Bush invokes 9/11 to justify torture, domestic spying and war

Patrick Martin
Global Research
November 4, 2007

In a speech Thursday, President Bush invoked the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as an all-purpose justification for his prevailing on a series of issues now in dispute in Congress: the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general despite his refusal to disavow torture; the passage of legislation to give sweeping new domestic spying powers to the federal government; and the approval of yet another emergency spending bill providing nearly $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush’s address was less a speech than a semi-hysterical diatribe, combining scare-mongering, crackpot history and bullying of his opponents in Washington. As in all presidential speeches of the past several years, he spoke before a carefully vetted audience at the Heritage Foundation, one of the main right-wing think tanks.

The desperate character of the speech was signaled by his repeated references to the 9/11 attacks, as well as last year’s alleged Al Qaeda plot to blow up airliners flying across the Atlantic from Britain to the US, and—the ultimate bogeyman—a supposed Al Qaeda plot to “build a totalitarian Islamic empire—encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.”

Bush suggested that any opposition to his policies of torture, spying and war represented a capitulation to this existential terrorist threat. He declared, “I know that when I discuss the war on terror, some here in Washington, DC dismiss it as political rhetoric—an attempt to scare people into votes. Given the nature of the enemy and the words of its leaders, politicians who deny that we are at war are either being disingenuous or naive.”

He denounced the Senate Judiciary Committee for holding up the nomination of Judge Mukasey as attorney general, with demands that he take a position on whether the waterboarding of suspected terrorists constitutes torture. In a lengthy letter to the committee Tuesday, Mukasey expressed personal “repugnance” for waterboarding, but refused to comment on whether it was torture, and hence illegal.

This flies in the face of both the Geneva Conventions and US laws, both of which classify waterboarding as torture and prohibit it completely, under any circumstances.

The Mukasey nomination is a conflict that the Democratic majority in the Senate clearly wanted to avoid. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York originally proposed the judge as a replacement for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and praised him in introducing him to the Judiciary Committee two weeks ago.

But when the issue of torture arose on the second day of his confirmation hearing, Mukasey’s refusal to condemn waterboarding as illegal became a political sticking point. Most Senate Democrats and several Republicans—including former Vietnam War POW John McCain—have called for an official ban on waterboarding and even enacted it into law in 2005, although this applied only to the military and not to the CIA.

The White House is adamantly opposed to such a ban, not only because it plans to continue waterboarding prisoners, but because numerous administration officials, from the CIA leadership up to Bush himself, could be held criminally liable for their actions over the past six years. Mukasey stated this concern explicitly in his October 30 letter, saying that any comment on the legality of waterboarding could arouse fears among executive branch officials about “personal legal jeopardy.”

Similarly, both House and Senate Democrats caved in to White House pressure and adopted the so-called Protect America Act last August—legislation that legalized, for a six-month period, more extensive spying on domestic telecommunications and Internet traffic by the CIA, NSA and other US intelligence agencies.

The Bush administration is now pressing for a bill that would make these expanded powers permanent, but the effort has encountered a significant obstacle, with resistance to the White House demand for a provision giving blanket immunity to telecommunications companies for collaborating in illegal surveillance of the private communications of American citizens.

The congressional Democrats have agreed to immunity for future cooperation by the telecommunications firms, but not to immunity that is retroactive, covering the past transfer of vast amounts of telephone and Internet data to the NSA and other federal agencies without any legal authorization, simply on the basis of an executive order from Bush.

There is also a potential logjam over the Iraq-Afghanistan spending, although no leading Democrat in Congress has proposed to block the legislation, and the Democratic-controlled Congress approved the last such measure in May. But there have been suggestions that the latest emergency funding bill will not be taken up until the New Year, when it could well become the focus of public attention during the height of the presidential nominating contest. Bush is pressing for a vote before Christmas.

Bush sought to connect the war funding to the Mukasey nomination and domestic surveillance issues in order to bully his opponents with the threat that they would be accused of neglecting the troops. He concluded with a McCarthy-style smear that managed to link antiwar protesters with terrorism. “When it comes to funding our troops,” he declared, “some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters.”

The Mukasey nomination is the most immediate concern of Bush, Vice President Cheney and their inner circle, as a series of prominent Senate Democrats have come out in opposition to his confirmation, including, by late Thursday, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, deputy leader Dick Durbin and presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd and Joseph Biden. Majority Leader Harry Reid indicated that if the Judiciary Committee did not approve the nomination he would not permit a vote by the full Senate.

Cheney touched on the issue in a speech Thursday, traveling to Indianapolis to address a meeting of the American Legion, a reliably pro-war venue from which all critics could be excluded. The vice president went beyond Bush to explicitly defend the torture interrogations conducted by the CIA, claiming that they had produced information that had proven critical for forestalling hundreds of potential terrorist attacks. (This contention did not jibe, however, with another piece of administration propaganda, a CIA leak to the New York Times claiming that the agency had only inflicted waterboarding on three prisoners, and none currently.)

