major problems at polls feared

...now, of course, what the washington post fails to mention in the following article is the corporate interest behind these machines: diebold, e.s.s. & sequoia...

from washington post: An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

we are giving away our elections to fraudulent & hackable machines. for more info, check out the recent princeton research & the fabulous bev harris of black box voting...

Syria says US behind attack on own embassy

from all headline news: Senior Syrian government officials have accused the US of being behind Tuesday's assault on its own embassy in downtown Damascus.

A Baath party official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told WorldNetDaily, "We in the government are 100 percent sure America was behind this attack, which is not the same as other attacks by Islamic groups."

He explained, "Only the Americans can succeed in carrying out an attack just 200 meters from President [Bashar] Assad's residence in the most heavily guarded section of Syria."

The official charged that Washington had orchestrated the attack to "prove Syria is filled with terrorists and to put us in a weak position" in order to extract political concessions. Following the attack, Bush administration officials said they hoped the incident had convinced Damascus of the dangers of Islamic terror and the need to cooperate with the West against the phenomenon.

The US and several of its European allies have repeatedly demanded over the years that Damascus close down the local offices and training camps of several organizations hostile to Israel and the West.

The identities of those who attacked the US embassy Tuesday have not been revealed. Three of the gunmen were killed by Syrian guards during the assault. A fourth was reportedly captured.

update: 'fourth US embassy attacker' dies

outside the box #69

here is the latest episode of "outside the box," hosted by alex ansary.
it was originally broadcast by portland community media on september 14, 2006.

on this week's episode, alex discusses the militarization of the police with paul richmond and shows clips from the film 'urban warrior'.

boston drills on 9/17 to simulate 'dirty bomb'

thanks once again to false flag news...

from boston globe: Less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, one of the largest antiterror drills ever in New England will test how public safety officials deal with some of their worst fears -- all at the same time.

The nightmare scenario starts with an explosion in a basement lab in Everett, jumps to a threat to the liquefied natural gas facility in Everett, and mushrooms to multiple explosions, one involving a radioactive "dirty bomb," inside the CambridgeSide Galleria mall, according to a memo obtained by the Globe yesterday.

Finally, as patrons flee the mall, at least one improvised explosive device is found at the nearby Lechmere MBTA station, according to the memo outlining Operation Poseidon, scheduled for the morning of Sunday, Sept. 17.

The drill, which will soon be announced to minimize public alarm, ends with a fictional 25 dead and 150 wounded.

US report on Iran 'dishonest'

from npr: A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog has said.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday outside a 35-nation board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says the report is false in saying Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site, when it has in fact produced material only in small quantities that is far below the level that can be used in nuclear arms.

muslims deplore pope speech, want apology

from reuters canada: Muslims deplored on Friday remarks on Islam by Pope Benedict and many of them said the Catholic leader should apologize in person to dispel the impression that he had joined a campaign against their religion.

In a speech in Germany on Tuesday, the Pope appeared to endorse a Christian view, contested by most Muslims, that the early Muslims spread their religion by violence.

"The Pope of the Vatican joins in the Zionist-American alliance against Islam," said the leading Moroccan daily Attajdid, the main Islamist newspaper in the kingdom.

"We demand that he apologizes personally, and not through (Vatican) sources, to all Muslims for such a wrong interpretation," said Beirut-based Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, one of the world's top Shi'ite Muslim clerics.

The Pope on Tuesday repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Pope, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, added "violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul."

vote 'none of the above'

here's a great letter to the editor in the statesmen-journal. it's from a few weeks ago & it reminds me of what jello biafra used to talk about...

"It is time for a new candidate for all of the elections held. The new candidate should be "none of the above." If none of the above wins the majority of the votes, the incumbent shall stay in office until a new election is held. The previous candidates will not be allowed to run for the position they failed to win the majority of votes in.

The elected officials we have in office now have lost touch with reality and our previous mistakes. Vietnam, we were saving the country from communism. Didn't work, did it? Our forced guest-worker program (slavery) didn't work, and we still have not solved the problems it created over 100 years later.

We need people to run for office that want to solve our problems at home, not the world's problems. If Iran and North Korea want to build a nuclear bomb, they will. Just send them a note based on the old Cold War mutually-assured destruction principle; it worked.

It's time to get our noses out of other countries' business and adhere to the principle that if those people want to change their government, it is their right to do it; not ours."

-- Leonard W. Zinda, Salem

senate panel defies bush on terror

from houston chronicle: A rebellious Senate committee defied President Bush on Thursday and approved terror-detainee legislation he has vowed to block, deepening Republican conflict over terrorism and national security in the middle of election season.

Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote, with Warner and three other GOP lawmakers joining Democrats. The vote set the stage for a showdown on the Senate floor as early as next week.

Earlier in the day, Bush had journeyed to the Capitol to try nailing down support for his own version of the legislation.

"I will resist any bill that does not enable this program to go forward with legal clarity," Bush said at the White House.

The president's measure would go further than the Senate package in allowing classified evidence to be withheld from defendants in terror trials, using coerced testimony and protecting U.S. interrogators against prosecution for using methods that violate the Geneva Conventions.

The internal GOP struggle intensified along other fronts, too, as Colin Powell, Bush's first secretary of state, declared his opposition to the president's plan.

"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," Powell, a retired general who is also a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a letter.

russian central banker murdered

from reuters/alertnet: The murder of Russia's first deputy central bank chief Andrei Kozlov, a crusader against money laundering, offers a glimpse into the world of crime which is never far from the surface of Russian business.

