; they will expend more funds; they will tell more lies.
Unless they start to fear us.
We say we "support the troops." Do we know what that means?
It means supporting the death and injury not only of nearly 3,000 US troops and 20,000 casualties but also the death of over 650,000 Iraqis, the detention, torture, and disappearance of an unknown number of others, and the projected partition of the country.
It means supporting genocide by denying it. Five hundred Iraqis per day have been dying since 19 March 2003, when Bush decided to despoil, rape, plunder, poison, bomb, torture and steal Iraq from Iraqis because they were oppressed by Saddam Hussein.
It means supporting George Bush, the humanoid predator in the White House, who sneered at the Lancet's study, referring to the results as "whatever they guessed at" -- and that was just before he added as an afterthought that the "innocent" death of Iraqis concerned him greatly.
It means supporting the US bullets that directly killed about 150,000 Iraqi men, women, and children, or 31 percent of the Lancet's total estimated deaths. The Lancet study, based on cluster sampling, used the standard methodology employed to estimate mortality in cases of conflict and disasters.
Bush's Operation Iraqi Freedom has liberated Iraq of 2.5 percent of its population in three years. Is the world better off without Saddam? I wouldn't ask an Iraqi that question!
France has just passed a bill in the lower chamber, proposing to make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide of 1.5 million people by the Turkish government in WWW I. The war in Iraq is half way to that number, and the warmongers are saying they won't pull out until 2010 or 2011 (though I wouldn't hold my breath; the US has 60 nuclear warheads in bases in South Korea, half a century after that war, and a similar number on Italian bases; it never "leaves"). If one adds 1.5 million Iraqis killed by the US sanction regime (1990-2003) and now over half a million killed as a result of the US occupation regime we're way over the number of people who died in the Armenian holocaust -- and the fat lady has not sung yet!
It means supporting more than 50 percent unemployment and 100 percent anarchy in crucial parts of Iraq.
It means war crimes such as the destruction of cities such as Falluja, Ramadi, Tel-afar and others.
It means one Iraqi child in four suffering from malnutrition.
It means a cost of $500 billion for the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq thus far while US citizens have scant defenses against natural disasters and catastrophic illness.
It means no end in sight.
It is time we ask the butchers in the White House a question the poet W.H. Auden asked in verse about another war: "To save your world you asked this man to die:/Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?" (Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier)
Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at lbohne@edinboro.edu.
Will 84% Of Americans remain content with a lying, exploitative and criminal government?
Steve Watson | Infowars.net
This past weekend saw the release of a new opinion poll revealing that 84% of Americans do not believe what the government says about the attacks on 9/11. Whilst this indicates a monumental awakening, it also means that there must now be a co-ordinated effort to secure a true independent inquiry, and the subsequent removal from office and punishment of those who have consistently lied about and exploited 9/11 - including the President.
Unless there is a great push for this and it actually happens, then we must face the possibility that the people of America are wiling to put up with a government that they know is lying to them. The poll indicates that there has been a huge growth of very healthy skepticism in the US. People are turning to alternative news sources and realizing that they are not getting the whole story on 9/11. This skepticism must now be transformed into activism.
According to the new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks:
"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%"
Furthermore a recent Zogby poll indicated that 44% of Americans think the Bush administration exploited 9/11 to attack Iraq.
This is extremely encouraging, yet, as Kurt Nimmo has asserted:
"First and foremost, it is rather pathetic that millions of people would tolerate a president who tells lies, especially in regard to something as horrific as nine eleven and the invasion of Iraq, where more than a half million people have died violently over the last three years. It is heartening to know nearly 30 percent of Americans realize Bush and his neocon handlers are liars. But that said, it is disheartening to realize they are either unwilling or incapable of doing anything about it."
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"TerrorStorm sets a new standard in documentary filmmaking.
Alex Jones knocks it out of the park yet again." -Dylan Avery, Director, "Loose Change"
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Nimmo is correct, 84% is an impressive figure but there is a distinct difference between having an opinion and doing something about it. So what must be done?
The mainstream media will first attempt to ignore this. We must not allow them to ignore it. The previous Zogby polls and the Howard Scripps polls were widely covered, why should this one be any different? The first course of action should be to simply get this story covered.
The mainstream media will be reluctant to cover this primarily because it dissolves the myth that they are still the authority on the spread of information and the truth. For the MSM to cover this story would be akin to shooting itself in the foot, admitting that people have turned to the alternative media because the mainstream does not cover what really happened and has not covered it for a long long time.
Alex Jones routinely calls into mainstream radio shows and gets attacked by the Neocon controlled hosts, yet virtually no callers disagree.
The official story of 9/11 is on artificial life support. The only thing keeping it alive is the the illusion that those who question it and are demanding the truth are in the minority. The latest scientific poll could be the final nail in the coffin of the official MSM propelled 9/11 propaganda.
John Perry at Oped News hits the nail on the head in his article today:
"It now seems that we are beginning to move from stage one of nineteenth century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's three stages of truth, which is ridicule, to stage two, which is violent opposition (stage three is acceptance of the truth as being self-evident). This is apparent in the fact that many in the "debunking" crowd have now taken to equating us with people who deny the Holocaust. That's right folks, we're "9/11 deniers".
These goons can't even make their propaganda make sense. How can a movement of millions seeking the truth about and justice for 9/11 possibly be called deniers? Why would we be seeking answers for something that we're supposedly denying?"
As we reported on Saturday, the next step is to use the majority opinion as leverage towards officially changing the record of what happened on 9/11, forcing the mainstream media into addressing the issue, not as a quirky news item, but as a serious re-defining of the state of the nation and the world today.
We have not taken the country back yet and the cabal that has taken control of the government continues to systematically use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to destroy the Constitutional foundations of law and order in America.
Remember that the majority of American voters now believe the Sept. 11 terrorist attack was a more significant historical event than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. We need to make sure that the history books reflect the truth about 9/11, a truth they do not reflect about Pearl Harbor.
Beyond this initial action we must push for the formation of a 9/11 Legal Action organization and commencement of criminal indictments following the likely Republican loss of Congress in November.
