9-11 Conspiracy - Global Right Path
9-+-11 Conspiracy
Remember: The Air France Concorde crashed into a hotel building after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle airport on 25 July 2000. Points to be noted here that building didn't collapse as in 911 in New York.
The Truth Will Set You Free (Daily Update):
The Great Historic Movie on 9-+-11 TRUTH: Loose Change 2nd Edition Re-cut
Click here to watch Loose Change - 2nd Edition
Why did WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7 collapses? Were there explosives planted?
Dr. Robert Bowman: the impossibility of the official government story
Why Lebanon? Why now?
War on Terror
Who Speaks For Islam?
Who Hijacked my Religion?
The Hidden Secret of CORPORATION, a Documentary Movie as shown on Canadian CBC TV.
Also more on CBC NEWS: SUNDAY NIGHT
|CBC News: Sunday Night airs on CBC-TV at 10:00 pm, and on CBC Newsworld at 9:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m. (ET) |
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2006
9/11: TRUTH, LIES AND CONSPIRACY
According to a recent Zogby poll, 42% of Americans believe the U.S. government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks. Did the 9/11 Commission fully investigate the events of that day? Is the U.S. government covering up key information about the attacks? Was 9/11 an inside job? CBC News: Sunday talks to the 9/11 Commission and the young student filmmakers behind the internet documentary Loose Change, to get to the heart of what's fueling the public's distrust of the U.S. government and the events of September 11.
READ THE COMPLETE INTERVIEWS:
• LEE HAMILTON, co-chair, 9/11 Commission, and co-author of "Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission"
• DYLAN AVERY, Writer/Director, "Loose Change"
• DAVID RAY GRIFFIN, theologian, author of "The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11"
• JIM MEIGS, Editor-in-chief, Popular Mechanics, publisher of "9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up Top The Facts"
• BOB McILVAINE, who lost his son Bobby in World Trade Center Tower One (coming soon)
WEBLINKS:
• 9/11 Commission Report
• Report on the World Trade Center by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
• NIST August 30, 2006 Fact Sheet: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
• "9/11: Debunking the Myths" (Popular Mechanics article, March 2005)
• Journal of 9/11 Studies
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth
• Documentary: "Loose Change"
• 9-11 Research
[pic][NB: CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites. Links will open in blank window.]
A FATHER'S JOURNEY
When the second tower collapsed in New York, this father's life collapsed along with it. Canadian Bob Ewart lost his daughter and son in law. Today, as part of the journey forward, Bob Ewart makes the journey back to Ground Zero.
[pic]
Some of the clearest proof that 9/11 was an act of United States Sponsored Terrorism comes from a close examination of the Pentagon Attack. In the above picture by Daryl Donley taken minutes after the attack at the Pentagon, the intense fireball is seen as coming from inside the building, and no wreckage of an airline crash is apparent.
[pic]
Where is the wing, tail and engine of the plane at Pantagon?
Welcome to
New book by 9/11 commission co-chairman- NORAD FAA DOD Pentagon LIED
Watch CNN Video Lou Dobbs comments
"The fact that they would continue and perpetuate the lie,
suggests that we need a FULL investigation of what is going on
and what is demonstrably an incompetent and what is worse,
a deceitful Federal Government."
Lou Dobbs CNN
There has never been an independent inquiry in the events of 9/11.
Despite two years of repeated attempts by the families of the victims of September 11, there has never been an independent investigation of What Really Happened that day.
Is there an Ongoing Coverup?
* Both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney took extraordinary steps to
limit any investigation into the events of 9/11.
* The NTSB never held inquiries into any of the 4 plane crashes, as required by law,
and the FBI is withholding the data from the airliner's flight recorders.
* All of the steel from the Twin Towers was shipped out of the country
before any investigation was held.
The media says that bin Laden carried out the 9/11 massacre from the caves of Afghanistan,
yet after a supposedly "thorough" investigation, the FBI says they have not uncovered
a single piece of paper that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.
Some are starting to ask:Osama Bin Asset?
* 7 of the supposed "hijackers" turned out to be alive and not even in the US on 9/11.
* 3 of the "hijackers" listed a US Navy base as their address on their drivers licences.
The Twin Towers didn't collapse, they exploded outwards;
parts of the buildings were ejected as far as 70 m. before they began to fall,
and the buildings' concrete was reduced to fine dust.
What really brought down the Twin Towers?
* No steel structured skyscraper in history has collapsed due to fire.
* The steel support columns in the sub-basement of the Twin Towers were melted,
and five weeks later, were still pools of molten steel.
They say an airliner crashed into the Pentagon,
but if so, why isn't there the debris of an airliner
in the photos of the scene of the Pentagon Attack?
* There's no airliner debris at the Pentagon, and the deep and focused damage
to the building could not be from an airliner crash.
* The FBI is withholding 2 videos that may show what really hit the Pentagon,
and the photos from the DoD Pentagon security camera have been falsified.
The 47 story World Trade Center Building Number 7 was levelled in 8 seconds,
seven hours after the Twin Towers came down. As it hadn't been hit by any plane,
nor sustained any significant damage from the "collapse" of Twin Towers
earlier two buildings away, why did Building 7 Collapse?
* The photographs show that there was no any major fire in the building at the time.
* The videos clearly show that it was a controlled demolition.
The source of the anthrax was the US Military biological weapons program.
The anthrax was identified as a strain used by the US government, and the anthrax used was weaponized
according to the American process. AreAmerican terrorists behind the Anthrax Attacks?
* The anthrax terrorist(s) worked for the US Military or their contractors,
and the attacks were planned before 9/11.
* The targets of the anthrax attacks were the Senators who opposed the
USA Patriot [sic] Act, which was then passed by Congress without its being printed or read.
