The Clinton Administration, according to the Israelis, persisted in viewing Russia's ties to Iran as a mere by-product of corruption, greed, and lack of state control in a collapsing economy; the Israelis argued instead that the nuclear sales were part of a larger Russian strategy to begin regaining superpower status and to enlist Iran's assistance in dealing with the export of Islamic fundamentalism.
"From the start, the Israelis took the view that Russia must want Iran to have a long-range-missile capability," a former State Department official told me. "Otherwise, why not stop it?" He went on to say, however, that "over time the Israelis began to see just how screwed up the Russians' controls were." Nonetheless, "the Israelis were almost shrill. The implication was 'You Americans have other fish to fry with the Russians, and are not giving enough attention to our security requirements.' "
But if instead I were a member of the conservative Jewish lobby and a newspaper columnist how might i use my position to write about this?
EXCERPT:The Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, revenged their defeat by the U.S. in the 1980s' war, and neatly checkmated the Bush administration which, for all its high-tech military power, understood little about Afghanistan.
America's ouster of the Taliban regime meant Pakistan lost its former influence over Afghanistan and is now cut off from Central Asia's resources. So long as the Alliance holds power, the U.S. is equally denied access to the much coveted Caspian Basin. Russia has regained control of the best potential pipeline routes. The "new Silk Road" will become a Russian energy superhighway.
By charging like an enraged bull into the South Asian china shop, the U.S. handed a stunning geopolitical victory to the Russians and severely damaged its own great power ambitions. Moscow is now free to continue plans to dominate South and Central Asia in concert with its strategic allies, India and Iran.
The Bush administration does not appear to understand its enormous blunder, and keeps insisting the Russians are now our friends. (Eric Margolis, TORONTO STAR)
Oh, those russians. You spin me right round.
NewsAndOpinion.com (JewishWorldReview)-- THE Islamic world after the terrorist attack of September 11th is teetering on the edge of massive change. There may well be global realignment as extensive as the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in 1989. In retrospect Osama bin Laden may be seen as the most effective terrorist since Gavrilo Princip killed the Hapsburg heir Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.
Young Princip's goal was the removal of the Austro-Hungarian rule of Serbia, not the destruction of the entire structure of monarchic Europe that resulted. But Osama bin Laden should be credited with knowing exactly what he was trying to achieve. In effect bin Laden exerted formidable pressure at the juncture of the weak and unsteady tectonic political alliances that still holds the growing Islamist fundamentalist threat in check from Morocco to Indonesia. And the earthquake he wanted has begun. Whether the threat of change to regimes as varied as Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the like can be managed for or against his ultimate goals remains the key question.
But there is scandalously little understanding of the real "Great Game" bin Laden has set in play. Instead it is being covered by the media as if it were a glorified sports contest between the United States and the Taliban over Afghanistan. One of the major drawbacks of the 24/7 news environment endured by the West today is the blizzard of repetitious particularity that overwhelms the shape of events. There may be a special providence in the fall of a sparrow but when has a helicopter wheel ever received so much airtime?
To complicate matters further, the formerly great news organizations of the West are just as clearly out of touch with the requirements of foreign reporting as its formerly great intelligence and security organizations. "The end of history" seemed a perfect opportunity to reduce costs by shutting down and consolidating the expensive worldwide independent reporting apparatuses they had created and run since World War II. Today's press is unrivaled in its ability to turn the most insignificant press conferences and press releases into instant "news" without any perspective on their relative importance. And today's governments and corporations alike constantly take advantage of the press's institutional inability to pierce the detail to see the real events hidden in plain sight before them.
Contrasting the Clinton Administration's war in the Balkans and the current Bush Administration's work in progress against terrorism is a useful exercise. Initiated by a phony Rambouillet demand by Secretary of State Madeline Albright and pursued in a phony NATO military campaign which shot up far more haystacks and cardboard tanks than Serbian military targets, the Clinton Administration's masterful razzledazzle of press communications fooled everyone, including President Clinton himself, until UK Prime Minister Tony Blair woke him up and the bombing of Belgrade brought the war to an end barely a month later. But the press proclaimed a "famous victory" and Clinton policy wonks have been dining out on it ever since.
There was considerable leverage against the Serbs who at least had a modern state with something to lose. But what seems to be constantly overlooked is that in the Bush Administration's war against terrorism, the American coalition is confronted with the first major incident of "fourth generation warfare" (4GW). It is facing Al Queda, which has no status as a nation state and has no army, navy, or air force yet it effectively attacked the United States on its home territory at the World Trade Center leaving more casualties than Pearl Harbor. And Al Queda has nothing to lose and potentially the entire Islamic world to gain. Attacking the United States was a masterful way to turn smoldering Muslim resentment of the United States into a blazing fire of support.
The Bush Administration's initial response was Clintonian--a phony new cabinet position to oversee "Homeland" security. As Doug Badow pointed out, the United States already has a cabinet position that has that responsibility-Secretary of Defense. And clearly no one understood the need to reconfigure his department to deal with the challenge of 4GW more than Donald Rumsfeld. He had already stirred up enough leaked wrath from Pentagon brass like outgoing Joint Chiefs' chairman, GEN Henry Shelton, to occasion a premature obituary in Time for his second tour as SecDef just prior to 9/11.
A rogue nation-state like Serbia or Iraq is like a fixed cancer that can be isolated and eliminated or controlled; Al Queda is more like a virus which mutates when challenged and masks its presence through conflicting symptoms and locations. And worst of all, it also can be transmitted easily. It is spread by fundamentalist Islamists underwritten by the devil's bargain made by the Saudi royal family who secure their regime by pouring millions of oil dollars into Wahabi hands all over the world. So eliminating Osama bin Laden or the Taliban does not begin to solve the basic problem.
The problem is the virus has already spread all over Islam. Islamists have been cheated out of an election in Algeria, forcibly put down by a Turkish military dedicated to the secular principles of Ataturk, and bribed and sent elsewhere to do their dirty work in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They had already killed Egypt's Anwar Sadat, when they were far weaker than they are now. The virus has been contained but it keeps changing and getting stronger. Who can doubt that to Al Queda supporters Hosni Mubarak, Pervez Musharaff, and the Saudi royals are "dead men walking" who will live only until the death sentences clearly implied by Ben Ladin's Al Jazeera television appearance are carried out?
In the Balkans War much was made of the fact that religious differences made peace, much less a nation state like Yugoslavia, between Muslims, Greek and Russian Orthodox and Catholics almost impossible. But as Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney points out, at least most of them are Slavs. Pakistan is made up of four entirely different ethnic groups-the Beluchis, the Sinds and Punjabis, and in the north, all too close to the capital Islamabad for comfort, militant Pushtuns exactly like those in Afghanistan across the Khyber Pass who are supporting the Taliban government-- with another several million refugee Afghanis among them. And Pakistan has nuclear weapons.