In arguing for the immediate confirmation of Mukasey, Bush claimed that it would be wrong to have any public discussion about what interrogation techniques were forbidden to US agencies because this would help Al Qaeda “train their operatives to resist questioning, and withhold vital information we need to stop attacks and save lives.” By that logic, however, it would be wrong to rule out in advance any method of interrogation, no matter how barbaric, including electrical shocks, the rack, drugs or even dismemberment.

Bush also claimed that Mukasey should not be asked to take a legal position on specific interrogation techniques because he has not yet been “read into the program,” i.e., because, as a retired federal judge, Mukasey does not yet have access to classified information.

The complete absurdity of this argument was demonstrated at the press briefing Thursday by White House press secretary Dana Perino. After reiterating Bush’s claim that it was “very unfair” to ask Mukasey to give an opinion on waterboarding, Perino added that it would be perfectly all right for the Senate to ask such questions after Mukasey had been “read into the program,” that is, after he took office. “If they want to ask him more questions about that,” Perino said, “they should confirm him and then they’d have the opportunity to do so.”

Moreover, Mukasey has not been asked whether specific acts of the CIA constitute torture. He has been asked whether, as a general principle, waterboarding is torture, to which he responded—in a transparent and provocative evasion—that he didn’t know what waterboarding was and therefore could not comment.

Despite this professed ignorance, however, there is no doubt that Judge Mukasey and every other politically literate American knows what waterboarding is and knows that it constitutes torture. Mukasey’s hometown newspaper, the New York Daily News, provided a graphic description of waterboarding in an op-ed column published Wednesday, written by Malcolm Nance, a former adviser on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence.

The column, entitled, “I know waterboarding is torture—because I did it myself,” is based on Nance’s experience as a master instructor and chief of training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, where Navy Seals are trained both to perform and resist waterboarding.

Nance rejects the conventional description of waterboarding in the US media as “simulated drowning.” He writes: “that’s a misnomer. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning…. Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia—meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.”

“The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again,” he continues. “Call it ‘Chinese water torture,’ ‘the barrel,’ or ‘the waterfall.’ It is all the same. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you questioning the meaning of what it is to be an American.”

The public embrace of this torture technique by the US government is a terrible sign of the decay of democratic rights in America, one which is increasingly recognized throughout the world. On the same day as Bush’s speech, Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on torture, declared in a speech in Australia that the US policy was undermining worldwide efforts against torture.

“I am very concerned about the undermining of the absolute prohibition of torture by interrogation methods themselves in Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo Bay and others, but also by rendition and the whole CIA secret places of detention,” he said. “All that is really undermining the international rule of law in general and human rights but also the prohibition of torture,” said Nowak. “It has a negative effect because the US is a very powerful and important country and many other countries take the US as a model.”

Nowak concluded, “In my opinion, this ill-conceived, security-oriented counterterrorism strategy is having a very, very negative effect, not only on human rights in the USA, but for the first time I would say in a long period of time, the US is really engaging in systematic violation of human rights, but also a very negative effect on many other countries.”

COINTELPRO Redux: Global Order Targets the 9/11 Truth and Patriot Movements

TruthNews | November 2, 2007
Kurt Nimmo

In 1970, as an antiwar activist, I was deemed dangerous enough�even though I was eighteen years old�to warrant a dossier compiled by the Michigan State Police "Red Squad," a throwback to the so-called Red Scare of the early 1920s. The Red Squad was organized to go after dissidents of all stripes but in particular, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to go after antiwar and "New Left" activists. As I discovered years later, the Red Squads worked in concert with the FBI, under its notorious COINTELPRO, and even the CIA, supposedly prevented by its charter from snooping and subverting domestic activists.

The depth and criminal severity of the CIA's subversion of American activists partaking in entirely legal and constitutionally guaranteed dissent was recently revealed in documents released to the the National Security Archive at George Washington University, known as the "family jewels" by agency insiders. Of course, much of the information revealed in the documents is nothing new, as researchers have known about numerous CIA projects for decades, including Operation Chaos and the Merrimac and Resistance programs, all specifically designed to infiltrate and compromise dissident groups. It is important to note that these CIA operations worked hand-in-glove with the FBI and local police, as noted by the Select Committee to Study Government Operations, otherwise known as the Church Committee.

The "CIA received and maintained considerable information about the domestic activities and relationships of American individuals and organizations. Much of that material was collected in the first instance by the FBI, police or other confidential sources, who turned it over to the CIA," the final report issued by the Church Committee notes.