"Just follow the money," said a senior banker and close friend of Kozlov who expected the spotlight in the murder probe to fall on those banks he had shut down, or was about to close.

"Andrei was out to get the lousy money launderers, the crooks. He was taking them out one after another. I'm sure one of those criminal banks that he took out is behind this."

whiff of bankruptcy jolts air america

from new york post: Air America is denying intense rumors that the ratings-challenged radio network will declare bankruptcy this week and attempt to reorganize to stay on the air for the November elections.

A high-level source told The Post that Rob Glaser, the Real Networks founder who rescued the 2-year-old network from its first financial crisis, "walked away last week" and took his moneybags with him.

Earlier this week, as first reported in The Post, Air America laid off six people and shuffled its on-air lineup - including deleting Jerry Springer and returning him to independent syndication.

maybe they shouldn't have fired mike malloy...

kissinger calls for 'new world order'

Writing an opinion column yesterday, Heinz Kissinger, one of the most treasonous war criminals of all-time, called for a "building a new world order."

This civilian-bombing, child-killer said that the US & Europe must unite to head off a "war of civilizations" arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East.

In an effort to downplay our current war crime debacle, Kissinger says that "the debate sparked by the Iraq war... is dwarfed by what the world now faces."

And what is that threat? Who is this year's boogeyman? What is that soverign nation the west supplies with weapons only to turn around & overthrow it with better weapons: Why it's Iran, of course! They are at the center of the challenge because they support Hezbollah...

NSA wiretap talking points

from raw story: The NSA has taken the unusual move of sending members of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee a list of "approved talking points" regarding its warrantless eavesdropping program...

Some of the talking points urge Senators to imply that they have personal knowledge of plots foiled by the wiretap program, or that the Senators--seven of whom responded by writing the NSA a letter blasting the move--had other personal knowledge that the program was legal or necessary.

"I have personally met the dedicated men and women of the NSA," one point reads. "The country owes them an enormous debt of gratitude for their superb efforts to keep us all secure."

"It has detected plots," reads another, "that could have resulted in death or injury to Americans both at home and abroad." No examples are given in the document.

The Senate voted earlier today to reject Democratic attempts to limit the use of the controversial wiretaps.

how'd you get blood on your hands???

nonaligned want terrorism redefined

from guardian: Iran, Syria, North Korea and more than 100 other nations are pushing to broaden the world's definition of 'terrorism' to include the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Converging on Fidel Castro's communist Cuba for a summit this week, members of the Nonaligned Movement complain of a double standard: powerful nations like the United States and Israel decide for the world who the terrorists are, but face no punishment for their own acts of aggression.

A draft of the group's joint declaration condemns "terrorism in all its forms," especially violence that targets civilians.

Terrorism should not be associated with any religion or nationality, says the draft. It singles out a favored phrase of President Bush in declaring that member countries "totally reject the use of the term 'axis of evil' by a certain state to target other states under the pretext of combating terrorism."

best war ever!

thanks once again to the truth will set you free...

air force chief: test weapons on testy US mobs

from ap: Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

the impolite phrase is "impeachable offense"

from keith olbermann: The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had 'something to do' with 9/11 is "lying by implication."

The impolite phrase is "impeachable offense."

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country...

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you -- or those around you -- ever "spin" 9/11?

america: bush's doormat

here's a couple of beautifully symbolic photos from the 5th anniversary of 9/11... our fearless leaders go to NYC to grandstand, literally, on the death of 3,000 people. note the expressions on their faces... could their complete & utter fucking disdain for us be any more evident?












a big thanks to jason reed & reuters for capturing these moments

agents scrutinize all in name of surveillance

The government dramatically increased its monitoring of U.S. citizens after Sept. 11, in ways that even some Bush allies now question.

from herald net: As Americans consider whether they are more safe or less five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, one thing is certain: They are being monitored by their own government in ways unforeseen before 19 terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Within minutes of the strikes, U.S. law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering authorities mobilized to find the culprits and prevent another attack. They ramped up the tapping of Americans' phone calls and voicemails. They watched Internet traffic and e-mails as never before. They tailed greater numbers of people and into places previously deemed off-limits, such as mosques.

They clandestinely accessed bank and credit card transactions and school records. They monitored travel. And they broke into homes without notice, looking for signs of terrorist activity and copying entire file cabinets and computer hard drives.

Authorities even tried to get inside peoples' heads, using supercomputers and "predictive" software to analyze enormous amounts of personal data about them and their friends and associates in an effort to foretell who might become a terrorist, and when.

poll: more americans blame bush for 9/11

from cnn: The percentage of Americans who blame the Bush administration for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington has risen from almost a third to almost half over the past four years, a CNN poll released Monday found.

Asked whether they blame the Bush administration for the attacks, 45 percent said either a "great deal" or a "moderate amount," up from 32 percent in a June 2002 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.

But the Clinton administration did not get off lightly either. The latest poll, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, found that 41 percent of respondents blamed his administration a "great deal" or a "moderate amount" for the attacks.

Read the complete poll results

That's only slightly less than the 45 percent who blamed his administration in a poll carried out less than a week after the attacks.

Still, most Americans appear to be fatalistic, with more than half -- 57 percent -- saying they think that terrorists will "always find a way to launch attacks no matter what the U.S. government does."

world remembers 9/11 but many not crying

from ap: The nations of the world joined Monday in solemn remembrance of Sept. 11 - but for many, resentment of the U S flowed as readily as tears.