Will there be a coup against Musharaff? His army and his ISI are mainly Punjabi, but its officers aren't polo playing "whisky" Sandhurst graduates any longer. Their foreign duty is largely in Saudi Arabia and they are strongly Wahabi and sympathetic to bin Laden. Musharaff's brave attempts to restructure his general staff and the ISI and contain Islamist radicals by placing the head of his nation's most important Islamic party under house arrest may be too little too late. One can sympathize with rumored discussions about moving Pakistan's nuclear weapons to China. But without some miraculous early breakthrough by the US coalition forces against the Taliban in Kandahar, Musharraf's already shaky support may disappear and a fundamentalist government come to power.
Just as ominously in February the annual Haj pilgrimage begins in Saudi Arabia. Millions of Muslim pilgrims from all over the Islamic world will pour into Mecca. In total numbers they may make up almost 20% of the population of 15 million Saudi nationals. And those Saudi nationals have suffered a 50% drop in their standard of living in the past decade under the current corrupt regime. It is hard to believe that Al Queda will neglect this golden opportunity to raise the flag of jihad at Mecca and attempt to take over a virtually defenseless state that proclaims itself Islam's protector and yet allies itself with the United States
The Clinton Administration ran perhaps the most negligent American foreign policy since the 1920s and the Bush Administration is struggling to deal with the potentially catastrophic consequences of that indifference. So far it is managing its challenge brilliantly. It is doing its best to lower expectations and create extraordinary historic breakthroughs in America's alliances with Russian and the independent Islamic republics of central Asia that have outflanked the difficulties with both Saudi and Pakistani support for the coalition. Given time they should provide the basis for excellent new policy options in the future throughout the region. But bin Laden's earthquake has a momentum of its own. And now it is not only the expectations of Americans that have to be satisfied.
In the short run, while the inescapably slow American buildup in armed forces and basing is still underway, bin Laden's Al Queda has more options than its enemies. The next three to four months are crucial. America should remember that in classic 4GW style, Osama bin Laden used American planes and American training to destroy the World Trade Center. Terrorists become extraordinarily resourceful playing weak hands against the strong and rich. So do revolutionaries. And it is time to realize bin Laden is both.
A revolutionary American naval hero, John Paul Jones, demonstrated one of bin Laden's most intriguing options. With his ship Bonnehomme Richard sinking under him, Jones, offered the opportunity to surrender, responded "I have just begun to fight!" Jones and his crew then conquered the British HMS Serapis and climbed on board to fight again from the deck of another nation' s ship, now his prize. What will it really matter if the American coalition conquers the rocky wasteland of Afghanistan only to find Al Queda in control of nuclear-armed Pakistan, or the oil riches of Saudi Arabia-and with strong popular support?
Thomas H. Lipscomb is the director of the Center for the Digital Future in New York. An an editor and publisher for many years, most recently as head of Times Books, he is also the founder of two public companies in digital technology. To comment, click here.
How long before 4GW stands for President George Bush IV?
New York CCTV Surveillance Route Planner
This looks like something out of a 007 video game. The CIA and his family built it for him-quite the 'treehouse'.
Also from the 'Gotcha' British SunTHE secret of Osama bin Laden's mountain hideout was revealed yesterday — by the man who delivers his groceries.
Trader Haji Jamal saw the terror chief last week when he delivered food to the remote cave complex by mule convoy.
He said bin Laden and his fanatical 400-strong bodyguard had set up an intricate supply-chain at the al-Qa'ida fortress village of Tora Bora, close to the Khyber Pass and the Pakistan border.
He told an undercover Afghan reporter: "I saw the sheik (bin Laden) after he returned from a short run to the Pakistani border."
Jamal would not say what was on the monster's shopping list, but said he took the order from military commander Anwar Gul. Gul is answerable to ageing warlord Younis Khalis, who first invited bin Laden into the area in 1996.
Grinning Jamal then admitted he would be delighted if the al-Qa'ida fighters kept their pledge to defend their master "to the last breath". He chuckled: "They have advised me that if they are killed I am authorised to take their wives. The ones I do not want I must give to my fellow tribesmen."
Not long before Afghani Blind Date tops the Archers ratings then
Engineers and other experts, who quickly came to understand how hurtling airplanes and burning jet fuel had helped bring down the main towers, were for weeks still stunned by what had happened to 7 World Trade Center. That building had housed, among other things, the mayor's emergency command bunker. It tumbled to its knees shortly after 5:20 on the ugly evening of Sept. 11.(NewYorkTimes-subscription required)
Yes, and amongst those other things, the CIA Economic Warfare HQ
If the wind changes
Perhaps I should start a hypochondriacs daily weblog?
I remember cross-stitching was popular in the 70's
"it is estimated that the average person has between 3 and 8 undigested meals in his or her colon at any given time"
VaticanAssasins.org
Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the General of the International Military Order of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as “the Black Pope”, ordered the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, with the advice and consent of his General Staff, composed of five assistants (each representing a hemisphere and under whom are many advisory Provincials), an advisor (resembling the likes of a military commander to warn him of any faults or mistakes), and his confessor (to ease his conscience and absolve him of his many sins). Why? Because the appointed time has arrived for the Jesuit General to destroy both the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, secretly using his CIA/Nazi-trained, Masonic Zionist Mossad in conjunction with his CIA/Nazi-trained, Masonic Islamic Intelligence Agencies, including Osama bin Laden’s MAK and Pakistan’s ISI, while shrouded in the confusion of a huge aerial war yet to come. This will enable the General’s crusading Knights Templars (the present day Shriner Freemasons) to rebuild Solomon’s Temple — for the Papal Caesar in Rome’s Vatican.(..continued)
As well as, presumably, lots of dead storefronts
Most of the extraordinary events were seen in the attitudes of dogs. "The dogs started barking, howling, became uneasy, listened to the ground, looked at the sky, bit each other, growled and some dogs tried to take their owners to the open areas," the research said.Also, collective deaths of fish were observed and snakes started entering buildings, which is unusual. Cats started to get flustered and bit their owners. Attitude changes were also observed in horses, mice, spiders, ants, crows and bees, among other animals.Furthermore, 266 witnesses in Istanbul and Yalova, west Turkey, said that they saw abnormal lights, which continued for 15 minutes.Witnesses also said that before the tremor, they felt the temperature change, moisture and pressure increase and a short time before the earthquake the temperature suddenly decreased and a heavy wind blew.
Horses became increasingly aloof, spiders got rather testy and the crow laid down with the bee.
THE police are to set up a secret database of children as young as three who they fear might grow up to become criminals.
Youngsters who behave badly or commit trivial misdemeanours will be put on the confidential register so that they can be monitored and supervised throughout childhood.The controversial initiative is to be pioneered in 11 London boroughs from March and then expanded nationally. Any child who is thought to be at risk of committing a crime by the police, schools or social services, will be put on the database. Children involved in cheekiness, minor vandalism and causing nuisances, will be targeted under the scheme.
Flippin' 'eck, Tucker!
In an exclusive interview with Michael Ruppert, a former German Defense and NATO official warns of a coming global distatorship.(Guerillanews.com)
I didn't bother reading this myself but you can if you like.