More on the Front Page
|hi Sane Person. thanks for stopping by. i'll address two of your points. |
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|Quote 1: "First off, an aluminum plane weighing several tons travelling at 500 miles per hour would most certainly be able to penetrate the WTC." |
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|"most certainly" isn't exactly arguing a point. |
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|if a real plane hit the WTC it would resemble the plane that hit the Empire State building decades ago: |
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|airplanes are largely made of aluminum. wings are made of fiberglass. there ain't no way an airplane is going to disappear into a steel building without any |
|pieces breaking off. |
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|Quote 2: "First live video was from North" starts out the with the hilarious statement that UA175 was fueled with diesel fuel." |
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|Jet fuel is refined kerosene. Kero burns around 650 Celcius. Steel melts at 2000 degrees Celcius. so, just as a stove doesn't melt when you light a burner on top,|
|so too the Towers would not have melted in their footprints because of kerosene burning in the open air. |
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|Harry Lime |
|Mon, Sep 11 19:47:52 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #44 |
|First off, an aluminum plane weighing several tons travelling at 500 miles per hour would most certainly be able to penetrate the WTC. What do you suppose should |
|have happened--should it have bounced off the side of the building? (I don't know if you were too high to notice this or not, but there was a lot of glass on the |
|side of the buildings, too.) |
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|Your "did CNN air fake video" page is what really got me. Your points are embarassing to read: |
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|Like points 3 & 4: The "wind" and "weather" reports. You say the reports say the wind was at 300. So the wind was coming from the Northwest, which means it was |
|blowing *from the northwest towards the southeast*. You even bring up the fact the the wind is blowing towards the southeast in your expert photoanalysis--so if |
|the weather report is verifying the photographic evidence, ummm, what's the conspiracy? |
|A Sane Person |
|Mon, Sep 11 00:03:27 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #43 |
|Point 5: "First live video was from North" starts out the with the hilarious statement that UA175 was fueled with diesel fuel. Do you even know what you're |
|talking about? Are you high as a kite? Did I really need to ask? Jet planes do not run on diesel fuel. Trains do, semi-trailers do, planes do not. |
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|You go on to question how somebody could possibly move camera locations in 15 short minutes--um, they got up and moved?--though to my untrained eye, it looks like|
|they just zoomed in a bit. Then you go on to ask where all the buildings in the background are. Last time I checked, the WTC was at the southern tip of Manhattan,|
|and that shot is, as you said, from the North. It probably would be helpful for you to know that these were also the tallest buildings around at the time, and the|
|camera was zoomed in towards the top of them (the flat parts where the sliver of the buildings meet the blue of the sky would be the top there, you see.) |
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|Finally, you ask why the plane is in shadow in the frames where it's approaching the WTC. Take a look at those frames again. Notice the smoke? I'm sure you did, |
|because you pointed out the highlights on them elsewhere. Well, those "highlights" on the smoke are where the sun is shining on it, which, in turn, means that the|
|smoke is blocking the sun from things behind it, a phenonmenon we non-stoners in fact refer to as: a "shadow." |
|A Sane Person |
|Mon, Sep 11 00:02:47 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #42 |
|Damn dude, I really wanted to refute all the points in your site, but it is just so damned big and chock full of all sorts of dumb sh**. You ask why people were |
|filming from the south side instead of from the north after the North tower was hit. Duh, because *that's where they were?* Because they were getting footage of |
|the smoke coming out of that big building they saw to the north of them? |
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|Your "notes" on "banking" are laughable, too. You don't seem to be able to take into account that, from a fixed camera angle, a plane could indeed look like it |
|was headed to the right even when it was banking to the left. |
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|I'm certain your "enemies" at Indymedia and The History Channel are erasing your posts for a good reason--they don't want to be seen giving a venue to ideas as |
|dumb as the ones on this site. I can't say that I blame them. |
|A Sane Person |
|Mon, Sep 11 00:02:11 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #41 |
|Your "hoax" theory is so full of holes that I suggest the only "hoax" is this website. You offer no proof, just statements of fact. Sorry, but saying "the media |
|doctored the footage" doesn't make it a fact. To pull off a hoax of this magnitude would require thousands of people and months if not years of planning. Yet you |
|don't have a single person who has stepped forward to say they were involved. As for doctoring footage, it would take dozens of FX wizards a month or so of |
|pre-planning, and at least a week from the time of the event to composite planes into all footage. It's impossible to pull off within minutes of the attacks, from|
|multiple angles no less. And that assumes that they got hold of EVERY bit of footage taken of the event. SOMEONE would have home video of the second tower |
|exploding sans plane if indeed there was no plane. Tens of thousands of witnesses watched planes fly into buildings. Or are they part of it? And controlled |
|demolition? It takes teams of experts months to prep buildings for that level of demo. No one in the THREE buildings noticed the teams tearing walls out and |
|setting charges? No one tripped on the MILES of wires it would require? The list is growing. And the airlines? Where are the planes? Are they in on it too? One |
|person. Produce ONE. Until then, your theories are ridiculous. The burden of proof is on you to PROVE your theories, not just make irresponsible claims. Or, is |
|this the real hoax? |
|apj1966 |
|Sun, Sep 10 20:56:53 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #40 |
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|Regardless of speculation about the 911 attack, we need to focus on what we know for sure. The administration had already planned the invasion of Iraq to achieve |
|its political and financial goals. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were always bitter enemies and not partners in the 911 attack. The al Q sought to overthrow |
|Hussein and start a civil war in Iraq. What we had on 9/11/01 was a situation of America trapped between enemies without and within. We could have struck the al Q|
|at known positions in Afghanistan but this would have defeated the goals of Bush and Cheney. It is absolute fact that the administration ignored countless reports|
|from the FBI, the CIA and global intelligence because they knew an attack on opur United States would give them the ability to manipulate our patriotism and the |
|press. Bush subordinates John Pondexter and Paul Wolfkowitz, former bin Laden allies from the Reagan administration (where we unlawfully supported the al Q |
|against Soviet backed armies) were observed smiling after the attack because they knew the administration would totally benefit from this. We must be the eye of a|
|growing internet hurricane that will launch American Revolution 2 and bing us to direct democracy, national mandates and 24/7 online control of our progressive |
|and compassionate destiny. Join the American Coalition 4 Direct Democracy (a concept not a group) and follow our developing third party coalition. You be da boss |
|now! |
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|Doug Johnson , American Revolution Two |
|Sun, Aug 13 16:06:05 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #39 |
|Hoax - I guess the world is flat too. Don't believe everything you think you see. It really happened, get over it. |
|rogerbacon |
|Wed, Jul 26 11:40:03 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #38 |
|Google: Stoelting Ultrascribe polygraph |
|David Howard , Marion, Florence or Leavenworth |
|Thu, Jun 29 12:29:29 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #37 |
|Goodbye, Anton |
|Admin |
|Mon, Jun 26 21:17:18 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #36 |
|I just registered as a new member of this site which I discovered accidently while surfing the net. |
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|Let me make sure I have this right: am I correct that there are people who are seriously posting comments on this site stating that 911 was a hoax? |
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|If this is true, then what I say is dircted at YOU, i.e., the person who really believes this and is not joking I do not expect you to change your opinion. Your |
|mental illness prevents you from doing that. Suffice it to say that you are truly sick. A convicted rapist has more integrity and intellectual honesty than you. |
|Part of me laughs at you, part of me feels sad for you. |