"From 1959 to at least 1974, the CIA used its domestic organizations to spy on thousands of US citizens whose only crime was disagreeing with their government's policies," writes Mark Zepezauer (The CIAs Greatest Hits). "This picked up speed when J. Edgar Hoover told President Johnson that nobody would be protesting his Vietnam war policies unless they were being directed to do so by some foreign power. Johnson ordered the CIA to investigate."

In response, the CIA vastly expanded its campus surveillance program and stepped up its liaisons with local police departments. It trained special intelligence units in major cities to carry out "black bag" jobs (break-ins, wiretaps, etc.) against US "radicals." �

In 1968, the CIA's various domestic programs were consolidated and expanded under the name Operation CHAOS. When Richard Nixon became president the following year, his administration drafted the Huston Plan, which called for even greater operations against "subversives," including wiretapping, break-ins, mail-opening, no-knock searches and "selective assassinations." Bureaucratic infighting tabled the plan, but much of it was implemented in other forms, not only by the CIA but also by the FBI and the Secret Service.

With the revelation of CIA and White House complicity in the Watergate break-in, light began to shine on Operation CHAOS. After a period of "reform," much of CHAOS's work was privatized, and right-wing groups and "former" CIA agents now provide the bulk of the CIA's domestic intelligence.

The FBI's concurrent program went by the name COINTELPRO, short for Counter Intelligence Program. COINTELPRO, the Church Committee explained, employed "techniques � adopted wholesale from wartime counterintelligence, and ranged from the trivial (mailing reprints of Reader's Digest articles to college administrators) to the degrading (sending anonymous poison-pen letters intended to break up marriages) and the dangerous (encouraging gang warfare and falsely labeling members of a violent group as police informers)�. Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that."

In order to understand the game of hardball the government played with activists�the vast majority of them nonviolent and many pacifist�consider the remarks of William C. Sullivan, former Assistant to the director of the FBI: "This is a rough, tough, dirty business, and dangerous. It was dangerous at times. No holds were barred�. We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents. They have used [them] against us. . . . [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business."

Of course, it was not rough and tough for the FBI and the "establishment," never seriously in jeopardy of losing control, even with the failures of Vietnam, but it was certainly rough and tough for activists, particularly activists involved in black and Indian "national liberation" movements�many of them, including Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark (the latter two of the Black Panthers), assassinated outright.

As Gregg York told M. Wesley Swearigen , published in Swearigen's in FBI Secrets: An Agent's Expose (1995), the FBI's plot to assassinate the Panthers was "in a style similar to the Chicago gangland murders of the 1950s," that is to say, at least in regard to the Black Panthers (and the American Indian Movement), cold-blooded murder was the preferred method of dealing with upstarts.

In A Short History of FBI COINTELPRO, Mike Cassidy and Will Miller bullet-point the FBI's COINTELPRO tactics:

• First, there was infiltration. Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. The main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. They also exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
• Second, there was psychological warfare from the outside. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists.
• Third, there was harassment through the legal system, used to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.
• Fourth and finally, there was extralegal force and violence. The FBI and police threatened, instigated and conducted break-ins, vandalism, assaults, and beatings. The object was to frighten dissidents and disrupt their movements. In the case of radical Black and Puerto Rican activists (and later Native Americans), these attacks, including political assassinations, were so extensive, vicious, and calculated that they can only be accurately called a form of official "terrorism."

"The public exposure of COINTELPRO and other government abuses resulted in a flurry of apparent reform in the 1970s, but domestic covert action did not end," the two authors warn. "It has persisted, and seems a permanent feature of our government. Much of today's domestic covert action can also be kept concealed because of government secrecy that has been restored."

Indeed, as Ross Gelbspan documents (Break-Ins, Death Threats and the FBI), COINTELPRO was not shut down in the 1970s but continued to live on and subvert the constitutional rights of Americans through the 1980s and 1990s, right up until the present day. "Utilizing thousands of pages of FBI documents secured through the Freedom of Information Act, Gelbspan found that activists who opposed U.S. policy in Central America �experienced nearly 200 incidents of harassment and intimidation, many involving�break-ins and thefts or rifling of files,'" writes Paul Wolf . (COINTELPRO: The Untold American Story).

"There is no better example than the Judi Bari �boom and bust' case to show that the FBI kept on well into the 1990s using covert action tactics against political movements and activists which they perceived as threats to the established order. One can make a case that the FBI is still using such tactics in the Bari case in 2001," Wolf writes. Environmental activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were targeted by the FBI for engaging in "leftist environmental and labor organizing." As it turns out, the FBI planted a bomb in their car.

