Dollar to Take a Dive, says IMF Head

Prensa Latina
October 27, 2007

IMF (International Monetary Fund) director, Rodrigo Rato, forecast that the dollar is due for a disorganized and pronounced fall.

In declarations to the press, Rato said that the greenback may continue to fall rapidly, which, he added, would complicate the credit crisis in the United States.

Rato said there was a possibility of a worldwide recession in 2008 but this would not be his most important forecast.

“There is another scenario. A lesser economic growth in the United States, which would have an impact on Europe and Japan,” maintained Rato who is soon to leave his post in the IMF.

He also indicated that there is danger of a growing inflation as a result of the high oil prices, but also the hike in food product prices.

World markets suffered strong turmoil during the past two months from the mortgage risk in the United States.

“All these dangers come at a time when the world economy now confronts risks, unbalances, protectionism and high oil prices,” Rato concluded.

Just East of Eden: Iran, images and reflections

Gaither Stewart
Online Journal
Oct 30, 2007

While the drums of war roll and the US president invokes economic sanctions against Iran and continues to speak of World War III, questions and more questions emerge from the disastrous past of US-Iran relations. In this climate and after the great lie about Iraq, one is justified to wonder if Iran’s nuclear ambitions are the problem. The answer seems obvious — not at all. Oil is the issue.

Oil is always the issue when official America speaks of Iran.

Are the president’s threats of war against Iran simply electoral propaganda? Many Europeans believe so. For, they reason, America cannot sustain another military front. Europeans believe the president’s rhetoric is bluff, though a dangerous bluff, because it is combined with America’s historical engrained ignorance about Iran.

One recalls that as late as August 1978, the CIA predicted that the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran could easily last another 10 years. Despite revolts exploding all over ancient Persia, Western businessmen believed this, too, and swarmed over the country in search of lucrative contracts originating in the corrupt court of the Shahinshah in Tehran. Right up to the Shah’s end, Iran was a feast for Westerners. Even after the entire nation knew of the torture the Shah’s American trained secret police, SAVAK, practiced on dissidents and anyone even suspected of being subversive in the dreaded Evin prison in the western part of the mountainside city.

As an employee and Italian-English interpreter (it seemed nearly everyone in Tehran spoke English!) for a group of Italian companies, I was in the ancient and captivating country of Iran for much of the time during late 1977 and the year of 1978, up until the revolution was well underway. Iran, as most foreigners who have lived there will testify, is a special country, the kind that gets in your blood. Not all the foreigners were there for the money. Maybe it’s the dry heat in the summer, or the cold winters, or those enormous purple mountains ever present. I met foreigners who had been there almost forever. They didn’t want to leave. They were much like Iranians who like to travel, even emigrate, but they’re always drawn back home. They never leave completely.

While the CIA was making its rosy Iran situation reports, I witnessed the disintegration of the Iran created by the American puppet, Shah Pahlavi. The pre-revolution was a period when curfews kept the streets relatively clear after 8 or 9 o’clock; yet young people claimed that the resistance controlled the city after midnight. University students everywhere were on the warpath. The first students were shot down by the Shah’s police in the holy city of Qom itself.

Then, on ‘Black Friday’ in that same August 1978, the Shah’s troops opened fire on the mobs on a Tehran square killing hundreds or thousands. From day to day, millions of inebriated marchers, their lances lifted toward the heavens, screamed for the heads of the Pahlavis and waved their banners for the Ayatollah and the Islamic Republic. Inexorably, but much more quickly than expected, the circles tightened around the Shah and US interests there. The ‘people’ were exhilarated. People learned the lesson that the poor learn easily — how easy it is to die . . . and to kill. On the streets of Tehran, you smelled stale gas and felt the terror in the air. Tensions palpitated under the plaster of the great avenues. Mystery and suspicion smoldered under the tall trees up Khiabon Pahlavi to the north. No one knew for certain what was happening but the whole city stank of greater battles to come.

It stank of revolution.