Mike Rivero of whatreallyhappened.com today pointed out on the Alex Jones show that we are living very dangerous times. Although 84% has to be a deterrent to anyone planning another 9/11 style deception, Bush may hit the panic button if Congress moves to the Democrat authority this November.
Public opinion is so against the criminal government now that even election fraud would not be able tip the balance in their favour anymore.
The country is being given a choice, do we go along with this, knowingly or do we do something about it?
Either we ignore the criminals and let them carry out attacks or we expose them and stand a chance of winning and salvaging liberty. It really does come down to a choice of quietly giving away our freedoms and never getting them back or forcing the criminal faction of the government into the open and standing a chance of retaining liberty. It's a risky business because in a way we must force them to act like despots. Things may a get a lot worse before they get better, but this is the only way freedom shall prevail.
Detainee has not been charged, not seen as a threat, but is behind bars
AP | Associated Press
 |
Ali Partovi, the last of about 1200 Arab and Muslim men swept up in the U.S. in the two months following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, is still in an immigration detention center. |
In a jail cell at an immigration detention center in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, not considered a danger to society.
But he has been in custody for five years.
His name is Ali Partovi. And according to the Department of Homeland Security, he is the last to be held of about 1,200 Arab and Muslim men swept up by authorities in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
There has been no full accounting of all of these individuals. Nor has a promised federal policy to protect against unrestricted sweeps been produced.
Human rights groups tried to track the detainees; members of Congress denounced the arrests. They all believed that all of those who had been arrested had been deported, released or processed through the criminal justice system.
Just this summer, it was reported that an Algerian man, Benemar "Ben" Benatta, was the last detainee, and that his transfer to Canada had closed the book on the post-9/11 sweeps.
But now The Associated Press has learned that at least one person — Partovi — is still being held. The Department of Homeland Security insists he really is the last one in custody.
"Certainly it's not our goal as an agency to keep anyone detained indefinitely," said DHS spokesman Dean Boyd. Boyd said the department would like to remove Partovi from the United States but that he refuses to return to his homeland of Iran.
And so he remains, a curious remnant of a desperate time.
Arrests now, questions later
Within hours of the Sept. 11 attacks — before it was even clear if they were over — the FBI was ordered to identify the terrorists who had managed to slip so smoothly into American society and to catch anyone who might have been working with them. The FBI operation was called PENTTBOM; it was swift and fierce, and the stakes couldn't have been higher.
When in doubt, the orders came, arrest now and ask questions later. To make this easier, law enforcement officials were authorized to use immigration charges as needed. The risk of allowing terrorists to slip away just because there wasn't ample evidence to hold them on terror charges could not be tolerated. And thus hundreds of individuals who were not terrorists, nor associated with terrorists, were temporarily taken into city, county and federal custody.
They were caught in their bedrooms while they slept, pulled from the restaurant kitchens where they worked, stopped at the border, even federal offices where they had gone to seek help. In the end, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's call for "aggressive detentions" in the unprecedented sweeps netted more than 1,200 individuals in less than two months.
The initial reaction to the sweeps was confusion. Members of Congress, leading civil rights organizations, Arab and Muslim activists, even the Justice Department's internal watchdogs, didn't know how to react.
"After 9/11, everyone was caught off guard. There was so much secrecy surrounding the government's policies that it took a number of months before the public and civil-liberties groups began unraveling what the government was doing," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.
Then came demands, from Congress, from the Justice Department's Inspector General, from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch and from Arab and Muslim activists, that these individuals must be accounted for.
To date that hasn't occurred.
"The fact is the United States has not come forward with information on what happened to these people, or released their names," said Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, an advocacy organization that represents several detainees being held in Guantanamo. "Our understanding is that the majority of these people who were swept up on immigration violations were then held in detention until they were cleared of any connection to terrorism. We believe that accounts for the vast majority of people who were swept up."
Immigration violation charges issued
Here's what is known: 762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism. Partovi was one of these 762. Much as Partovi used a false passport, nearly all of these detainees had violated immigration laws, either by overstaying their visas, entering the country illegally, or violating some other immigration law.
Unlike Partovi, almost everyone was either deported or released within a few months.
There were still at least 438 other individuals who were not accounted for. Most of those individuals, said Justice Department officials, were released within days. But at least 93 were charged with federal crimes and processed through the courts, and an unknown number were deemed material witnesses.
As the years passed, said the ACLU's Gelernt, public concern faded.
"Initially there was a lot of attention on the 1,200 people, but we're still not sure exactly what happened to all of them," said the ACLU's Gelernt.
The repercussions are still being felt, say advocates.
"Those 1,200 were taken in on pseudo-immigration charges," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "It really is a black mark on the U.S. and it undermines our intelligence gathering because it creates distrust between law enforcement officials and communities where those officials should be building rapport and trust."
"People lost years of their lives and families were ripped apart in the frenzy of fear," said Kerri Sherlock, director of policy and planning at the Rights Working Group, an advocacy organization in Washington D.C. "Do we really want to be a country that locks people up without guaranteeing their basic constitutional rights?"
In June 2003, the Justice Department's inspector general, an in-house auditor, found widespread abuses in the way immigration laws were used to hold people suspected of terrorism in the months following 9/11. The inspector general made 21 recommendations aimed at protecting individuals' civil rights. Twenty of those recommendations have been adopted.
The last recommendation calls for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to formalize policies, responsibilities, and procedures for managing a national emergency that involves alien detainees. After the inspector general's report, the Justice and Homeland Security departments agreed with the recommendation and began negotiating over language. Officials at both departments say those negotiations are still going on.
"The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice continue to work toward the development of formal joint policies and approaches for the handling of such national security cases during periods of national impact," said Homeland Security Department spokesman Dean Boyd.
Rights decided case-by-case
However, Boyd stressed that guidelines were set up in 2004 to make sure detainees' rights are being protected on a case-by-case basis.
"We learned from the past," he said. "We evaluate each situation to make sure it's being handled fairly."
Tim Lynch, a lawyer with the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, said guidelines are not enough.
"I don't think the guidelines will mean very much in an emergency if they don't have the binding force of law," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised if those guidelines aren't followed if there's another massive attack."