Modern Saudi Arabia is to an extent a perverted creation of America and its British ally. Henry Kissinger, the former US secretary of state, spelled out in his recent book on American foreign policy its essentially manipulative approach to such Middle East states as Saudi Arabia. The US, he says, cannot afford the region to be "dominated by countries whose purposes are inimical to ours". Their economic "purposes" have been to prop up a regime which would guarantee a stable flow of petrol and oil to the US at relatively low prices and recycle its petrodollars back to the west in the shape of construction projects and arms purchases.
The Saudis control 25% of world oil reserves. The US has paid the royal family up to $100bn a year for it.
The first bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in New York took place in 1993: Osama bin Laden was in exile in Khartoum, nursing his rage against the Saudi royal family and the US bases they permit on Saudi soil. In Britain, the then government was more interested in money-making opportunities than in registering these sinister signs and re-evaluating their relationships with a frustrated Muslim world.
British MI6 intelligence about Iranian military planning was being circulated by John Major to the ailing King Fahd in Riyadh, to help keep him on his throne in return for more lucrative arms sales: the notorious Al Yamamah weapons deal was already transferring £1.5bn a year into British pockets.
The Saud clan - now estimated to number more than 7,000 privileged tribesmen - are still clinging to absolute power. However, much of their oil wealth has been frittered away, and unemployment among young Saudis is rising. Per capita income in the early 1980s was $28,000. It is now below $10,000.
The dictatorial Saud clan describe themselves as "guardians of the two holy places" and preside over the vast annual pilgrimages to Mecca. They poured cash into the Islamic University at Medina and similar schools across the Muslim world, from Cairo to Peshawar.
The anti-modernist religion they promoted became a focus for guilt and anger among young men frustrated at modern "corruption" and deprived not only of normal social lives, but of all democratic political outlets.
In 1979, 200 armed fundamentalists, many of whom had studied Islam at Medina, took over the grand mosque at Mecca. But 63 of the ringleaders were publicly beheaded in selected town squares all over the country, and the seeds of rebellion quickly led to repression. Shaheed Coovadia, who now teaches in the US, studied at Medina. He says: "That incident was a turning point. When I was there you couldn't move without permission. It was like living in a police state. People even came to check your bed to see if you'd risen for the morning prayer."
Providentially that same year, Soviet troops rumbled over the mountain roads into Afghanistan to shore up a tottering pro-communist regime. The CIA had been covertly undermining the Afghan government by arming fundamentalist rebels - the mojahedin. In Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security adviser, was cock-a-hoop that the Russians had been drawn into what he saw as his cleverly baited trap. The day Soviet forces crossed the border, he wrote to Carter, saying: "We now have the opportunity to give the USSR their Vietnam war."
Young Bin Laden, son of a wealthy construction magnate, joined the anti-Soviet campaign. He set off for Peshawar, as the most prominent of a Saudi contingent of poor citizens, students, taxi-drivers and Bedouin tribesmen.
For the Saudi regime it was an outlet for an otherwise dangerous fanaticism. For the US, the Afghan Arabs were useful proxy troops in the cold war. As Bin Laden himself later described it: "The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis."
Did the Saudi royals or the US have any qualms about arming and brutalising these frustrated young fundamen-talists? Brzezinski had his response to that question ready: "What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the cold war?"
Nowadays, the west is less smug about its interference. It is beginning to realise that the "stirred-up Muslims" may not have finished their upheavals.
(GUARDIAN Nov 21st)see below
EXCERPT:America's mistakes in the world usually grow from a failure to live up to our values, not from an effort to practice them. One politician grappled rather thoughtfully with this question. "I don't think they should look at us with envy," this politician said of the rest of the world.
"It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that's why we've got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom."
The politician in question spoke those words during the 2000 presidential debates. His name is George W. Bush
"compassionativity"
After September 11th Americans buy much less than before. However, there is a sector of the economy that not only was unhurt after the terrorist attacks but even started to boom. The worse the news is for Americans, the better things are with preachers prophesying another apocalypse. Best selling is literature devoted to the “signs of the end times.”
Do they mean John Grisham's Christmas Novel?
SCIENTISTS have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago..including..'A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.'
I guess the fall of the roman empire will be the next "ancient natural disaster" they find. Did debauchery cause none of these?
who: Amateur rocket builder Steve Bennett
what: Successfully launches unmanned test rocket
where: MORECAMBE UK
when: Yesterday
Steve hopes the same craft, the Nova, will carry him into space next year and allow him to claim the $10million "X prize" on offer to anyone who can fly three people 100km into space in a two-week period, says The Telegraph. Elsewhere, The Mirror reports that Russian cosmonauts refused to let desperate NASA officers use their space toilet because of a row over millionaire "space tourist" Dennis Tito.(inframes.com)
BILL WHITE: THE BUSINESSMEN BEHIND DAVID HOROWITZ AND THE LIBERTARIAN WAR FRONT (Pravda)Man, this war is letting people get everything off their chest
Clintonized FBI Fingers 'Right-Wing Hate Groups' in Anthrax Probe(NewsMax.com)
Talk about reading between the lines. See also FrontpageMagazine.com for David Horowitz' apoplexy.
The Deconstruction of the World Trade Center
By Robert Uhlig, Technology Correspondent(Telegraph)(Filed: 22/11/2001)
Could haemorrhagic plague emerge again? If it did so, infectious individuals, apparently healthy and not showing any symptoms, would rapidly spread the disease throughout the world by modern transport because of the long incubation period. The mortality would be catastrophic.
THE largest outbreak in history of a highly contagious disease that causes patients to bleed to death from every orifice was confirmed yesterday on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan(Telegraph)(Filed: 04/10/2001)
The Oklahoma bomb may have been a topic of study only because it demonstrates how much damage a simple bomb can create. But there is a more intriguing possibility. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, his accomplice, were responsible for the Oklahoma bomb. Several investigators pointed out that Nichols had spent time in the Philippines and met members of Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic group connected to Bin Laden. Suggestions that the two bombers had been manipulated by an Arab terror cell were rejected by the FBI, but are still a source of speculation in America.
More elaborate plans uncovered in Kabul include studies for a kinetic energy supergun capable of firing chemical or nuclear warheads. However, it seems more likely that the terrorists were toying with a proven form of attack: another assault on a building in America. Qurban Bir, 27, a decorator hired to repaint the Kabul house, said he saw a diagram of a tall building "like the Empire State in New York" with diagonal lines showing the best trajectories for its demolition.
McVeigh and Bin Laden? If this were a movie you'd say "who wrote this shit?"
First they came for the middle easterners..
Another Eruption Brewing?
C'mon Ye S.A.S!
This one's probably called Project "Open Sesame"
Targets linked to Osama Bin Laden in Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be at the top of the hit list(SUNDAY TIMES)
I can see them now-"Eeni, meeni, mienie, moe.."
(Phil Brennan, Nov. 22,NewsMax.com)
Not content with adding thousands of airport workers to the federal payroll – and union membership – Sen. Hillary Clinton now wants even more new federal hirings to keep an eye on the nation's nuclear plants, now protected by the plant owners' security forces.
According to New York Times reporter Robert Worth, Clinton, D-N.Y., told reporters at the Indian Point nuclear facility that she would introduce legislation to make the feds responsible for nuclear plant security.