I found it strange that in the growing chaos they continued working on new streets, somehow emblematic of the enduring millenary continuity of Persia-Iran. Still alive is the image of workers sleeping in tents under viaducts, their gray-black feet sticking out of the openings, the canvas flapping in the morning breeze.

Then when the great summer heat ended, they no longer worked at night under the floodlights with the pounding jackhammers that made the earth quiver and quake. In September, a general strike paralyzed the country. The young cab drivers at the traditional old hotel where I lived spoke openly of how they would hang the Shah and cut off the heads of the SAVAK beasts. All those wild kids! Leftists all, doomed to be devoured by the revolution they helped make.

Conservatives and foreign businessmen wondered when the Shah would make his move? What were their American protectors doing? Yet, you could smell it, the revolution. It was in the air. Sometimes I would try to tell the businessmen what was happening. But none of the company executives or the investors felt it; they were still intoxicated by the brilliance of past Persian glories and the apparent permanence of the Pahlavi dynasty. They didn’t want to know the reality either. Their investments in the Shah’s Iran were too great.

But the revolution was there.

In Tehran in 1978 you didn’t know who was who. Monarchists and Communists and Mullahs, and Islamic Marxists were everywhere making the revolution.

Yet, at night in the hotel bar time stopped. It was a sad and lonesome place, like all the hotel bars in all the African capitals of all the former European colonies. A place for lonely men. Images: a businessman sitting alone in a corner holds his glass in mid-air as if considering the evanescence of love and time. American technicians in dirty work clothes are loud at a big table in the middle. A Frenchman in a far corner stares vacantly and with a forefinger traces circular images in the moisture on the plastic tabletop. A waiter passes among them all with trays loaded with drinks.

On the other side of the world, Washington was paralyzed. No one there knew what to do. No one seemed to realize that the Shah’s glass castle was cracked and breaking on all sides. While the SAVAK continued to torture subversives and martial law became more and more severe, Ayatollah Khomeini moved from his exile in Najaf in Iraq to Paris, manifestations mushroomed throughout the country, and in front of my eyes young soldiers threw away their guns, jumped down off their military trucks and sided with the people. The Shah had lost control of the nation. Yet, Westerners were still blind. They waited for the US to move. German and French and Italian and Dutch work teams drove out of downtown hotels each morning to their works sites in the mountainous surroundings as if nothing of great significance were underway.

Paradoxically, in the later period, I attended a meeting, in a downtown office building, organized by Bechtel Corporation to celebrate the opening of its huge office in Tehran with over 100 employees. Close to political power and the CIA in the USA, the Bechtel engineering and construction company from San Francisco is dedicated, in its own words, ‘to making money.’ But it also helps to overthrow foreign governments judged unfriendly to US interests. Yet, in Iran, Bechtel and the US government failed miserably. It did nothing. It could do nothing, and its men vanished. Today, I note, Iran is not even listed among the many countries where Bechtel has worked to further American interests and to make money. Its history is not only a story of duplicity but also of incompetence.

Meanwhile, in Iran, chaos reigned. It was revolution!

Washington had total confidence in the Shah’s American-armed military forces that had made Iran the gendarme of the region. The entire West seemed as surprised and incredulous as were the businessmen I was associated with, who had counted on the US Marines to put things right. It couldn’t happen here, they all thought.

The Iranian Revolution was a severe blow to US power in the Middle East from which the world power has never recovered. The miscalculations, misjudgments and blindness to reality concerning Iran of 29 years ago have led the USA down erroneous paths ever since.

The subsequent history is well known. In January of 1979, the Shah fled to Egypt. In February, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile to become the leader of the emerging Islamic Republic of Iran where he was regarded as a semi-God.

Islam had invaded politics.

In February, Iranian students occupied the US Embassy in Tehran and its personnel became hostages, forcing the Ayatollah to side with the ferociously anti-American students. This was Iran’s sweet revenge for the US-organized coup d”tat that overthrew Premier Moussadeq in 1953 for his nationalization of Iran’s oil (read Iran, stop and always think oil!) and re-installed the amenable Shah on the throne.