In the 1990s, the FBI and government concentrated on a new target�the putative militia movement, its numbers increased by the treacherous events in Waco, Texas. As Daniel Brandt writes (The 1960s and COINTELPRO: In Defense of Paranoia), the Clinton administration turned the legacy of COINTELPRO into a full-blown media circus with the likes of Warren Christopher unveiling simultaneously "a broad plan for expanded wiretapping, denial of visas, working with other governments on money laundering and seizing assets, and expanding the use of current laws prohibiting fund- raising for terrorist organizations," in short a precursor of things to come under the neocon Bush administration and its contrived GWOT.

The bombing in Oklahoma City happened three months later. It was accompanied by 100 times more footage about dead children than the same media mustered for Waco two years earlier � or for that matter, bombed children in Vietnam during the 1960s. They deftly dropped the word "international" from all references to "terrorism," and "anti-terrorism" moved to the fast track. The president's popularity went up as Bill and Hillary staged a session with some children in front of the cameras, promising the toddlers that they'd do their best against the bad guys. They didn't take questions. A few days later Clinton sent a $1.5 billion anti-terrorism bill to Congress. Here we go again, for those old enough to remember the sixties.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) had bigger fish to fry. Even though the connection between the bombing and militia groups was more imaginary than real, the copy-starved media grabbed whatever crumbs they were offered by these two axe-grinding groups. The militias hit the front pages everywhere. On June 7, with the support of the ADL, the Senate passed a sweeping $2 billion anti-terrorism measure by a vote of 91-to-8. It took a pair of gloves at the O.J. trial to slap our media back to their usual fare. And by then the House was already reporting a similar bill out of committee.

Since the 60s and 70s, Brandt notes, things have changed. "Without the �communists' to kick around anymore, some of those who once underwrote Wall Street's global interests by donating their first- born, are now describing themselves as patriots and populists. Many of them have taken a fresh look at the international ruling class, and resurrected a long but gnarly tradition of anti-establishment, isolationist nationalism�. Much of the political thinking among these new patriots is immature, and is short on both research and scholarship. Even so, it still describes the world better than what's left of the Left, with its self-interested insistence on multiculturalism and political correctness. The conspiracy theories peddled by patriots make more objective sense today, than the reasons they were given for our involvement in Vietnam did in the sixties. That's progress of sorts."

Naturally, the corporate media did a fine job destroying the so-called militia movement's reputation. "Widely portrayed as having links with white supremacist organizations or �Nazi' type groups, many of them vigorously deny such allegations and point to a growing number of Black participants in the movement, including some in leadership roles. This is a loosely-federated movement with a presence in all 50 states, in urban as well as rural areas," writes Husayn Al Kurdy .

The rebels and "revolutionaries" now challenging the major power internally turn out to be from the Right, insofar as the Left/Right spectrum has any real meaning anymore. Many of those pushing for "tough" state-sponsored measures (those at the business end of some of these initiatives could call them "terrorist" with full justification) now include voices from what calls itself the "Progressive Community," the remnants of what used to be called "The Left." By cheering government repression against their opponents, as many are now doing, they expose their political opportunism, just as many in other political camps did on previous occasions. The Pastor Niemoller scenario as evoked during the Hitler period has been playing itself out. This time around, the story begins "First they came for Randy Weaver's family and the Branch Davidians�"

Indeed, the "target" threat, as elucidated by the FBI and CIA way back in the late 60s, has transferred from the "left" over to "right," that is if you still put any credence into these antiquated political designations.

The growing 9/11 truth and "patriot" movements�largely a reformulation of the "militia" movement with a contingent of disillusioned "progressives"�pose more of a threat than anything proffered by the diehard and politically correct to a fault Greenies, so many who are completely snowed under by the globalist agenda and dependent on foundation grant money dispensed through methodical gatekeepers.

Of course, the anti-globalist movement, well entrenched on the "progressive" side of the equation, still poses a significant threat to the New World Order and, as black bloc "anarchist" agent provocateurs demonstrate, the state is busily at work attacking the anti-globalist movement, as it poses a sincere threat to the corporatist-fascist order, determined to convert the planet into a slave plantation.

In the years since the events of September 11th, 2001, the patriot movement, increasingly merged with a nascent "truth" movement, has effectively challenged the globalist order�from exposing the 9/11 cover-up and substantially detailing the texture of the inside job to confronting and hounding the elite and their minions from Ottawa and university auditoriums to live television audiences. Needless to say, these often improvised guerrilla tactics have put our rulers on the offensive.

As Alex Jones warned on his November 1st radio program, the gloves have come off and the elite are in the process of targeting the patriot-truth movement head-on. The slanderous mischaracterizations of Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other corporate media minion-whores of state power are but a preparation of things to come�and likely sooner before later.

It is no mistake the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed like a clipper ship through Congress, as our rulers certainly consider 9/11 truth an "extremist belief system" determined to "advance political, religious, or social change," that is to say, in the parlance of the elite, engage in terrorism. It is the job of Glenn Beck et al to equate truth activists to the sufficiently demonized Timothy McVeigh�emblematic of the "patriot" terrorist, never mind his shadowy linkage to military intelligence�a process made all the more simple by the fact the corporatist-fascist media venue allows no rebuttal short of a Bill O'Reilly shout-over, replete with adolescent references to pinheads and cartoonish al-Qaeda villains.