Critics say Americans have squandered the goodwill that prompted France's Le Monde newspaper to proclaim "We are all Americans" that somber day after the attacks, and that the Iraq war and other U.S. policies have made the world less safe in the five years since...

In Europe, where Islamic terror has struck twice since 9/11, in the Madrid train bombings and the London transit attacks, the silent tributes were tinged with doubts and recriminations.

Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — an advocate of repairing ties with Washington that were frayed under her predecessor
Gerhard Schroeder — had veiled criticism of the United States, saying: "The ends cannot justify the means."

anniversary

it's no accident that today marks the one year anniversary of media monarchy.

i appreciate all of you who take the time to read this this blog.

thank you.

flashbacks from what really happened?

FLASHBACK: Jeb declared "Martial Law" on 9/7

FLASHBACK: Insider Trading Leads To CIA's Highest Ranks

FLASHBACK: Security by Marvin

FLASHBACK: Who Told Giuliani the WTC was Going to Collapse?

FLASHBACK: Anthrax Frame-Up

outside the box #67

here is the latest episode of "outside the box," hosted by alex ansary.
it was originally broadcast by portland community media on september 7, 2006.

from alex ansary: Tonight I began the program with a core focus on 9/11 and the five year anniversary coming up, and the media’s reaction to the 9/11 Truth Movement. After the weekly headlines, I made time for phone calls.

'path to 9/11' is the path to distraction

from propaganda matrix: The lapdog mainstream media and the left-gatekeeper establishment wannabees have so far succeeded in overshadowing the 9/11 truth movement nearing the fifth anniversary of the attacks, by getting all hot and bothered about a nothing docudrama that whitewashes both the Bush and Clinton administration's contribution to facilitating the destruction of the trade towers.

'The Path to 9/11', a two part ABC docudrama set to air on Sunday and Monday night, gives Clinton a pass for being too interested in his sex scandal to recognize the threat of Al-Qaeda - when in reality Bill Clinton deliberately refused to grab Bin Laden when he had the chance on numerous occasions. Mindless debates about Monica Lewinsky serve only to distract attention from the truth that both Bush and Clinton premeditatively protected terrorist networks before 9/11.

No surprises then that the idiot left gatekeepers have bought this GOP distraction talking point hook, line and sinker - taking the bait to wage endless back and forth diatribes about how angelic Bill Clinton was.

The same liberal establishment mouthpieces, including Democracy Now, The Nation and others have developed an amazing kind of amnesic barrier whereby they fully acknowledge that Bush lied about everything related to Iraq - bolstered by the Senate dismissal of Saddam-Al Qaeda ties today - and yet cannot entertain for a second the possibility that the government told anything other than the truth about 9/11.

This is exemplified today by darling of the left Alexander Cockburn, who scoffs at the notion that the greatest superpower since the Roman Empire, flush with a booty of 2.3 trillion dollars, could not possibly have had the prowess to carry out 9/11 - yet 19 incompetent pilots acting on the behest of a man in-between trips from a dialysis machine to a cave and afforded the total non-response of US air defense could have accomplished the task. Read Kurt Nimmo tear Cockburn a new one here.

The projectile verbal diarrhea surrounding 'The Path to 9/11' is clearly an intentional ploy to create enough noise in the news cycle to drown out prominent media coverage of the 9/11 truth movement and the educational and demonstrative actions now being organized for the weekend on behalf of the Loose Change crew and Alex Jones.

Don't let this non-issue hog the limelight - The Path to 9/11 is the path to distraction.

BYU places '9/11 truth' professor on paid leave

"it is a very simple question... are you now or have you ever been a member of the 9/11 truth movement?"

from deseret news: Brigham Young University placed physics professor Steven Jones on paid leave Thursday while it reviews his involvement in the so-called "9/11 truth movement" that accuses unnamed government agencies of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.

BYU will conduct an official review of Jones' actions before determining a course of action, university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. Such a review is rare for a professor with "continuing status" at BYU, where Jones has taught since 1985...

Jones became a celebrity among 9/11 conspiracy-theory groups after he wrote a paper titled "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse?" (pdf) The paper was published two weeks ago in the book "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out" and lays out Jones' hypothesis that the three towers fell because of pre-positioned demolition charges — not because of the planes that hit two of the towers.

When Jones began to share his demolition theory publicly last fall, he politely declined to speculate about who set the charges other than to say terrorist groups couldn't have been the source.

Then, later, he started to speak publicly about research conducted at BYU on materials from ground zero. He said he found evidence of thermite — a compound used in military detonations — in the materials.

In recent weeks, after becoming the co-chairman of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Jones seemed willing to go further, implicating unnamed government groups but not President Bush...

Jones, also known for his cold fusion research, provided academic clout to the 9/11 truth movement. C-SPAN repeatedly broadcast a conference that featured Jones this summer. Recent articles about Sept. 11 conspiracy theories that focused at least in part on Jones have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian in London and other publications.

please watch professor steven jones' keynote address at the american scholars symposium on june 24th in los angeles...



also check out TAFM's great post about "Sticking Up for Steven Jones," which astutely points out that "all sides of this argument have a right to say what they think happened without being persecuted. Anything less than that goes against what this nation stands for."

white house targets conspiracy theorists as terrorist recruiters

from propaganda matrix: A document cited by President Bush in his recent speech at the Capital Hilton Hotel on how to 'win the war on terror' cites conspiracies as one of the wellsprings of terrorism and threatens to "address" and "diminish" the problems they are causing the government in fulfilling their agenda.