The American hostages stayed put for over a year. New Iran didn’t really know what to do with them. It didn’t how to negotiate. The fundamentalists were busy making the Islamic republic and Khomeini learning to control power. What did the young revolutionaries, the mujahadeen and the Socialists and the Communists care? What did they care about diplomatic and international rules and niceties? This was not a tea party; this was revolution.

Iranians exulted again at the fiasco of the US military attempt to rescue the hostages. Another slap in Washington’s face. Oh, how they seethed on the banks of the Potomac. All their assessments were wrong, all attempts to salvage something from the disaster wrong, wrong timing, wrong policies.

So, in 1980 American-armed Iraq conveniently attacked Iran in chaos, while Washington turned up the heat and upped its own confusion by secretly selling more arms to Iran. Yep, to revolutionary Iran! In order to pay for the dirty war against the new leftwing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contras scandal. La drole de guerre! America arms both sides. Until Iraq launched its Us-provided chemical warfare, killing thousands of Iranians.

Nonetheless, Iraq could never come near defeating Iran, no more than American armies today or its Blackwater mercenaries could defeat ancient Iran whose history reaches back to the beginnings of time. Iran is not tribal Afghanistan or artificially created and manipulated Iraq. From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, from villages of the Elbruz Mountains to the magic fountains of Isfahan, Iran is solidity. Iran is durability, part of our cultural heritage. This is territory of ancient peoples; according to some theories, the location of the mythical Garden of Eden and Cain’s land of Nod, somewhere East of Eden.

US, Israel support PKK

Press TV
October 29, 2007

PKK Kurdish rebel group and its sister organization, PEJAK, have been receiving support from the US and Israel, an American journalist claims.

“In the past months, Israel and the United States have been working together in support of PKK and its Iranian offshoot PEJAK, I was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning, Seymour Hersh.

In an interview with Turkish gazette, Zaman, the leading American investigative journalist also revealed that the White House has lost control over PKK which has gone rogue.

Earlier, the renowned American journalist accused Washington and the Zionist regime of providing PKK and PEJAK with ‘training and equipment’ in a secret ploy to destabilize the region.

Commenting on PEJAK, Hersh asserted that Washington considers it as “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran.”

The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK) has been behind a string of deadly attacks on security forces in northwestern Iran. PEJAK is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States, and the European Union.

Jeremy Scahill: US war of conquest in Iraq

FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds to Tell All

Brad Friedman
Brad Blog
October 29, 2007

Attention CBS 60 Minutes: we’ve got a huge scoop for you. If you want it.Remember the exclusive story you aired on Sibel Edmonds, originally on October 27th, 2002, when she was not allowed to tell you everything that she heard while serving as an FBI translator after 9/11 because she was gagged by the rarely-invoked “States Secret Privilege”? Well, she’s still gagged. In fact, as the ACLU first described her, she’s “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.”

But if you’ll sit down and talk with her for an unedited interview, she has now told The BRAD BLOG during an exclusive interview, she will now tell you everything she knows.

Everything she hasn’t been allowed to tell since 2002, about the criminal penetration of the FBI where she worked, and at the Departments of State and Defense; everything she heard concerning the corruption and illegal activities of several well-known members of Congress; everything she’s aware of concerning information omitted and/or covered up in relation to 9/11. All of the information gleaned from her time listening to and translating wire-taps made prior to 9/11 at the FBI.

Here’s a handy bullet-point list, as we ran it in March of 2006, for reference, of what she’s now willing to tell you about.

“People say, ‘why doesn’t she just come forward and spill the beans?’ I have gone all the way to the Supreme Court and was shut down, I went to Congress and now consider that shut down,” she told The BRAD BLOG last week when we spoke with her for comments in relation to our story on former House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s original attempt to move a resolution through the U.S. House in 2000 declaring the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in Turkey as “genocide.”