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|There has to be a God because only a devine force could keep stupid people like you alive for so long after being born. |
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|Anton |
|anton |
|Mon, Jun 26 20:18:52 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #35 |
|I heard this song called "Iraq" by a musician from San Diego, CA by the name of TIMZ. The song sent chills throughout my body. His words are so powerful and they |
|convey my exact feelings. Hear it for yourself at: Just click play song, you can even download it from this site. |
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|George Bush, I hope you are listening. |
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|vig |
|Wed, Jun 21 17:19:50 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #34 |
|The strange projectiles, seen flying from the WTC, are supposed to be pieces of metal melted by the Thermite used for the WTC demolition. Also doesn't anyone |
|remember the interview on 20/20, Nightline, or 60 minutes, I don't remember which, where about 7 NYC FBI agents retired in protest. They stated that they "had" |
|the same 16 hijackers about 5 years before 9/11. They were not allowed to pursue the investigation, on these suspects. The orders to "cease and desist" were |
|coming from the White House. These interviews took place about 4-5 months after 9/11. By the way, I have a copy of the transcripts, of an interview with Donald |
|Rumsfeld, where he admits that the Pentagon was hit by a missle. If anybody wants a copy email me and I will send you a copy, ASAP. Take Care and |
|ROGUE22 |
|Sat, Jun 10 19:18:15 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #33 |
|1. There was no plane debris at the Pentagon. |
|Cover-up: none. "Witnesses" and an old piece of metal was the package used to make sure that people get the message "It was an inside job", as part of the truth |
|planted to terrorise you. |
|Web of disinformation: some (rense, , etc) go as far as to try to cover-up what was meant to be obvious, since that helps people to swallow |
|the core lie. |
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|Matt Marriott , 9/11 for dummies - The Five Basic Facts, -1 |
|Thu, May 18 07:33:11 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #32 |
|Google Search: "Arrest Bush 41" |
|David Howard , 9/11 and October Surprise scandal |
|Fri, May 12 17:34:23 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #31 |
|Aluminum planes CAN enter buildings. The World Trade Centers were NOT made of steel on the outside, but concrete. The inside was made of ASTM-E119, a super |
|high-grade steel. Let's think like you for a second. What do you think would have happened if a plane going at 300 MPH hit the strongest building in New York |
|City? |
|Aquarillis |
|Sat, Apr 29 20:08:55 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #30 |
|you know what i kinda find funny...on show biz tongight when they ask the audience about 9/11 anda u.s cover up the people that believe the government dont even |
|give facts they just call us insane. That is saying a lot because that basically saying they have no facts behind what they are saying |
|iagainsti |
|Fri, Mar 31 11:43:24 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #29 |
|George (Flipper) Bush is a disgrace to the american people, he used his powers as flipper-in chief to destroy a country for his own personal revenge. He is |
|killing American soldiers daily, and innocent Iraqi citizen's becaus Saddam tried to kill his daddy in 1991 Golf War, and said in his demented speech that GOD |
|told him to do it. The time is now to take him, and his puppet Tricky Dicky out of office, Vote to Impeach PuppetMaster Bush, before this country losses the |
|respect it has in the world. |
|ImpeachDaPuppetMaster |
|Wed, Jan 4 21:10:32 2006 - 151.196.137.238 - message #28 |
|Hey John, interesting link from CNN. It is amazing how casual they are over the five frames the Pentagon released. Like the Pentagon, the most heavily surveilled |
|corridor in the world, can't produce more than five still photos of the Boeing which strikes it. |
| |
|regards, |
|Harry |
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|Harry Lime , Why only Five Frames? |
|Tue, Feb 1 20:58:43 2005 - 151.196.137.238 - message #27 |
|CNN admits an airplane Did Not hit the Pentagon on 9-11 !! |
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|This is a copy of a letter I wrote to the editor of CNN's web site division. |
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|Please see the link for yourself :-) |
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|The website is about the pictures the DoD released of the so called plane hitting the Pentagon. |
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|Dear Editor, |
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|This story starts with this statement: |
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|"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Department of Defense on Thursday released a series of photos taken by a security camera that show the fireball from a hijacked airliner |
|crashing into the Pentagon on September 11." |
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|You see, here is More Proof an Airplane did Not crash into the Pentagon. By this stories own words, a Fireball crashed into the Pentagon. I agree with this. |
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|Fireball in this sentence, Is the SUBJECT. Also, please put a comma, after the word 'airliner'. |
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|O.k., Now that I have proven the truth of this disaster, and the truth that I have better journalism skills than the writer of this story, may I have a job? |
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|John Phoenix |
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|JohnPhoenix , Plane didn't hit Pentagon |
|Tue, Feb 1 17:03:26 2005 - 151.196.137.238 - message #26 |
|i never get tired of watching "flight 175" enter the South Tower like a knife through butter. |
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|Harry Lime , Boeing Butter |
|Mon, Dec 13 20:31:58 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #25 |
|a discussion of the "no planes theory". |
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|Harry Lime , Media Hoax Theory |
|Sun, Nov 7 18:53:56 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #24 |
|Great article by Stan Smith about 911. |
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|Harry Lime , Stan Smith on 911 Truth |
|Sun, Nov 7 18:35:00 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #23 |
|From Chappaquiddick to New York and Washington : Through Oklahoma City |
|Patrick McNally |
|Format ISBN Price |
|Paperback (6x9) 1418484539 $17.75 |
|Dust Jacket Hardcover (6x9) 1418484520 $28.50 |
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|About the Book |
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|This book starts the process of tying together scattered threads, which run from the Chappaquiddick ‘accident’ up to the bombings of the Murrah Building and World|
|Trade Towers. Where the evidence indicates varying possibilities this is pointed out, but without blandly burying the issue of ‘what happened’ under a |
|philosophical cover. |
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|About the Author |
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|The author’s formal academic training has been in mathematics. As a teenager the author picked up an enthusiasm for voracious reading on the side, outside of any |
|formal academic training, yet supplementing the latter |
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|Free Preview |
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|This point about the “controlled demolition” pattern which was followed, not only by the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, but also identically by|
|Building 7, which was never claimed to have been hit by any plane, is worth comparing, for example, with photos of Hamburg in July 1943. The firestorms which hit |
|this city were much more devastating than anything which could have been created by two jetliners crashing. Yet, even here, the pattern which shows through, from |
|aerial and ground photos taken after the bombing, is one of long rows of building shells surviving and standing, though horribly gutted out. The claim that two |
|American jetliners would have accomplished a more thorough leveling to the ground of three distinct Trade Tower buildings than the RAF and USAAF were able to |
|accomplish in Hamburg is absurd. |
|PatrickSMcNally |
|, click here |
|Wed, Jul 28 09:05:18 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #22 |
|Democracy Now! has agreed to have David Ray Griffen appear. [pic] |
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|Took them long enough though. |
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|Harry Lime |
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|Sat, May 15 15:24:04 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #21 |
|Please join this highly important campaign to get Democracy Now! to have author David Ray Griffin appear. Thanks. |
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|Harry Lime |
|, Waking Amy |
|Mon, Apr 19 19:09:20 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #20 |
|Louis Freeh and the VanPac Case... It was Murder at the highest level ! |
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|On the day Judge Robert Vance was murdered Louis Freeh was an unknown prosecutor in the state of New York. Three years later Louis Freeh was director of the FBI. |