On Tuesday Bush referred to the strategy paper as "an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001," that takes into account, "the changing nature of this enemy."

The document says that terrorism springs from "subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation," and that "terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda."

The terminology echoes President Bush's speech to the UN General Assembly on November 10th 2001 in which he stated, "Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty.



This is an outright threat to the 9/11 truth movement and is meant to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

It is also a callous reminder that the administration that has been the progenitor of the most heinous and deliberate campaign to mislead and lie to its own people is so transfixed by its own hubris that it has the temerity to accuse others of propagating deceptive information.

This is the same administration that deliberately included the Niger yellow cake fraud in a state of the union speech to sell a war - knowing that the information was completely bogus.

How dare they threaten us with the very defining characteristic of their black legacy and equate us with terrorists?

This is a direct assault on the alternative media and a continuation of the twilight zone rhetoric that saw the administration attempt to link its critics with Fascists and Hitler appeasers. The only fascists that should really concern us are not imaginary 'Blogofascists' or 'Islamofascists' but the Neo-Fascist slugs that occupy the White House and their cheerleading sycophants in the mainstream media and congress.

This is by no means the first time political enemies of the state have been smeared as terrorist sympathizers.

Alex Jones' 2001 documentary film 9/11: The Road to Tyranny featured footage from a FEMA symposium given to firefighters and other emergency personnel in Kansas City in which it was stated that the founding fathers, Christians and homeschoolers were terrorists and should be treated with the utmost suspicion and brutality in times of national emergency.

We have highlighted previous training manuals issues by state and federal government bodies which identify whole swathes of the population as potential terrorists. A Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Law Enforcement pamphlet gives the public characteristics to identify terrorists that include buying baby formula, beer, wearing Levi jeans, carrying identifying documents like a drivers license and traveling with women or children.

A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.

Shortly after 9/11 a Phoenix FBI manual that was disseminated amongst federal employees at the end of the Clinton term caused waves on the Internet after it was revealed that potential terrorists included, "defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN," and individuals who "make numerous references to the US Constitution." Lawyers everywhere cowered in fear at being shipped off to Gitmo.

In May we broke the exclusive of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to "obey the government" in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation.

softening us up for torture, 24 hours at a time

from lew rockwell: In general terms, the formula is this: each 24-hour season features a supervillain who’s intent on destroying the world by using various forms of nightmare-inspired WMD... usually bear[ing] a remarkable resemblance to whatever happens to garner the direst rhetorical attention by Bush at that time.

To apprehend the supervillain, Jack stoically breaks obtrusive, obsolete rules... As you can imagine, these storylines offer repeated opportunities to illustrate timely debate topics from the public consciousness, especially during a never-ending "War on Terror": the setting for the show is the Los Angeles "Counter Terrorism Unit" (oddly enough, foreshadowing our Department of Homeland Security)... In one of the principle plotlines, the writers attempt to prop up the notion of the unitary executive incarcerating indefinitely and torturing any citizen whom he labels an enemy combatant (Newspeak for "terrorist") during times of great exigency.

They contrive a perfectly worst-case scenario to demonstrate Bush administration logic: namely, that because it’s theoretically possible that a single man, woman, or child, if tortured, could reveal information about a terrorist plot which could potentially save innocent lives, then any amount of coercion is therefore justified to compel that individual to surrender whatever useful information that he might be hoarding...

Their torture rationale continues that if the unitary executive has the authority to enforce his discretion in the course of prosecuting a "war" (even if undeclared by Congress), then he can also withhold details about the intelligence that led to this discretionary action in the first place – all in the name of protecting national security...

People who consider themselves to be conservatives should beware: if another Clinton-analog presidency occurs, it's not too difficult to imagine scenarios where these law enforcement tactics will be applied to anti-abortion activists, gun rights enthusiasts, the Minutemen, taxpayer protection groups, some new Branch Davidian group, and others like them. (And incidentally, that’s when the Patriot Act will really come to fruition.)

Even better, I know that most people won’t complain, because they already saw something just like it on 24.

see also "john yoo & the torture memo"

armitage takes the blame for 'plamegate'

from boston globe: The former number two State Department official said yesterday he inadvertently disclosed the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson in conversations with two reporters in 2003.

Confirming he was the source of a leak that triggered a federal investigation, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he never intended to reveal Plame Wilson's identity. He apologized for his conversations with syndicated columnist Robert Novak and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward.

For almost three years, an investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has tried to determine whether Bush administration officials intentionally revealed Plame Wilson's identity as a covert operative to punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the Bush administration's march to war with Iraq.

"I made a terrible mistake, not maliciously, but I made a terrible mistake," Armitage said in a telephone interview from his home last night.

He said he did not realize Plame Wilson's job was covert.

mos def's political performance shut down

from inside entertainment: Mos Def was arrested last week while he tried to play for people waiting outside Radio City Music Hall, where the MTV Video Music Awards took place in New York last week...

Apparently, it was after [he] sang Katrina Clap, a song attacking the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, that more police were called and arrests were made...

However, a statement from Carleen Donovan, a representative for Smith, said, "Mos Def chose to use his voice to speak for those who are losing their own during this critical period of reconstruction.

NASA to try friday launch without replacing troublesome component

from wtnh: Caught in a scheduling squeeze, NASA decided to try to launch space shuttle Atlantis on Friday without replacing a troublesome electrical component...