When the AP wrote Ali Partovi to ask for an interview, he called collect from the Florence Correctional Center, a privately run detention center in Arizona where he is held. Adamantly, he said he did not want to be interviewed and that he wanted to remain private, even though he said understood his case files, including litigation he files himself, are part of the public record.
He later reportedly told a public affairs officer at the facility that he is too busy for an interview — perhaps preparing his many legal appeals.
Suing for up to $10 million
In his lawsuits — there have been seven so far — Partovi claims he is a victim of civil rights abuses and demands between $5 million and $10 million in restitution. The most recent was filed in July.
The staff at the jail where he was first held "poured hot coffee on my body, they also poured cold ice water on my body," he wrote in one, claiming that staffers also cuffed his hands and feet, which caused "my ankle and lower extremities to swell abnormally."
"It is my firm belief that I am constantly subjected to physical abuse (because) of my ethnicity, I am Iranian of Persian birth," he wrote in another, filed this summer. In that lawsuit he claimed that immigration officers forced him to kneel while handcuffed, and then kicked and punched his stomach and kidneys.
"As you can imagine, this is very, very painful when you are cuffed from behind," he wrote.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney said that office was aware of the lawsuits but could not comment on them. A detention center spokesman said he was not aware of any lawsuits and could not respond.
Refused a lawyer's help
Partovi doesn't have a lawyer, and he told the AP he doesn't want one, choosing instead to represent himself, gleaning expertise from the prison library.
He did have a lawyer once, when he was arrested in Guam in the fall of 2001, trying to enter the country on a fraudulent Italian passport.
"Mr. Partovi came into Guam International Airport using a false passport. He explained about having been married to a Japanese women and the arrangement wasn't working out. He applied for political asylum, and I believe the federal government thought he might be a terror suspect," said Curtis Charles Van de Veld, who was hired by the federal government to represent him.
Partovi was sentenced to 175 days in custody, which he had already served by the time he pleaded guilty in 2002. Then he was turned over to the Department of Homeland Security.
Until the AP contacted him, Van de Veld didn't realize his former client was still in custody.
"I'm surprised he hasn't contacted me," he said.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Only 16% now believe official fable according to New York Times/CBS News poll
Truth Movement has the huge majority of opinion
How will the Bush Cabal react?
Steve Watson & Alex Jones | Prison Planet.com
A monumental new scientific opinion poll has emerged which declares that only 16% of people in America now believe the official government explanation of the September 11th 2001 terror attacks.
According to the new New York Times/CBS News poll, only 16% of Americans think the government is telling the truth about 9/11 and the intelligence prior to the attacks:
"Do you think members of the Bush Administration are telling the truth, are mostly telling the truth but hiding something, or are they mostly lying?
Telling the truth 16%
Hiding something 53%
Mostly lying 28%
Not sure 3%"
The 84% figure mirrors other recent polls on the same issue. A Canadian Poll put the figure at 85%. A CNN poll had the figure at 89%. Over 80% supported the stance of Charlie Sheen when he went public with his opinions on 9/11 as an inside job.
A recent CNN poll found that the percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington rose from almost a third to almost half over the past four years. This latest poll shows that that figure has again risen exponentially and now stands at well over three quarters of the population.
It took 35 plus years for the majority of Americans to wake up to the fact that the assassination of JFK was a government operation. It has only take five years for MORE Americans to wake up to the fact that 9/11 was an inside job on behalf of the Neoconservative crime syndicate within the US.
Reference to past polls show that in the last five years there has been an explosion in numbers of those who do not buy the official line.
In 2004 a Zogby Poll showed that just over half of New Yorkers believed there was a cover up.
In May of this year another Zogby poll indicated that around half of ALL Americans did not buy the official story.
The latest poll also shows a massive awakening has occurred recently given that previous estimates indicated that around 34% still believed the official story and around 30% were oblivious altogether.
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"TerrorStorm sets a new standard in documentary filmmaking. Alex Jones knocks it out of the park yet again." -Dylan Avery, Director, "Loose Change" - Click here to get the DVD or click here to watch online now!
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Alex Jones declared that the Truth movement has cause to celebrate this evening as it is now beyond any doubt that the vast majority of Americans know that the official story of 19 Saudis with box cutters is ludicrous.
The diligence of those who have worked to educate the world on 9/11 truth from day one cannot be underestimated. We are now seeing the fruits of this hard and at times extremely trying labor hit home.
We would add thought that although this is a major victory for the truth movement it does not mean that the hard work can stop.
The next step is to use the majority opinion as leverage towards officially changing the record of what happened on 9/11, forcing the mainstream media into addressing the issue, not as a quirky news item, but as a serious re-defining of the state of the nation and the world today.
We have not taken the country back yet and the cabal that has taken control of the government continues to systematically use 9/11 and the war on terror as an excuse to destroy the Constitutional foundations of law and order in America.
As it becomes clearer that more and more Americans KNOW that their government is lying to them on the most fundamental issue of their lifetimes, we must consider what kind of reaction the government will undertake.
Remember that the majority of American voters now believe the Sept. 11 terrorist attack was a more significant historical event than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In July 2001 Alex jones issued an emergency warning that there was going to be a massive false flag terrorist attack in New York to be blamed on Osama Bin Laden. At that time there was not enough activism among the population to prevent it going ahead.
In August of 2006 Alex Jones issued a second emergency warning that all the factors pointed towards an imminent attack. The activism that occurred in the wake of this warning and that of others was exponential and may indeed have helped stave off another attack.
Our next warning is this, desperate times call for desperate measures. The criminal elements of the government now know that they have been totally exposed and are reviled by the majority of free thinking Americans. Will their response be to vamp up the crack down on that free thinking itself?
In essence Americans have outright REJECTED giving up their liberty for security in the wake of 9/11. The only security IS liberty itself, and the only way to stay secure is to constantly defend liberty.
By Henry Makow Ph.D.
It appears that China has outflanked George Jr. and the Neo Cons and stymied NWO plans for world hegemony based on controlling Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil.
By getting its proxy North Korea to menace South Korea and Japan, China has saved Iran and written the epitaph for the US in Iraq. America cannot pursue its Middle East strategy while contending with another war in North East Asia.