“Here’s my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX — promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know,” about everything mentioned above, she told us.

“I can tell the American public exactly what it is, and what it is that they are covering up,” she continued. “I’m not compromising ongoing investigations,” Edmonds explained, because “they’ve all been shut down since.”

“She’s Very Credible”

She has, in fact, spent years taking every reasonable step to see that the information she has goes through the proper channels. The Supreme Court refused to hear her whistleblower lawsuit, even in light of the Department of Justice forcing the removal of both her and her own attorneys from the courtroom when they made their arguments concerning why it was that she still had to remain gagged under the “States Secrets Privilege.”

On the morning that the SCOTUS refused to hear her case, the facade cracked on the front of the building. In a ridiculously ironic metaphor which would have been rejected by any credible screen-writer, a chunk of marble — just above an allegorical statue representing “Order” and just below the words “Equal Justice” — came crashing to the ground.

She has met with, and told her story to, U.S. senators including Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Patrick Leahy, both of the Senate Judiciary Committee, both who found her extremely credible. 60 Minutes producers may remember when Grassley told them, “Absolutely, she’s credible…And the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.”

In fact, the FBI itself has done so. Their Inspector General found her allegations, as described in the unclassified version of his report, to be “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.”

As far back as 2002, Grassley and Leahy co-wrote letters on Edmonds’ behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to the allegations she’s made.

“Certain officials in this country are engaged in treason against the United States and its interests and its national security,” she said during an interview an August 2005 interview on Democracy Now. That comment followed 60 Minutes’ revelation years before alleging that Edmonds had information revealing that a “Turkish intelligence officer” she worked with at the FBI “had spies working for him inside the US State Department and at the Pentagon.”

She’s briefed many legislative offices — as well as the 9/11 Commission — in regard to her claims, and now, she says, she’s even prepared to tell the media “the names of every single Congressional office who has received the names of the witnesses” to the crimes she’s detailed.

When we spoke last week, Edmonds seemed to reserve most of her frustration for Congressman Henry Waxman’s office. Waxman is the Democratic Chairman of the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

After briefing members of his security-cleared staff “inside the SCIF” — a high-security room in the U.S. Capitol, specially created for discussion of highly sensitive information — Edmonds says she was told on several occasions, prior to the 2006 Election, that her case would be one of the first heard in his committee, once he became Chairman.

“I even gave names of former and current FBI agents who were willing to go to Waxman’s office and give more information on all of this,” she said.

“Before the elections, I had a promise from Congressman Waxman’s office.” She claims they told her, before the election, “the only reason they couldn’t hold hearings, was because the Republicans were blocking it.”

“They said ‘your case will be one of the first ones we will hold investigations on,’” she told us. Now, however, since the Democrats have become the majority in the House, Waxman’s office is “going mum.” They won’t even respond to her calls.

The congressman’s office did not respond to several requests for comment on this story.

Two Other “Well-Known” Congressmen

Aside from the allegations she’s already made concerning Hastert, as we reported in some detail in early 2006, following up on a Vanity Fair exposé in 2005, Edmonds says there are at least “two other well-known” members of Congress that she’s prepared to name as well.

“There are other Congressional people, whose names have not come out,” she explained. “As [Waxman’s office knows] I’ll be able to give them file numbers and investigations, including investigations by the IRS. I will be giving details one by one, not just allegations.”

“But,” she added, “unfortunately nobody wants to have an investigation like that.”

For the record, she told The BRAD BLOG, the other two “well-known members” are from the House, both Republican, and “one of them is recently no longer there.”

So far, she says, “those names have not been public.”

“Kafka-esque”

Since leaving the FBI, and in the wake of her years-long ordeal, which she frequently describes as “Kafka-esque,” Edmonds has founded the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

In addition to the support she has received, at various times, from members of Congress, she’s received a great deal of support from members of the national security whistleblower community and government watchdog organizations.

