terrorists working for western countries from nafeez ahmed: It came to my attention that a senior correspondent, Kristin Aalen, working for a national Norwegian broadsheet - Stavanger Aftenbladet(Stavanger Evening News) - just recently printed a detailed article in the newspaper on Western covert operations sponsoring al-Qaeda after the Cold War... based almost entirely on my research in The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. Entitled "Terrorists Working for Western Countries" (24.11.08), it even gives a country-by-country summary breakdown complete with a handy geopolitical world map of the wide arc of these operations. It's a very useful piece from a mainstream national European paper that very effectively summarizes the thrust of my research into this unpalatable subject. A shame that the British press is so reticent about such issues. There are some caveats. Kristin sometimes oversimplifies my geopolitical explanations, and this can lead to serious misinterpretations, such as her rendition of my examination of Pentagon sponsorship of al-Qaeda fighters in the Balkans - she says that the US and NATO helped the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs, provoking them, and thus preventing peace. This is caricature of my argument, which is more fully fleshed out in The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry.
'rogue' trader highlights possible 9/11 & 7/7 insider trading from steve watson: According to an article in The London Times today, Société Générale rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel profited enormously on the day of the 7/7 London bombings. He has also revealed how his company made huge profits on September 11th 2001, prompting some to return to questions over insider foreknowledge of both terrorist attacks: “The best trading day in the history of Société Générale was September 11, 2001... At least, that’s what one of my managers told me. It seems that profits were colossal that day... I had a similar experience during the London attacks in July 2005.” Kerviel was charged almost exactly one year ago in the Société Générale trading loss incident which cost the financial services company an estimated €4.9 billion. Until the Bernard Madoff fraud incident last month, it was reported to be the largest fraud in banking history.
yet another military exercise occurring on 9/11 uncovered from 9/11 blogger: When it seems impossible to discover additional shady military exercises occurring Sept. 11, 2001, there comes along yet another investigator uncovering secret documents pointing to unprecedented military actions happening the same day.
National Security Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson is reporting in his new book, "Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad," that the U.S. nuclear bomb squad, known as the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, was out of the country on its first foreign deployment since 1998, at a British air base in the Cotswolds, on Sept. 11 as part of Operation Jackal Cave.
According to the book, the exercise involved more than 500 personnel, 62 aircraft, 420 short tons of cargo, the CIA and a special operations force that would seize a mock nuclear device that the NEST squad would disable.
The after-action report from the deployment, ""DOE EXERCISE 03-01 JACKAL CAVE" notes the early termination of the exercise because of the attacks, but finds useful "strengths and weaknesses" including the need to "[i]ssue secure international cell phones to control members and team leaders."
The heavily redacted report created in 2003 and prepared for the Department of Energy's Office of Emergency Response by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education gives only hints of the exercise, including continuing training and exercises between the Department of Energy's Joint Technical Operations Teams (JTOT) and the Army's 21st Ordnance Company (EOD) to "enhance command and control relationships."
Morris is also quoted in a story printed in the Swindon Advertiser in South West England in an article dated Aug. 30, 2001 in which he describes RAF Fairford, a former wartime base, hosting a major United States European Command sponsored training exercise between September 5 and 18. Morris said Fairford would be used as a transit point for the exercise.
The existence of these training exercises proves that official claims that the events of September 11 were unimaginable have been false. However, future investigations of 9/11 will need to determine whether these exercises served a more nefarious purpose. For example, might they have been intended as a smokescreen for rogue individuals working within the military and other government agencies who were involved in planning the attacks? Thus, if colleagues overheard these individuals discussing matters such as planes hitting the World Trade Center or crashing into the Pentagon, they could have claimed they were simply talking about a forthcoming training exercise.
from ctc411: Operation Northwoods Exposed - Starring Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura, and James Bamford. Note: The official “Operation Northwoods” (780kb PDF) document was originally obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive through the Freedom of Information Act...
nsa revelations to have lasting implications from raw story: Following the (actually-not-all-that-surprising) bombshell that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on calls between innocent US citizens, activists are considering re-opening a lawsuit alleging the government's infringement upon constitutional rights. An appeals court last year dismissed a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the NSA, arguing the plaintiffs the ACLU represented could not prove they had been targets of warrantless surveillance the NSA had engaged in. Now that ABC News has revealed evidence of NSA spooks listening to innocent Americans' private phone calls, the civil liberties group may ask the court to reconsider. "Everything is being discussed right now," ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer told RAW STORY this week.
pint-size eco-police, making parents proud & crazy from nytimes: Sometimes, Jennifer Ross feels she cannot make a move at home without inviting the scorn of her daughters, 10-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Eliza. The Acura MDX she drives? A flagrant polluter. The bath at night to help her relax? A wasteful indulgence. The reusable shopping bags she forgot, again? Tsk, tsk.
“I have very, very environmentally conscious children — more so than me, I’m embarrassed to say,” said Ms. Ross, a social worker in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. “They’re on my case about getting a hybrid car. They want me to replace all the light bulbs in the house with energy-saving bulbs.”