While a US carrier group steamed toward Iran (because of its nuclear research,) North Korea was exploding nuclear weapons and threatening to attack Japan and the US! Nothing could better demonstrate the bankruptcy of Bush's foreign policy.
In the terms of Brezinzki's "Grand Chessboard" this is "checkmate" to the US and Israel, pawns of London-based central bankers. The US has already withdrawn from Al Anbar province. Withdrawal from the rest of Iraq is now just a matter of time.
I watch the network news for the spin, not for the "information," and Friday the spin was new. CBS had a panel of elite talking heads addressing the subject:" How can we get out of Iraq?"
One said and I quote, "theocracy may be the most we can hope for; liberal democracy is impossible." Hello!? The US can take credit for putting Iranian Ayatollahs in power!
On Tuesday morning, the Iraqi Resistance blew up the main US arsenal in Baghdad killing hundreds of Americans and destroying a billion dollars in arms. That was real news, so it wasn't reported.
As you know, the British army Chief of Staff said Britain needs to get out of Iraq. US generals are also in revolt. US politicians said we need to negotiate with Iran. You get the picture. The Neo-Con controlled US foreign policy is in disarray. All that remains is face saving. The easy money has been made. It's time to fold.
It's very possible China is also controlled by the Illuminati, and that the US-Chinese rivalry will eventually end in world war.
But in the meantime I hope those responsible for the Iraq fiasco will be repudiated. The Democrats will be net beneficiaries although they are equally responsible. We may get a breather for a couple of years while the NWO bankers discover other ways to bury Western civilization and take away our freedom.
Freedom under occupation makes Saddam Hussein look like Nelson Mandela in comparison
Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com
A new study published by The Lancet estimates that 655,000 Iraqis, the vast majority of them innocent civilians, have been killed as a result of the bombing and occupation of Iraq. Was this a human price worth paying for the supposed liberation of an oppressed people? How does freedom in Iraq under Bush's mandate compare with Saddam Hussein's regime?
"We've always said it could be days, weeks, or months and we don't know. And I don't think you need a timetable. What you really need to know is it's going to end and it's going to end with the Iraqi people liberated."
Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003.
"Thanks to the United States, there are now 15 million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq liberated by your courageous leadership and decision to liberate us, Mr. President."
President Talabani of Iraq, September 13, 2005.
"Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country."
George W. Bush, Sept. 23, 2003.
"Just in this administration, we've liberated 50 million people from the Taliban in Afghanistan and from Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- two terribly oppressive regimes that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their own people."
Dick Cheney, May 31, 2005.
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The claim that Iraq is now liberated and that its people have suffered for the glorious opportunity of seeing democracy and freedom flourish throughout their country is the last thread the Neo-Cons are hanging onto as claims of weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda ties evaporated long ago. Yet to claim Iraq is liberated is the most absurd of any of the justifications for going to war or "staying the course."
Here's a rundown of the gracious liberties the Iraqi people have been afforded.
RIGHT TO PROTEST
- Iraqis are routinely arrested and taken to Abu Ghraib style detention facilities for the crime of "showing dislike" to their occupiers. In one case this involved an individual holding up a protest placard. In another incident, an Iraqi had his mouth taped over and was arrested for "making anti-coalition statements." In some cases, protesters are simply gunned down and killed. The media are banned from reporting on protests. Not even Palestinians are subject to this kind of treatment.
- In legalese resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, the Iraqi government has criminalized criticism and even ridicule of the government or any of its officials. Ridiculing is defined as exposing corruption or questioning the actions of government officials. Iraq's new government considers itself to be so democratic that dissent is unnecessary - so they've outlawed it!
PROTECTION FROM UNLAWFUL SEARCHES AND SEIZURES
- Iraqis are kidnapped and thrown in some of the same dungeons used by Saddam Hussein for the crime of not showing their papers at checkpoints. Those who cite the threat of car bombs as the necessity which mandates this should recall the incident where British SAS personnel were caught dressed up as Arabs with fake wigs and garb attacking a police station.
- Iraqi's homes are routinely raided and all military age men arrested.
RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS
- Immediately after the invasion and occupation, all Iraqis were ordered to turn in their guns or face arrest. Iraqis enjoyed universal arms ownership under Saddam Hussein.
INSTANT EXTRA-JUDICIAL PUNISHMENT
- Petty thieves who steal such things as firewood have their vehicles crushed by U.S. Abrams tanks as punishment.
- The UN's chief anti-torture expert recently said that cases of torture in Iraq outstripped those under Saddam Hussein and that the situation was "out of control." The outgoing UN human rights chief Dr. John Pace dropped a bombshell when he told an obscure Maltese newspaper that as many as a thousand detainees a month are being tortured to death in Iraq.
- Iraqis are subject to "collective punishment" - an staple fascist model - whereby U.S. forces kill ten men from one village in response to a single U.S. army casualty.
- Multiple videos have surfaced which show U.S. military personnel driving down Iraqi highways and randomly assassinating drivers on a whim and then laughing and high-fiving. Other videos show U.S. forces zealously finishing off wounded Iraqis with glee, declaring the carnage "awesome" and anticipating the next kill. Another video shows troops bemoaning the fact that they are not able to shoot children who throw rocks.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
- Arab television networks and newspapers that do not obediently tow the line of the occupation are raided and shut down and editors are sometimes gunned down on the street. The U.S. military plants propaganda in newspapers as a matter of course.
- A pre-war policy outlined the intention of the U.S. military to target for assassination any independent reporter who was not embedded within U.S. ranks. Since that order more journalists have been killed in Iraq than the entirety of the Vietnam war - the latest being British ITV reporter Terry Lloyd, who was shot in the head by U.S. troops. Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, was shot dead after uncovering evidence of U.S. mass graves.
- "Dozens of Iraqi journalists have been kidnapped by criminal gangs or detained by the American military, on suspicion that they are helping Sunni insurgents or Shiite militias. One, Bilal Hussein, who photographed insurgents in Anbar Province for The Associated Press, has been in American custody without charges since April," reported the New York Times.