But that's not all. Clinton is also pushing for an expansion of the evacuation zone from the present 10 miles to 50 miles, putting New York City, 30 miles away, and its 8 million residents within the zone. This would require the evacuation of all 20 million people in that zone in the event of an emergency at Indian Point.
The senator did not explain how the nightmarish evacuation of the city's 8 million people plus the other 12 million people living within the 50-mile perimeter could be accomplished without creating unmanageable chaos.
She told reporters that the bill she'll co-sponsor with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., would:
Put the feds in charge of plant security at the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.
Toughen the simulated terrorist attack exercises the feds already conduct from time to time on nuclear plants to check their safety precautions.
Stockpile potassium iodide, which helps to prevent cancer and other diseases among people exposed to radiation.
The Times noted that Clinton failed to address any details of how the evacuation would be conducted other than to say "the direction and force of the wind" would be the major determinant of where an evacuation would be needed.
According to the Times, the evacuation plan has become a sore point for many people in Westchester County who believe that it would not work in a serious accident.
Hmm, funny, I've never been that pro-Hill but I agree with all these contingencies
“At dusk the men of the tribe assembled and proceeded to arrange themselves in two concentric circles with the god-king seated at their center. They began chanting and as the night progressed their voices became as one; powerful and hypnotic. All through the night their voices became louder until we had to remove ourselves to a remote area as not to be affected. At dawn they abruptly stopped, as if on command. They rose as if on cue, glassy eyed and apparently oblivious to their surroundings. Jurambai their god-king led them to the end of a jungle path and watched as, without hesitation, the over 100 warriors calmly walked over the edge of the cliff, falling to their deaths on the jagged rocks some 500 feet below”
Mengele now had some inkling of the tremendous power of his discovery and he gave the compound a working name of, Anlügen 23, which roughly translated means “to engage in falsehood” since it apparently gave the user the ability to lie with out moral compunction and to be especially believable and almost god-like while doing so.
As per instructions given him by the special agents who transported him to South America, and acting to save himself from certain prosecution at Nuremberg, he had continued to make regular reports to a special section chief within the Department of State who also had ties to the KGB. Just enough of this information found it’s way (by way of rumor) into the hands of Senator Joseph P. McCarthy that it became the basis for his investigation into Communist influence there.
In a quid-pro-quo to avoid prosecution, this State Department section chief from then on kept McCarthy in the loop. When "Tail Gunner Joe" was publicly humiliated and destroyed before the Army McCarthy Hearings his contact then became the Chief Counsel for the House Un-American Activities Committee, Robert F. Kennedy.
Feeling the necessity to keep the arrangement intact RFK made the decision to keep the Soviets in the loop to protect the relationship with State. Kennedy did this by feeding the information to Dalton Trumbo (author of “Johnny Got His Gun” and progenitor of Metallica’s breakthrough video “One”) who was rumored to be a deep cover agent for the Soviets. This alliance with the Hollywood left would be a fateful one.
Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood, at a time when patriotism actually meant something, and had certain contacts of his own within the Democrat Party and easily interfaced with Kennedy.
All that we can glean from the skimpy information that we have at our disposal is that Mengele did indeed discover something in the jungles of Argentina and news of it was anxiously followed along the chain that led to the Kennedy’s because by this time Joseph Sr. had taken quite an interest in the reports. The elder Kennedy's many contacts among world leaders and his understanding of the almost limitless power a drug capable of guaranteeing an almost divine persuasive ability could offer, made it apparent to him that this was a huge discovery, perhaps epochal in importance.
It is a truism that authoritarians and demagogues in general often require that their agents say one thing and do another, obviously a public perception of veracity and believability is of paramount importance. Kennedy Sr’s realization of this combined with his knowledge of Mengele’s apparent discovery led to the enshrinement of Anlügen 23 as indeed, the "Holy Grail" of the Democrat party.
At this point in the historical record even our “pieced together” information becomes choppy, what with the outing of Bobby and JFK’s “tag team” relationship with Marilyn Monroe and of course all three of their deaths, under mysterious circumstances, the wagons were pulled in ever tighter circles from which little information leaked out.
Due to our investigative efforts and though based primarily on third party and hearsay evidence this is what we have pieced together, it is shocking in nature like a dagger pointed at the very heart of the American dream.
It seems that during his jungle experimentation phase, Dr Mengele’s former clandestine laboratory was secretly transformed from a military pharmaceutical research facility into J.HillipMengeleHausen-AG (J.H.M-Hausen-AG) a stuffy appearing East German pharmaceutical manufacturer, most often known for it’s feminine hygiene products.
Our sources indicate that J.H.M-Hausen-AG started the painstaking production of Anlügen 23 in the spring of 1959. Production techniques were so involved and capital intensive that only extremely small amounts could be produced. Efforts to synthesize the drug have, to our knowledge, never been successful to this day.
We did however discover what may have been the first instance of importation of this powerful agent into the U.S.
Upon direction by brother John, Robert Kennedy the Attorney General, directed that his brother’s very close friend, a certain P. Lawford, travel to Wiesbaden to bring back samples of an “elixir” while he was returning from making the movie “Exodus” in 1960. Lawford traveled under his screen name, Major Caldwell, to help deflect curiosity. Lawford allegedly smuggled 50 ml. of the substance back into the country. The concoction was first used successfully in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis where JFK bullied, lied to and generally made a buffoon out of Nikita Khrushchev.
JFK was ecstatic to discover that the substance not only worked but also had the powerful side effect of increasing his already prodigious libido. As time went on it appears that Kennedy became more and more dependant on the compound and threw all caution to the wind in November of 1963 by entering the political hornets nest in Dallas on that fateful day on the mistaken belief that operatives within Coke A Cola Corporation (of whom Richard Nixon was chief counsel – there is a link there that we can not go into at this juncture) had gleaned a few more precious viles of Anlügen 23. His dependence on the psychoactive narcotic. cost him his life.
Unfortunately, Lawford too succumbed, but in his case it was to wine, women and terrible impressions by Sammy Davis Jr....
Another "Say No More" Must Read from the conspiracy vaults. This time about a vast left-wing one including Lenny Kravitz whom I've always belived was highly suspect..
And next time it will be worse. "The issue is nuclear. There's no question that the next generation of terrorists, rather than going for small, little dramas, will go for the big one. They now understand that the way to get the world's attention is not strapping bombs to themselves in a pizza parlour, but to do something so horrific it gets you into the Guinness Book of World Records for terrorism. That takes years to plan - and it will be nuclear." (GUARDIAN)
The US-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the presence of anthrax in a letter sent to the chief pediatrician at a hospital here, Chile's Health Minister Michelle Bachelet said.
Authorities did not comment on earlier press reports that the letter was sent from Switzerland from a medical equipment manufacturer with headquarters in the United States.
Medical Equipment? Hmm,are they sure those knee surgery deaths aren't terrorist related?
The Garlic Information Center in Britain indicates that deadly anthrax is most susceptible to garlic.