Ms. Ross’s children are part of what experts say is a growing army of “eco-kids” — steeped in environmentalism at school, in houses of worship, through scouting and even via popular culture — who try to hold their parents accountable at home. Amid their pride in their children’s zeal for all things green, the grown-ups sometimes end up feeling like scofflaws under the watchful eye of the pint-size eco-police, whose demands grow ever greater, and more expensive.
'drop guns' coming to america? from infowars: In this video, former U.S. soldiers explain how they were told to carry “drop guns” to cover up the murder of Iraqi citizens. According to the soldiers, this is an informal military policy.
army orders pain ray trucks; new report shows 'potential for death' from danger room: After years of testing, the Active Denial System - the pain ray which drives off rioters with a microwave-like beam - could finally have its day. The Army is buying five of the truck-mounted systems for $25 million. But the energy weapon may face new hurdles, before it's shipped off to the battlefield; a new report details how the supposedly non-lethal blaster could be turned into a flesh-frying killer... The announcement arrives on the same day as a new report from less-lethal weapons expert Dr. Jürgen Altmann that analyzes the physics of several directed energy weapons, including Active Denial, the Advanced Tactical Laser (used as a non-lethal weapon), the Pulsed Energy Projectile (a.k.a. "Maximum Pain" laser) and the Long Range Acoustic Device (a.k.a. "Acoustic Blaster")... "As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree"
'credible threat' at middle tennessee state from usnews: Middle Tennessee State University was shut down Thursday around noon after authorities determined there was a "credible threat" to campus, according to Sidelines. The announcement was made after multiple university officials received E-mails Wednesday and Thursday threatening the student body, and authorities responded to three suspicious small fires set in a dorm Thursday. According to the campus police chief, at least one of the E-mails references "killing, bombing, and destruction," but does not specify a location. Authorities are still unsure whether the fires and threats are related. Classes have been canceled for the rest of the week as state and local police sweep the campus, with their weapons drawn, according to the Tennesseean, looking for a male suspect. Officials did not reveal why he is being sought. MTSU is one of the largest undergraduate colleges in Tennessee with almost 24,000 students, most of whom live off campus. Class will restart October 15, after a previously scheduled fall break.
sheriff begins taking away concealed weapons permits from oc register: The Sheriff’s Department has begun the process of revoking hundreds of concealed weapon permits across Orange County. This week, department officials confirmed that 146 letters have been sent out advising current license holders that their permits to carry firearms in public – called CCWs – are being revoked. There are currently 1,024 permit holders. "The Department has determined that your identified risk does not meet the good cause threshold as required under the new CCW policy based upon the information you provided. As a result of this determination, the Department’s present intention is to revoke your CCW license," reads the form letter sent out this month...
[COMMENT: It is clear that the intention is to demonize gun ownership while making the ‘permit’ aspect convey a privilege rather than a right, as guarded by the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. Further, the claim that the former sheriff was ‘corrupt’ is meant to justify the revoking of permits, which are also associated emotionally as being wrong to hold.]
update: panel to study military eavesdropping from nytimes: The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, said Thursday that the committee would investigate claims by two military eavesdroppers that they routinely listened in on private calls home from American military officers, aid workers and journalists stationed in Iraq.
Mr. Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, called the accusations “extremely disturbing.”
“Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans it is a very serious matter,” he said.
Ms. Kinne and Mr. Faulk, both Arabic linguists, were based at Fort Gordon, Ga., where the N.S.A. has a large listening post focused on the Middle East. Ms. Kinne was there from 2001 to 2003 and Mr. Faulk was there from 2003 to 2007, Mr. Bamford said.
Ms. Kinne, who became an anti-Iraq-war activist, has spoken about her experiences as an eavesdropper to several Web publications since last year, but her accusations have not drawn broad attention. Mr. Faulk does not appear to have spoken out before.
Mr. Faulk told ABC that he and his colleagues listened to “personal phone calls of American officers, mostly in the Green Zone, calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends.”
He said the eavesdroppers would swap recordings of intimate calls for entertainment. “At times I was told: ‘Hey, check this out. There’s some good phone sex,’” he said.
video: congress ends 9/11 workers’ health care bill from ny1: Congress has abandoned legislation to provide billions of dollars in health care for September 11th recovery workers. The program would have provided long term care for workers who were at the World Trade Center on or shortly after September 11, 2001 at an estimated cost of at least $5 billion. Mayor Michael Bloomberg strongly objected to a part of the bill that would have forced the city to pay for 10 percent of the program, saying it would place an undue burden on city taxpayers. In addition, the legislation would have reopened the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, adding around $6 billion to the plan.
and speaking of bloomberg...
bloomberg plans to seek re-election by rewriting term limit law from thinkprogress: On Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly plans to announce that he will be seeking a third term, arguing that “the financial crisis unfolding in New York City demands his steady hand and proven business acumen.” The New York Times reports: "The move represents an about-face for Mr. Bloomberg, who has repeatedly said he supports term limits and once called an effort to revise the law 'disgusting.' He will apparently try to do so through legislation in the City Council, rather than the ballot box. Mr. Bloomberg’s gambit carries significant political risk. The city’s term limits law was passed twice by voters, in 1993 and 1996, and several polls show widespread popular support for keeping it in place. Under the plan Mr. Bloomberg has outlined to associates, those voters will have no say in the matter, raising the possibility of a backlash." After 9/11, Rudy Giuliani also considered running for a third term, citing national security concerns. The Albany Project has more.