DEMOCRACY
- Local elections and in provincial cities and towns across Iraq were cancelled in favor of U.S. "hand-picked mayors and administrators," that were formerly part of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
RIGHT TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE
- Iraqis are subject to snap announcements of curfews and ordered to remain in their homes.
Iraq is nothing more than an elected dictatorship.
Sounds like another country a bit closer to home.
YouTube
Keith reveals the bush administrations truest innermost feelings of Christianity. Of course we all knew that already. Bush and most of his staff are skull and bones, a satanic secret society at yale university.
Friday, October 13, 2006
By Charles Sullivan
"Information Clearing House" -- -- It is evident to me that the United States government believes that any individual or group of people that works to prevent it from implementing its agenda are terrorists. Furthermore, I contend that the government’s plan is not the people’s agenda; but some of us will be required to sacrifice our lives in order to help them execute their will, and all of us will be required to sacrifice our freedoms.
I also contend that the government overwhelmingly represents the interests of wealth and power; that its strength is derived from corporate bribes, rather than from grass roots populist support; that it exists to execute a Plutocratic agenda of world domination, while neglecting the needs of the overwhelming majority of the people.
I charge that the government is engaged in immoral and criminal conduct on a global scale. That it does not conform to the norms of civil society; that it is sociopathic, and flagrantly violates domestic and international law. The form of government that we have does not serve the citizenry—it preys upon them. It is not a government of the people, for the people. It is government of the corporations, for the corporations, by the corporations—a corporate Plutocracy.
The sole purpose of Plutocratic government is to spread the gospel of free market economics and privatized wealth, and to extend the hegemony of capitalism to every corner of the earth. Its god is the almighty dollar. Championed by right wing extremists, it is equally endorsed by cowering neo-liberals in Congress. Its funding is derived from corporate sources and extorted tax contributions from the citizenry.
I contend that the government routinely breaches the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that it was sworn to uphold; and that it circumvents domestic law through the frequent use of presidential signing statements that effectively render civil law null and void. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Acts that resulted in the suspension of habeas corpus, passed into law with the aide of fourteen Democrats, is beyond onerous—it is morally vacuous and criminal.
The executive branch of the government, in particular, has run amok; it disdains the daily struggles of ordinary citizens, and is engaged in class warfare against its own, and the world’s working people. It conducts terrorist attacks on its own citizens, and against civilians abroad.
It is widely known abroad that the U.S. government is practicing extraordinary rendition in order to torture, maim, and kill its suspected enemies; it imprisons innocent people all over the world indefinitely, without due process and without charging them with any crime.
We bear witness to the crimes of a rogue government that invades sovereign nations, bombs their cities into piles of rubble, murders with impunity, imposes harsh economic sanctions, denies women and children life saving medical treatment, and steals their oil and mineral wealth. Hypocritically, it calls those who resist occupation, terrorists.
I further contend that the government is engaged in a campaign of unlawfully monitoring the communications of its citizens, including the infiltration of Quaker religious orders that preach doctrines of peace over those of war, and is increasingly stifling free speech and the right of peaceful assembly. Our hard won civil liberties are giving way to an emerging police state. The prying eyes of paranoid government are everywhere.
Thus we are left with an illicit government that routinely commits crimes against humanity under the pretense of executing a war on terror. To its eternal shame, it has unleashed the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Pentagon upon its own citizens without just cause. These agencies are monitoring our computers, tapping our phones, and tracking our movements not to protect America from terrorists, but to protect the Plutocracy from those who would expose it.
What does it say about a government when those who uphold the Constitution and the rule of law are targeted as enemies of the state or as terrorists? Is this what Thomas Jefferson and the framers of the constitution intended?
The assassins of truth have the audacity to feign faith in god while daily committing unholy acts of terror against peace loving people at home and abroad. With the deftness of a public relations firm, they are using religion as a weapon against a guileless flock that blithely follows its every command, even as it leads them to the slaughter of an Armageddon of its own creation.
By these acts and worse, the U.S. government defines Democracy. It has been empowered to do so by Republicans and Democrats alike.
I hereby assert that the hidden purpose of the U.S. government is not to serve the needs of the people or to make the world free and democratic, as it so boldly claims; it is to accrue ever more wealth to the obscenely rich, the global elite. Its intent is to do to the U.S. what it has done to Iraq; to revoke the Constitution and the rule of law; to bankrupt the federal treasury and to privatize everything that is publicly owned. Ultimately its objective is to pursue the religion of unregulated free market capitalism, and to establish global corporate rule.
It seems to me that any government that does not serve the people and treats those who uphold the Constitution as terrorists is not a Democracy; and we should refrain from calling it by that name. Governmental power that is not derived from, and subservient to the people, is illegitimate—a form of authoritarian dictatorship as vile as Communism.
When an institution that was purportedly created to serve the needs of the people is no longer accountable to the people, and operates in secrecy, we can be sure that sinister powers are in motion. Those responsible are not only obscuring truth and revising history; they are knowingly and willfully assassinating truth, and mocking the very idea of Democracy.
Government that is controlled by capital, rather than a moral imperative to serve the public good, is a danger to the world. Such government is not only misguided and inherently unjust; it is hostile to Democracy and opposed to peace.
A government of the people would have a very different agenda than a Plutocratic regime. It would provide no cost health care to its citizens, free higher education to anyone who wants it; and it would not squander the federal treasury on unprovoked war that will not end in our lifetimes. Such a government would not overthrow democratically elected governments abroad. Nor would it throw its support behind terrorist states like Israel, and it would not finance brutal dictatorships like Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, as has been the history of the American government.
Democracies do not betray its citizens by outsourcing jobs to sweat shops in other parts of the world in order to maximize corporate profits and to drive down wages. They do not wage war on sovereign nations based upon lies and innuendo; they do not occupy other countries, and they do not plan additional wars and occupations at the behest of corporate lobbyists against nations that pose no threat to them.
Democracies do not sentence their youth to fight and die under false pretenses in order to open sovereign nations to corporate plunder and capitalism.
Plutocracy, I contend, is the outgrowth of the capitalist system that values private profits above all else. Under this sickly paradigm people are dehumanized; reduced to mere commodities on a par with a lump of coal or a pool of oil. It is a system that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing; and it is driven by insatiable greed.