A potent natural antibiotic, more powerful than many prescription antibiotics, is oil of oregano.
Huperzine A, a derivative of Chinese club moss, has been suggested as a pre-treatment against nerve gases
from the same source
HINT: A secret CIA office dedicated to "Economic Warfare" was located in 7 World Trade Center, and was totally destroyed in the "terrorist" attacks on September 11.
A US Government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that immediately after the attack, a CIA team scoured the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports stored in the station, either on paper or in computers. It was not known whether the efforts were successful
This knowledge is extremely important, because it allows us to decode the mass of misleading information being provided by government and media, and focus on exactly who was hit the hardest. Forget the dozens of alleged Anthrax “hot spots” hyped up by the media in recent days, because most are very likely collateral damage caused by simple cross contamination. At best these more recent finds are only warm spots. To date, “seriously high” spore counts have been registered only in American media headquarters buildings, Capitol Hill, the State Department and its outlying embassies, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
It comes as no great surprise to learn that these organizations, and these alone, worked in concert with banking conglomerates in the World Trade Center in terms of waging economic and physical war on countless helpless sovereign nations over the past three decades. We are not just talking about Iraq or Palestine here. To the list of those ruthlessly attacked economically in the past, we must add Russia, Britain, France, and many others. Therefore in terms of real suspects for the attack on the World Trade Center, and the subsequent Anthrax attacks, I can only quote Israel Shamir: “It could have been anybody, and it was everybody.”
as well as this..
Activating the primary Home Run channel proved to be easy. Most readers will have heard of a “transponder”, prominent in most news reports immediately following the attacks on New York and Washington. Technically a transponder is a combined radio transmitter and receiver which operates automatically, in this case relaying data between the four aircraft and air traffic control on the ground. The signals sent provide a unique “identity” for each aircraft, essential in crowded airspace to avoid mid-air collisions, and equally essential for Home Run controllers trying to lock onto the correct aircraft. Once it has located the correct aircraft, Home Run “piggy backs” a data transmission onto the transponder channel and takes direct control from the ground. This explains why none of the aircraft sent a special “I have been hijacked” transponder code, despite multiple activation points on all four aircraft. Because the transponder frequency had already been piggy backed by Home Run, transmission of the special hijack code was rendered impossible. This was the first hard proof that the target aircraft had been hijacked electronically from the ground, rather than by [FBI-inspired] motley crews of Arabs toting penknives.
The Home Run listening device on the flight deck utilizes the cockpit microphones that normally feed the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), one of two black boxes armored to withstand heavy impact and thereby later give investigators significant clues to why the aircraft crashed. However, once hooked into Home Run, the CVRs are bypassed and voice transmissions are no longer recorded on the 30-minute endless loop recording tape. If Home Run is active for more than thirty minutes, there will therefore be no audible data on the Cockpit Voice Recorders. To date, crash investigators have recovered the CVRs from the Pentagon and Pittsburg aircraft, and publicly confirmed that both are completely blank. The only possible reason for this, is data capture by Home Run, providing the final hard proof that the attack aircraft were hijacked electronically from the ground, rather than by “Arab terrorists”.
This guy's site is a veritable trove of conspiracy theories. Fascinating reading (with a pinch of salt. remember a wink's as good as a nod to a blind bat)
It is a fitness-phobe's dream come true - a way to increase muscle strength without ever lifting a finger.
According to a report in New Scientist magazine, just imagining exercising can increase the strength of even large muscles. Researchers say the discovery could help patients too weak to exercise because of stroke or other injury to start recuperating. And if the technique is effective in older people, it could help maintain their strength.(Reuters)
Not sure i could concentrate for that amount of time
The FBI's "Magic Lantern" technology would allow investigators, via the Internet, to secretly install powerful software that records every keystroke on a person's computer, according to people familiar with the effort. The software is similar to "Trojan horse" programs already used by some hackers and corporate spies. (AP)
I didn't really write this-pete
The first "Smoke Rage"story is mere days away surely? Hope i'm not in it.
But i ordered "Super-size".
This reminds me why I am so $ked off. One of things that occured to me in the days after, is that they'll never allow Jet-Paks and flying cars now. Not even electirc ones.
In a reiteration of a now well-known claim by one of George W Bush’s former business partners, the BBC said he made his first million 20 years ago on the back of a company financed by Osama’s elder brother, Salem. But it added the more disturbing assertion that both presidents Bush had lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a small private company which has gone on to become one of America's biggest defence contractors. The bin Ladens sold their stake in Carlyle soon after September 11, it said.(Newsnight)
Also Bush, Baker, Major in "How will the President of the United States personally make millions, if not billions of dollars from the War on Terror? He'll inherit it.
Meet the Carlyle Group. Former World Leaders and Washington Insiders Make Billions in the War on Terrorism"(GUARDIAN)
I remember Politics in the Billy Bragg Days
"Bin Laden's film crew must have studied Schindler's List, because a five-minute orgy of Israelis brutalising women and children is like a replay of scenes from the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto. In Spielberg's film, the camera panned to the body of a little girl in red; in this, the climax is the murder of Mohammed al-Durra. As in Schindler's List, children and women sing slowly and movingly.
And this is the point at which I burst into tears. I hardly realise that I have been visually and aurally manipulated until I study the clip in detail. In slow motion, and in time to the music, Israeli soldiers beat two women with sticks, until one falls to ground. The soldiers carry off screaming men, as if they are so much rubbish. Then, they strike a little boy with such force that he crumples to the ground. These images, and similar ones, are repeated over and over, until the violence seems unending.
But, hang on aren't these the same three incidents, shot from different angles? Bin Laden has simply cut up full-length "news" sequences and scattered them about, fooling me with the frenzied graphics and sound effects.
Throughout, he is screaming tearfully over the music: "Your sister goes to bed honourable and wakes up violated, raped by the Jews." As we see images of beatings for the umpteenth time, all he can do is wail - a curiously effective cry of impotence and grief."(DAILY TELEGRAPH)
Conspiracy theorists' will have a wail of a time with this one. PAKNEWS:Speilberg behind Osama Vid? Many believe the video was too well executed to have been made by terrorists. Mossad Blamed
So that's why the UN building's still there. Thank god for crappy FWD's
Two of the journalists slain in Afghanistan this week had discovered what appeared to be highly deadly Sarin gas at one of Osama bin Laden's bases, it was reported yesterday.
More likely these deaths we're revenge for the bombing of AL Jazeera
How Our Image of the Hosts of the First Thanksgiving Evolved (ABCNEWS)What if the Pilgrims hadn't invited the Indians to a Thanksgiving feast, but instead took them out to the local tavern and regaled them with boastful tales and lewd jokes?
If only, add to list of "Things to do with a Time Machine"
If a surgical product was contaminated and distributed nationally, "you'd expect more cases of sudden unexplained deaths after routine surgery," Mr. Ferguson said.
Both the disease control centers and Minnesota health officials are now looking for such cases.