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|Although Vance's caseload was 60% drug related, the FBI, the agency that never communicates with the CIA, immediately responded "drugs were no more prominent than|
|several other avenues we are following". But Vance had been preparing to hear a series of cases, all pointing to the CIA as a major source of Cocaine... and Vance|
|had a reputation for absolute and dogmatic honesty. The FBI soon "discovered" from the records of Vance's prior trials that the bombs were EXACT duplicates of |
|bombs Walter Leroy Moody had sent years earlier. Supposedly, Moody had painted both cardboard box bombs interiors with black paint, used the exact same welded end|
|caps etc etc... Supposedly Moody must have been rather stupid and not known the bombs would point directly to him like a Neon sign. But Moody did not know how to |
|weld. Ted Banks was accused of doing the welding.... a deal was struck to pin it all on Moody. A conviction was secured and the case drifted into history. |
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|Then it all unraveled. In Federal Appeals court counterfeiter turned patriot Ted Banks blew the whistle on then Assistant U.S. Atty. Louis Freeh. Patriot Banks |
|accepted a ten year addition to his sentence as the price of telling the truth. He pointed at Freeh from the stand and said "I lied and he told me to Lie, I never|
|welded no bombs for Moody". Then FBI agent Whitehurst charged the FBI had fabricated evidence, ... then the Vance bomb was identified in the Unabom case as |
|originating from Saratoga California.... then the world court threw out the Lockerby conviction cause FBI agent J Thomas Thurman could not be trusted...because he|
|was not credible in their eyes after his role in the Vance debacle... and the US press is still silent. |
| |
|The site, , provides insights into the activities of the FBI/CIA pre September 11th 2001. Activities that include the manufacture and management of |
|a series of high profile, random terrorist events and selective assassinations. The facts have been covered up, despite a wide trail of undeniable proof and |
|multiple witnesses. They are presented at |
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|Hopefully some day they will erect a statue to Ted Banks just like the one they erected to Nathan Hale at yale...the same pose would be appropriate since they |
|both did essentially the same thing. I would like to suggest an inscription for that day and that statue ... "His currency was counterfeit but his character was |
|not !" |
| |
|DanPride |
|, click here |
|Tue, Apr 13 02:39:18 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #19 |
|MSNBC was asking people to submit questions the 911 Coverup Committee could ask Condi. Here's what I sent them: |
| |
|"Reports from the New York Times and other New York media sources confirm that the WTC rubble was removed (i.e., actually sold for scrap) prior to it being |
|thoroughly inspected by qualified investigators. What role did you play in authorizing the removal of the WTC rubble?" |
|Harry Lime |
|, MSNBC |
|Thu, Apr 8 06:28:53 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #18 |
|9/11 is the conclusion of a series of state sponsored terrorism events aimed at taking over the government. They made the most mistakes early on the the process, |
|and that is a good place to look for evidence of what is really going on. Unabom is the start of the path that leads to 9/11 and the Iraq war. Its the same |
|players all the way through...guys like Agent J. Thomas Thurman, Henry Murray, or even Donald Rumsfeld. provides insights into the activities of |
|the FBI/CIA pre September 11th 2001. Activities that include the manufacture and management of a series of high profile, random terrorist events and selective |
|assassinations. It is a worthwhile read. |
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|DanPride , Pre 9/11 Events |
|Tue, Mar 30 09:20:26 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #17 |
|911 is a subject of passionate research of mine. |
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|Harry Lime |
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|Sun, Mar 28 19:12:50 2004 - 151.196.137.238 - message #16 |
The Truth Will Set You Free
Thursday, September 14, 2006
IMF, World Bank going down the drain
After decades of siphoning the life-blood out of nation after nation's economies, the IMF and World Bank's golden days of collecting boatloads of interest from developing countries are over.
Not surprisingly, no one wants to do business with them anymore. They've lost their legitimacy; they've lost their income stream; and they'll soon be out of business.
[T]he IMF Executive Board [is] trying to steer through two reforms intended to "safeguard and enhance the Fund's credibility."
The first involve[s] reallocating the voting power of IMF member countries according to the current size of their gross domestic product [ostensibly] intended to increase the voting power of a selected number of big developing countries -- Korea, Turkey, China, and Mexico -- while laying the ground for eventually expanding the decision-making power of other developing countries.
The other initiative [would] give the Fund the new role of solving "global macroeconomic imbalances" -- a euphemism for disciplining countries with large trade surpluses like China.
They won't get away with either.
A bloc of about 50 developing countries objects to the proposed GDP-based formula. These countries see the move as dividing developing countries while producing only one real winner: the United States, which would increase its voting power under the new system. The second initiative has generated opposition for attempting to get the Fund to do Washington's dirty work of pressuring China to revalue its currency to reduce the massive U.S. trade deficit with Beijing.
Meanwhile . . .
[A] string of crises [plagues] the two agencies, also known as the "Bretton Woods institutions" after the site of the July 1944 conference where they were founded. The Fund, in particular, is in a state of demoralization. "Ten years ago, the IMF was flying high, arrogant in its belief that it knew what was the best for developing countries," notes one civil society policy paper. "Today, it is an institution under siege, hiding behind its four walls in Washington, DC, unable to mount an effective response to its growing numbers of critics."
* * *
The IMF's equivalent of Stalingrad -- where the defeat of the German Sixth Army marked the turning point of World War II -- was the 1997 Asian financial crisis, where it "lost its legitimacy and never recovered it," said to Dennis de Tray, a former IMF and World Bank official who is now vice president of the Washington-based Center for Global Development.
The Fund was blamed for pushing policies of capital account liberalization that made the Asian economies vulnerable to the volatile movements of speculative capital; assembling multibillion dollar rescue programs that rescued creditors at the expense of the debtors; imposing expenditure-cutting programs that merely worsened the downspin of the economy; and opposing the formation of an Asian Monetary Fund that could have provided the crisis countries with financial reserves to save their currencies from speculative attacks.
Sound familiar? It should.
Standard operating procedure - (1) deregulate financial markets, allowing banks and brokerages to seize control over economies; (2) bail them both out when things go sour; (3) insist that governments cut social programs and starve their people to make up the difference; and (4) maintain control over their brutal monopoly.
Too bad, it's a recipe for disaster and governments around the world are waking up.
The Fund went from one financial disaster to another. The Russian financial collapse in 1998 was attributed to its policies, as was Argentina's economic unraveling in 2002.
Resistance was not long in coming. In the midst of the Asian financial crisis, Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir of Malaysia broke with the IMF approach and imposed capital controls, saving the country from the worst effects of the crisis.
Mahathir's defiance of the IMF was not lost on Thaksin Shinawatra, who ran for prime minister of Thailand on an anti-IMF platform and won. He went on to push for large government expenditures, which stimulated the consumer demand that brought Thailand out of recession.
Nestor Kirchner completed the humbling of the IMF when, upon being elected president of Argentina in 2003, he declared that his government would pay its private creditors only 25 cents for every dollar owed. Enraged creditors told the IMF to discipline Kirchner. But with its reputation in tatters and its leverage eroded, the Fund backed off from confronting the Argentine president, who got away with the radical debt-write down. [AWESOME!]
By 2006, underscoring the crisis of legitimacy of the institution, the governor of the Bank of England described the IMF as having "lost its way."
But, legitimacy isn't all they lost. They lost the money, honey.
The crisis of legitimacy has had financial consequences. In 2003, the Thai government declared it had paid off most of its debt to the IMF and would soon be financially independent of the organization. Indonesia ended its loan agreement with the Fund in 2003 and recently announced its intention to repay its multibillion-dollar debt in two years. A number of other big borrowers in Asia, mindful of the devastating consequences of IMF-imposed policies, have refrained from new borrowings from the Fund. These include the Philippines, India, and China. Now, this trend has been reinforced by the move of Brazil and Argentina earlier this year to pay off all their debts to the Fund and declare financial sovereignty.