Democracies derive their power from the people, all people being equal, and the distribution of wealth being equal. Plutocracies derive their power from the private ownership of immense wealth and property that represents a small percentage of the aggregate population. In the capitalist system, only those with wealth and property have legal standing and representation in government. All others are second class citizens with second class rights and subservient to the Plutocracy. It is about time that we learn the difference.
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, free lance writer and social activist residing in the hinterland of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@phreego.com
By Deborah Haynes | Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - The head of Britain's army said the presence of British troops in Iraq was exacerbating the security situation on the ground and they should be withdrawn soon, according to a British newspaper.
General Sir Richard Dannatt also said in an interview with the Daily Mail newspaper that Britain's Iraq venture was aggravating the security threat elsewhere in the world.
In unusually blunt comments for a serving senior officer, Dannatt told the Friday edition of the newspaper that the troops should "get ... out sometime soon because our presence exacerbates the security problems".
Britain, Washington's main ally in Iraq, has around 7,000 soldiers deployed, mainly in the south of the country.
The U.S.-led invasion to oust former president Saddam Hussein has come under heavy criticism, as the civilian death-toll mounts and British and U.S. troops are increasingly in the firing line.
Dannatt, who took over as Chief of the General Staff in August, said: "We are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear. As a foreigner, you can be welcomed by being invited in a country, but we weren't invited certainly by those in Iraq at the time.
"The military campaign we fought in 2003 effectively kicked the door in. Whatever consent we may have had in the first place, may have turned to tolerance and has largely turned to intolerance. That is a fact. I don't say that the difficulties we are experiencing round the world are caused by our presence in Iraq but undoubtedly our presence in Iraq exacerbates them."
Putting himself directly at odds with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush, the general criticized the post-invasion planning by the U.S.-led coalition.
"I think history will show that the planning for what happened after the initial successful war fighting phase was poor, probably based more on optimism than sound planning."
"The original intention was that we put in place a liberal democracy that was an exemplar for the region, was pro-West and might have a beneficial effect on the balance within the Middle East. That was the hope, whether that was a sensible or naive hope history will judge. I don't think we are going to do that. I think we should aim for a lower ambition."
The Ministry of Defense declined to comment immediately on the comments. A spokesman at Blair's office was not immediately available to comment.
In a snapshot of the daily chaos plaguing Iraq, gunmen stormed a television station in Baghdad on Thursday and shot dead 11 staff in the biggest attack yet on media in the country.
Iraqi media organizations, funded by religious or political groups, are frequent targets for militant groups as attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents and sectarian death squads continue to convulse the country, killing an estimated 100 people a day.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
By Douglas Herman
Two kinds of 9-11 truth deniers (debunkers) exist today: Those who deny our government has the expertise to carry out the 9-11 attack, and those who deny our government is diabolical enough to do it. Both are sadly mistaken.
If you present them with the many suspicious anomalies of 9-11, they demand your proof. If you present them with proof, they deny it with scarcely a glance. If you mention the scientific laws that were broken on 9-11, they claim you are no authority. If you quote an authority, they claim he is no expert in that particular field.
All truths passes through three stages, said the philosopher Schopenauer. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Debunkers, those people who adamantly deny government involvement in the 9-11 conspiracy, who adamantly deny such a conspiracy could even occur, are stuck in the first and second stages.
At first it may seem we are battling an insurgency here. The debunkers are strong, well-organized and well-funded. They are smart. They have strength and numbers; cunning and clever intelligence. They use persuasive power and intimidation, propaganda and a network of allies.
Their strongest attribute is their sincere belief that to "debunk" your every argument--no matter how sound--is the purest form of patriotism. Indeed, Saul of Tarsus believed he was a pure, patriotic warrior for God, persecuting the early Christian believers. That is, until he reportedly got knocked off his horse and changed his name to Paul and became a believer himself.
The saddest part of our struggle with this insurgency is that many of these debunkers appear to be honest but misguided patriots. They range from diehard conservatives, believers in the US government's version of 9-11 events, to the so-called, "Left Gatekeepers," the strident liberal critics of an increasingly dictatorial state who nonetheless believe every key component of the 9-11 attack as told to them by their government. The exact same government they loudly criticize for lying to them in every other facet.
Debunkers, not content in their core beliefs, slam those of us who question any facet of 9-11. They deride us as conspiracy nuts and loonies. Or worse, desecraters and traitors.
We in the 9-11 Truth Movement are battling a desperate insurgency. Desperation is the key word; time is not on their side. They recognize the rising danger of a well-informed American citizenry. From Leftists Alexander Cockburn and Noam Chomsky to Neocon apologists and 9-11 debunkers Tucker Carlson, Hannity & Colmes and Condi Rice, they have shouldered the government's propaganda burden to suppress the rising tide of information and clarion calls that clamor for a true investigation of 9-11 events.
Recently a new columnist at Counterpunch.com attempted to debunk and defuse the many 9-11 inconsistencies in a feature, In Defense of Conspiracy: 9/11, in Theory and in Fact. Diana Johnstone wrote, "Who profits from the crime?"---but without really acknowledging any of those rich and powerful people who profitted immensely. I emailed her and she responded about a week later.
"Dear readers and critics, Thank you for your comments on my 9/11 piece...Please understand that I have been snowed under by responses -- over 50,000 words, plus attachments and web site references, still coming."
Ouch. The surging tidal wave of the 9-11 truth movement had engulfed another debunker.
But just why are debunkers good for the 9-11 truth movement? Because they serve a great purpose. And as mentioned, many of them are true patriots, good, conscientious citizens. They want what we want. Good honest government.
Perhaps the greatest benefit of so-called debunkers is that they prod, goad, ridicule and agitate. They challenge us--and who doesn't like a good challenge?---to get our 9-11 facts straight. Prodding us to dig deeper and sift the truth from the fiction. Goading us to devise more convincing arguments. Ridiculing us for embracing whatever rumor we may have heard as scientific fact. Agitating us to such a degree we stubbornly redouble our efforts.