"We have asked health care providers to notify us if they have cases that resemble these," Mr. Ferguson said. "We've gotten many calls from around the country. There are maybe a half-dozen or dozen cases that might be similar. We're interviewing people now to see if we're dealing with a similar situation. But we don't have a fourth case so far." .."I doubt very much that it could be bioterrorism ..but no one has ever seen something like this occur."
Careful with the band-aid folks!-pete
LONDON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Something catastrophic occurred on Earth 1,500 years ago that may have led to the Dark Ages and coincided with the end of the Roman Empire and the death of King Arthur, a Northern Ireland scientist said on Friday.
It could have been a bombardment of cometary debris or the eruption of a super volcano.
But whatever it was, it is clearly etched in the chronology of tree rings from around the world, according to Professor Mike Baillie, of Queen's University in Belfast.
The global environmental event that occurred around 540 AD is not recorded in any history books. But the tree ring chronologies compiled from samples of trees, some preserved in bogs, which date back thousands of years, single out something that was quite extraordinary.
``It was a catastrophic environmental downturn that shows up in trees all over the world,'' Baillie told a news conference at the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference.
``This event is clear in the tree ring records.''
The height of a tree is indicative of the quality of soil it is growing in but the rings hold clues about past climate conditions and have been used to date events in the past.
They correctly recorded the year without a summer in the North American region in 1816 and the eruption of various volcanoes around the world.
Baillie believes the slowdown of tree growth recorded in the rings around 540 AD was due to a bombardment of cometary debris which happened around the time of King Arthur's death, the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Traditional myths recorded in 13th century texts refer to a comet in Gaul around 540 AD when the sky seemed to be on fire, according to Baillie.
``These myths hint strongly at a bombardment vector for the environmental downturn but are almost universally dismissed as fiction or fantasy by academics,'' he said.
Baillie is appealing to historians to accept that something terrible happened around 540 AD and to find a record of it.
``I am calling for a debate by scientists and historians on how to approach the evidence for catastrophic events of this kind which were previously not known to have taken place,'' he added.
12:17 09-08-00
hence the expression -the sky's falling down! (see Asterix the Gaul)-pete. Burt and Bob always laugh when I tell them this 'the Dark Ages really we're Dark' theory. So Glad to see it in type.
Oh My God. At least monica was the same species!
In addition to your concern about the origins of West Nile virus in the US, I also wonder about the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England, as well as the recent outbreak of Dengue fever in Hawaii, the first in 36 years. Then there is the fact that over one hundred people have recently come down with Ebola in the Afghan-Pakistan border region. That is reportedly the worst known outbreak of Ebola in human history.
And I might add that an extraordinarily reliable intelligence source indicates that al-Qaeda and/or Iraqi agents have been spreading some kinds of infectious materials in the US. The infectious material being spread does not appear to be of a "plague nature," but does cause illnesses, such as serious sores on the lips, as well as sore throats that persist for weeks.
One of our main weaknesses is thus the fact that we are looking for dramatic examples of terrorism and never seem to think that terrorism can involve foreign agents doing such things as spraying PCB on the playgrounds of children.
With respect to the spreading of infectious materials by al-Qaeda or Iraqi agents, the authorities have been alerted as to what they should look for, and the location of at least one such foreign agent is known. But it‘s a big country and there are many agents.
And soon we will have Thanksgiving and Christmas, with shopping malls filled with people. And Thanksgiving marks the "cold and flu season." So that is a good time for an opportunistic bio-weapons terrorist to release an infectious disease that has transmission vectors that are analogous to influenza. (from "Bringmenews.com")
Ebola?! Ahh. the solace of doubtfulness. File this under 'dodgy' and sleep better, except for the sore throat.
A second-by-second videotape of the final moments of doomed American Airlines Flight 587 shows a puff of smoke in the sky seconds after it crashed outside New York's JFK Airport Monday, lending credence to eyewitnesses who say the jetliner exploded before slamming into a Queens, N.Y., neighborhood..(NewsMax.com)
"At First I thought the helicopter had shot it down"- was the first eyewitness account I heard on FoxNews
(NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire) After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek.
The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.
He's got the whole world in his hands
PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.
In the book ''Bin Laden, la verite interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.
Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.
The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.
They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.
Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.
But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.
''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.
According to the book, the government of Bush began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.
To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The last meeting between U.S. and Taliban representatives took place in August, five weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, the analysts maintain.
On that occasion, Christina Rocca, in charge of Central Asian affairs for the U.S. government, met the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan in Islamabad.
Brisard and Dasquie have long experience in intelligence analysis. Brisard was until the late 1990s director of economic analysis and strategy for Vivendi, a French company. He also worked for French secret services, and wrote for them in 1997 a report on the now famous Al Qaeda network, headed by bin Laden.
Dasquie is an investigative journalist and publisher of Intelligence Online, a respected newsletter on diplomacy, economic analysis and strategy, available through the Internet.
Brisard and Dasquie draw a portrait of closest aides to President Bush (news - web sites), linking them to oil business.
Bush's family has a strong oil background. So are some of his top aides. From the U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites), through the director of the National Security Council Condoleeza Rice, to the Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, all have for long worked for U.S. oil companies.
Cheney was until the end of last year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for oil industry; Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron; Evans and Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant.
Besides the secret negotiations held between Washington and Kabul and the importance of the oil industry, the book takes issue with the role played by Saudi Arabia in fostering Islamic fundamentalism, in the personality of bin Laden, and with the networks that the Saudi dissident built to finance his activities.
Brisard and Dasquie contend the U.S. government's claim that it had been prosecuting bin Laden since 1998. ''Actually,'' Dasquie says, ''the first state to officially prosecute bin Laden was Libya, on the charges of terrorism.''
''Bin Laden wanted settle in Libya in the early 1990s, but was hindered by the government of Muammar Qaddafi,'' Dasquie claims. ''Enraged by Libya's refusal, bin Laden organised attacks inside Libya, including assassination attempts against Qaddafi.''
Dasquie singles out one group, the Islamic Fighting Group (IFG), reputedly the most powerful Libyan dissident organisation, based in London, and directly linked with bin Laden.
''Qaddafi even demanded Western police institutions, such as Interpol, to pursue the IFG and bin Laden, but never obtained co- operation,'' Dasquie says. ''Until today, members of IFG openly live in London.''
The book confirms earlier reports that the U.S. government worked closely with the United Nations during the negotiations with the Taliban.
''Several meetings took place this year, under the arbitration of Francesc Vendrell, personal representative of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, to discuss the situation in Afghanistan,'' says the book.
''Representatives of the U.S. government and Russia, and the six countries that border with Afghanistan were present at these meetings,'' it says. ''Sometimes, representatives of the Taliban also sat around the table.''
These meetings, also called ''6+2'' because of the number of states (six neighbours plus U.S. and Russia) involved, have been confirmed by Naif Naik, former Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs.
In a French television news programme two weeks ago, Naik said during a ''6+2'' meeting in Berlin in July, the discussions turned around ''the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid.''
''And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come,'' he added.
Naik also claimed that Tom Simons, the U.S. representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan.
''Simons said, 'either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option'. The words Simons used were 'a military operation','' Naik claimed.