The decision to try a launch on Friday wasn't unanimous. Officials in NASA's safety office felt the fuel cell should be changed out not because of a safety issue, but they were concerned about whether the mission could be carried out successfully. The fuel cell's manufacturer, UTC Power, wanting NASA to use a pristine unit, also recommended against flying until it was swapped out, said Wayne Hale, space shuttle program manager.

EU denials of CIA jails 'silly'

from abc news online: Members of the European Parliament have urged European governments to come clean about secret prisons run on their territory by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The pressure comes in the wake of an acknowledgment by US president George W Bush that such prisons do exist, and have been used to interrogate terrorist suspects.

One of the MPs at the forefront of the European Parliament's investigation into the prisons, Sarah Ludford, says European governments that have denied their existence now look ridiculous.

"I think what has happened with this statement by George Bush, I think it's rather pulled the rug out from under the wall of silence by European governments and it makes them look either fools or liars really," she said.

wow, things are pretty bad when bush can make other governments look like "fools or liars"...

anderson cooper's cia secret

from radar online: Anderson Cooper has long traded on his biography, carving a niche for himself as the most human of news anchors. But there's one aspect of his past that the silver-haired CNN star has never made public: the months he spent training for a career with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Following his sophomore and junior years at Yale—a well-known recruiting ground for the CIA—Cooper spent his summers interning at the agency's monolithic headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in a program for students interested in intelligence work. His involvement with the agency ended there, and he chose not to pursue a job with the agency after graduation, according to a CNN spokeswoman, who confirmed details of Cooper's CIA involvement to Radar.

flashback: anderson vanderbilt 322°

Germany refuses to back attack on Iran

from new york sun: Chancellor Merkel said Germany will not back a military strike on Iran, underlining the difficulty that America faces in keeping international support for its effort to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Iran, which last week defied a U.N. demand that it halt uranium enrichment, said yesterday that it is ready to retaliate against any attack. Negotiators from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany will meet in Berlin today to discuss whether to impose sanctions.

"The military option isn't an option," Mrs. Merkel told Parliament yesterday, adding to comments she made September 2. "We won't close the door to negotiations."

Germany is the first country involved in negotiations with Iran to rule out the use of force and Mrs. Merkel's pledge divides her from President Bush, who has repeatedly refused to do so.

dirty bomb terror drills in detroit

from false flag news: The largest terror drill in U.S. history with a "simulated" dirty bomb postulates terrorists coming across the Canadian border. Michigan is at high risk for a false-flag attack, as it was the site of pandemic drills on Aug 4 and another set of flu and terror drills on from the July 17- 28.

The large Muslim population in Michigan would be the perfect scapegoat for a staged terror event, while justifying a REX-84 style concentration camps for Americans and a nuclear invasion of Iran.

from windsor star: Up to 1,000 volunteers will take part next month in the most in-depth disaster simulation ever held in a major American city, U.S. Homeland Security and Detroit officials said...

They will stage a large-scale two-day emergency exercise in southwest Detroit near the Ambassador Bridge Sept 8 and Sept. 9, when up to 1,000 volunteers will play the part of victims of a dirty bomb attack.

clinton officials tell abc to 'pull it'!

from cnn: A miniseries about the events leading to the September 11 attacks is "terribly wrong" and ABC should correct it or not air it, former Clinton administration officials demanded in letters to the head of ABC's parent company.

But in a statement released Thursday afternoon in apparent response to the growing uproar, ABC said, "No one has seen the final version of the film, because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible." ...

"The content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has a duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely. It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known..."

blair to quit within year

from reuters: British Prime Minister Tony Blair moved to end a growing revolt in his Labour Party on Thursday by pledging to quit within a year but failed to silence critics who say a speedy change of leader is needed to win back voters.

Blair was forced to give his clearest indication on when he would stand down after nearly a decade in power and three election victories by a week of government resignations and calls from former allies for him to go...

Blair's popularity has tumbled in opinion polls after government scandals over sleaze and mismanagement were compounded by controversy over the wars in Iraq and Lebanon.

bush acknowledges secret cia prisons

from forbes: President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of previously secret CIA prisons around the world where key terrorist suspects have been held and questioned.

He said the "small number" of detainees that fall into this category include people responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen and the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania...

Bush would not detail the type of interrogation techniques that are used through the program, saying it was tough but was not torture.

lung problems rife among WTC responders

maybe it was all that asbestos... the asbestos that helped make the WTC an obsolete, under-inhabited insurance fraud waiting to happen... was the WTC disposable?

from ap/yahoo: Nearly 70 percent of recovery workers who responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center have suffered lung problems, and high rates of lung "abnormalities" continue, a new health study released Tuesday shows.

Doctors at Mount Sinai Medical Center, which conducted the study, said the results prove that working in the toxic gray dust at ground zero made many people sick, and some will likely suffer the effects for the rest of their lives.

"There should no longer be any doubt about the health effects of the World Trade Center. Our patients are sick," said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the group that investigated the long-term effects from exposure to dust at the site

thoughtcrime in britain’s ascendant police state

from kurt nimmo: It is interesting to read Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun newspaper, ferreting out the cheesy “stunner” banner ads of half naked women to get at the glaring propaganda grist.

For instance, we are told the “Sun can reveal” there are upward to five “suspected al-Qaeda training camps in Britain” and “MI5 agents are watching locations where they believe young Muslims are being trained as terrorists,” in other words British intelligence is busy setting up their groomed patsies, as we know MI5 has a long and sordid history of protecting and then sacrificing its own “homegrown” would-be “al-Qaeda” terrorists.

