Urban legend of "North American Union" feeds on fears (Warning: Government Psi-Op)

seattle times
WASHINGTON — Forget conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination, black helicopters, Sept. 11, 2001. This is the big one.

We're talking about the secret plan to build a superhighway, a giant 10- to 12-lane production, from the Yucatán to the Yukon. This "SuperCorridor" would allow the really big part of the plan to take place: the merging of the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Say goodbye to the dollar, and maybe even the English language.

The rumor is sweeping the Internet, radio and magazines, spread by bloggers, broadcasters and writers who cite the "proof" in the writings of a respected American University professor, in a task force put together by the Council on Foreign Relations and in the workings of the Commerce Department.

As do many modern rumors, fears of a North American Union began with a few grains of truth and leapt to an unsubstantiated conclusion.

Back and forth

"There is absolutely no U.S. government plan for a NAFTA Superhighway of any sort," said David Bohigian, an assistant secretary of commerce. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., a powerful member of committees that would authorize and pay for a North American Free Trade Agreement Superhighway if one were being planned, dismissed the notion as "unfounded theories" with "no credence."

And yet: A pending congressional resolution condemns it. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks darkly of "secret funding" for it. Commentators fulminate against the four-football-fields-wide behemoth as a threat to private property, national security and "a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community," as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly wrote.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan writes that under the North American Union plan, "the illegal-alien invasion would be solved by eliminating America's borders and legalizing the invasion."

Congressional action

Responding to denials, Rep Virgil Goode, R-Va., the chief sponsor of the House of Representatives resolution opposing the NAFTA Superhighway, scoffed: "I've heard that line before. They're just calling it something else. ... It's a decrease in our security and an erasing of our borders."

Goode is hardly alone: His resolution has attracted 21 co-sponsors, from both parties.

"Nobody is proposing a North American Union," countered Robert Pastor, the American University professor to whom conspiracy theorists point as "the father of the NAU." They cite his 2001 book, "Towards a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New," as the basic text for the plan. They also note his co-chairmanship of a Council on Foreign Relations task force that produced a 2005 report on cooperation among the three countries.

This is no backwoods rumor, no small-time concern. Google "North American Union" on the Internet and you'll find 113 million references (as of Friday evening).

Fears stoked

On one recent day alone, Pastor said, he received 100 e-mails on the topic. "They get turned on by [CNN's] Lou Dobbs and [Fox's] Bill O'Reilly, who are fearful that Mexicans and Canadians are about to take over our country," Pastor said, adding that such claims are a product of "the xenophobic or frightened right wing of America that is afraid of immigration and globalization."

Not that he doesn't think cooperation — short of a merger — is a good idea. He has testified before Congress on improving coordination within North America.

"The three governments are trying to grope toward a better way to relate to one another, but they are trying to do it under the radar screen, because they know any initiative would be both controversial and difficult to get approval of," Pastor said. "But precisely because they're doing it so quietly, the conservative crowd is concerned that they're really doing something important. But they're not. The real problem is that the three governments are asleep on the issue."

Tom Fitton is president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that promotes accountability in government. He said his group was "investigating" the rumors and that, while it hadn't uncovered proof positive, the Bush administration was fueling suspicion by the way it was handling the issue.

"You've got all these ministries in the three countries working trilaterally on transportation, energy, food safety, health, pandemics and border security," Fitton said. "The concern from some on the right is that the process is not as transparent as it ought to be, and that it is a threat to sovereignty in the sense that they're talking about integration instead of just cooperation."

The supposed superhighway would be a monster, with high-speed lanes and freight rail lines, plus pipelines, water, fiber optics and electric power, with gasoline and food concessions, stores, hotels and emergency services in the median.

Those convinced that the full-bore NAFTA Superhighway is coming point to several disparate efforts that they say prove the government isn't telling the whole truth:

• The controversial effort to build the Trans-Texas Corridor, which would largely parallel existing highways, primarily moving freight. The suspicious see it as the NAFTA Superhighway's first leg.

• A Bush administration proposal to allow some Mexican trucks to drive deeper into the U.S. heartland than previously allowed. A bill to limit the program, proposed by Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan., passed the House this week, 411-3. (Boyda, a congressional newcomer, defeated a five-term incumbent who had called the superhighway a myth.)

• North America's SuperCorridor Project, or NASCO. The Texas-based nonprofit coalition advocates for improvements along major trade corridors, such as Interstates 35, 29 and 94.

• The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). It's a collaborative effort on several fronts, including trade and security, by the United States, Canada and Mexico. Critics call it Ground Zero for the push for a North American Union.

Bohigian, the assistant secretary of commerce whose portfolio includes the SPP, said the effort is intended only to "reduce the cost of trade and improve the quality of life" through efforts such as decreasing the wait time for trucks idling at international borders. Reducing the average wait time from 35 minutes to six minutes has saved more than $1 billion, he said.

Fitton of Judicial Watch said much of the activity dates to the establishment on March 23, 2005, of the SPP by Bush, then-Mexican President Vicente Fox and then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.

Notes obtained from the U.S. government after a meeting in Canada in September 2006 contained the phrase "evolution by stealth," Fitton said.

Matt Englehart, spokesman for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, said the North American partnership "is absolutely not a precursor" to a loss of American sovereignty.

"It's about smart and secure borders, promoting the safe and efficient movement of legitimate people and goods," Englehart said.

He described the work by the three governments as "standard intergovernmental diplomacy and coordination that occurs all the time on various issues."

What about that highway?

The federal government has no plans for a superhighway, Englehart said, but "there are private and state-level interests" pushing something similar. "They describe themselves as NAFTA corridors, but they're not federally driven initiatives, and they're not part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership."