What is, in effect, a boycott by its biggest borrowers is translating into a budget crisis for the IMF. Over the last two decades, IMF operations have been increasingly funded from the loan repayments of its developing country clients rather than from the contributions of wealthy Northern governments. The burden of sustaining the institution has shifted to the borrowers. The upshot of these developments is that payments of charges and interests, according to Fund projections, will be cut by more than half, from $3.19 billion in 2005 to $1.39 billion in 2006 and again by half, to $635 million in 2009. These reductions have created what Ngaire Woods, an Oxford University specialist on the Fund, describes as "a huge squeeze on the budget of the organization."
And now, they have nowhere to go.
Boo-hoo. What's a poor vampire - I mean, banker - to do?
The erosion of the Fund's role as a disciplinarian of debt-ridden countries and an enforcer of structural adjustment has been accompanied by a futile search to find a new role.
The Group of Seven tried to make the Fund a central piece of a new "global financial architecture" by putting it in charge of a "contingency credit line" to which countries about to enter a financial crisis would have access if they fulfilled IMF-approved macroeconomic conditions. But the prospect of a government seeking access a credit line that could trigger the very financial panic that it sought to avert doomed the project.
Another proposal envisioned an IMF-managed "Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism" -- an international version of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy mechanism that would provide countries protection from creditors while they came out with a restructuring plan. But when South countries objected that the mechanism was too weak and the United States opposed the proposal for fear it would curtail the freedom of operations of U.S. banks, this new prospect also collapsed.
The role of righting "global macroeconomic imbalances" assigned to the Fund during the spring meetings of the IMF leadership earlier this year is part of this increasingly desperate effort by the G 7 governments to find a task for an international economic bureaucracy that had become obsolete and irrelevant.
But, hey - they're not alone. Equally despised all over the world for their financial plundering, the World Bank is in the same boat.
A budget crisis is also overtaking the Bank, according to Ngaire Woods. Income from borrowers' fees and charges dropped from $8.1 billion in 2001 to $4.4 billion in 2004, while income from the Bank's investments fell from $1.5 billion in 2001 to $304 million in 2004. China, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and many of the more advanced developing countries are going elsewhere for their loans.
The budgetary crisis is, however, only one aspect of overall crisis of the institution. The policy prescriptions offered by Bank economists are increasingly seen as irrelevant to the problems faced by developing countries, says de Tray, who served as the IMF resident officer in Hanoi and the World Bank representative in Jakarta.
The problem, he says, lies in the emphasis at the Bank's research department on producing "cutting-edge" technical economic work geared to the western academic world rather than coming out with knowledge to support practical policy prescriptions.
The Bank is currently staffed by some 10,000 professionals, most of them economists, [OMG!] and de Tray claims that "there is nothing wrong at the World Bank that a 40 per cent staff reduction would not fix."
American University Professor Robin Broad, an expert on the Bank, claims that the Bank is, in fact, in more of a crisis than the IMF but that this is less visible to the public. "The IMF's response has been to withdraw behind its four walls, thus reinforcing the public perception of its being besieged," she notes. "The Bank's response, however, has been to engage the world to hide its mounting crisis."
Broad identifies three elements in the Bank's offensive. "First, it goes out and tells donors that it is the institution best positioned to do lending to end poverty, for the environment, for addressing HIV-AIDS, you name it . when in fact its record proves that it's not.
Second, it has the world's largest 'development' research department -- funded to the tune of about $50 million -- whose raison d'etre is to produce research to back up predetermined conclusions.
Third, it has this huge external affairs department, with a budget of some $30 million -- a PR unit that feeds these so-called objective research findings to the press and fosters the image of an all-knowing Bank." But, she concludes, "This can't last. Inside the Bank, they know they're in crisis and are scrambling. And sooner or later, if we do our work, the truth will come out."
As it always does.
What is troubling for [some], however, offers an opportunity for [others] who have long regarded the current multilateral system of global economic governance as mainly concerned with ensuring the hegemony of the developed countries, particularly the United States. Proposals for alternative institutions for global finance have been circulating for some time.
The current crisis may be the break in the system that will make governments, especially those in the South, willing to seriously consider the alternatives.
It's only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down. And when it does, those two hucksters will find themselves out on the curb - or perhaps, in the morgue.
posted by qrswave @ Thursday, September 14, 2006 3 comments
CNN presents . . . the truth, for a change
[pic]
Pretty poor and superficial coverage - but hey, what do you expect? It's Paula Zahn. Besides, the important thing is that the genie's out of the bottle.
And there's no way to put it back, notwithstanding the fact that CNN tried to minimize Loose Change's credibility by pointing out that none of them are engineers or "trained investigators" (whatever that means) and that only Jason has a college degree. Weak, very weak.
They also switch over to so-called credible sources, who dismiss the trio's claims out of hand. Nevertheless, the deed is done. They got people thinking and more importantly, they proved that the internet is making a colossal difference.
CNN correspondent: You say this was a conspiracy. Isn't it possible that it was simply a colossal failure by the US government?
Dylan: For them to have been completely caught off guard by September 11th, we would have to believe that our government is the three stooges.
[pic]Possible. But, not likely.
Ultimately, CNN treads lightly, knowing that the internet is watching very, very carefully and that everything they say can and will be held against them.
___________________________
Three Stooges -
posted by qrswave @ Thursday, September 14, 2006 9 comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
making history through the internet
Amy Goodman hosts a televised debate between Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas (producers of Loose Change) and David Dunbar and his side-kick, the cranky James Meigs (Popular Mechanics).
Regardless of whether or not you believe their theory that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon, considering how young they are, these guys did an outstanding job of keeping the focus on the issues despite their opponents' constant stream of character assaults. Truly impressive. It's no wonder they are so hugely popular.
America needs more courageous and upstanding youth like these young men. They managed, through courage and conviction, to get their message across to the entire world on a shoe-string budget and against all odds. They're making history through the internet. And so can you.
Keep the faith - I see victory on the horizon.
posted by qrswave @ Wednesday, September 13, 2006 12 comments
Popular Mechanics crank can't admit defeat
What a loser.
Rather than admit that he's wrong and we're right, the man who thinks he 'debunked' the Truth, with his empty commentary in Popular Mechanics last year, wails and whines about being compared to a Nazi.
ON Feb. 7, 2005, I became a member of the Bush/ Halliburton/ Zionist/ CIA/ New World Order/ Illuminati conspiracy for world domination. That day, Popular Mechanics, the magazine I edit, hit newsstands with a story debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Within hours, the online community of 9/11 conspiracy buffs - which calls itself the "9/11 Truth Movement" - was aflame with wild fantasies about me, my staff and the article we had published. Conspiracy Web sites labeled Popular Mechanics a "CIA front organization" and compared us to Nazis and war criminals.
For a 104-year-old magazine about science, technology, home improvement and car maintenance, this was pretty extreme stuff.
Boo-hoo. Where's the beef? There is none.
Unable to admit that he was discredited because his piece lacked substance, he wants readers to believe that he was persecuted because he conducted 'research.' The man is in absolute denial and suffers from paranoid delusions. Instead of accepting the fact that 9/11 Truth theories are now mainstream, he insists we 'inflitrated the mainstream' as if through some voo-doo powers and not simply through logic and reason.