I have one such agitator. His name is Jan Burton. I had considered spamming Jan but what he writes refreshes me, challenges me. And much of what he writes has a great deal of hard truth based on facts.
Jan is no troll, intent on simple provocation. He dares me to call those involved. He prods me. He agitates and exasperates me. If every one of us in the so-called Truth Movenment did as much prodding and goading of our local newspaper editor, US Representative or local structural engineer, would we or would we not eventually wear them down?
As Paul wore down his critics.
I believe--and I may be wrong--that behind most 9-11 deniers, most debunkers are good and decent people. Should half of them ever became convinced 9-11 was an inside job, they would become as forceful as Paul. A more powerful force for change than most of us have been.
Footnote: In my last column, "OKC & WTC: The Case For Controlled Demolition," I noted the many suspicious fires that ignited in WTC-7 (but did not ignite in the other two buildings alongside WTC-7). The FEMA report at www.WTC7.net is an interesting read. The report emphasizes the fires on floors 11-13, the Security & Exchange offices. Directly beneath the SEC were two floors of Secret Service offices (also on fire). FEMA deduces: "It is likely that fires started as a result of debris from the collapse of WTC 1." Yet no fires were reported below the seventh floor and NIST reported no debris had struck the roof. To conclude that the fires may have been purposely set--ARSON-- does not appear to dawn on these government detectives. NIST also notes that one of the first fires reported occured---where else---at mayor Giuliani's command post on the 23rd floor, the OEM, Office of Emergency Management. I suspect certain operatives were torching the building--as any GOOD detective or insurance investigater would have concluded.
By Jonathan Cook
Information Clearing House -- -- The Middle East, and possibly the world, stands on the brink of a terrible conflagration as Israel and the United States prepare to deal with Iran's alleged ambition to acquire nuclear weapons. Israel, it becomes clearer by the day, wants to use its air force to deliver a knock-out blow against Tehran. It is not known whether it will use conventional weapons or a nuclear warhead in such a strike.
At this potentially cataclysmic moment in global politics, it is good to see that one of the world's leading broadcasters, the BBC, decided this week that it should air a documentary entitled "Will Israel bomb Iran?". It is the question on everyone's lips and doubtless, with the imprimatur of the BBC, the programme will sell around the world.
The good news ends there, however. Because the programme addresses none of the important issues raised by Israel's increasingly belligerent posture towards Tehran.
It does not explain that, without a United Nations resolution, a military strike on Iran to destroy its nuclear research programme would be a gross violation of international law.
It does not clarify that Israel's own large nuclear arsenal was secretly developed and is entirely unmonitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or that it is perceived as a threat by its neighbours and may be fuelling a Middle East arms race.
Nor does the programme detail the consequences of an Israeli strike on instability and violence across the Middle East, including in Iraq, where British and American troops are stationed as an occupying force.
And there is no consideration of how in the longer term unilateral action by Israel, with implicit sanction by the international community, is certain to provoke a steep rise in global jihad against the West.
Instead the programme dedicates 40 minutes to footage of Top Gun heroics by the Israeli air force, and the recollections of pilots who carried out a similar, "daring" attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in the early 1980s; menacing long shots of Iran's nuclear research facilities; and interviews with three former Israeli prime ministers, a former Israeli military chief of staff, various officials in Israeli military intelligence and a professor who designs Israel's military arsenal.
All of them speak with one voice: Israel, they claim, is about to be "wiped out" by Iranian nuclear weapons and must defend itself "whatever the consequences".
They are given plenty of airtime to repeat unchallenged well-worn propaganda Israel has been peddling through its own media, and which has been credulously amplified by the international media: that Iran is led by a fanatical anti-Semite who, like Adolf Hitler, believes he can commit genocide against the Jewish people, this time through a nuclear holocaust.
Other Israeli misinformation, none of it believed by serious analysts, is also uncritically spread by the film-makers: that Hizbullah in Lebanon is a puppet of Iran, waiting to aid its master in Israel's destruction; that Iran is only months away from creating nuclear weapons, a "point of no return", as the programme warns; and that a "fragile" Israel is under constant threat of annihilation from all its Arab neighbours.
But the programme's unequivocal main theme -- echoing precisely Israel's own agenda -- is that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is hellbent on destroying Israel. The film-makers treat seriously, bordering on reverentially, preposterous comments from Israel's leaders about this threat.
Shimon Peres, the Israeli government's veteran roving ambassador, claims, for example, that Iran has made "a call for genocide" against Israel, compares an Iranian nuclear bomb to a "flying concentration camp", and warns that "no one would like to see a comeback to the times of the Nazis".
Cabinet minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet domestic security service, believes Israel faces "an existential threat" from Iran. And Zvi Stauber, a former senior figure in military intelligence, compares Israel's situation to a man whose neighbour "has a gun and he declares every day he is going to kill you".
But pride of place goes to Binyamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and the current leader of the opposition. He claims repeatedly that the only possible reason Iran and its president could want a nuclear arsenal is for Israel's "extermination". "If he can get away with it, he'll do it." "Ayatollahs with atombic bombs are a powerful threat to all of us." A nuclear Iran "is a threat unlike anything we have seen before. It's beyond politics" -- apparently worse than the nuclear states of North Korea and Pakistan, the latter a military dictatorship and friend of the US barely containing within its borders some of the most fanatical jihadist movements in the world.
Apart from a brief appearance by an Iranian diplomat, no countervailing opinions are entertained in the BBC programme; only Israel's military and political leadership is allowed to speak.
The documentary gives added credence to the views of Israel's security establishment by making great play of a speech by Ahmadinejad -- one with which the Israeli authorities and their allies in Washington have made endless mischief -- in which the Iranian president repeats a statement by Iran's late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that went unnoticed when first uttered.
In the BBC programme, Ahmadenijad is quoted as saying: "The regime occupying Jerusalem should be eliminated from the page of history". This is at least an improvement on the original translation, much repeated in the programme by Netanyahu and others, that "Israel must be wiped off the map".
But for some strange reason, the programme makers infer from their more accurate translation the same diabolical intent on Ahmadinejad's part as suggested by Netanyahu's fabricated version. Iran's nuclear weapons, we are told by the programme as if they are already in existence, have "presented Israel's leaders with a new order of threat". In making his speech, the BBC film argues, Ahmadinejad "issued a death sentence against Israel".