However, these shrill, irrational and confrontational tactics will not work, as far too many Americans are clued in to the fact there is something rotten� not specifically in Denmark but rather in Washington, on Wall Street, and in the corporate suites and on the sets and studios of the corporate-fascist media.

It remains to be seen if enough Americans will step up and show the intestinal fortitude required to make a difference. But then, it should be remembered, the last time we had a revolution in this country it was a small number of dedicated individuals who made the difference while a large and hesitant majority sat on the fence.

US scientists engineer 'mighty mice'

AFP | November 1, 2007

US researchers have engineered a line of "mighty mice" whose human equivalent would have similar abilities to the bicycling champion Lance Armstrong, according to research published Thursday.

The breed of mice can run six kilometers (four miles) at a speed of 20 meters (yards) per minute for up to six hours without stopping, according to Richard Hanson, a biochemistry professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

"They are metabolically similar to Lance Armstrong biking up the Pyrenees; they utilize mainly fatty acids for energy and produce very little lactic acid," said Hanson, the senior author of the article which was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The genetically engineered mice can eat 60 percent more than wild mice in a control group but remain slim and fit. The "mighty mice" live longer, and some females were able to reproduce much later in life than other mice.

The researchers said some "have had offspring at 2.5 years of age, an amazing feat considering most mice do not reproduce after they are one year old."

Hanson said the strength of the mice was made possible by the fact that they produce very little lactic acid, which forms during intense exercise.

Scientists bred 500 of the mice, which also showed more aggression than other mice, over the past five years as part of a project aimed at unlocking the metabolic and physiological function of PEPCK-C in muscles and tissues.

The key to their unusual traits is the over-expression of the gene that influence production of the enzyme PEPCK-C (phosphoenolypyruvate carboxykinases), said Hanson.

The transgenic mice are descended from six "founder lines" that "contain a chimeric gene in which a copy of the cDNA for PEPCK-C was linked to the skeletal actin gene promoter," the research said.

The resulting mice showed different levels of PEPCK-C in their muscles, but one particularly active group had levels of PEPCK-C activity of nine units per gram of skeletal muscle, compared to just 0.08 units per gram in the muscles of control mice.

"From a very early age, the PEPCK-Cmus mice ran continuously in their cages," said Parvin Hakimi, a researcher in the Hanson lab.

The "mighty mice" primarily relied on "fatty acids as a source of energy during exercise, while the control animals rapidly switched from fatty acid metabolism to using muscle glycogen (carbohydrates) as a fuel; this dramatically raised the blood lactate levels," the research said.

The PEPCK-C enzyme was first discovered at the medical school of Case Western Reserve University in 1955, the study authors said.

Memos Prove Rumsfeld Directed Psychological Terror Campaign

Hyping climate of fear, threat of violence to achieve political objectives is the very definition of terrorism

Prison Planet| November 2, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

New Pentagon memos released by the Washington Post prove that ex-U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld directed a psychological campaign of terror in order to achieve political objectives, making Rumsfeld himself a terrorist according to the very definition of the term.

"Donald Rumsfeld, the former United States defence secretary, tried to maintain an atmosphere of fear in America as part of the Iraq war propaganda campaign, a series of leaked memos has shown," reports the London Telegraph .

In an April 2006 memo, Rumsfeld encouraged Pentagon officials to "Keep elevating the threat" and "Talk about Somalia, the Philippines etc. Make the American people realise they are surrounded in the world by violent extremists".

Rumsfeld also urged his staff to concoct "bumper sticker statements" (mindless clichés) in an attempt to garner continued support for the occupation of Iraq.

In the most telling e mail, the former defense secretary ordered the Pentagon to "link Iraq to Iran," heralding the birth of the now saturated propaganda talking point that Iran is fueling the violence in Iraq and helping to kill U.S. troops, despite the fact that British officials patrolling the Iran-Iraq border admit that there is "No concrete proof that Iran is supplying Iraq."

Rumsfeld's obsession with micro-managing every aspect of the propaganda offensive upon the American people led to him disseminating anything up to 60 "snowflakes" or memos every single day, much to the chagrin of Pentagon employees.

His insistence that an artificial climate of fear be maintained in America about the threat of new terror attacks in order to sell the unpopular war in Iraq are the smoking gun for criminal charges to be initiated.

By several of the very definitions of terrorism, Rumsfeld has provably engaged in terrorism, by hyping the threat of terror to achieve a political objective.

Definitions of terrorism

- A psychological strategy of war for gaining political ends by deliberately creating a well-founded climate of fear among the civilian population.