Michael Barkun, a Syracuse University political scientist who specializes in conspiracy theories, said a major theme long has been "that schemes are being hatched to destroy American sovereignty."

"The only thing that's new here is that it appears in the guise of a North American Union," he said. "Previously it appeared in the guise of U.N. domination. I think whatever appeal this has may derive from the fact that there are pre-existing concerns about trade that have been around since the creation of NAFTA, and even more strongly the immigration issue in the sense of border security. So in a way it becomes an issue onto which all kinds of anxieties and concerns can be projected."

Doug Thomas, professor of communications, technology and culture at the University of Southern California, said the advent of the Internet has made conspiracy theories widely available.

"It's the speed and the distribution," he said. "People are able to join in and flush them out a little quicker, so everybody can add a piece to the puzzle."
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Its like saying the Atlantic Ocean doesnt exist. Whats worse is, if they told us the Atlantic Ocean didnt exist, you would probably believe that to. The North American Union is REAL! Its already been setup, and we have been in it for about 2 years now. Calling it a Myth is a LIE!

Here's some proof from the mountain of evidence!
CFR Documents
Building a North American Community
The End of Natinoal Currency
old CFR member list

The REAL Rudy Giuliani

Big Brother X-Ray Vans Now Patrol The Streets

Birth Control Measures Prompt Riots in China

NY TIMES
BEIJING, May 21 — An intensive campaign to enforce strict population-control measures prompted violent clashes between the police and local residents in southwestern China in recent days, witnesses said, describing the latest incident of rural unrest that has alarmed senior officials in Beijing.

Villagers and visitors to several counties of Guangxi autonomous region in southwestern China said rioters smashed and burned government offices, overturned official vehicles, and clashed with the riot police in a series of confrontations over the past four days.

They gave varying accounts of injuries and deaths, with some asserting that as many as five people were killed, including three officials responsible for population-control work. A local government official in one of the counties affected confirmed the rioting in an interview by telephone but denied reports of deaths or serious injuries.

The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to punish people who violated the country’s birth control policy. The policy limits the number of children families can have legally.

Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China’s long economic boom.

The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China’s hinterland remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its largest cities.

To limit the growth of its population of 1.3 billion, many parts of China rely more on financial penalties and incentives than on coercive measures, including forced abortions and sterilizations, that were common in the 1980s, when the so-called one-child policy was first strictly enforced.

But local officials who fail to meet annual population control targets can still come under heavy bureaucratic pressure to reduce births in their area of responsibility or face demotion or removal from office.

According to villagers and witness accounts posted on the Internet, officials in several parts of Guangxi mobilized their largest effort in years to roll back population growth by instituting mandatory health checks for women and forcing pregnant women who did not have approval to give birth to abort fetuses.

Several people said officials also slapped fines starting at 500 yuan and ranging as high as 70,000 yuan, or $65 to $9,000, on families that had violated birth control measures anytime since 1980. The new tax, called a “social child-raising fee,” was collected even though the vast majority of violators had already paid fines in the past, the people said.

According to an account published on a Web forum called Longtan, officials in Bobai County of Guangxi boasted that they had collected 7.8 million yuan in social child-raising fees from February through the end of April.

Many families objected strongly to the fees and refused to pay.

Witnesses said in such cases villagers were detained, their homes searched, and valuables, including electronic items and motorcycles, confiscated by the government.

“Worst of all, the gangsters used hammers and iron rods to destroy people’s homes, while threatening that the next time it would be with bulldozers,” said one local peasant, who identified himself as Nong Sheng and who faxed a petition letter complaining of the abuses to a reporter in Beijing.

Nong said the crackdown was widespread in several counties in Guangxi. He said local courts had declined to hear any cases related to the matter, citing an edict from local officials.

Other villagers reached by phone described an escalating series of confrontations that began Thursday and continued through the weekend.

Several described in detail an assault on the government offices of Shapi Township, Bobai County, by thousands of peasants.

They said villagers broke through a wall surrounding the government building, ransacked the offices, smashed computers and destroyed documents and then set fire to the building itself. There were inconsistent reports of death and injuries during that clash and a subsequent crackdown by riot police.

Lebanese Army Clashes With Islamist Militants; 70 Die

May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Lebanon's soldiers clashed for a second day with Islamist militants in the northern city of Tripoli, as Lebanese officials accused neighboring Syria of sparking the bloodshed that may have killed 70 people.

Gunfights yesterday killed about 40 people, including 27 soldiers, the state-owned National News Agency said. As well as the soldiers and militants, another 30 people may have died yesterday and today inside the Nahr el-Bared camp, which houses about 30,000 Palestinian refugees and is at the center of the fighting, the agency reported.

Television footage on Arab and international channels showed plumes of smoke rising above Tripoli, a predominantly Sunni Muslim city, as the army struck at militants from the Palestinian group Fatah Al-Islam. A two-hour cease-fire was brokered today by the International Committee of the Red Cross to evacuate the wounded and remove bodies, the state news agency said.

While all major political parties in Lebanon, including those allied with Syria, said they supported the Lebanese army and condemned Fatah Al-Islam, the violence may be an attempt by Syria to keep pressure on the Lebanese government, analysts and Lebanese government members said.

``This is another attempt to blackmail Lebanon,'' Marwan Hamadeh, Lebanese minister of telecommunications, said in a telephone interview today, accusing Syria of instigating and supporting the group. ``Lebanon will not submit to this kind of pressure.''

The Lebanese government was holding an emergency meeting today to discuss the crisis, the official news agency said.