"Conspiracy theorists want to pick and choose which facts to believe," he cries. Yeah, so what? Judges do it all the time. Witnesses present evidence, the Judge decides which facts to believe and which to discard as incredible.
Then he has the nerve to characterize the mickey mouse evidence upon which the official version relies as 'a huge preponderance of evidence' and the glaring gaps that could fit a herd of elephants as 'a small handful of anomolies.' What a joke.
These anomalies include the claim that the hole in the Pentagon was too small to have been made by a commercial jet (but just right for a cruise missile); that the Twin Towers were too robustly built to have been destroyed by the jet impacts and fires (so they must have been felled by explosives), and more. If true, these and similar assertions would cast serious doubt on the mainstream account of 9/11.
"But they're not true," he cries. And to prove it, he attacks two inconsequential quotes, which even if false, only discredit the quotes, not necessarily the underlying facts. More importantly, he doesn't come any where near the gaping holes and impossibilities in the official story that prove it's a LIE.
The American public has every right to ask hard questions about 9/11. And informed skepticism about government and media can be healthy. But skepticism needs to be based on facts, not fallacies. Unfortunately, for all too many, conspiratorial fantasies offer a seductive alternative to grappling with the hard realities of a post-9/11 world.
I couldn't agree more - the most seductive (and absurd) of which is the conspiracy theory that 19 hijackers with box-cutters collapsed three colossal buildings into their footprints by hitting them with two planes.
Give it up, Meigs - like it or not, the Truth will prevail.
posted by qrswave @ Wednesday, September 13, 2006 20 comments
9/11 Truth - like it or not
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
--Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)
On September 10, five years after the attacks, the BBC finally interviewed David Ray Griffin and actually gave him a fair shot at presenting his case - and boy did he ever.
He was incredible. Mild-mannered and down to earth, he spoke with both ease and conviction about the impossibility of the official version, contrasting it with the probability - indeed certainty - that the attacks of September 11th were orchestrated by someone in the government and the ensuing collapse of the buildings a controlled demolition. The man is a hero.
Griffin: The official theory about 9/11 IS a conspiracy charge - that 19 members of Al Qaeda conspired to defeat the most powerful military force in history and to bring down three buildings by hitting [only] two of them. So, it's a conspiracy theory.
Anybody who says what you're talking about is conspiracy theory and we know that conspiracy theories are nutty, they ignore the fact that the official theory is a conspiracy theory.
So, the question is, which of the conspiracy theories is true? And we judge that by which one has the best evidence. When you look at the evidence for the official theory, it all evaporates.
They also interviewed former M-15, David Shayler, who laid the blame squarely on the plot by PNAC to secure US global hegemony.
BBC host: Why do you think we as the public [seem] to go along with so many conspiracies, whether it was John F. Kennedy, [Princess Diana] - why are we going down this conspiracy line so much?
Apparently, she missed Griffin's precise answer to that question . . .
Shayler: Because, I have to say using the words of Jesus 'The truth will set you free.'
Amen to that.
The two jokers they brought in to counter Griffin and Shayler are not even worth mentioning - they presented such a feeble case.
The gig is up, liars.
Like it or not, the Truth is out - the official version is a LIE.
_______________________
Thanks, Prison Planet
posted by qrswave @ Wednesday, September 13, 2006 4 comments
Pyroclastic Flows - 9/11’s ‘Smoking Gun’
When I first saw scenes of the towers collapsing, with clouds of smoke billowing through the streets of lower Manhattan, I knew that I had seen it before. But, I couldn't say where. Now, I know.
The US Geological Survey website provides us with a definition of a pyroclastic flow as a ground hugging avalanche of hot gas and debris. The rising gas chimney is clearly visible in this photo of the North Tower implosion, with pyroclastic flows between buildings. The cauliflower shape of the debris cloud is a telltale sign of pyroclastic flows generated by massive explosions, typical of volcanic eruptions and controlled demolitions.
A pyroclastic surge can even flow over water as hot gases carry dust created by explosive energy. Here, the South Tower implosion creates a pyroclastic surge, moving out over the Hudson river.
Once again, our definition of a pyroclastic flow: hot gases carrying dust and debris flow along the ground with a fluid motion. It requires explosive energy to generate the necessary heat, dust, and debris. Turbulence and fluidization of debris are characteristic.
Seeing this footage of pyroclastic flows from volcanic eruptions juxtaposed alongside those that erupted from the collapsing towers will make your jaw drop - it did mine. This is - literally - 9/11's smoking gun.
___________________
Thanks, Brasscheck
posted by qrswave @ Wednesday, September 13, 2006 10 comments
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Amazing new 9/11 video - released yesterday!
This is incredible - people filmed the whole thing from their home - 500 yards from the North tower! I've never seen this before.
I'm watching it now. Comments later . . .
12:32 - break in the scene ... big rush of fresh black smoke emerges from South tower - then woman filming says "Oh my God, Oh my God . . . I just saw it happen - It was a military plane!"
posted by qrswave @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 13 comments
The Best War Ever
From the best-selling authors of Weapons of Mass Deception comes a new book and a call to action . . .
"The propaganda that drew us into this war is now guaranteeing our defeat.
The deception isn't over. The deception is continuing."
--John Stauber, co-author
* * *
"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over again, so the truth can sink in. You gotta catapult the propaganda."
--George W. Bush, nit-wit President
Using comic strip characters and captions, the authors do a brilliant job of illustrating how badly Americans have been duped into war with Iraq and how likely it is that we'll be duped again with Iran and Syria, if we don't act now.
Comics! This is precisely the kind of simple presentation Americans need to get it through their thick media-drenched skulls that if we don't act now, America is history.
_______________________
The Book: The Best War Ever
Thanks, Emmanuel Goldstein
posted by qrswave @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 2 comments
you are what you eat
[pic]
A stark warning to those who swallow WHOLE this administration's colossal lies.
An over-full python became stuck in the middle of a Malaysian road after swallowing a pregnant sheep.
* * *
Pythons eat no more than once a week but when they open their incredible hinged jaws, anything is fair game.
This 5.5m python found its eyes were definitely bigger than its belly.
* * *
In July surgeons were forced to operate on a 4m Burmese python after it inadvertently swallowed a queen-size electric blanket.
Humans also have become victims. In 1972 a python in Burma swallowed an eight-year-old boy [OMG!].
But sometimes their food really doesn't agree with them.
In October last year, a 3.6m python came off second best in Everglades National Park in Florida.
The snake, which tried to swallow a 1.8m alligator whole, exploded, said scientists who found the gory remains.
You are what you eat.
posted by qrswave @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 2 comments
Get ready for 'a thousand eyes for an eye'
Forget the one-to-one ratio you learned in Sunday school, that's for non-Israelis.
Israelis have a free pass to kill as many Palestinians as they like in retaliation for the mere threat of violence.
An average of eight Palestinians, mostly children, is killed daily in Israeli ground and air strikes on Gaza Strip.
Hundreds are maimed, seriously injured or paralyzed, according to Green Left Weekly.