In his infamous January 1999 address to the U.S. Department of State, Kabbani cautioned officials about imminent danger to America posed by nuclear-armed Islamic extremists. He further described 5,000 suicide bombers being trained by bin Laden in Afghanistan ready to move to any part of the world.
In a recent pronouncement, ISCA said: "Shaykh Hisham Kabbani warned of the dangers of mass terrorism to American cities, and he was brushed aside as a dangerous alarmist. Muslim organizations are no doubt beginning to regret their treatment of him." (Newsmax)
Oh shit. One wonders how many we're lost in transit?
In the late 1990s, according to former U.S. and Afghan officials, a number of prominent Persian Gulf state officials and businessmen flew into Kandahar on state and private jets for secret hunting expeditions.
For days at a time, the hunters would roam the hills, releasing falcons trained to catch the bustards. Some satisfied hunters heaped donations on their Taliban hosts, officials said--and on Al Qaeda leaders who occasionally joined them.
Among the reported visitors were high-ranking UAE and Saudi government ministers. According to U.S. and former Afghan civil air officials, the hunters included Prince Turki al Faisal, son of the late Saudi King Faisal. He headed that nation's intelligence service until late August, maintaining close ties with Bin Laden and the Taliban. Another visitor, officials said, was Sheik Mohammed ibn Rashid al Maktum, the Dubai crown prince and Emirates defense minister.
(LATimes)
Also
Number of years that Osama bin Laden's half-brother owned the Houston Gulf Airport before his death in 1988 : 6
Number of years since then that the airport has been owned by his estate : 13(Harper's Index)
Want to find out whether there are any hazardous waste sites near the local day-care center? What safety controls are in place at nuclear power plants? Or how many people are incarcerated in terrorist-related probes?
"We have to get away from the ethos that knowledge is good, knowledge should be publicly available, that information will liberate us," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "Information will kill us in the techno-terrorist age, and I think it's nuts to put that stuff on Web sites."(LATimes)
Talkabout Doublespeak.
MIKE WALLACE: Tonight, an improbable story about a revolutionary new technology called Brain Fingerprinting that has caught the interest of both the CIA and the FBI. It is the creation of Dr. Larry Farwell, a scientist from Iowa, who says that by analyzing the brain waves of a criminal suspect, he can tell whether or not that individual has committed a crime. Dr. Farwell believes Brain Fingerprinting could one day be as effective as DNA in helping police investigate crimes, and in helping free those who have been wrongly convicted.(CBS 60minutes DEC 2000)
Before long truth serums and torture will seem medieval.
Brain scans can reveal whether someone is lying or telling the truth, US researchers have discovered. When people lied, MRI scans revealed significant increases in activity in several brain regions. (New Scientist)
The Control Question asked by the nurse was "Do you approve of George Bush's handling of the crisis?"
Crucial evidence linking both Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the Taliban to the suicide hijackings on New York and Washington on 11 September has been uncovered in secret documents discarded in Kabul and other Afghan cities.
Among papers seen by Western journalists, and abandoned by retreating Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, were a flight simulator computer programme and a list of flight schools in the US. Other evidence uncovered at al-Qaeda sites indicates that major power plants in the US and Europe - some of them nuclear - were being targeted for attack. (GUARDIAN)
By Nusrat Javeed
WASHINGTON: Though extremely pleased with the stunning rout of Taliban, policy planners in the USA are utterly confused where to go next. "Policy papers written in the morning are obsolete by the afternoon," admitted a state department official, working on South Asian affairs, while talking to a noted scholar, Stephan Cohen.
The confusion is so profound that Washington is yet not certain whether Taliban are running for their lives like the "headless chickens." Or, they abandoned city after city with a design. Some analysts suspect the application of well-thought-out "strategic retreat". While the Pashto speaking Afghans appear discreetly "melting with the crowd" or retreating to the security of their ancestral villages and tribes, "foreign legions" of their supporters keep putting a deadly defence on the front lines of Kunduz and Kandahar. Most of the Taliban's 60,000-strong fighting force and its weaponry in Afghanistan is believed to have escaped with low casualties from the heavy US bombing strikes and the lightning Northern Alliance offensives. Many analysts in Washington strongly feel that not more than 900 Taliban fighters have been killed. And, their arsenals of between 250 and 300 Scud missiles remain intact. They can still be used against cities captured by the Northern Alliance. Yet, the US is pleased. For, its bombers and the Northern Alliance apparently made greater inroads on groups, perceived as "core units" of Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Between 2,000 to 3,000 Pakistanis, Chinese, Chechens, Saudis, Egyptians, Yemenis, and Jordanians are estimated to have died while "covering" the Taliban retreats.
Intelligence sources claim that the Taliban command, though ordering its own forces to retreat, instructed Al Qaeda fighters to hold the line, fight until the last man and not surrender, so as to cover their pullback.
Al Qaeda men obeyed the order and most were killed. Still, military sources note that Osama Bin Laden's primary fighting force, Brigade 55, retreated with the Taliban and escaped virtually unscathed, although elements of the brigade remained in the besieged city of Kunduz.
Though wild estimates are made regarding the Taliban losses, no one cares to discuss as to how many troops of the Special Forces of the USA and its allies might have died on the ground. A firm news blackout has been imposed on the casualty count in Washington. Much more intriguing is the silence Moscow maintains about its role. Most analysts The News talked to in Washington admit that the Russian Spetznaz, Special Forces, and Uzbek commandos spearheaded the Northern Alliance offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif. And, took the greatest number of casualties.....more (Jang)
These reports about news Blackouts are so informed
Two defectors from Iraqi intelligence said yesterday that they had worked for several years at a secret Iraqi government camp that had trained Islamic terrorists in rotations of five or six months since 1995.
...The defectors said they knew of a highly guarded compound within the camp where Iraqi scientists, led by a German, produced biological agents..activities, including simulated hijackings carried out in a Boeing 707 fuselage set up in the camp....We were training these people to attack installations important to the United States. The gulf war never ended for Saddam Hussein. He is at war with the United States. We were repeatedly told this...The Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group headed by Ahmed Chalabi in London, helped arrange the meeting and interview with the defectors and supports that side of the Washington debate. (NYT-free subscription required)
Gulf War II . But will the sequel make as much money as the original?
Wasn't that the name of one of the bad guys in Asterix?
DRUG SMUGGLERS at Canadian prisons and airports are about to encounter a new force in the campaign to protect public morals-a team of highly trained gerbils. The sensitive noses of these furry detectives have already won £20 000 worth of government investment to help track down the nation's criminals. Several problems involved in gathering a workforce of conventional dope-sniffers (dogs, for example) led the Canadians to make the breakthrough for rodent liberation. Dogs obey only one handler (or two at most); they eat a lot; and they need a fair amount of space and care. Add to that the discomfort they bring by sniffing around the ankles of harassed travellers in airports and there seems to be a good case for the gerbil as a seeker-out of contraband. The customs authorities set up an intensive training scheme to make the most of the gerbils' talents. At airports, where a few pioneering gerbils are in action, the sniffers crouch in their cages behind a counter and catch the smells of travellers as they walk past a fan. Although the customs gerbils face retirement sooner than a dog would, officials are enthusiastic about their cheaper upkeep and their modest approach to industrial relations. (5 August 1982)
You see all those rumours about Richard Gere weren't true. He was merely smuggling drugs back from tibet one day...