Hariri Killing

The Lebanese, U.S., and French governments want an international tribunal set up to try Syrian officials who they say were behind a series of assassinations in Lebanon, including the 2005 car-bomb killing of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Hariri had been pressing for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, where they had been stationed since the end of the country's 1975-1990 civil war.

The Syrian troops left Lebanon later in 2005. Since last summer's war between Israel and the Shiite Muslim militia group Hezbollah, Shiite and Christian political parties supported by Syria have pushed the Lebanese government to step down, saying it is too close to the U.S.

``The Syrians have a lot of interest in keeping pressure on Lebanon and taking advantage of the country's precarious situation,'' said Anne Giudicelli, a former French diplomat who founded and runs Paris-based Terrorisc, a risk consultancy company specializing in the Middle East. ``Obviously, it's hard to have proof.''

Human Shields

The fighting erupted after security forces raided a building in Tripoli to arrest suspects in a bank robbery, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported. Alleged members of Fatah Al-Islam then attacked army posts at Nahr el-Bared, the BBC said.

Hamadeh said the fighting was dragging on because the militants were using the camp's population as human shields.

``The innocent Palestinians inside the camp are hostages,'' Hamadeh said. ``Our biggest fear is if this issue spreads beyond the camp.''

In other violence, a 63-year-old woman died and 10 people were injured in a bombing yesterday at a shopping center car-park in a Christian district of Beirut in what police described as a terrorist attack, AFP said.

Fatah Al-Islam is an Islamic splinter group of the mainstream and secular Palestinian Fatah group. It has no more than few dozen members, said Alain Flandrois, deputy director general of GEOS, a Paris-based risk consultancy.

Al-Qaeda Allegiance

The group has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, though it's unclear whether it has any operational link to Osama bin Laden's international terrorist group, Flandrois said.

``Saying you are al-Qaeda has a certain publicity and political impact that helps put pressure on the government,'' Flandrois said. ``But these groups operate with a lot of autonomy. The Lebanese are more likely to see the hand of Syria rather than al-Qaeda.''

In a statement on its official Web site, Hezbollah condemned Fatah al-Islam's attack and praised the Lebanese army. The Hezbollah statement said that its allies, the fellow Shiite Amal group as well as the Free Patriotic Movement of Christian General Michel Aoun, also condemned the attack. Hezbollah, Amal and Aoun are allied with Syria, oppose the international tribunal, and are pressuring the Lebanese government to step down.

`Gang of Criminals'

The commander of the mainstream Fatah movement in Lebanon, Sultan Abu al-Aynayn, said Fatah Al-Islam is a ``gang of criminals'' and condemned it for attacking the Lebanese army, the Beirut-based Daily Star said.

Syria's official news agency made no mention of the events in Lebanon on its official Web site.

French defense minister Herve Morin said today that the fighting in Tripoli shows there is a ``permanent risk'' for the United Nations soldiers who are in the south of Lebanon maintaining a buffer between Hezbollah and Israel following their month-long war last summer.

Al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, in a video last September called on followers to attack all countries that supported the UN resolution that established the buffer zone, which is manned by soldiers from 28 countries, including France, Italy, French, Spain, and India.

Immigration bill would require re-verification of 145 million American workers

RAW STORY
A story in tomorrow's New York Times (reg. req.) describes how U.S. employers, despite having had a considerable amount of input into the current immigration bill, are unhappy with the result in a number of ways. In particular, they are worried that a "merit-based" system for allocating green cards would result in the government deciding whom to let in rather than businesses being able to apply for immigrant workers with the skills they need.

However, the area of greatest general concern may be a proposal that would require employers to re-verify the identity of every single person currently employed in the United States. Not only would it place a considerable burden on both government and business, but the verification system currently being tested has shown a significant rate of error.

Excerpts:

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Under a 1986 law, employers are supposed to ask all job applicants for documents to verify that they are eligible to work in the United States. The Senate bill goes much further, requiring employers to copy the documents and check an electronic database established by the government.

"We cannot ask our employers to verify somebody here unless we help them," President Bush said last week.

But Susan R. Meisinger, president of the Society for Human Resource Management, which represents 215,000 personnel executives, said: "The Senate proposal would require employers to re-verify the identity and employment eligibility of 145 million Americans who are currently employed. That's unworkable. The burden on government and the private sector could cause the system to crash."

The government has been testing an employee verification system like the one envisioned in the Senate bill. Federal investigators have found a significant error rate because information in the database is sometimes inaccurate or outdated.

THE FULL, REGISTRATION-RESTRICTED STORY IS AVAILABLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES.

UK Police chief's 'Orwellian' fears

bbc
A senior police officer has said he fears the spread of CCTV cameras is leading to "an Orwellian situation".

Deputy chief constable of Hampshire Ian Readhead said Britain could become a surveillance society with cameras on every street corner.

He told the BBC's Politics Show that CCTV was being used in small towns and villages where crime rates were low.

Mr Readhead also called for the retention of some DNA evidence and the use of speed cameras to be reviewed.

His force area includes the small town of Stockbridge, where parish councillors have spent £10,000 installing CCTV.

Mr Readhead questioned whether the relatively low crime levels justified the expense and intrusion.

'Every street corner?'

"I'm really concerned about what happens to the product of these cameras, and what comes next?" he said.

"If it's in our villages, are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation where cameras are at every street corner?

"And I really don't think that's the kind of country that I want to live in."

There are up to 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people.

The UK also has the world's biggest DNA database, with 3.6 million DNA samples on file.

Gas Prices Hit An All-Time High

Lundberg Survey: National Average Price For A Gallon Of Regular Is $3.18
(CBS) The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.18, according to the latest Lundberg Survey. As CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston reports, that is the highest average cost per gallon ever in the United States – even adjusting for inflation.