- The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence against people or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies .

- The systematic use of terror, the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear for bringing about political change .

- The use of - or threatened use of - criminal violence against civilians or civilian infrastructure to achieve political ends through fear and intimidation , rather than direct confrontation.

- The calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear .

Under any of the definitions of terrorism listed above, Rumsfeld has demonstrably engaged in terror by artificially hyping the fear of new attacks as part of a strategy to achieve a political objective.

US Economy in "Relentless" Decline

Analysts say dollar will continue to slide no matter what

Infowars.net | November 1 , 2007
Steve Watson

Economic experts have predicted a continuing slump for the dollar, no matter what the federal reserve does. Others have suggested the dollar's decline is now relentless and will only be accelerated as other countries abandon it for stronger reserve currencies.

�The relentless slide in the dollar against other major currencies, notably the euro, is encouraging speculation that Asian countries and oil producers will step up diversification of their reserve assets out of the US currency, accelerating its decline,� Capital Economics' Julian Jessop has written today.

While Jessop states that the The dollar's fall has been and will be further driven by a slowing US economy and not by reserve asset diversification, others are not so convinced.

Despite the fact that the Fed has today cut interest rates by a quarter point , analysts at Market Watch believe the dollar is to continue on a downward spiral now, no matter what:

"Whether the Fed cuts its benchmark a quarter percentage point, as expected, or a half-point --or even not at all -- the dollar is likely to bear the near-term brunt of the market's kneejerk reaction either way, and then move in one direction: down." Lisa Twaronite states.

Regardless of whether or not the Fed cuts rates, "the dollar is in for a beating," said Marilyn McDonald, marketing director at Interbank FX.

"The U.S. dollar is finally in trouble. For quite some time now, it has been one of the top five yielding currencies among the [Group of 10 industrialized] nations, which is why it has been used in the carry trade for so long," she said.

Carry trades involve borrowing lower-yielding currencies, such as the yen, and investing it in higher-yielding assets. The dollar has long benefited from such trades, but the benefits are dropping in line with U.S. interest rates.

While the vast majority of analysts agree that the markets are in deep trouble and the dollar is weak due to relatively poor economic fundamentals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said that financial markets are recovering from the subprime crisis.

Paulson again echoed previous sentiments of the IMF, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, stating that while it was "definitely the case" that innovation in U.S. capital markets had gotten ahead of regulatory controls, contributing to the crisis, such innovation remained desirable.

"I don't think we would want it the other way around. If we had it the other way around, we'd be sacrificing growth and efficiency in the markets."

They have all continually badmouthed the dollar, claiming it is "overvalued" despite the fact it has lost over half of its value against the Euro since 2001. The IMF, despite acknowledging "the likelihood of a disorderly plunge in the dollar" and contrary to pleas from Europe has given the green light for traders to continue to sell the dollar.

In their World Economic Outlook brief, the IMF brazenly states that the agenda in continually badmouthing the dollar is to exalt the Chinese Renminbi in order to contribute to "a necessary rebalancing of demand and to an orderly unwinding of global imbalances."

In layman's terms, this means lowering the living standards of the American middle class by tanking the dollar and sending oil prices skyrocketing towards $200 , as part of the "post-industrial revolution" agreed upon by the Bilderberg Group. This would eviscerate the middle class and create a two-caste system based upon the Chinese model, where the super-rich live in opulence and the rest of the population are forced to struggle on the poverty line.

Meanwhile analysts at EconomicsBriefing.com have pointed out that while the UN is warning of ballooning food prices and the possibility of food riots , no one is saying or doing anything about the primary cause, US federal reserve encouraged, worldwide central bank monetary expansion.

Official Statement Confirms Detonations on 9/11

RINF Alternative News | November 1, 2007

Smoking gun testimony, demolition detonations reported by top brass in official statement

The rank of this witness is:
CAPTAIN KARIN DESHORE OF BATTALION 46

CAPTAIN KARIN DESHORE QUOTE :

�SOMEWHERE AROUND THE MIDDLE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, THERE WAS THIS ORANGE AND RED FLASH COMING OUT.

�INITIALLY IT WAS JUST ONE FLASH. THEN THIS FLASH JUST KEPT POPPING ALL THE WAY AROUND THE BUILDING AND THAT BUILDING HAD STARTED TO EXPLODE. THE POPPING SOUND, AND WITH EACH POPPING SOUND IT WAS INITIALLY AN ORANGE AND THEN RED FLASH CAME OUT OF THE BUILDING AND THEN IT WOULD JUST GO ALL AROUND THE BUILDING ON BOTH SIDES AS FAR AS I COULD SEE.