As we reported last Spring, Veteran FBI counterintelligence agent John Cole has said he’s “talked to people who had read her file, who had read the investigative report, and they were telling me a totally different story” than that given publicly by FBI officials. “They were telling me that Sibel Edmonds was 100 percent accurate,” he said, “management knew that she was correct.”

Famed “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg has described Edmonds as “extremely credible.” In a 2005 interview on KPFA, Ellsberg said, “FBI agents we’ve talked to have, in every respect that was raised, have confirmed her story - that she’s a very credible witness.”

More than 30 groups, from across the political spectrum — including the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the September 11th Advocates, the Liberty Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), OMB Watch, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and People for the American Way (PFAW) — all signed a letter in March of this year calling on the House Oversight Committee to “hold public hearings into the case of FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, and the erroneous use of the State Secrets Privilege to shut down all court proceedings in her case.”

That petition was sent almost precisely one year after The BRAD BLOG originally reported on a public petition to Congress, demanding they hold public hearings. More than 30,000 people, Edmonds says, have now signed that petition since it was first announced.

“Exhausted Every Channel”

In a speech given over the Summer in D.C. at the American Library Association (ALA, video here), Edmonds detailed the “Kafka-esque” nature of her unprecedented gag-order. Among the information still-regarded as “classified” under the States Secret Privelege: the fact that she was a translator for the FBI, where she was born, what languages she speaks, the date of her birth, the universities she attended, and the degrees she earned.

In fact, the interview that CBS’s 60 Minutes aired with her in 2004, was later retroactively classified by the Department of Justice under the same “privilege”!

But enough is enough. She’s now ready to tell all. To the public. But not (yet) to us. She will speak, however, to any broadcast network that would like to have her.

“I have exhausted every channel. If they want to, they can bring criminal charges against someone who divulges criminal activity, and see how far they’re going to get.”

But will any of the corporate mainstream networks take her up on the offer? It’d certainly be an explosive exclusive.

“I don’t think any of the mainstream media are going to have the guts to do it,” she dared them.

So whaddaya say 60 Minutes? We’ve given you scoops before that you ended up turning down — and likely later regretted. Will you be smart enough to take this one?

“You put me on air live, or unedited. If I’m given the time, I will give the American people the exact reason of what I’ve been gagged from saying because of the States Secrets Privilege, and why it is that I’m the most gagged person in the history of the United States.”

“My feeling is that none of them have the guts to do that,” she dared them, before charging, “they are all manipulated.”

“I keep using the word Kafkaesque…” she paused, during her speech at ALA, clearly showing her exasperation, “because…,” she continued slowly, “…I really can’t come up with a better word.”

David Horowitz Awareness Week: Islamo-Fascism Comes to Columbia

A.C. Bowen
Lew Rockwell
October 30, 2007

12:18 and still no David Horowitz. Typical of Columbia to start the program late. Roone Arledge Cinema, one of the smaller auditoriums on campus, was ¾ full of mostly white, mostly male, mostly Republican spectators, and they were getting restless. Four middle-aged Communist protesters were stationed outside in the rain handing anti-Horowitz handbills to students who had come to Lerner Hall for the engineering job fair. No one bothered to inform the protestors that they were at the wrong door. Finally, a hush fell over the crowd as a faceless Columbia bureaucrat assumed the speaker’s position in order to remind us to turn our cell phones off and avoid yelling Communist slogans once the speech began.

Polite applause greeted Horowitz’s appearance at the speaker’s podium. I was a bit disappointed myself, having expected a tall, grand, imposing figure with a posh accent in the mould of William F. Buckley circa 1968. Horowitz is short, rotund, balding, and speaks in a nasal, pseudo-Brooklyn twang. They don’t make ’em like they used to. Then again, considering Buckley’s overweening neo-conservatism, it seems they never did.