These days, every trip to the gas station is an experience in sticker shock. A gallon of regular gas costs $3.24 in New York. It's $3.45 in Milwaukee, and $3.59 in Chicago.

This weekend alone, from Friday to Sunday, the average price of gas went up another 5 cents per gallon.

A gallon of mid-grade gasoline averaged $3.29, and premium cost $3.40, according to the latest Lundberg Survey of seven-thousand gas stations across the country.

The price hikes are giving oil companies another banner year. First quarter profits for Exxon-Mobil totaled nearly $9.3 billion. Royal Dutch Schell picked up more than $6.9 billion. The number was $4.7 billion for Chevron.

In a December interview with CBS News, Shell's president defended the industry's high profits.

"The profits are high because the crude price is high, and the cost of producing that crude has not materially changed," John Hofmeister said. "Future investments cost more money."

Oil executives downplay the amount of fuel that can be produced from home grown sources like ethanol.

"I think independence is naive," Hoffmeister told CBS News.

U.S. inventories are at record lows for the pre-summer season – a sure fire formula for higher prices in the future. But many consumers are hurting right now.

To cope with climbing prices, commuters like Denise von Wilke are looking for every possible way to save. She drives more slowly and car pools with a co-worker for her 47-mile trip to work.

Von Wilke also uses the Internet to find bargains. She says she can find the lowest gas prices in all of New Jersey from her desk.

Across the country, the lowest price for regular fuel was $2.87 in Charleston, South Carolina, and the highest was in Chicago at $3.59 a gallon, according to the Lundberg Survey.

Higher fuel costs are driving many Americans to mass transit. The American Transportation Association reports more than 10 billion trips on trains and buses last year – the highest use of public transportation in 49 years.

Ethiopia says 1,000 insurgents killed in Mogadishu clashes

ADDIS ABABA, May 19, 2007 (AFP) - Ethiopia said Saturday its troops backing Somali government forces killed nearly 1,000 insurgents in Mogadishu in March and April during some of the heaviest clashes in the city's bloody history.

"Some 200 to 300 Al-Shabaab fighters (Somali insurgents) and other extremists died in the fighting in late March and more than 600 in the fighting that ended on April 26," the Ethiopian foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said 150 others were taken prisoner, "many of them international mujahedeen", but did not indicate where the detainees were being held.

Mogadishu's dominant Hawiye clan elders and a local rights panel estimated that at least 1,400 people, mainly civilians, died in the clashes, which drew international condemnation for attacks on civilian targets.

Addis Ababa said at least 80,000 people fled the violence, while United Nations agencies said up to 400,000 people were displaced.

"The numbers of those who had fled from the two or three (Mogadishu) districts where the fighting was fiercest was perhaps as many as 80,000, but this was no more than a fifth of the higher UN estimates," the statement added.

African Union peacekeepers from Uganda are due to take over from Ethiopian forces who helped Somali troops expel the Islamists from southern and central Somalia at the start of the year.

Apart from the face-to-face fighting, dozens of people -- including peacekeepers -- have been killed and scores wounded in separate attacks since then, mainly by homemade bombs and grenades.

Renegade Somali leaders living in Eritrea last month vowed to intensify insurgent attacks despite their retreat following the Mogadishu clashes.

Somalia, a nation of 10 million, has been without an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre sparked a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.

NATO's top official spending night at Bush's Texas ranch

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- NATO's secretary-general has arrived at President Bush's Texas ranch for talks on Afghanistan and other topics.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and his wife, Jeannine, were greeted by the Bushes after arriving by helicopter. The president drove them to his ranch in his pickup.

Tomorrow, Bush and Scheffer are expected to focus on Afghanistan, where violence has increased lately, but also talk about NATO's role in Kosovo, and U-S plans for a missile defense system in Europe.

By inviting Scheffer for an overnight stay in Texas, Bush is demonstrating his commitment to NATO and its leader.

The Mystery Militia In Lebanon

time
Fighting between Lebanese troops and militants from an Islamist Palestinian faction continued outside Tripoli, Lebanon’s second biggest city, for a second day Monday in the country’s worst internal violence since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Some 50 people were killed Sunday in a series of intense gun battles fought in the streets of Tripoli itself and nine miles north of the city in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp, which is also headquarters of the Fatah al-Islam faction. The violence spread to Beirut late Sunday when a 22 pound bomb exploded in a car park in the Ashrafieh district of east Beirut, killing one woman and wounding 12 others.

By Monday morning, calm had returned to central Tripoli, but the Lebanese government vowed to continue its offensive against militants holed up in Nahr al-Bared. The Lebanese government believes that the sudden surge of violence is linked to moves by members of the United Nations Security Council to appoint an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Though Syria has denied any involvement, many believe it was behind the killing. "The pro-Syrian opposition has reached a complete political deadlock and the international tribunal is about to be passed by the United Nations. That's the reason why we are seeing this violence," Marwan Hamade, Lebanese minister of telecoms and a leading anti-Syrian politician told TIME.

Fatah al-Islam has dominated security news in Lebanon since it first declared its existence late last year. The Sunni extremist group said it had split from Fatah al-Intifada, a pro-Syrian Palestinian faction which is headquartered in Damascus, and that its goal is to fight for the Palestinian cause. But divining the real identity of Fatah al-Islam has become mired in Lebanon's political crisis and the answer to what the group’s real agenda is depends on whom you ask. The anti-Syrian March 14 coalition, which forms the backbone of the Lebanese government, believes that the group is linked to Al-Qaeda but was planted in Lebanon by Syrian military intelligence to cause instability.