Cynics might say the recent summit between Hollywood bigwigs and Washington officials was a bad joke, but one should never underestimate the power of motion pictures. They are far more popular than novels with the general populace, take up scant hours of one’s life and require simply the price of admission. What follows are plot summaries for a few of these potential projects:
The Blue Veil: Demi Moore stars as an ex-stripper who joins the armed forces, eventually achieving the status of Navy S.E.A.L., and goes on a covert, all-female mission into Kandahar with cohorts Halle Berry, Heather Graham and Jennifer Lopez. The women spend much time kicking Taliban ass in slow motion and sharing more open views on feminism with the downtrodden Afghan women they meet along the way. Eventually, they liberate two female aid workers held in a rat-infested cell. The pivotal scene features the stars, completely naked save for American flag g-strings, taking out a Taliban stronghold guarding the workers while AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” blasts on the soundtrack.
November 14: The latest edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists describes how, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US implemented emergency plans that had initially been designed for all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)
I guess they fell off the back of a truck
Times reporter finds blueprint for 'Nagasaki bomb'.Nov15th (Times-UK).
"Soon we will demolish America, remember my words," the Taliban head emphasised.
Speaking of international terrorist Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar said that "America will never get him alive". He denied rumours about an alleged arrest of bin Laden.(Pravda)
Well, let's face it, it's also a cinch to buy a fully automatic weapon in texas.
However side effects include a 15 second memory retention thingy
Well, that make's it official-pete
Be vigilant for melons
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network may have successfully transported several nuclear, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction to the United States, a Pakistani daily has reported. Stating that Pakistani and American investigators were "jointly probing" the possibility of such an attack when the United Nations General Assembly was on, The Frontier Post, quoting sources close to the investigators, said they "have reached a conclusion that at least two briefcase nuclear weapons may have reached the US shores".
"The investigators have been able to identify at least one briefcase weapon acquired by Al-Qaeda from Central Asian rogue groups," the report said.
It said the weapon identified was a small 8-kg device that carries at least two kg of fissionable plutonium and uranium. "The device, of Russian make, carries a serial number 9999 and manufacturing date October 1988." Describing the device as "simple", the report said the radioactive materials were kept in separate compartments, on top of which the charging mechanism is placed. "The charging mechanism can be activated through a timer or even through a cellphone command", it said.
Besides the nuclear devices, Al-Qaeda activists are said to be in possession of "at least 70 capsules, also of Russian origin, containing a very lethal biological agent".
"Broken in a crowded place, this capsule can cause deaths on a huge scale. It melts human body meat to the bone," the report said, adding that another chemical agent the terrorist outfit has was called 'Vipera Lebentina Venema', a derivative of snake poison. (HindustanTimes/FrontierPost)
This takes you back. We will try to never forget.
Yes. Yes. But I think I'd need a longer pole, like ten foot or something
Vincent, 35, who has been in Britain for six years, was flicking through his morning paper over his breakfast when he realised his family home had been missed by the A300 Airbus by a road's width.
He is now planning to move back to New York in the new year but says: "If I could go back today I would. My family are still there and I need to be with them.
"I lived in that area all my life and I know some of the people I have known all my life will no longer be there anymore.
"It is devastating. If I didn't come to Britain I would still have been living in that house, who knows what would have happened."
Vincent, who has a five-year-old son Vincent jnr, moved to this country in 1995 after meeting a Geordie in New York.
They were married and moved back to Washington near Newcastle after his wife's parents became ill. They later divorced and he has since married another Geordie, Dawn, who plans to move back to Queens with him in February."I can't wait to get back. All these terrible things haven't put me off going back. They make me want to go back more like." (2dayUK)
I go with the weather balloon theory myself
OSB: My kidneys are all right. I did not go to Dubai last year. One British newspaper has published an imaginary interview with Islamabad dateline with one of my sons who lives in Saudi Arabia. All this is false.
HM: Is it correct that a daughter of Mulla Omar is your wife or your daughter is Mulla Omar's wife ?
OSB: (Laughs). All my wives are Arabs ( and all my daughters are married to Arab Mujahideen). I have spiritual relationship with Mulla Omar. He is a great and brave Muslim of this age. He does not fear anyone but Allah. He is not under any personal relationship or obligation to me. He is only discharging his religious duty. I, too, have not chosen this life out of any personal consideration.
Who said he was an Arab supremacist? OK, in the Fatwa he says the Umma (muslim nation) will be run by the "Sons of Mohammed" but it was his idea. He's only helping the poor Afghans and Pakistanis out of pure selflessness.
This is deeply worrying.
EXCERPT:Getting back to the matter of construction contracts, consider what happened after the Khobar Towers complex in Dhahran was bombed on June 25, 1996. Osama bin Laden was accused by the U.S. of masterminding that bombing, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded about 500 others.
Afterwards, a new 'super-secure' facility was erected:
"The facility very likely is the most heavily guarded operational installation used by the US military. This, clearly, is what retired Army Gen. Wayne A. Downing had in mind when in 1996 he released a report criticizing security at Khobar Towers and recommending more extensive force protection measures.
"… In a supreme irony, the complex was built by the giant contractor, Saudi Binladin Group -- owned by the same family that produced international terrorist Osama bin Laden, now an outcast in his homeland." ('Air Force Magazine,' February, 1999)
Osama did some building for the infidels in Afghanistan as well. That was during the late 1980s. Under contract with the CIA, he and the family company built the multi-billion dollar "caves" (1) in which he is now, supposedly, hiding, thus causing the U.S. and Britain to bomb the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and other strategic military installations:" He brought in engineers from his father's company and heavy construction equipment to build roads and warehouses for the Mujaheddin. In 1986, he helped build a CIA-financed tunnel complex, to serve as a major arms storage depot, training facility and medical center for the Mujaheddin, deep under the mountains close to the Pakistan border."('Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,')
In a reiteration of a now well-known claim by one of George W Bush’s former business partners, the BBC said he made his first million 20 years ago on the back of a company financed by Osama’s elder brother, Salem. But it added the more disturbing assertion that both presidents Bush had lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a small private company which has gone on to become one of America's biggest defence contractors. The bin Ladens sold their stake in Carlyle soon after September 11, it said.(BBCNEWS -Newsnight)
What the hell?
"I see a Golden Bridge stretching from shore to shore"
Way To Go!
The new world order?
Excellent Article
They make it sound so easy
Don't forget your parachute, dear
For the past 55 years it has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively outnumber the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at Al-Qaeda's door. The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHISC. It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's government.
This is reprehensible
Status: True.
He should have told Oliver Stone
Status: False.
Status: False
I fell for this one too.
Consider me officially terrorised. And what if they use one of those vacuum bags to pack more in?
"Great Blasted Buggery"-would probably be a better name if it ever happened
This is a long one, but very well thought out,wish i had a brain like this guy
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