Horowitz led off with a few pleasant generalities about his alma mater, but soon strayed into more contentious territory. Columbia used to be a friendlier place 52 years ago, said he. Professors kept their political opinions to themselves and all viewpoints – even his own Communist one, a very unpopular one at the height of the era of McCarthyism – were tolerated from students. Now, alas, all the conservative faculty has been purged and the militant leftist academics (activists first and scholars second, natch) who remain wish to bring us back to the teaching methods of the 19^th century, when professors at religious colleges merely spouted their doctrines and presented no opposing viewpoint to students. To be a conservative on campus these days, Horowitz said, is a character-building experience. As a student at a college which spoon-feeds pseudo-Marxist pablum to all of its incoming students through its much-vaunted Core Curriculum, I must agree in principle, if not in detail. At least we have Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on 114 campuses (I thought it was 200 campuses, David? You’d better update your website) this week, though. That’ll show them terrists.

After outlining his basic views on the liberalization of our universities, Horowitz chose to enlighten the listeners about his reasons for creating the Week. There is nothing about the Week or its rhetoric, he said, which could or should be construed as anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. The Week, it seems, is all about separating the moderate Muslims from the Islamo-Fascists, and praising the former while decrying the latter. In fact, the very term Islamo-Fascism was coined by Muslims – Algerian Muslims, to be exact – who wished to speak out against the Islamic militant groups which had killed 150–200,000 of their co-religionists. He – Horowitz – first picked up the term from Christopher Hitchens, and thus did not think of it himself. In his Slate article, Hitchens disagrees with this description of the term’s provenance, but agrees with Horowitz’s use of it.

Horowitz went on to echo much of what Hitchens said in his article. That is, Islamic regimes have a long history of being Fascist. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was an acolyte of Hitler and wished to set up death camps for Jews in the Middle East modeled on ones in Germany and elsewhere. The Iranian Republican Guard, he said, goose-steps in homage to the SS. (Funny that the Russians – haters of all things Nazi – still goose-step as well.) Islamo-Fascists, Horowitz said, are first and foremost at war with moderate Muslims and Islamic countries whose regimes are not hyper-religious. As evidence he cites al-Qaeda’s bombing of a wedding in Iran. Actually, the bombing was in Jordan. (The US has certainly never blown up a wedding, has it? Okay, that one was a mistake. This one wasn’t.)

Why does any of this matter? Horowitz has an answer for that as well. We’re at war, he said, and “you can’t fight a war unless you can name your enemy.” Alas, all too often the enemy is right here at home. Sami al-Arian, for instance. Horowitz claims that al-Arian held pledge drives to raise money for Islamo-Fascist groups. “$500 to kill a Jew,” to be precise. This shows, he says, that leftist professors are in league with Islamo-Fascists around the world. In Horowitz’s words, the left “tried to save Saddam” and are now “supporting the nuclear program of the Persian Hitler.”

Ah, the “Persian Hitler” – still Columbia’s enemy du jour. Horowitz went on at some length about human rights abuses in Iran. Did you know that Ahmadinejad has just passed a law saying that couples can’t hold hands in public, and that this edict will be enforced by the Morality Police? Neither does the mainstream media. He’s right about one thing, though: hatred for America in the Middle East did not start with Bush. Horowitz blames it on Jimmy Carter. Then Clinton wanted to invade Iraq and the “entire Democratic congress was for it” but unfortunately this was in 1998, and Clinton got himself embroiled in more important matters with a certain “cupcake.” Damn those missed opportunities. Of course, when it came time for Bush to bomb Iraq, the Democrats reversed their former support.

Why, then, are we at war with Iraq? Because we’ve always been at war with Iraq. The Gulf War, he says, ended with a treaty. Part of the treaty involved Saddam not gassing Kurds any more, and the other part of the treaty involved Saddam allowing weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for weapons. Saddam violated both parts of this treaty and thus asked us to attack him. So that’s the reason, then. Nothing about yellowcake uranium or cooperation with al-Qaeda or anything else.