�THESE POPPING SOUNDS AND THE EXPLOSIONS WERE GETTING BIGGER, GOING BOTH UP AND DOWN AND THEN ALL AROUND THE BUILDING. I WENT INSIDE AND TOLD EVERYBODY THAT THE OTHER BUILDING OR THERE WAS AN EXPLOSION OCCURRING UP THERE AND SAID THINK WE HAVE ANOTHER MAJOR EXPLOSION. I DONT KNOW IF WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE SAFE HERE.�

The second building was being demolished.

The complete interview will be published on RINF shortly.

"War Criminal" Ex-MI6 Head Dearlove Confronted At Event

Man who admitted "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq grilled on 7/7, Bilderberg membership, forced to leave after being called proxy mass murderer

Prison Planet | November 1, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

Author of the infamous Downing Street Memo and ex-MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was confronted and branded a "war criminal" by audience members who attended his talk at the London School of Economics last night, before being hounded out of the building - but subsequent media coverage of the event completely failed to mention the controversy.

Ironically, during a lecture in which Dearlove pushed the notion of how the media should acquiesce to government demands in reporting aspects of sensitive stories, in their write-up of the talk , the BBC omitted any details of how Dearlove was intensively questioned and eventually forced to leave by members of We Are Change UK .

The discussion, entitled Can We Trust Journalists With Public Security? , was merely a platform for Dearlove to spew propaganda about non-existent weapons of mass destruction and how the public and the media need to fall in line and mute their dissent about the so-called "war on terror."

A topic certainly not on Dearlove's agenda was the fact that he authored the leaked Downing Street Memo, written nine months before hostilities began, in in which he admits that �the facts and intelligence� about WMD were being �fixed round the policy� of a pre-planned invasion of Iraq.

But the evening turned into a spectacle after Dearlove came under rapid fire questioning about his membership of the Bilderberg Group, the alleged 7/7 mastermind's status as an MI6 agent , and MI6's deliberate counter-terrorism failures.

Watch the video.

Dearlove refuses to answer any of the questions before struggling to explain away Bilderberg as "Erm, it's a, it's a conference, it's a gathering at which people discuss issues - rather like this."

The fact that Bilderberg is in reality a secret gathering of the global elite, completely closed to the public and the mass media, which is secured by armed guards and secret service personnel, at which a consensus for global policy is agreed upon, seems to contradict Dearlove's terse rebuttal.

After the speaking engagement, We Are Change UK members and former MI5 officer Annie Machon tried in vain to get Dearlove to answer their questions, before branding him a "liar," a "war criminal" and stating that he had the blood of over 600,000 dead Iraqis on his hands and was a "proxy mass murderer."

Dearlove was forced to scuttle out and leave the building as his lackeys tried to block the camera. "You dress it up however you want, it's a lie sir," shouts one We Are Change UK member as Dearlove exits.

"You will hang from the gallows," calls out another, "The people will not stand for it."

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:

George Carlin Questions "Received Reality" Of 9/11 Story

Grammy award winning comedian, actor says new investigation would be whitewash

Prison Planet | October 29, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

Grammy-winning American stand-up comedian, actor, and author George Carlin spoke of his doubts about the official 9/11 story during a recent appearance at Borders bookstore in New York City, just a few blocks away from ground zero.

Asked what he thought of the 9/11 truth movement and how Bill Maher's show was interrupted by truthers last week, Carlin responded, "I always question the received reality."

"The consensus reality is often intentionally misleading," he added.

Asked if he would support a new investigation into 9/11, Carlin was skeptical, stating, "They don't investigate themselves in this country - it would be a whitewash, it would be like the Kennedy thing, it would be like everything."

"The people who are in charge do what they want and they will always do what they want, power does what it wants to and I wouldn't trust an investigation," Carlin concluded.

Watch the video.

Carlin was described by Comedy Central as the second greatest stand-up comedian of all time behind Richard Prior and is famous for his scathing black humor directed at American culture and the political climate.

During a recent appearance on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show, Carlin said that America was "finished" because "no one questions things anymore" and that the population had been bought off by distractions, toys and gizmos.

Watch a stand-up routine where Carlin slams the education system and talks about the true power system that controls America.

On Track for U.S. Collapse

Michael S. Rozeff
Lew Rockwell
October 27, 2007

Bush and Cheney are steering the U.S. into a collapse. Only strong public voices by influential people can prevent the coming disaster. We desperately need for men and women who are known to the public and have credibility to speak up in the critical period ahead to avoid catastrophe.

• A few weeks ago, Israel bombed a alleged nuclear facility in Syria. This is a warm-up for an attack on Iran.
• In the last few days, the U.S. unilaterally tightened sanctions on Iran. Russia and China do not support this move.
• A week ago Bush warned Iran that its attainment of nuclear arms would lead to World War III.
• Russia, which has been assisting Iran in its nuclear construction program for decades, regards Western military action against Iran as unacceptable.
• China has been arming Iran with missiles. Its relations with Iran have been improving for years.