Last week, Israeli strikes killed another three citizens of Gaza and wounded an entire family in Beit Hanoun
But, now that one of their soldiers is actually dead, you can expect thousands of Palestinians to pay with their lives.
Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the army said, announcing its first fatality in the territory since renewing ground operations three months ago.
* * *
"I can confirm that an Israel Defense Forces non-commissioned officer was killed by gunfire," an army spokesman said. "(Soldiers) were fired upon in central Gaza ... during an operation to eliminate terrorist infrastructure."
* * *
Earlier, an Israeli air strike destroyed the two-storey central Gaza home of a senior security official in the Interior Ministry, witnesses said. No one was wounded.
* * *
More than 210 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, have been killed in Israeli operations against militants [since the army launched a ground offensive in the area after Palestinian gunmen seized a soldier in a cross-border raid on June 25.]
210 Palestinians dead because ONE soldier was kidnapped. Now, you can expect that ratio to skyrocket.
The clash came one day after Palestinian factions agreed to form a unity government to try to end Western sanctions imposed on the Hamas-led administration for refusing to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
Coincidence? I don't think so.
Prepare for a VERY bloody reprisal against the civilian population of Gaza by Israel.
posted by qrswave @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 2 comments
Who hijacked my religion - Part II
Somebody out there is very busy hijacking religions to further their own political agenda - specifically Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. I wonder who it is.
"Judaism and Zionism [are] really incompatible. [They are] diametric opposites.
Judaism, in short is a religion, it's a faith from Abraham, the forefathers . . . the great grandchildren of Abraham went and stood on Mount Sinai and accepted to make a bond with God that they will listen to whatever God says, they will follow His teachings . . .
We have to emulate God. We have to be compassionate, do goodness, be holy, be devout to God, and so forth and so on as the teachings of the Torah, which you all are most probably well acquainted..."
-- Rabbi Dovid Weiss
This of course is dedicated to a couple of misguided visitors who I will not name, but who I humbly advise should listen and learn from Rabbi Weiss. He just might save you your souls. Until then, go away.
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Part 6:
________________
Thanks, Sabbah
posted by qrswave @ Tuesday, September 12, 2006 8 comments
Monday, September 11, 2006
Move over, Israel - Gaza to rely on Egypt for power
Universal rule of thumb - when you treat your customers like crap, you lose their business.
A new link connecting the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah to the Egyptian power grid opened as the Palestinians strive to end their dependence on Israel.
The 1.5 kilometre (mile-long) five megawatt power line connects the Egyptian and Palestinian sides of the divided town, the director of Egypt's Canal Company for Electricity Distribution, Ismail Hilal, said at the official launch.
Egypt and the Palestinian Authority agreed in June to build a new 50 kilometre (30 mile) 200 kilowatt power line linking the main north Sinai town of El Arish to Rafah.
They also agreed to build an eight-kilometre (five mile) 220 kilowatt line from Rafah to an electricity transformer in the Gaza Strip.
The capacity of the Egyptian power station in El Arish will also be boosted to provide sufficient power for Gaza's population of 1.3 million people.
The Gaza Strip had hitherto been entirely dependent on Israel for the fuel to keep its sole power station running.
Israelis must be fuming over this.
Watch them come up with a pretext to bomb it.
posted by qrswave @ Monday, September 11, 2006 2 comments
5 yrs later - hardly anyone believes the BIG lie
Five years after they pulled it off, hardly anyone in the world believes the ridiculous story about 19 hijackers with box-cutters and hundred-story buildings magically collapsing into their footsteps.
They miscalculated big time.
When they took the towers down, they never anticipated that this many people would question their version of reality and work so hard to demonstrate, unequivocally, that they lied. But, we did.
And to those who think that the truth was buried at ground zero, think again. It's only a matter of time.
Just as the towers collapsed into their footprints, so will the lie.
posted by qrswave @ Monday, September 11, 2006 15 comments
all they needed was a pretext . . .
Five years ago today - they made one.
"They made a decision, on 9/11, that this was the excuse that they needed to go in and finish off Saddam Hussein."
--Joseph Trento, Historian
* * *
"That was the plan.
And this administration was indeed waiting for a pretext.
General Clark has said publicly that on 9/11 - as [Americans] were holding hands and jumping to their deaths - the White House called him and said - pin it on Iraq.
They weren't thinking about the Americans dying.
They weren't thinking about the people who were committing suicide in order to escape the flames.
They were thinking about 9/11 not as an attack - but AS A GIFT."
* * *
These people came to their conclusions and then looked for intelligence to support it.
And when they couldn't find intelligence to support it - they created lies. [They lied to] the American public, to the American Congress, to the United Nations, and to the rest of the world.
--Robert Steele, former CIA agent
Since then, tens of thousands have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands of lives were shattered, hundreds of billions of tax dollars wasted, and 4.5 billion years contaminated with their weapons of mass destruction. And don't dare ask 'Was it worth it?' without asking 'for who?'
If 9/11 was 'a gift', it was one they gave to themselves.
I can't say much for the rest of the video, which ultimately takes you down an incredible dead-end road by over-emphasizing Saudi Arabia's no-doubt-suspicious relationship with this administration without once mentioning Israel's.
But, the first 35 minutes is worth watching - a bitter reminder of the third-rate movie we've been living since the day they 'pulled' those towers.
Today, of all days, it will leave you yearning to see these bastards' lies exposed and their souls eternally burned in hell.
posted by qrswave @ Monday, September 11, 2006 33 comments
Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act
Something really disturbing is going on at the moment. Apparently the Bush administration is planning to abolish parts of the War Crimes Act that could make it accountable for previous crimes against humanity it has commited.
(Taken from a blog that sports the quote: "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe )
The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?
American prohibitions on abuse of prisoners go back to the Lieber Code promulgated by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The first international Geneva Convention dates from the following year.
After World War II, international law protecting prisoners of war and all noncombatants was codified in the Geneva Conventions. They were ratified by the US Senate and, under Article II of the Constitution, they thereby became the law of the land.
Wishing to rebuke the unpunished war crimes of dictators like Saddam Hussein, in 1996 a Republican-dominated Congress passed the War Crimes Act without a dissenting vote. It defined a "war crime" as any "grave breach" of the Geneva Conventions. It thereby advanced a global trend of mutual reinforcement between national and international law.
The War Crimes Act was little noticed until the disclosure of Alberto Gonzales's infamous 2002 "torture memo." Gonzales, then serving as presidential counsel, advised President Bush to declare that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to people the United States captured in Afghanistan. That, Gonzales wrote, "substantially reduced the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."
Noting that the statute "prohibits the commission of a 'war crime' by or against a US person, including US officials," he warned that "it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges." The President's determination that the Geneva Conventions did not apply "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
Unfortunately for top Bush officials, that "solid defense" was demolished this summer when the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruled that the Geneva Conventions were indeed the law of the land.
The Court singled out Geneva's Common Article 3, which provides a minimum standard for the treatment of all noncombatants under all circumstances. They must be "treated humanely" and must not be subjected to "cruel treatment," "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," or "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."
As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld "suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them" because "the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3--and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime." A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.
Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the Associated Press on August 10, "I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous." Human rights attorney Scott Horton told Democracy Now! on August 16 that one of the purposes of the proposed legislation is "to grant immunity or impunity to certain individuals. And these are mostly decision-makers within the government."
Bush officials have not acknowledged that one of their real motives for gutting the War Crimes Act is to protect themselves from being prosecuted for their own crimes. But so far they have apparently offered only one other reason for tampering with the law: The existing law, especially the Geneva language prohibiting "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," is too vague to enforce. (Perhaps the Bush Administration should declare the US Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" as too vague to enforce as well.)
Waaaiit a second. Too vague to enforce? Does that mean you should abandon it altogether? Why not make it more concrete and explicit? Oh, that'd put them into deeper sh*t than what they're in already. Ok, I get it now. Sorry, my bad.
Fidell noted in an August 9 Washington Post article that military law includes many terms like "dereliction of duty," "maltreatment" and "conduct unbecoming an officer" that may appear vague but that are nonetheless enforceable. The Army Field Manual bars cruel and degrading treatment. When Attorney General Gonzales recently testified at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that "outrages upon personal dignity" was too ambiguous, Senator John McCain stated that top military lawyers see no problem in complying with Common Article 3.
The arguments for preserving the War Crimes Act and rejecting the Bush amendments, in contrast, are multiple and overwhelming:
1. Commitment to the Geneva Conventions protects US service people from future retaliation.
As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has argued, abandoning the Geneva Conventions would put US soldiers at greater risk, would "reverse over a century of US policy and practice in supporting the Geneva Conventions" and would "undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops, both in this specific conflict [Afghanistan] and in general."
2. The War Crimes Act will prohibit "torture-lite" in the future.
According to Scott Horton, the proposed legislation is "designed to provide an OK to certain techniques which fall just short of torture that are being used by the CIA," including "waterboarding, longtime standing and hypothermia," techniques that have been "linked to severe injuries and fatalities."
3. The War Crimes Act will prohibit future Abu Ghraib-type outrages.
The Bush Administration's legislation would remove the prohibition on "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." Repealing the War Crimes Act, the Washington Post's R. Jeffrey Smith reported, is decriminalizing the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear that shocked the world at Abu Ghraib prison.
Derek P. Jinks an assistant law professor at the University of Texas, author of a forthcoming book on the Geneva Conventions, said in an August 9 Washington Post article that the "entire family of techniques" used to degrade, humiliate and coerce prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo "is not addressed in any way, shape or form" in the Bush Administration's proposal. Retired Army Lieut. Col. Geoffrey Corn, until recently chief of the war law branch of the Army's Office of the Judge Advocate General, said in the same article, "This removal of [any] reference to humiliating and degrading treatment will be perceived by experts and probably allies as 'rewriting'" the Geneva Conventions.
This "rewriting" could have very concrete ramifications in practice. The international tribunal prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia deemed acts like placing prisoners in "inappropriate conditions of confinement," forcing them to urinate or defecate in their clothes, and threatening them with "physical, mental, or sexual violence" to be humiliations, degrading treatment and outrages. The proposed changes to the War Crimes Act would indicate that it is not a crime for Americans to conduct such acts.
4. Gutting the War Crimes Act will promote the perception of the United States as an outlaw country.
As a letter signed by sixteen members of Congress recently said, such legislation "would harm the reputation of the United States as a leader promoting and protecting human rights." What would be more deserving of scorn than a country that lets potential war-crime defendants repeal the very law under which they might be prosecuted?
I beg to differ. The United States Government already IS an outlaw organisation. Gutting the War Crimes Act will only make it more evident. There's a difference.
"Promoting and Protecting human rights"? You wish..
5. The Bush legislation unfairly exempts high government officials from the very war crimes charges they are leveling against lowly "grunts."
Since the start of the Iraq War there have been more than thirty prosecutions under the military law that prohibits war crimes, with many more pending. But they have all prosecuted low-level military personnel. Gutting the War Crimes Act would leave the military "bad apples" at the bottom subject to prosecution but would let the civilian "bad apples" at the top evade all responsibility.
As Horton points out, the Uniform Code of Military Justice already incorporates the Geneva Convention rules, but it does not apply "to Donald Rumsfeld or Stephen Cambone or to people in the White House." The point of the War Crimes Act is that it "spreads the application of the Geneva Conventions the next level up to civilians, and particularly to civilian policymakers." From the beginning, the "prosecutorial focus" of the War Crimes Act "was intended to provide deterrence at that level." Repealing it undermines the fundamental principle of equal justice under law.
6. Preserving the War Crimes Act is part of reasserting the rule of law in America.
The War Crimes Act has been a central focus of the Bush Administration's scorn for all Constitutional limits on the power of the President and the executive branch. It was the idea that the President could by fiat declare US and international law null and void that animated the Gonzales torture memo. It was this denial of constitutional limits that the Supreme Court resoundingly rebuked in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. A rebuff to the Bush Administration's attack on the War Crimes Act is a reassertion of those constitutional limits.
The War Crimes Act can be a bridge to a more just and peaceful world. The incorporation of the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions on war crimes into national law affirms America's commitment to international law. It embodies an implementation of the global heritage of the Nuremberg trials, the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions. It embeds that tradition within our own national law.
In the wake of World War II, Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, observed that "the ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Making statesmen responsible to law is what the War Crimes Act is all about.
Defending the Law
The arguments for preserving the War Crimes Act are conclusive (except perhaps to those who might face criminal prosecution under them). Indeed, the Administration's decision to gut the War Crimes Act is a gift to those who want to see American statesmen held accountable to national and international law. It suggests that the Bush Administration itself recognizes the criminality of many of its actions. And it shows in the sharpest relief why the War Crimes Act is needed.
But, at least for the moment, Bush's Republican allies still control both houses of Congress; they are in a position to slip a repeal of the War Crimes Act into any piece of legislation they choose. Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, senior member of the House Committee for Homeland Security, told The Nation, "The Bush Administration and the GOP leadership in Congress is trying to quietly excuse and even codify cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody, at secret CIA prisons abroad and even the abhorrent practice of extraordinary rendition [the outsourcing of torture and other cruel treatment to other countries]."
While the Administration has been lining up its ducks, the campaign to save the War Crimes Act has just begun. The advocacy group Just Foreign Policy has started an online campaign to save the War Crimes Act. "This is not an obscure point in the law. What's at stake here is whether, for example, the abuses of prisoners by sexual humiliation that shocked us at Abu Ghraib are clearly illegal under US law," national coordinator Robert Naiman observes. "If we found these actions outrageous, we are obligated to tell our members of Congress to protect the law that bans them."
Markey adds, "Every American citizen should call the White House and their members of Congress because these changes being made in the dead of night could be the green light for other countries that capture American troops to treat them cruelly or torture them."
So if you don't care about the foreign scum you're torturing in your prisons, think of your heroic and brave troops that might get the same treatment abroad, if that's the only thing that'll shock and outrage you.
posted by The Sphinx @ Monday, September 11, 2006 8 comments
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