Lebanese authorities have accused the group of a twin minibus bombing in the Christian town of Ain Alaq in February in which three people were killed. They also believe Fatah al-Islam members carried out at least three bank robberies, the latest on Saturday when $120,000 was stolen from a bank in the coastal town of Amioun south of Tripoli.

Some analysts in Lebanon say that Syrian intelligence has a long history of working with Palestinian Islamist groups in Lebanon, notably Esbat al-Ansar, based in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon. Esbat al-Ansar is included on the US list of international terrorist organizations. "Syrian intelligence has been working with groups like this for 20 years. It's an old practice," says Radwan al-Sayyed, a professor of Islamic studies at the Lebanese University and a speech writer for Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

But others argue that blaming Syria for all Lebanon's problems is the default position of the March 14 coalition and the government, and that Fatah al-Islam is a genuine Islamist organization dedicated to the Palestinian cause. Tripoli resident Mohsen Mohammed, 35, an adherent of the strict Salafi school of Sunni Islam and a sympathizer of Fatah al-Islam, says that the group's popularity has been steadily increasing in the Nahr al-Bared camp. "They help people by giving them food and aid. They are very disciplined and polite and never carry arms in the camp except at times of trouble," he says.

Fatah al-Islam has recently begun establishing a presence in other refugee camps in Beirut and south Lebanon. Mohammed and other supporters of the group in Tripoli said that Fatah al-Islam's goal is to become the dominant Palestinian faction in Lebanon. Islamist sources in Tripoli said that Fatah al-Islam is being funded by Salafist supporters in the city, which allows them to win popularity in the refugee camps by providing social services. The crackdown on Fatah al-Islam, they say, is part of a broader attempt by the US-backed Lebanese government to quell any sign of anti-American Sunni extremism.

As many as 200 people in Tripoli and north Lebanon were rounded up by Lebanese authorities last month and accused of ties to Al-Qaeda, stockpiling weapons and planning attacks. "They were all innocent people," says Sheikh Ibrahim Salih, a prominent Salafist cleric in Tripoli. "They [the government] want to keep the Sunni street under control and to convince the Americans they are fighting terrorism."

Fatah al-Islam is headed by Shaker al-Absi, a veteran Palestinian guerrilla fighter who originally trained in the Syrian Air Force. He is believed to have fought American forces in Iraq and was linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq who was killed a year ago. Al-Absi was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court in 2004 for the murder of American diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. His fighters reportedly number 200 to 500 and are drawn from several Arab countries.

They have proved a tenacious foe. In Sunday's street battles, several of the well-armed militants holed up in residential buildings in the Zaharieh district of central Tripoli firing machine guns and hurling grenades at Lebanese soldiers who sought cover behind armored personnel carriers on the street below. Soldiers battered the cramped apartment buildings with rifle and heavy machine gun fire, ripping chunks of masonry from the walls and filling the air with dust and acrid gun smoke. It was not until early evening that the army managed to kill the last of the militants.

Although a crowd of onlookers cheered as Lebanese troops poured machine gun fire into the buildings, one soldier grumbled that when the troops first arrived on the scene some local residents has tried to hide the militants. "They have supporters here," he said. The government is vowing to finish Fatah al-Islam once and for all, but the struggle to contain rising Sunni extremist sentiment in Lebanon promises to be a long battle.

Poll: 80% Believe Kennedy Conspiracy

aol
A Recent AOL Poll shows that 80% believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in assassinating Kennedy.

What if the next attack is the last?

Homeland Security NTARC News
WND.com
It's easy to forget the Islamic terror attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. In fact, the bulk of Americans already have.

Our government has precipitated this view by requiring nothing of ordinary citizens. There are no gasoline or ration coupons, there are no long lines to buy tires or other products used in the war, and there is no military draft. In fact, for the bulk of Americans, 9-11 was a television mini-series that played way back when. It drew oohs and ahhs when it ran, but now it's over.

It is the military alone that has paid the price. And for the bulk of Americans, that suits them quite well.

It is possible – and I have held this view – that such complacency was a testimony to the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies. The NSA in particular, it seems, had the capability of listening in on certain terrorist telephone calls about where the next bomb would be detonated. Thus the work of the FBI and Homeland Security became considerably easier, and more pre-emptive.

It's also possible that this view is wrong.

Recently, I have found myself wondering: What if the next attack on American soil – the one so many experts say they feel is inevitable – is not a single attack? What if, instead, it is a widespread, crippling blow designed to finish the United States as a world power? What if it destroys 8-12 of America's cities with nukes that were gradually put in place during the time interval since 9-11? What if it releases a follow-on biological attack?

Put another way, what if the reason there have been no attacks following 9-11 is that there have been no attacks following 9-11?

Despite the fact that 9-11 failed in its goals, it is impossible not to admire bin Laden as a military strategist. The concept: Hit the financial center in New York and the federal government in Washington, D.C. Remove the capability of the U.S. to respond militarily by crippling the Pentagon. Throw the government into turmoil by destroying the White House and the Capitol building.

We don't honor the people on the plane that went down in that Pennsylvania field nearly often enough. Nor do we appreciate that grounding and diverting civilian airliners that day prevented other attacks. The character of the 9-11 attack increasingly leads me to believe that the next attack on the United States will be a large, crippling attack beyond the comprehension of most Americans.

For the left, ending the war on terror is easy. Quit fighting. Give the Islamists what they want, which is commonly perceived to be Israel (there they go again, giving away something that isn't theirs to give). For those of us who know the cycle of aggression and appeasement, the answers are not quite so easy. A nuclear North Korea and probably within another year Iran indicate that most of the world is ready to accept "nukes are us" franchises in terrorist nations. Civilization cannot survive this, simply to give aging leftist boomers another few years of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Amnesty Opens Door For Foreign Occupation Of U.S.