The latest bit of media hyperventilation surrounds the supposed discovery of an “Islamic school in the Sussex countryside, where it is alleged night-time training exercises were staged,” according to Mike Sullivan, billed as the Sun’s “crime editor.” As usual, we are expected to switch off the higher reasoning centers of our brains and believe Islamic bad guys were “followed by undercover MI5 watchers as they went on camping trips at beauty spots around the South East of England.” Of course, the word “watchers” should be replaced with “handlers.”

outside the box #66

here is the latest episode of "outside the box," hosted by alex ansary.
it was originally broadcast by portland community media on august 31, 2006.

from alex ansary: Syndicated Talk Show Host Andre Eggelletion joined me to discuss the economic impact currently facing America as this war continues and our national debt reaches over 8.5 Trillion dollars. Later I discuss Iran and the latest breaking news headlines.

terror trials drop to pre-9/11 levels

*sniff, sniff* ... i smell a pretext ...

from washington times: The federal government has fallen back to prosecuting international terror suspects at about the same rate it did before September 11, 2001, according to a study based on Justice Department data.

The surprising decline followed a sharp increase in such criminal prosecutions in the year after the 2001 attacks, according to the study, released yesterday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data research group at Syracuse University.

The analysis of data from the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys also found:

•In the eight months ending in May, department attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. In nearly four in 10 of the rejected cases, prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime...

The report comes at a difficult time for the Bush administration, which is sagging in public opinion polls just before congressional midterm elections. Democrats hope to regain control of at least one house of Congress, and President Bush has urged Republicans to run in part on his record in the war on terror.

military-industrial complex kingpins call for genocide to kickstart WWIII

from propaganda matrix: The military-industrial complex is gearing up to ethnically cleanse the entire middle east in a genocidal purge that will be a curtain raiser for world war three as preparations for a nuclear air strike on Iran remain on stand-by absent only the monolithic staged terror attack or false-flag provocation that will justify them.

Armed Forces Journal, a mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex, recently carried a strategy plan for completely redrawing the borders of the Middle East written by retired Major Ralph Peters.

Peters lambastes the Neo-Cons for not having stamped enough influence (or chaos) on the middle east and calls for the use of genocide in realizing the Neo-Fascist's dream of a completely reinvented Middle East run by the same cabal currently responsible for untold war crimes In Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.

"Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history," writes Peters, "Ethnic cleansing works."

His twisted justification is that major crises around the globe are converging and that a massive economic crash is set to occur in 2008. Two of those converging disasters are listed as global warming and peak oil - which as we have exhaustively documented are monumental con jobs manufactured out of thin air to justify increased control over the personal lives of Westerners, feudalism, and expansion of empire.

An economic collapse doesn't worry the families that own the Federal Reserve and America because they will be the only ones to benefit from it.

The ten major shareholders of the Federal Reserve are as follows... Rothschild: London and Berlin; Lazard Bros: Paris; Israel Seiff: Italy; Kuhn- Loeb Company: Germany; Warburg: Hamburg and Amsterdam; Lehman Bros; New York; Goldman and Sachs: New York; Rockefeller: New York.

Financial collapses are routinely preceded by insiders who are aware of the imminent downfall moving their assets and then buying them back for pennies on the dollar in the aftermath. So the graven necessity in which mass genocide is sold to us is inherently flawed and the justification for its implementation is a gargantuan deception.

Peters goes on to illustrate how our lives will be mired in a never ending cycle of war, terror and fear as he lays out the manifesto for world war three.

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."

How the Middle East will look after it is ethnically cleansed by the "liberating" Neo-Fascist assault. Click to enlarge.

The endless drumbeat of propaganda tells us that it is Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who advocates genocide, yet scratch beneath the surface and the real protagonists of a vampiric holocaust to ethnically cleanse the middle east of Arabs are the US and Israeli Neo-Fascist crime syndicates that have hijacked our governments.

The megalomaniacs that control Israel wish to live in a world largely devoid of Muslims or Persians and they have embarked on a hundred year plus mission of ethnic cleansing to wipe them from the globe. The blitzkrieg of Lebanon is part of this process.

Race-specific bio-weapons have already been developed for this purpose. From Wired News,

"Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London's Sunday Times."

"The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus."

"The "ethno-bomb" program is based at Israel's Nes Tziyona research facility. Scientists are trying to use viruses and bacteria to alter DNA inside living cells and attack only those cells bearing Arabic genes."

Imagine if plans were unearthed detailing a program on behalf of Kim Jong-il or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to create an ethno-bomb to wipe out Jews or caucasians. How would Israel and the United States react?

Only Israel is allowed to be nuclear-armed, violate dozens of UN treaties, use chemical weapons on civilians, and construct horrific policies of ethnic cleansing.

Israel have made a pact to carry out this agenda in league with the Neo-Cons, and above them the Globalists, whose desire is also world population reduction and complete full spectrum domination and control over all countries and near-Earth space itself.

All these facets are openly discussed by the elite in their own public documents.

"...advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

Who wrote these words in their own strategy document? The Nazis? The regime of Pol Pot?

No, it was Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and the rest of the Neo-Fascist collaborators that formed the Project For a New American Century - the ideological framework of the Bush administration.

When we witness future atrocities that inflict death, misery and suffering on large numbers of the population will we recall who bragged about metering out such terror in the first place?