We know that Bush and Cheney are capable of pre-emptive attack. We know that Bush will act if he believes he is right no matter what the costs are. In his distorted worldview, Iran with nuclear weapons is a scenario worth any cost to avoid.

We know that Bush, Cheney, and Rice have repeatedly warned Iran of meaningful consequences if Iran arms itself with nuclear weapons. We know that their terms in office end in 15 months. These are the critical months.

But it is by no means clear that the front-running candidates for office who may replace them hold substantially different views. Hillary Clinton has publicly called for sanctions against Iran and has called Iran a threat to Israel.

Why may an unprovoked attack on Iran lead to WWIII and why may it lead to the collapse of the U.S.?

Imagine this scenario. The U.S. encourages Israel to bomb the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. Russia attempts to restrain an Iranian response but fails. Iran responds in any of many ways, such as launching missiles on Israel, firing on shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, mining the Straits of Hormuz, sending troops into Iraq, or allying its military with Hezbollah and attacking Israel from Lebanon.

The U.S., citing Iran’s aggressions (that will be the story), launches a full-scale attack on Iran designed to devastate the country. This attack has actually been planned by the U.S. for years. Syria is unable to maintain neutrality and quickly becomes a battleground between Iran and Israel.

The price of oil by this point has already soared to $200 a barrel. The U.S. begins to use its strategic reserve and to divert Iraqi production. Russia responds by taking steps to prevent its oil production from reaching the U.S. China responds by cutting off its support of the U.S. Treasury market. Venezuela halts oil shipments to the U.S. The first stages of WWIII are economic warfare designed to cripple the U.S. and halt its war-making capacity.

The U.S., unable to finance its deficits and fund its sovereign debt, is forced into raising interest rates drastically in order to borrow. The Fed is forced to print money. An inflationary spiral occurs. Meanwhile the high interest rates and high oil prices, not to mention the shock of a spreading conflict, drive the U.S. economy into severe decline. The U.S. attempts to raise taxes in order to fund itself, further crippling the economy. Gold soars to $1,500–$2,000 an ounce.

The U.S. attempts to bolster its military forces. The draft is reinstated. The severity of the emergency allows Bush and Cheney to assume emergency powers and begin a dictatorship. Elections are postponed.

The U.S. collapses.

Unfortunately, even if this scenario does not occur, the position of the U.S. is so precarious that any number of other scenarios equally disastrous lie in wait. This house needs urgently to be put in order or it will fall, and especially if it does not terminate its imperial adventures. The very fact that Bush and Cheney (or any major U.S. political officials) gain by starting WWIII is a terrible indictment of our entire political system.

Who can stop this? Who can prevent this? It will only take a few well-placed people to prevent this catastrophe. My guess is 5–20 people could sway public opinion against war or provide enough cover for Congressional dissenters to screw up their courage. Maybe even as few as 3 or 4 influential people could derail the Bush-Cheney train to disaster. They need to speak out at the right times and they must be heard. Previously mute or muted voices simply must speak out. They know who they are. They know that their silence will mean silent approval of a U.S. collapse.

Iran says documents show U.S. backing “terrorists”

Reuters
October 28, 2007

Iran has access to evidence of U.S. support for terrorist groups in the Middle East, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Iran’s new chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, made the allegation in comments to visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, whose country may soon send troops to hunt down Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.

Tehran says the rebels are operating in Iraq with U.S. forces present in the country and this shows Washington is refraining from tackling them.

Like Turkey, Iran also has faced cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels and has shelled targets inside Iraq in response.

“Escalation of terrorism in the region is one of the direct results of the presence of occupiers in Iraq, particularly America,” Jalili, an ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said according to the country’s state broadcaster.

“And there are documents and information available proving America’s support for terrorist groups in the region,” he said, without giving details. Jalili is also the new secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The United States often accuses Iran of backing and training militias responsible for some of the bloodshed threatening to tear Iraq apart. Tehran denies the charge and blames the violence in Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces.

The two countries are also locked in a stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Western powers suspect is aimed at developing bombs. Iran says it only wants to generate electricity.

Washington last week dubbed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and accused its Qods force of backing terrorists. It also imposed sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals.

At a joint news conference with Babacan, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday also accused the United States and Israel of involvement in terrorism in the region.

“We see … their hand behind some of the regional terrorist activities,” Mottaki said.

Babacan, whose country’s ties with the United States have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks, thanked Iran for helping Turkey fight the PKK guerrillas and said the two sides had talked about continuing their cooperation.

The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched its campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey in 1984. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then.

Jalili on October 20 replaced Ali Larijani as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, a move analysts saw as signaling a toughening of Tehran’s position in the atom row.