Reform Bill drafted in secret by foreign stakeholders, not even provided to Senators to read
infowars.net
The Senate is on the verge of passing a bill that has been written in secret and has not even be read which provides total amnesty for 12 million (if you are to believe official figures) illegal aliens already inside the US, allows them to bring in their entire families from outside and ultimately paves the way for foreign occupation of the United States.

The immigration reform bill, which has been hailed by President Bush, has been denounced by many commentators and Senators as total amnesty by stealth.

Listen To Alex Jones' impassioned rant on this subject from today's show.

It has been drafted in total secrecy with the help of liberal think tanks and Latino national interest groups such as the National Council of La Raza and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which as the Washington Post reported now have virtual veto power in the immigration debate. Some of these groups are notoriously racist and have openly called for revolution.

On Wednesday conservative web site redstate reported:

The issue boils down to whether Senate Republicans leaders, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Conference Chairman Jon Kyl (Ariz.), will give Democrats a free pass to bring up the bill without ever giving Republicans a chance to review it. Sen. Teddy Kennedy (D.-Mass.) is leading negotiations for the Democrats, and has so far negotiated a favorable deal for Democrats, according to sources close to the negotiations.

A motion to proceed is a procedural step to start debating the legislation. It would allow leadership to present a bill to the Senate with no time for senators to actually read the legislation.
“There is concern among conservatives on the Hill that leadership will cave in on the motion to proceed on a bill that they’ve never seen,” one senior Senate aide told me. “Conservatives don’t want to do this because they don’t trust that the negotiators will produce a bill that will be satisfactory to conservatives.”

The legislation would grant undocumented workers who came into the country before January a permit to remain. They could then apply for a new, four-year "Z Visa," renewable indefinitely, as long as they pay a $5,000 fine, a $1,500 processing fee, show a clean work record and pass a criminal background check (even though they entered the US illegally, so are criminals).

The "Z visas" also pave the way for "chain immigration" allowing an immigrant to bring in relatives. Previously chain immigration was limited to immediate family members. New legislation will open it to include possibly more than 11 family members of any relation. Once those family members become resident they too will be able to bring in their extended families and so on.

Advocates of the bill are claiming that this can only happen in tandem with a total crackdown on border control. In other words before those immigrant-rights measures could go into effect, the government must deploy 18,000 new Border Patrol agents and four unmanned aerial vehicles; build 200 miles of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing, and 70 ground-based radar and camera towers; provide funds for the detention of 27,500 illegal immigrants a day; and complete new identification tools to help employers screen out illegal job applicants.

Given that the government has not been able to build a simple fence in six years how is it going to be able to achieve all this within eighteen months? We have also seen in the past how "immigration control efforts" such as Real ID, boosting troops on the borders and building fences are simply smoke and mirrors behind which lie methods of control, outrageous elitist profiteering and the destruction of freedom.

This is not the first time the Bush administration has moved to aid the benefits of Mexicans illegally working working in the US. In 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had initiated a program to start paying hospitals and doctors for providing emergency care to illegal immigrants. Members of Congress from border states had sought the money, totaling $1 Billion. They said treatment of illegal immigrants imposed a huge financial burden on many hospitals, which are required to provide emergency care to patients who need it, regardless of their immigration status or ability to pay. The administration had previously abandoned a proposal that would have required many hospitals to ask patients if they were U.S. citizens or legal immigrants.

Add to this previous mainstream reports of banks and lenders opening their doors to illegal immigrants, facilitated by government agencies, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the FDIC is encouraging banks to lend and invest in undeserved markets regardless of customers' immigration status.

Given these facts why should anyone now believe that the real agenda is to create a system that is tough on illegal immigrants?

In 1986 Reagan announced an amnesty of one million illegals which ended up being between three and six million with the promise of tougher border control which never materialized. There are now officially twelve million illegals in the country, however this figure is universally thought to be flawed as it is based primarily on the national census, to which illegals are most likely not to partake in. Higher estimates put the figure at over twenty million, with three or four million a year now entering the US.

The new bill's authors "seem to think that they can dupe the American public into accepting a blanket amnesty if they just call it 'comprehensive' or 'earned legalization' or 'regularization,' " commented Rep. Tom Tancredo "The president is so desperate for a legacy and a domestic policy win that he is willing to sell out the American people and our national security."

“It is unconscionable that with an issue of this magnitude and complexity that the Senate would proceed to legislation without any text available to review by senators,” another senior Senate source said.

U.S. Senator DeMint commented "I hope we don't take a thousand page bill written in secret and try to ram it through the Senate in a few days. This is a very important issue for America and we need time to debate it." DeMint denounced the "Z visas" stating "This rewards people who broke the law with permanent legal status, and puts them ahead of millions of law-abiding immigrants waiting to come to America. I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty."

Indeed it is amnesty, but it seems this time it will be much much more as well.

The AP is reporting that the Santa Fe Police Department is considering the possibility of recruiting Mexican nationals to fill vacant police jobs. Current regulations prohibit non-citizens from serving as police officers, but as a total amnesty would legalize all illegals this problem would dissolve.

Law departments are arguing that they, like the armed forces, should be allowed to recruit foreign nationals into vacant positions.

The US armed forces has also seen an influx of foreign troops, an average of 20% of ground troops in Iraq are now non citizens, this is set to rise to 50% over the next year with foreign recruitment stations facilitating the supply.

There now exists a situation in the US where foreigners are being recruited to the armed forces and soon enough to law enforcement.

Add to all this the fact that there is a huge push for a North American Union underway, which is continuing apace in relative secrecy and without Congressional oversight. We have issued several reports, the latest here, covering the fact that a wide range of US administrative law is being re-written in stealth under this program to "integrate" and "harmonize" with administrative law in Mexico and Canada, just as has become commonplace within the EU.