But, as has now been pointed out on numerous occasions (though clearly not often enough for the BBC to have noticed), Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were referring to the need for regime change, the ending of the regime occupying the Palestinians in violation of international law. They were not talking, as Netanyahu and co claim, about the destruction of the state of Israel or the Jewish people. The implication of the speech is that the current Israeli regime will end because occupying powers are illegitimate and unsustainable, not because Iran plans to fire nuclear missiles at the Jewish state or commit genocide.
Overlooked by the programme makers is the fact that "fragile" Israel is currently the only country in the Middle East armed with nuclear warheads, several hundred of them, as well as one of the most powerful armies in the world, which presumably make most of its neighbours feel "fragile" too, with far more reason.
And, as we are being persuaded how "fragile" Israel really is, another former prime minister, Ehud Barak, is interviewed. "Ultimately we are standing alone," he says, in apparent justification for an illegal, unilateral strike. Iran's nuclear reasearch facilities, Barak warns, are hidden deep underground, so deep that "no conventional weapon can penetrate", leaving us to infer that in such circumstances Israel will have no choice but use a tactical nuclear strike in its "self-defence". And, getting into his stride, Barak adds that some facilities are in crowded urban areas "where any attack could end up in civilian collateral damage".
But despite the terrifying scenario laid out by Israel's leaders, the BBC website cheerleads for Israel in the same manner as the programme-makers, suggesting that Israel has the right to engineer a clash of civilisations: "With America unlikely to take military action, the pressure is growing on Israel's leaders to launch a raid."
As should be clear by now, the Israeli government's fingerprints are all over this BBC "documentary". And that is hardly surprising because the man behind this "independent" production is Israel's leading film-maker: Noam Shalev.
Shalev, a graduate of a New York film school, has been making a spate of documentaries through his production company Highlight Films, based in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, that have been lapped up by the BBC and other foreign broadcasters. With the BBC's stamp of approval, it is easy for Shalev to sell his films around the world.
Shalev, who claims that he doesn't "espouse a political view", started his career by making documentaries on less controversial subjects. He has produced films on Ethiopian immigrants arriving in Israel, and on the Zaka organisation, Jewish religious fundamentalists who arrive at the scene of suicide attacks quite literally to pick up the pieces, of human remains.
In the past his films managed to bypass the reticence of broadcasters like the BBC to broach the combustible subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict outside their news programmes by touching on the topic obliquely. Importantly, however, Shalev's films always humanise his Israeli subjects, showing them as complex, emotional and caring beings, while largely ignoring the millions of Palestinians the Israeli government and army are oppressing.
According to a profile of Shalev published in the Israeli media in 2004, his success derives from the fact that he has developed a "soft-sell approach", showing Israel in a good light without "the straightforward 'hasbara' [propaganda] efforts which explain Israel's case that Israel's Foreign Ministry is required to disseminate to European and American news outlets."
In the words of an Israeli public relations executive, Shalev has a skill in telling Israel's story in ways that international broadcasters appreciate: "[Shalev] also shows the Israeli side, he is not one of those traitors who sell their ideology for money. He has the skill to market it in such a way that overseas they want to see it, and this is very important."
But recently Shalev has grown more confident to try the hard sell for Israel, apparently sure that the BBC and other foreign broadcasters will still buy his films. And that is because Shalev offers them something that other film-makers cannot: intimate access to Israel's security forces, an area off-limits to his rivals.
Before the disengagement from Gaza last year, for example, Shalev made a sympathetic documentary, shown by the BBC, about a day in the life of one Israeli soldier serving there. The film largely concealed the context that might have alerted viewers to the fact that the soldier was enforcing a four-decade illegal occupation of Gaza, or that the Strip is an open-air prison in which thousands of Palestinian have been killed by the Israeli army and in which a majority of Gazans live in abject poverty.
Interviewed about the documentary, Shalev observed: "The army really is very, very careful. There is no indiscriminate firing. I saw, and this was not a show put on just for us, that before any shot is fired there is confirmation that there is nobody behind or in front of the objective. The army is very sensitive to non-deliberate fire."
In other words, Shalev's film for the BBC shed no light on why Israel's "deliberate" fire has killed hundreds of Palestinian children during the second intifada or why a large number of civilians have died from Israeli gunfire and missile strikes inside the Gaza Strip.
Earlier this year Shalev made another film for the BBC, "The Hunt for Black October", to coincide with the release of Stephen Spielberg's movie Munich. "The BBC gains exclusive access to the undercover Mossad agents assigned to track down the Palestinian group responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics," the BBC was able to glow in its promotional material.
Shalev's latest film, "Will Israel bomb Iran?", follows this well-trodden path. Arabs and Muslims are again deprived of a voice, as are non-Israeli experts.
So why did the BBC buy this blatant piece of propaganda?
Here are a few clues. Shalev's film includes:
* footage taken from inside Hizbullah bunkers under the supervision of the Israeli army as it occupied south Lebanon.
* a "rare view" of the inside of the Israeli army's satellite control room, which spies on Israel's Arab neighbours and Iran and which, according to programme, is "incredibly guarded about its security arrangements".
* an exclusive appearance by Israel's former military chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, who we are told is "rarely interviewed".
* a glimpse inside a Rafael weapons factory, which the programme tells us is "rarely filmed".
In other words, the BBC, and the other broadcasters who will air this "documentary" in the coming weeks and months, has been dazzled by Shalev's ability to show us the secret world of the Israeli army. So dazzled, it seems, that it has forgotten to check -- or worse, simply doesn't care -- what message Shalev is inserting between his exclusive footage.
It might have occurred to someone at the BBC to wonder why Shalev gets these chances to show things no one else is allowed to. Could it be that the "hasbara" division of the Israeli Foreign Ministry has got far more sophisticated than it once was?
Is the Israeli government using Shalev, wittingly or not, and is he in turn using the BBC, to spread Israeli propaganda? Propaganda that may soon propel us towards the "clash of civilisations" so longed for by Israel's leadership.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
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