As manufactured terror alerts, magnified turmoil in the Middle East, and dire proclamations that doomsday is approaching all converge at the end of the summer of 2006, the twist in the story is likely to be a massive staged terror attack that will smother any remaining voices of dissent and once again leave America transfixed in an orgy of militarism, paranoia and fear.

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon is the next escalation of a conflict that is being orchestrated according to a set roadmap that leads directly to World War Three.

Israel, the United States and Great Britain have been caught red-handed on numerous occasions staging terror attacks and false flag provocations in the Middle East for over 50 years.

The next big provocation is intended to prod Iran into launching what will be presented by the world's media as a pre-emptive action, unjustified by any US or Israeli intervention and used as war propaganda to mandate nuclear air strikes to oust Ahmadinejad's regime.

Some see Ahmadinejad himself as just a cameo player in a rigged game. Greg Palast has suggested he could be reading off a script and has been in the pocket of the Neo-Fascists all along. Ahmadinejad and Bush are very close cousins in the context that they both believe their own ego and divine right to rule alone is enough to save them from the judgment of history. Contrast Ahmadinejad's behavior with that of Hugo Chavez - Chavez is completely obsessed with the fact that the US are trying to instigate regime change in Venezuela and he's shouting it from the rooftops in the media every week. Though the scheduled air strike of Iran is even more inevitable, Ahmadinejad remains seemingly unperturbed.

Others compare the actual context and meaning of Ahmadinejad's speeches with the bellicose hubris of warmongers who call him the new Hitler and say he wants to eradicate Israel.

Ahmadinejad never militarily threatened to "wipe Israel off the map," this is firstly a gross mistranslation and it is also taken completely out of context. Ahmadinejad called for the future end of the political system of Zionism, not to ethnically cleanse an entire country. In addition, earlier this week Ahmadinejad said on record that Iran "was no threat to Israel or any nation," but you won't hear Fox news repeating that particular quote every 5 minutes, because it doesn't correlate with the "Mad Mahmoud" image that the Neo-Fascists are trying to construct to justify their next act of bloodletting.

If there is some kind of staged attack in the US then as always we will look at who has the capability and the motive to pull it off - especially in light of the fact that Dick Cheney's USSTRATCOM contingency plan calls for attacking Iran in the immediate aftermath of a 'second 9/11' - no matter who is behind it - which of course is going to be the cabal Dick Cheney fronts for itself and the same pack of murderers that are actively seeking to initiate global ethic cleansing and genocide to bring about world war three.

opium harvest in Afghanistan highest ever

yet another 'mission accomplished' from the bush crime family. they don't call him 'poppy' bush for nothing, you know...

from the ledger: Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as "alarming" and "very bad news" for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country's prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

nellie connally, who rode in JFK death limo, dies

from reuters: Former Texas first lady Nellie Connally, who was riding in the limousine with President John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963, has died at the age of 87...

Connally insisted Kennedy was struck by two shots and her husband by a third, which disagreed with the findings of the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination...

"I will fight anybody that argues with me about those three shots," she told Newsweek magazine in 1998. "I do know what happened in that car."

Some conspiracy theorists say that if there were three shots as Mrs. Connally said, and a fourth that missed the car, there must have been more than the one gunman -- Lee Harvey Oswald -- who the Warren Commission said killed the president.

why was mike malloy fired?

i don't believe there's been definitive word on why air america fired mike malloy. the reason cited publicly was 'financial.' however, the prevailing idea coming from the neocon's is that maybe mike malloy was fired because he dared to let webster griffin tarpley drop some knowledge for a few hours on august 3. (download this episode for yourself here & get smart)

cliff kincaid's article for the conservative voice does raise some interesting points: air america is struggling financially and was hoping to score some big bucks from george soros & the democracy alliance. then tarpley gets on and tells it like it is, mainly that the left-gatekeepers are just as bought, sold & phony as their right counterparts.

now, of course, kincaid goes on to belittle webster griffin tarpley & equate the 9/11 truth movement with them ayrab terrists. but the initial thesis is what's most interesting to me. it reminds of the story dramtized in the film, the insider. basically the idea is, "shut up and stop telling the truth, you're getting in the way of our money!"

ah, but now we're getting somewhere... maybe it wasn't just 9/11 truth, maybe it was the other sacred cow of the phony left: mike malloy broke the 11th commandment - thou shalt not criticize the state of israel.

from sf indybay: Malloy’s termination comes at a time when he’s been highly critical of Israel for its aggressive military attacks upon civilians both in Lebanon and Palestine. Many people are now asking whether Malloy’s termination is related to such criticism... Several weeks ago, Malloy boldly stated on the air that he reserved the right to criticize any country for its corrupt policies, including Israel. He said that if anyone had a problem with that, they should take it up with his boss.

kurt nimmo's thinks that instead of webster griffin tarpley, maybe it was alex jones' fault. "It should be noted that Alex Jones, both a thorn and persona non grata for the corporate media—and Air America is the corporate media—was interviewed on Malloy’s show on August 8, and then Malloy appeared on Jones’ show on August 10..." (download this episode for yourself here & get even smarter)

nimmo goes to say that, "It should also be noted that Malloy, while not definitively stating nine eleven was an inside job, certainly does not believe the official version, so readily embraced by the “progressive left” and its foundation money and academic gatekeepers, including Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill, and Air America’s Al Franken, to name but a few... Let’s hope Malloy gets picked up by another radio network. Maybe Genesis Communication Network or Republic Broadcasting Network can find a slot for him."

i wholeheartedly agree, give a big one finger salute to air america and say 'good riddance.'

criticize Israel? you're an anti-semite!