As this issue has raged on and tensions have continued to mount we have also seen that 'Immigration Protests' are being used as a cover for a racist ethnic cleansing movement. The fallout of increased tensions could lead to rioting and may provide the perfect pretext to begin round-up and internment procedures that have been previously outlined in the REX 84 program and were cited in the recent Kellogg Brown and Root contract to construct detention camps which was given to them by Homeland Security.

Social, political and economic forces are pulling America apart and driving her toward a bloody conflict that may fracture and Balkanize the nation. The move to cement a legal force of underling workers that will do the dirty work for America while at the same time wiping out middle class opulence and sustainability is a direct avocation of a creation of a massive underclass of illegal, third world, uneducated and poor slaves.

This only serves to benefit one section of society, the elite.

We urge you to flood the switch boards of the Senate and Congress and vent anger at the fact that the latest immigration reforms are set to be passed without even being read. We ask you to demand to know why the legislation has been drafted in secret under the direct influence of foreign stakeholders. And we ask you to demand your Senators and Congressmen to halt this blind overhauling of American security and to restore the system of constitutional debate before it is too late.

202-225-3121 Congress Switchboard

202-224-3121 Senate Switchboard

www.congress.com

Michigan GOP Move To Kick Ron Paul Out Of Debates Dropped

prisonplanet

Another crushing victory for free speech as RNC overwhelmed with thousands of calls, 20,000+ petition signatures

Freedom of speech has just registered a crushing victory after it was announced that the Michigan GOP have dropped their move to have Congressman Ron Paul kicked out of the Republican debates.

Though we still have to be wary that other factions within the GOP could seek to bar Ron Paul, we have shot down this trial balloon for now.

The RNC and the Michigan GOP received thousands of calls after we quickly organized a campaign and a petition in opposition to Michigan head Saul Anuzis' action to circulate a petition calling for Ron Paul to be removed from all future debates. Others also circulated online petitions to counter the move, totaling over 20,000 signatures between all the petitions.

Anuzis was angry that the Texas Congressman had dared to suggest that bombing Middle Eastern countries causes anger and blowback at the Republican candidate debate on Tuesday evening.

"After consulting with my fellow RNC members, I believe there isn’t anything to be gained by advancing a petition aimed solely at removing Congressman Paul from the debates. The primary is and will continue to work itself out," writes Anuzis on his blog.

Anuzis also protests that his intention was never to censure free speech but in moving to kick Ron Paul out for something he said that offended the Neo-Con leadership of the Michigan GOP, this was clearly an attempt to stifle a candidate who has made himself a frontrunner and won all the debate polls by simply telling the truth.

Judging by this call (MP3 link) to the RNC, both the Republican National Committee and the Michigan GOP have been flooded by complaints over the last couple of days and their only recourse was to submit to the will of the people and drop the idea altogether.

This is another victory for free speech and another example of how we can make a difference and make our voices heard in the political process.

FOX's Gibson Stretched Thin Over Rosie's 'Imagination'

jones report
O'Donnell Allegedly Pushing Phony Numbers for Iraqi Deaths, Found Guilty for Not Believing in Bogeymen "Terrorists" and 'Imagining' Government-Sponsored False-Flag Attacks by U.S.

Rosie is attacked by FOX's John Gibson for making more provocative statements about government-sponsored terrorism yesterday on The View . Gibson objected to the insinuation that the United States has engaged in state-sponsored terrorism and considered absurd Rosie's statement that "most Americans don't fall for the trick of the bad 'terrorists' anymore" as she emphasized the word 'terrorists' by making a quote mark gesture.

Gibson and his guest also accuse her of using bad figures for the number of Iraqis killed, though the real number is much higher than the 655,000 estimate Rosie quoted-- which was based on an MIT study that mainstream-media TV news and the Bush Administration tried to refute. That number itself now more than 6 months old.

In addition Documents obtained by the BBC under a Freedom Of Information Act request have proven that despite public dismissal of last year's Iraq Death Toll study, published in The Lancet Medical Journal, British Government officials actually backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion.

Regardless, Rosie is branded "anti-American" and full of "hate."

"The vast majority of Americans no longer are falling for the trick of the bad 'terrorists'," making a quotation gesture during the word terrorists.

Gibson questioned "By what stretch of the imagination" could the U.S. government perpetrate state-sponsored terrorism and terrorists be imaginary?

LINKS IN SUPPORT OF ROSIE'S ARGUMENT

Bush's War on Perception; the bombing of the Golden Mosque

False Flag Terror of the New World Order

Rumsfeld's Replacement Nurtured Bin Laden and Pivotal in Iran-Contra

Brzezinski Suggests False Flag Event Could Kick-Start Iran War

Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen

Zbigniew Brzezinski with Osama bin Laden in 1979.

PHONY TERRORISM

Former CIA Analyst: Government May Be Manufacturing Fake Terrorism

How the CIA Created Osama bin Laden

Bin Laden Tape Betrays 'Phony Hijacker' Contradiction

Hijack 'Suspects' Alive and Well

World Net Daily: Terror Alerts Manufactured for Political Effect?

More Evidence "al-Qaeda" is a CIA-ISI Contrivance"

A War in the Planning for Four Years

FBI Director Mueller acknowledged in 2002 There Was No "Legal Proof to Prove the Identities of the Hijackers"

Another Phony Al-Qaeda Group Claims Responsibil ity for Latest London Bombings

CNN: 'Hijacker' Visa Found in Flight 93 Wreckage

RELATED TO PHONY: 9/11 Prior Knowledge Archive

Street lockdowns proposed for Baltimore

ap
BALTIMORE - A city council leader, alarmed by Baltimore's rising homicide rate, wants to give the mayor the power to put troubled neighborhoods under virtual lockdown.

"Desperate measures are needed when we're in desperate situations," City Council Vice President Robert W. Curran told The (Baltimore) Sun. He said he would introduce the legislation next week.

Under Curran's plan, the mayor could declare "public safety act zones," which would allow police to close liquor stores and bars, limit the number of people on city sidewalks, and halt traffic during two-week intervals.

Police would be encouraged to aggressively stop and frisk individuals in those zones to search for weapons and drugs.

Baltimore has tallied 108 homicides already this year, compared to 98 over the same period last year. Police and prosecutors also say they are facing a "stop snitching" culture that discourages victims and witnesses from cooperating with investigators trying to get criminals off the streets.

Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., a mayoral hopeful, said Curran's idea was an interesting concept but it raised questions about civil liberties.

"We have to make sure we're not declaring martial law," he said.

Mayor Sheila Dixon had a lukewarm response after meeting with Curran on Wednesday, but she said she might support the idea with some changes.

"We're already currently in those communities. We're bringing the resources and services to the communities," Dixon said. "I want him to build on what we're attempting to do."

Curran said he modeled his plan after an approach advocated by Philadelphia mayoral candidate Michael Nutter, who won the Democratic nomination Tuesday. Nutter has called for declarations of a "state of emergency" in high-crime neighborhoods, where police would conduct aggressive stop-and-frisk searches and impose curfews.

Curran, who also sponsored Baltimore's recently passed smoking ban, said he expects opposition.

"Some of the critics of the smoking ban were telling me, 'If you want to save lives in Baltimore, do something about the murder rate, do something about the gun violence,'" he said. "I'm trying to stop the murders, to reduce the mortality rate from gun violence in this town."

Armed police raid home after mistaking Lara Croft dummy for gunman

uk daily
When police spotted a gun-wielding suspect lurking in the shadows of a suburban front room, their response was swift.

Armed officers burst into the house, shouted at the owner to lie on the floor, and ordered him to surrender his weapon.

But efficiency turned to embarrassment when the "gunman" turned out to be a life-sized model of the video game character Lara Croft, complete with trademark outsized pistols.

Computer shop owner David Williams, 42, had taken the dummy home to put it up for sale on the auction site eBay.

As the source of the confusion dawned on all concerned, it might have been the moment for an apology from the police.

Instead, however, Mr Williams was taken to the cells and held for more than 13 hours before being released.

He is now on bail for a suspected firearms offence, and Lara Croft remains impounded as evidence.

"It would have been laughable if it hadn't been so terrifying," he said yesterday. "One of the police held a gun and yelled, 'Where's the weapon, where's the weapon?'

"I didn't have a clue what was going on, I assumed they'd got the wrong house. I couldn't believe it when I realised they'd mistaken a Lara Croft dummy for someone with a gun."

Father-of-two Mr Williams had phoned police after receiving nuisance phone calls, and officers arrived at his house in Dukinfield, near Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, shortly before midnight.

He says he did not hear them arrive, but unknown to him one officer had seen the dummy's silhouette through the front window and called for armed back-up.

Soon afterwards, the street was cordoned off and a team of armed officers burst in through Mr Williams's back door.

A spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said officers peered inside after Mr Williams failed to answer his front door.

"They believed they saw a silhouette of a person pointing what appeared to be a firearm inside the house," she said.

They followed "correct procedure" by withdrawing to await armed officers, she added.

"Officers then went into the house and found a mannequin holding a toy weapon."

Mr Williams, who says he is speaking to lawyers about a possible claim for wrongful arrest, will hear whether he faces further action when he answers bail next month.

Global net censorship 'growing'

bbc
The level of state-led censorship of the net is growing around the world, a study of so-called internet filtering by the Open Net Initiative suggests.

The study of thousands of websites across 120 Internet Service Providers found 25 of 41 countries surveyed showed evidence of content filtering.

Websites and services such as Skype and Google Maps were blocked, it said.

Such "state-mandated net filtering" was only being carried out in "a couple" of states in 2002, one researcher said.

"In five years we have gone from a couple of states doing state-mandated net filtering to 25," said John Palfrey, at Harvard Law School.
Mr Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, added: "There has also been an increase in the scale, scope and sophistication of internet filtering."

ONI is made up of research groups at the universities of Toronto, Harvard Law School, Oxford and Cambridge.

It chose 41 countries for the survey in which testing could be done safely and where there was "the most to learn about government online surveillance".

A number of states in Europe and the US were not tested because the private sector rather than the government tends to carry out filtering, it said.

Countries which carry out the broadest range of filtering included Burma, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, the study said.

Full list of countries from the survey that filter content
The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms.

The report said: "In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world."
Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, said the organisation was also looking at the tools people used to circumvent filtering.

"It's hard to quantify how many people are doing this. As we go forward each year we want to see if some of these circumvention technologies become more like appliances and you just plug them in and they work," he added.

"Few states restrict their activities to one type of content," said Rafal Rohozinski, Research Fellow of the Cambridge Security Programme.

He added: "Once filtering is begun, it is applied to a broad range of content and can be used for expanding government control of cyberspace. "Cyberspace has become a strategic forum of competition between states, as well as between citizens and states."

Mr Palfrey said the report was an attempt to shine a spotlight on filtering to make it more transparent.

"What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."

Ron Paul: First Bush Was Working Towards New World Order

infowars
Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) was asked a question about the New World Order's agenda for a one-world government during a campaign stop in Austin, Texas on Saturday, amidst tremendous turnout and support.