Now that we “know our enemy” and have a justification for fighting him, what would happen if we left Iraq? Hundreds of thousands of moderate Muslims would die. You know, “everyone who voted in the election that George Bush made possible”? Yeah, them. All dead. Iran would become the “major power” in Iraq and would invade all of its neighbors for “not being Muslim enough.” That having been done, Ahmadinejad would “wipe America off the map” just like he said in his Colu… wait. I seem to remember having watched that speech in person, but what I don’t remember is Ahmadinejad saying that he wants to wipe America off the map. Or Israel, for that matter. But Horowitz said he “watched the speech” and heard Ahmadinejad threaten to kill us all (”because if they detonate a dirty bomb in New York, it won’t distinguish between liberal and conservative”), so maybe my memory is failing. “That’s a gun to your head,” he kept reminding us. I suppose that questions about the morality of Osama’s guns versus Bush’s guns are better left to philosophers.

That’s okay, though, said Horowitz. None of the above horrors will come to pass because we’re not going to leave Iraq. Bush won’t leave it, and Hillary won’t leave it when she’s elected. Let’s repeat that, shall we? She won’t leave Iraq when she’s elected. (The slightest possibility makes you want to give your entire paycheck to Ron Paul.) The problem with that, he said, is that we’re fighting them over there, but we won’t fight them here. “Why are the traitorous New York Times editors not in jail?” he yelled. “They revealed state secrets in the middle of a war. In the middle of a war!” Same goes for the traitor Cindy Sheehan, whom Horowitz thinks should be cooling her heels in the next cell.

Horowitz continued for about 45 minutes in that same vein. Then came the question and answer session, with questions having been submitted in advance and fully vetted by the College Republicans. Of course, the questions were real softballs. “Why only Islamo-Fascism? What about American fascism?” Horowitz said that anyone who considered that America was at all fascist is “delusional.” Next question. “Are you familiar with the rate of tenured female professors in Iran?” “No.” Next question. “Why does the US deal with Islamo-Fascist regimes like Saudi Arabia?” “Unfortunately it’s a complicated world. ” The Saudi royal family is “corrupt and evil,” but because of environmental radicals we need Saudi oil and thus we need them as our allies, he said. Apparently, my question about the hypocrisy of his decrying of human rights abuses in Iran while promoting some of those very same abuses in the US wasn’t deemed worthy of his consideration.

As a parting thought, Horowitz offered this translation of the first amendment: that it is the right of individuals to make utter fools of themselves in public. If that translation is correct, then he is one of the nation’s foremost exploiters of the first amendment and ought to be congratulated. So, sir, my hat is off to you for having the cojones to promote your particular brand of neo-conservatism on 114 (or 200) college campuses. Similar kudos to the Columbia University College Republicans for providing Horowitz with enough rope to hang himself and a convenient forum to do it in.

Neocons Dream Up Nefarious Alex Jones - Ron Paul Plot

Kurt Nimmo TruthNews October 29, 2007

Neocons never rest, especially when they are tasked with shooting down the only Constitution-based presidential candidate out of fear he will, when elected, put an end to their clash of civilizations mass murder campaign.

For instance, the neocon blogger “Allahpundit,” posting on the Hot Air site, is busy accusing Ron Paul and Alex Jones of some sort of shadowy collusion. “…it seems now we’ve got money moving in both directions between America’s Greatest Patriot and this bottom-feeding Truther jackass: a $2,300 donation from Jones to Paul and a $1,300 payment this quarter from Paul’s campaign to ‘Jones, Alex.’ Assuming it’s the same Alex Jones, which seems a safe bet, pray tell what might that payment have been for?” writes the dirt-sniffing blogger.

Nothing nefarious here, folks. Indeed, Alex Jones donated to the Ron Paul campaign, as radio talk show hosts are allowed to donate to the political campaigns of their choice. As for the supposed “$1,300 payment” to Alex Jones, this was merely a refund. Jones made a mistake—he intended to donate $1,000, not $2,300, and the $1,300 was a refund. The transaction was noted by OpenSecrets, an organization covering presidential funding.