schwarzenegger vetoes bill honoring harvey milk from thinkprogress: Yesterday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that “would have made the birthday of gay political icon Harvey Milk a statewide ‘day of significance.’” Schwarzenegger, who opposes efforts to ban same-sex marriage in the state, explained his veto by saying that he believes Milk should “be recognized at the local level.” But the AP notes that conservative groups had lobbied the governor to oppose the measure: "In his veto message issued Tuesday, the governor said that while he respected the measure’s intent, he thinks Milk’s “contributions should continue to be recognized at the local level. Conservative groups had lobbied Schwarzenegger not to sign the legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Mark Leno of San Francisco." Milk, who was the first openly gay man to hold a prominent political office in America, was assassinated in 1978. Watch the trailerof Gus Van Sant’s upcoming biopic of Milk.
and speaking of california corruption...
pelosi paid husband with pac funds from washington times: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year. Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker's "PAC to the Future" over the PAC's nine-year history. The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife's committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show. FLS is on track to take in $48,000 in payments this year alone - eight times as much as it received annually from 2000 to 2005, when the committee was run by another treasurer. Lawmakers' frequent use of campaign donations to pay relatives emerged as an issue in the 2006 election campaigns, when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal gave Democrats fodder to criticize Republicans such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. John T. Doolittle of California for putting their wives on their campaign and PAC payrolls for fundraising work.
mccain: 'i always aspire to be a dictator'
from paul joseph watson: During an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board yesterday, John McCain - presumably making an attempt at humor - said with a completely straight face that he aspired to be a dictator, while decrying the Congressional rejection of the bailout bill. “I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. Its just not acceptable,” said McCain. “This is just a not acceptable situation. I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently.” McCain has urged the Bush administration to bypass the will of Congress and invoke executive orders to pass the bailout bill, along with a further $1 trillion dollar spend on buying up bad mortgage debt.
fbi prevents agents from telling 'truth' about 9/11 on pbs from cq politics: The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency. The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, by acclaimed investigative reporter James Bamford, due out in a matter of days. The FBI denied Rossini and Miller permission to participate in the book or the PBS "NOVA" documentary, which is also being written and produced by Bamford, on grounds that the FBI "doesn't want to stir up old conflicts with the CIA," according to multiple reliable sources. Bamford, contacted by phone, said he could not comment because his publisher has embargoed his new book for release around Oct. 10.
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from raw story: The super-secretive National Security Agency has been quietly monitoring, decrypting, and interpreting foreign communications for decades, starting long before it came under criticism as a result of recent revelations about the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Now a forthcoming PBS documentary asks whether the NSA could have prevented 9/11 if it had been more willing to share its data with other agencies.
from nafeez ahmed: It came to my attention that a senior correspondent, Kristin Aalen, working for a national Norwegian broadsheet - Stavanger Aftenbladet (Stavanger Evening News) - just recently printed a detailed article in the newspaper on Western covert operations sponsoring al-Qaeda after the Cold War... based almost entirely on my research in The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism. Entitled "Terrorists Working for Western Countries" (24.11.08), it even gives a country-by-country summary breakdown complete with a handy geopolitical world map of the wide arc of these operations. It's a very useful piece from a mainstream national European paper that very effectively summarizes the thrust of my research into this unpalatable subject. A shame that the British press is so reticent about such issues. There are some caveats. Kristin sometimes oversimplifies my geopolitical explanations, and this can lead to serious misinterpretations, such as her rendition of my examination of Pentagon sponsorship of al-Qaeda fighters in the Balkans - she says that the US and NATO helped the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs, provoking them, and thus preventing peace. This is caricature of my argument, which is more fully fleshed out in The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry.
from steve watson: According to an article in The London Times today, Société Générale rogue trader Jérôme Kerviel profited enormously on the day of the 7/7 London bombings. He has also revealed how his company made huge profits on September 11th 2001, prompting some to return to questions over insider foreknowledge of both terrorist attacks: “The best trading day in the history of Société Générale was September 11, 2001... At least, that’s what one of my managers told me. It seems that profits were colossal that day... I had a similar experience during the London attacks in July 2005.” Kerviel was charged almost exactly one year ago in the Société Générale trading loss incident which cost the financial services company an estimated €4.9 billion. Until the Bernard Madoff fraud incident last month, it was reported to be the largest fraud in banking history.
from 9/11 blogger: When it seems impossible to discover additional shady military exercises occurring Sept. 11, 2001, there comes along yet another investigator uncovering secret documents pointing to unprecedented military actions happening the same day.
from 9/11 blogger: In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, senior U.S. government and military officials repeatedly claimed that what happened that day was unexpected. In May 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." [1] Two years later, President Bush stated, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." [2] General Ralph Eberhart, the commander of NORAD on September 11, said, "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised." [3]