How can we have a real discussion about Mideast peace if speaking honestly about Israel is out of bounds?

from los angeles times: Ever wonder what it's like to be a pariah? Publish something sharply critical of Israeli government policies and you'll find out. If you're lucky, you'll merely discover that you've been uninvited to some dinner parties. If you're less lucky, you'll be the subject of an all-out attack by neoconservative pundits and accused of rabid anti-Semitism....

Think Israel's tactics against Hezbollah were too heavy-handed, or that Israel hasn't always been wholly fair to the Palestinians, or that the United States should reconsider its unquestioning financial and military support for Israel? Shhh: Don't voice those sentiments unless you want to be called an anti-Semite — and probably a terrorist sympathizer to boot...

In a climate in which good-faith criticism of Israel is automatically denounced as anti-Semitic, everyone loses. Israeli policies are a major source of discord in the Islamic world, and anger at Israel usually spills over into anger at the U.S., Israel's biggest backer.

oregon artists take 9/11 truth to mexico

from agnieszka laska dancers:
THE FALL '01 is a study in human debasement and expansive lamentation on a great society whose deteriorating values may well presage an empire at the precipice of its fall.

The multimedia work for dancers and actors, brings to the performance stage a compelling story from which we can no longer hide... the seemingly endless Orwellian Peak Oil War of Terror, launched to solidify the regime's desperate imperialist grasping - not for the faint of heart and long past time for singing in the dark.

... thanks to 9/11 blogger

behold a pale horse

greg szymanski says: "William Cooper, a former military intelligence officer and world renowned lecturer and writer, was killed in a suspicious 2001 police shootout in his Arizona home. Author of the best selling underground book of all time, "Behold A Pale Horse," his top secret intelligence document discoveries provide proof positive the Illuminati intends mass destruction of half the world's population, reaching its diabolical goal in what the author terms 'the age of deception.'"

you can download the eBook version of William Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse (17MB PDF) from the fine folks at nw0.info.

highly enriched uranium found at Iranian plant

could this perhaps have been found at the facility the US helped build?

from new york times: The global nuclear monitoring agency deepened suspicions on Thursday about Iran’s nuclear program, reporting that inspectors had discovered new traces of highly enriched uranium at an Iranian facility.

Inspectors have found such uranium, which at extreme enrichment levels can fuel bombs, twice in the past. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that at least some of those samples came from contaminated equipment that Iran had obtained from Pakistan.

But in this case, the nuclear fingerprint of the particles did not match the other samples, an official familiar with the inspections said, raising questions about their origin.

tv movie praises bush, blames clinton for 9/11

from think progress: On September 10 and 11, ABC will air a "docudrama" called “The Path to 9/11.” It was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, who describes himself as “more of a libertarian than a strict conservative," and is giving interviews to hard-right sites like FrontPageMag to promote the film.

What will it say about President Clinton? Here’s Rush Limbaugh with a preview:

A friend of mine [Cyrus Nowrasteh] out in California has produced and filmed — I think it’s a two-part mini-series on 9/11 that ABC is going to run in prime-time over two nights, close to or on 9/11. It’s sort of surprising that ABC’s picked it up, to me. I’ve had a lot of people tell me about it, my friends told me about it... And from what I have been told, the film really zeros in on the shortcomings of the Clinton administration in doing anything about militant Islamofascism or terrorism during its administration. It cites failures of Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright and Sandy Burglar.

How does it deal with President Bush? Salon has a review:

Condoleezza Rice gets that fated memo about planes flying into buildings, and makes it very clear to anyone who’ll listen just how concerned President Bush is about these terrorist threats — despite the fact that we’re given little concrete evidence of the president’s concern or interest in taking action. Maybe my memory fails me, but the only person I remember talking about Osama bin Laden back in 1998 was President Clinton, while the current anti-terrorist stalwarts worked the country into a frenzy over what? Blow jobs. In the end, "The Path to 9/11″ feels like an excruciatingly long, winding and deceptive path, indeed.

The director of the film, David Cunningham, is already backtracking about its accuracy, saying "this is not a documentary." OK, fair enough. But the movie is being billed as "based on The 9/11 Commission Report."

today's 'islamic fascists' were yesterday's friends

from global research: According to President George W. Bush, America is at war with "Islamic fascists." Commentators who support Bush's military interventions also argue that the West faces new religious enemies who do not play by the old rules of warfare. Hezbollah (which literally translates as "Party of God") says its wants to obliterate Israel, and Hamas (an abbreviation of "Islamic Resistance Movement") has taken the reins of power in Gaza and the West Bank; meanwhile, al-Qaeda and its associates continue to carry out sporadic, scrappy attacks designed to restore the Islamic caliphate. All of this has led one British newspaper columnist to argue that there is a new "World War being waged by clerical fascism against free societies."

In a nutshell, the wars over state, territory, and politics that defined the Cold War era have given way to cosmic battles between "good and evil"– between a West apparently keen to defend secular, democratic values and its twisted opponents who prefer the idea of autocratic Islam.

This simplistic view of the new geopolitical landscape is deeply problematic. It overlooks the key role that the West played in nurturing radical Islamist groups, precisely as a means of isolating and undermining secular movements that were judged by Western governments to be too uppity or dangerous... They gave the nod to, and in some instances funded and armed, Islamist movements that might challenge the claims of local anti-colonial, liberationist, or communistic outfits.