But never mind. In the demented recesses of the average neocon mind, this transaction is considered some sort of “sinister” conspiracy—one they hope may bring down the Ron Paul campaign, as the neocons want to make it look like Ron Paul is paying Alex Jones for favorable coverage on his radio show and websites.

It irks the neocons to no end that a real conservative is running for the presidency. Obviously, the cons want the snake Rudy Giuliani to reign as decider-commander in 2009—they have packed his campaign with their Machiavellian-Straussian “advisors,” including the swami of destruction, Norman Podhoretz, who never encountered a Muslim he did not want to kill, or at least make suffer by way of bunker-buster.

Finally, Rick Moran posted a partial retraction on the American Thinker site:

As far as the specific charge in my piece yesterday that the Paul campaign paid 9/11 truther and New World Order conspiracist Alex Jones $1300 in “services,” the facts of the matter are different. The “disbursement” that was paid to Mr. Jones was a partial refund of a campaign contribution made by Jones, who originally donated the maximum amount of $2300.

I regret the confusion caused by the difference between “services” rendered by Mr. Jones and the partial refund of his contribution.

Fair enough, except for the fact Moran took the opportunity to slam Alex Jones, Endgame, and Ron Paul. “Paul’s supporters will continue their campaign of intimidation against us, of that I am sure,” Moran concludes after quoting several venomous emails he received. “But I for one will not be deterred from reporting on the decidedly unbalanced and frightening nature of both his supporters and the direction his campaign would take America.”

Of course, as we live in Bushzarro world, it is not “unbalanced and frightening” that a gaggle of pernicious neocons want to launch World War IV, as they fondly call it.

For a bit more enlightenment on this story, check out the comments posted on the the Liberty Papers blog.

Martin Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, October 29, 2007

Actor Martin Sheen questioned the official 9/11 story, as well as the collapse of Building 7 and Larry Silverstein’s “pull it” comment during an anti-war march this past weekend in Los Angeles, saying that recent revelations about the attacks had caused him to have doubts.

Sheen was interviewed by We Are Change L.A. along with fellow actor Mark Ruffalo during an event hosted by the ANSWER Coalition at which around 20,000 people attended.

Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning Martin Sheen, star of blockbuster films like Apocalypse Now and The West Wing, follows in the footsteps of his son Charlie Sheen, who publicly spoke of his doubts about the official 9/11 story back in March 2006.

Martin Sheen said that he was dubious about questioning the official story until his son introduced him to new information about the anomalies of what happened on that day.

“Up until last year, I was very dubious,” said Sheen, “I did not want to believe that my government could possibly be involved in such a thing, I could not live in a country that I thought could do that - that would be the ultimate betrayal,” he added.

“However, there have been so many revelations that now I have my doubts, and chief among them is Building 7 - how did they rig that building so that it came down on the evening of the day?” said Sheen.

Sheen also questioned the comments of Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder of the WTC complex, who told a September 2002 documentary that the decision was made to “pull” Building 7, a demolition industry term for the deliberate implosion of a structure.

“How convenient,” said Sheen, “When did they rig that building? That’s the most interesting question and I have not received a satisfactory answer - nobody could give me an answer to how you rig the building - what a coincidence - two weeks prior and then bring it down on the day, that is the one thing that I have not got a sensible answer about from anyone,” he concluded.

Sheen also stated that NORAD’s failure to follow its standard operating procedure on 9/11 was “something to wonder about”.

Click here to listen to the audio MP3.

Though Fox News and other attack dogs are likely to seize upon Sheen’s comments and run hit pieces, the National Institute of Standards and Technology itself had to admit recently that the total collapse of the twin towers at free fall speed could not be explained.

NIST also promised to investigate whether explosive devices were involved in the collapse of Building 7 in August last year.

The issue of Building 7 stoked controversy earlier this year when archive footage from news networks including BBC and CNN emerged that showed correspondents reporting the collapse the 47-story skyscraper over 20 minutes before it fell, leading some to charge that people with foreknowledge of the collapse were feeding networks a script as the events of 9/11 unfolded.

Watch the video: