by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
The Bush administration is contemplating sending US Forces to Pakistan with a view to neutralizing Al Qaeda in its safe haven in the Northwestern region of Waziristan. (...)
One of the young filmmakers behind a controversial 9/11 conspiracy documentary was arrested this week on charges that he deserted the Army, even though he claims he received an honorable discharge. (...)
An Oneonta man who helped produce a 9/11 conspiracy documentary that became an Internet hit was arrested Monday for allegedly deserting the Army.
Korey Rowe, 24, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, was picked up by deputies at about 10:45 p.m. Monday, Otsego County Sheriff Richard Devlin Jr. said.
Rowe, along with Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, are members of Louder Than Words, a production company that is working on a third edition of the movie "Loose Change," which contends the U.S. government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That edition is intended to be a theatrical release.
Rowe was arrested on a "military warrant" that Devlin said was brought to the attention of deputies by the Oneonta Police Department, who received information from a source outside of that department.
He is being held without bail in the Otsego County jail and is waiting to be picked up by U.S. Army officials, Devlin said.
The Associated Press reported last month that deserters are rarely court-martialed by the Army. (...)
by F. William Engdahl
That bowl of Kellogg’s Cornflakes on the breakfast table, or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the new world food price shock, conveniently timed to accompany our current world oil price shock. (...)
Terrorists may be conducting "dry runs" at U.S. airports to test security before a possible attack, according to a Transportation Security Administration warning to airport screeners.
"Past terrorist attacks and plots show that such testing generally indicates attacks will soon follow," said the internal memo, which was posted on the Internet by NBC News on Tuesday. (...)
by Paul Joseph Watson
A BBC Radio 4 investigation sheds new light on a major subject that has received little historical attention, the conspiracy on behalf of a group of influential powerbrokers, led by Prescott Bush, to overthrow FDR and implement a fascist dictatorship in the U.S. based around the ideology of Mussolini and Hitler.
In 1933, Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush the current President's grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
According to the BBC, the plotters intended to impose a fascist takeover and "Adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression."
Click here to listen to the BBC Radio 4 investigation. (...)
Iran's president will take part in the August 16 summit of a security cooperation grouping dominated by China and Russia, to be held in Kyrgyzstan, a senior Iranian diplomat said Tuesday.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and China - was set up to collaborate on security-related issues, but increasingly focuses on economics and transportation. The SCO runs a joint anti-terrorism center in Shanghai and has India, Pakistan, and Iran as observers. (...)
An Iraqi al Qaeda-led group said on Monday a U.S. suggestion that its leader is a fictitious character was a lie.
Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner said last week a senior operative for al Qaeda in Iraq captured this month told his U.S. interrogators that the self-styled Islamic State in Iraq is just a front for al Qaeda and its leader did not exist.
"The latest lie was that they have arrested a man who they called as the link with Sheikh Osama (bin Laden)," it said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.
Bergner has said the information came from an operative called Khalid al-Mashadani who was caught on July 4 and who he said was an intermediary to bin Laden. (...)
Oops! Could it be that this guy who confessed that AQI's leader was fictitious is fictitious himself?... This stuff would actually be pretty funny if there weren't people getting killed everyday.
President George W. Bush argued forcefully today that an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq is linked tightly to the central Al Qaeda leadership, and that for American forces to leave Iraq without defeating the terror group would be “dangerous for the world and disastrous for America.”
In a half-hour speech clearly aimed at his Democratic critics, Mr. Bush said that those who argued that the affiliated group, called Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI, was a local group with local objectives, and not a serious threat to Americans at home, were seriously misinformed.
“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Bush said, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the affiliated group in Iraq who was killed last year.
Mr. Bush emphasized in his remarks that Al Qaeda in Iraq’s top leaders include people from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey, and said that American forces had recently unmasked an effort by the group to pass off an Iraqi actor, using the surname al-Baghdadi, as its leader to give it a more Iraqi image. (...)
And here comes Bush, already using the new modified script...
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday denounced Britain for making insulting demands that betrayed outdated colonial thinking, in comments likely to escalate a row over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
"What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking," Putin was shown saying on Russian state television.
"They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never been a British colony," Putin said. (...)
It DOES seem like it will escalate it. But Putin is right - Britain's attitude is pretty interesting, considering it's dealing with a country that could "wipe it off the map" in ten minutes... Outdated colonial thinking indeed...
How long before the dollar hits $1.40 to the euro? That is the question many analysts are asking after a week when the US currency struck a new low of $1.3843 to the euro and fresh multiyear lows against a range of currencies, including sterling.
The US currency has fallen 4.5 per cent against the euro this year and 4 per cent against sterling, hitting a new 26-year nadir against the pound last week. The trade-weighted dollar index dropped to its lowest since 1992. (...)
Calling for the impeachment of U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Cindy Sheehan and 45 fellow Iraq war protesters were arrested on Monday after they refused to leave a U.S. lawmaker's office and adjoining hallway, authorities said.
Before police escorted her away, Sheehan, who emerged as a leading peace activist after her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, announced what she had earlier suggested -- that she would be a candidate for Congress next year.
Sheehan said she would challenge House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. Pelosi has refused calls to start impeachment of Bush and Cheney for what critics charge was misleading the United States into war. (...)
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday he would not rule out military action against Iran, but believed a policy of sanctions could still persuade Tehran to drop its disputed nuclear program.
"I firmly believe that the sanctions policy that we are pursuing will work, but I'm not one who's going forward to say that we rule out any particular form of action," Brown told a news conference, when asked if he would rule out a military strike against Iran. (...)
by Ahmed Ali
Life in the violence-plagued capital city of Iraq's Diyala province has become a struggle for day-to-day survival. (...)
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of whoever opposes the US led war.
A presidential Executive Order issued on July 17th, repeals with the stroke of a pen the right to dissent and to oppose the Pentagon's military agenda in Iraq.
The Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq" provides the President with the authority to confiscate the assets of "certain persons" who oppose the US led war in Iraq:
"I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people."
In substance, under this executive order, opposing the war becomes an illegal act. (...)
Gordon Brown has renewed his demand for Russia to hand over the prime suspect in the Litvinenko murder, describing the situation as "intolerable". (...)
One of President Bush’s counterterrorism advisers said today that the United States would consider using military force inside Pakistan if it identified key Al Qaeda targets there, but the Pakistani foreign minister angrily rejected such talk as “irresponsible” and said American attacks in the sensitive border area could cause civilian deaths and enrage Pakistani opinion. (...)
by Webster G. Tarpley
A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver. Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here. (...)
German authorities believe Al Qaeda is targeting their country for attacks and that German Islamists have been traveling to Pakistan for "terrorist training," a top security official told a newspaper.
"The danger that there could be terrorist attacks here is very real," Deputy Interior Minister August Hanning said in an article to run today in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. "We have many indications that Al Qaeda is targeting Germany and German installations abroad, such as embassies." (...)
"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11." (...)
A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship and launch a war with Iran within a year.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, blasted Thursday a new Executive Order, released July 17, allowing the White House to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies and giving the government expanded police powers to exercise control in the country.
Roberts, who spoke on the Thom Hartmann radio program, said: "When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order], there's no check to it. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule." (...)
Former House speaker and possible presidential contender Newt Gingrich said Thursday that the United States should make efforts to bring about a regime change in Iran and warned against the dangers of Tehran attaining nuclear weapons.
An Iranian nuclear strike on the United States could be more ruinous than the Japanese attack in 1941, Gingrich told Project Israel, a non-profit organization established to provide the American media with information on Israel. (...)
by Paul Craig Roberts
The wake-up call is unlikely to be effective, because the American attitude toward government changed fundamentally 70-odd years ago. Prior to the 1930s, Americans were suspicious of government, but with the arrival of the Great Depression, Tojo, and Hitler, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Americans that government existed to protect them from rapacious private interests and foreign threats. Today, Americans are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to government than they are to family members, friends, and those who would warn them about the government’s protection.
Such events could take a number of forms. As even diehard Republican Patrick J. Buchanan observed on July 17, with three US aircraft carrier battle groups in congested waters off Iran, another Tonkin Gulf incident could easily be engineered to set us at war with Iran.
Alternatively, false flag “terrorist” strikes could be orchestrated in the US. The Bush administration has already infiltrated some dissident groups and encouraged them to participate in terrorist talk, for which they were arrested. It is possible that the administration could provoke some groups to actual acts of violence.
Many Americans dismiss suspicion of their government as treasonous, and most believe conspiracy to be impossible “because someone would talk.”
There is no basis in any known fact for this opinion.
According to polls, 36 percent of the American people disbelieve the 9/11 Commission Report. Despite this lack of confidence, and despite the numerous omissions and errors in the report, it has proven impossible to have an independent investigation of 9/11 or to examine the official explanation in public debate. Even experts and people with a lifetime of distinguished public service are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists,” “kooks,” and “traitors” if they question the official explanation of 9/11. This despite the fact that war in the Middle East, a long-planned goal of Bush’s neoconservative administration, could not have been initiated without a “new Pearl Harbor.”
That powerfully constructed steel buildings could suddenly turn to dust because they were struck by two flimsy aluminum airliners and experienced small fires on a few floors that burned for a short time appears unexceptionable to a majority of Americans.
Moreover, people have talked. Hundreds of them. Firefighters, police, janitors, and others report hearing and experiencing a series of explosions in upper floors and massive explosions in the underground basements. This eyewitness testimony was kept under wraps for three or more years until the official explanation had taken root. The oral histories were finally forced loose by Freedom Of Information Act suits. The eyewitness reports of explosion after explosion had no effect. (...)
by Kathleen Parker
Just when you thought the war in Iraq couldn't get any stranger, a high-ranking al-Qaeda figure who was first captured and then killed - his body displayed on state-run TV - turns out to have been a fiction.
He didn't exist.
The apparently invented character called Abu Omar al-Baghdadi was known as the head of the Islamic State of Iraq - believed to be a front group for al-Qaeda.
He wasn't captured, as was reported previously. He wasn't killed May 1 by hostile fire from U.S. forces, as reported in a May 3 New York Times story. He wasn't even real, according to the U.S. military.
All this we learn from a leading al-Qaida figure captured July 4 by U.S. forces in Mosul. Khalid Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, who in the interest of economy will be referred to hereinafter as "Smitty," told interrogators that Baghdadi was invented by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, aka Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, hereinafter referred to as "Jimbo."
According to Smitty, Jimbo invented Baghdadi to create the impression among Iraqis that al-Qaida is a nationalistic group in Iraq when, in fact, the Islamic State was a Sunni Muslim insurgent group run by an Egyptian, who hired an Iraqi actor to read statements from the fictional al-Baghdadi.
Well, it's good to have all that straight. (...)
Russia's president said he is convinced that Russia and the U.K. will overcome the current crisis in their relations, which took a turn for the worse Thursday when Russia expelled four British diplomats in a reciprocal move.
"I think Russian-British relations will develop normally. I am convinced that we will cope with this mini-crisis too," Vladimir Putin told journalists after hosting a Finno-Ugric culture meeting with the leaders of Hungary and Finland in the Russian Republic of Mordovia.
Putin said that both Russia and the U.K. are interested in developing bilateral relations, "but any actions should be matched with common sense. The legal rights and interests of partners should be respected, and then everything will take the best course," he said. (...)
One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.
Mr. Nasr, however, said Iran's recent entente with Al Qaeda could be simply a matter of statecraft. " Iran and Al Qaeda do not have to like one another," he said. "They can hate each other, they can kill each other, their ultimate goals may be against one another, but for the short term Iran can unleash Al Qaeda on the United States." (...)
"We are disappointed that the Russian government should have signalled no new cooperation in the case of the extradition of Mr Andrei Lugovoy for the alleged murder of Alexander Litvinenko," Foreign Secretary David Miliband said.
"We obviously believe that the decision to expel four embassy staff was completely unjustified," he said, adding Britain was however heartened by expressions of support from the international community. (...)
"They're expelling 4 diplomats? What have we done to deserve this??..."
Russia is stopping anti-terrorist cooperation with the United Kingdom in protest against London's actions in the so-called Lugovoi case, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said on Thursday.
"We deeply regret that the measures announced by London make it impossible to develop anti-terrorist cooperation between Russia and the UK," he said.
What does that mean?...
Russia announced on Thursday that it was expelling four British Embassy officials in response to a similar British move following Russia's refusal to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, suspected of murdering former Russian intelligence agent Alexander Litvinenko. (...)
The Russian Foreign Ministry has announced it decided against publishing an article by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the American magazine Foreign Affairs, claiming the article had been censored.
The article was offered to the Foreign Affairs editorial board in May 2007 as the Russian foreign minister's "direct address to the readers of this reputable publication as clarification of Russian foreign policy," the ministry said.
"But some of the edits made would have made Lavrov sign his approval of the U.S. administration's well-known foreign-policy approaches, which we reject as going against our principles," it said. (...)
For more than a year, the leader of one the most notorious insurgent groups in Iraq was said to be a mysterious Iraqi named Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi.
As the titular head of the Islamic State in Iraq, an organization publicly backed by Al Qaeda, Baghdadi issued a steady stream of incendiary pronouncements. Despite claims by Iraqi officials that he had been killed in May, Baghdadi appeared to have persevered unscathed.
On Wednesday, a senior American military spokesman provided a new explanation for Baghdadi's ability to escape attack: He never existed.
Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, the chief American military spokesman, said that the elusive Baghdadi was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.
The ruse, Bergner said, was devised by Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian born leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who was trying to mask the dominant role that foreigners play in that insurgent organization. The ploy was to invent Baghdadi, a figure whose very name establishes his Iraqi pedigree, install him as the head of a front organization called the Islamic State of Iraq and then arrange for al-Masri to swear allegiance to him. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, sought to reinforce the deception by referring to Baghdadi in his video and Internet statements. (...)
I wonder if that actor does the bin Laden tapes too. Anyway, at the moment the White House wants us to believe that "al Qaeda in Iraq", rather than being independent, is the same as the international "bin Laden al Qaeda", and is being used to plan a terror attack in America. The solution? Iraqi al Qaeda's main figure gets erased from the script! What an enormous and unbelievable joke...
Reports in the British media that two Russian strategic bombers violated U.K. airspace are untrue, an aide to the Russian Air Force commander said Wednesday.
British media reported earlier Wednesday that RAF fighters were scrambled to intercept Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers that had taken off from an airbase on the Kola Peninsula, in Russia's north, and were flying in the direction of the U.K. (...)
by Paul Joseph Watson
A videotape that was heralded as "new" footage of Osama bin Laden by many quarters of the press has been conclusively proven to be more than 5 year old re-released footage, leading to questions about why the government and the media continue to act as willing propagandists for the terrorists while striking fear into Americans by claiming an attack is inevitable.
The Associated Press ran the tape as a top story on Saturday under the headline "Bin Laden Appears in New al-Qaida Video".
Euro News, the propaganda arm of the European Union broadcast in dozens of countries around Europe, described the footage as "apparently new".
"Possible New Message From Osama Bin Laden," reported ABC News, noting that "a brief clip of an older-looking Osama bin Laden is contained in a new al Qaeda videotape," when in reality the graying in Bin Laden's beard was exactly the same as when he appeared in a 2001 videotape, while also wearing the exact same jacket.
The footage first appeared in May 2002, having been released by a Pakistani security official to the Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in Birmingham, England. This CBS video clip clearly shows the same footage as the apparent "new" tape.
Here is a screenshot from the 2002 tape (right) compared to the new tape (left). Notice the sloping mountain in the left background.
by Vladimir Simonov
London's attempts to politicize what is a strictly criminal case may threaten to damage the impressive and sophisticated edifice of mutually beneficial relations and cultural affinity that has been built over many decades.
Miliband wants Russia either to violate the 61st clause of its constitution, which prohibits the extradition of Russian nationals, or to change it - no more and no less.
The circumstances surrounding Litvinenko's mysterious death are becoming more and more confusing every day. Recently, a 67-year-old waiter from a bar in the London Millennium Hotel testified that on November 1 (the alleged date of Litvinenko's poisoning with polonium), while he was bringing tea to the table of Litvinenko, Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, another ex-spy who was also poisoned with polonium, somebody tried to block his way. Scotland Yard has yet to deal with this important testimony.
This is just a detail, but it points to major shortcoming in the British inquiry into Litvinenko's case. Nobody in Russia has seen the results of the post-mortem or any other tangible evidence. Many Russian analysts and policymakers believe that Britain has something to hide in connection with the mysterious death of the ex-FSB agent.
"The British authorities are primarily trying to get Lugovoi out of Russia to prevent him from disclosing what he knows about the operations of British secret services," said Konstantin Kosachev, who heads the International Affairs Committee of the lower house of Russia's parliament. "Apparently, they are hoping that if they get him to Britain, they will manage to suppress his testimony. But that is not going to happen." (...)
Fox News on Tuesday interviewed veteran Pentagon reporter Rowan Scarborough about his "startling allegation" that "elements within the CIA are sabotaging our own War on Terror." Scarborough, a former columnist for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times, is the author of Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA, which claims that "CIA bureaucrats are undermining President Bush and the War on Terror through disinformation, incompetence, and outright sabotage."
"The CIA ... is the only agency I know that has a retired group of officers who formed together for the sole purpose of attacking Bush," said Scarborough. "The head of the organization goes around the country giving speeches about how the government did 9/11." (...)
by Paul Craig Roberts
In his novel 1984, George Orwell portrayed a future time in which the explanations of recent events and earlier history are continually changed to meet Big Brother's latest purpose. Previous explanations disappear down "the memory hole."
Sound familiar? Any American who pays attention can observe the identical phenomenon occurring in the U.S. today. (...)
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess?
One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.
Twice it was said, on Aug. 2 and Aug. 4, North Vietnamese patrol boats had attacked the U.S. destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy in international waters. The U.S. Senate responded by voting 88 to two to authorize President Johnson to assist any Southeast Asian nation whose government was threatened by communist aggression. (...)
by William M. Arkin
Gen. Peter Pace, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that the Joint Chiefs may consider increasing the current level of U.S. forces in Iraq. You heard that right: Come September, we could be looking at Surge II.
Here's how it could happen: In September, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker produce their "report" to Congress. President Bush then ponders the options. (And we know he isn't going to throw in the towel.) And then the case is made -- and there is a certain logic to it -- that keeping forces at the same or higher levels would help the U.S. and Iraq reach their goals more quickly.
So one option then would be Surge II. These guys have guts. (...)
by Paul Craig Roberts
Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future. (...)
The terrorist network Al Qaeda will likely leverage its contacts and capabilities in Iraq to mount an attack on U.S. soil, according to a new National Intelligence Estimate on threats to the American homeland. (...)
by Ahmed Ali
Air strikes have destroyed civilian homes rather than al-Qaeda targets under the U.S. military operation in Baquba, residents say.
"The U.S. military bombed houses that were completely uninhabited," Kadhim Rajab, a 39-year-old city official told IPS. "Al-Qaeda had left the city before the operation even began because they knew what was coming even before we did."
But residents did speak of an al-Qaeda presence earlier. "U.S. troops bombed a number of houses that were actually used by al-Qaeda," Ibrahim Hameed, a 43-year-old secondary school teacher told IPS. "But there was no resistance at all, we heard no shooting."
Ismail Aboud, a 51-year-old physician, said the U.S. military had deliberately avoided armed clashes with militants. "It seems that the forces allowed the terrorists to leave the battlefield in order to avoid direct military clashes," he said. (...)
America's staged war against "al Qaeda"...
by Ali al-Fadhily
Many Iraqis are now beginning to see the rising sectarian violence as part of a larger plan to partition the country.
"Americans want to alter the shape of our cities, dividing Iraqis into ethnic and sectarian groups living separately from each other," Khali Sadiq, a researcher in statistics at Baghdad University told IPS.
"They are not doing this directly, but they have obviously given room to militias and Iraqi forces to do the job," he said. "We are more than halfway towards a sectarian Iraq."
A recent report has raised further suspicions that there is a U.S.-backed plan to partition the capital city, and possibly the country along sectarian and ethnic lines. (...)
San Francisco architect Richard Gage, AIA, founder of the group, 'Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth,' announced today the statement of support from J. Marx Ayres, former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission and former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council
Mr. Gage, Mr. Ayres, and over 120 other architecture and engineering professionals, have signed a petition posted on the group’s website which questions the official reports of the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers and Building 7 in New York City on 9/11/01, and calls for a new investigation. The group does not speculate as to who and why, Gage says, but instead calls for a new investigation by Congress with subpoena power. He believes a new investigation is the only hope of "fully answering these questions and bringing those responsible to justice."To read Mr. Ayres’s full statement and to learn more about Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, please visit the organization’s website at: http://AE911Truth.org (...)
"These decisions show that the Litvinenko case was politically motivated from the very start," Lugovoi said, while also maintaining his innocence. "Nobody invited me to Britain - I faced the charges in absentia, and nobody gave me any chance to defend myself."
Litvinenko died in a London hospital in November 2006. British experts said they had discovered radioactive isotope polonium-210 in his body, but published no official autopsy results. In a deathbed note, purportedly written by Litvinenko, who received British citizenship shortly before his death, he blamed President Vladimir Putin for his murder, an allegation the Kremlin dismissed.
Russia in turn wants Britain to extradite two of its own suspects, fugitive tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Chechen emissary Akhmed Zakayev. Berezovsky is accused of fraud and a coup attempt, while Zakayev is facing terrorism charges. Both have been granted British passports.
Russian diplomatic spokesman Kamynin said: "We have the impression that British authorities are trying to justify their refusal to cooperate with Russian law enforcement officials on the extradition of Zakayev and Berezovsky, against whom we have undeniable evidence of terrorism." (...)
RUSSIA attacked Britain overnight as "immoral" and "provocative" for its decision to expel four Russian diplomats over Moscow's refusal to extradite a murder suspect, and indicated it would hit back. (...)
Britain's foreign secretary said four Russian diplomats will be expelled from the country over Moscow's refusal to extradite a Russian suspect in the murder of former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. (...)
The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo." (...)
There are indications Islamic terrorists are plotting another attack against the U.S., Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
Two days ago, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said he had a "gut feeling" the U.S. faces an increased threat of attack in the next month and a half based on terrorists' past activity.
"I'm certainly concerned about it," Rice told Fox News today. "It is a period of time in which there is a lot of intelligence, a lot of chatter that would suggest there is an effort to plan an attack against the United States." She said there is "nothing that appears concrete or imminent." (...)
CNN, which noted it could not verify the authenticity of the 40-minute video and had translated it from Arabic into English, said on its Web site there was no indication of where or when the footage had been shot.
The news network said the video contained old clips but concluded it had been compiled in the last four weeks.
The environment in which bin Laden is shown speaking is similar to that on releases made before the September 11 attacks on the United States by al Qaeda in 2001.
Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, said bin Laden appears in only a 50-second portion of the video in which he asserts that the Prophet Mohammed had wanted to be a martyr.
"What is this status that the best of mankind wished for himself?" CNN said bin Laden asked rhetorically. "He wished to be a martyr. He himself said: 'By Him in whose hands my life is! I would love to attack and be martyred."'
"This glorious prophet who was inspired by God summarized this entire life by these words. He wished upon himself this status. Happy is one who was chosen by God as a martyr," bin Laden said, according to the CNN translation of his remarks. (...)
This is as close as it can get to a new bin Laden video calling for attacks (since he's dead). The warning signs continue...
The summer before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Richard Clarke was the White House Director of Counterterrorism. As the Blotter has reported, senior law enforcement officials said this week there are growing signs of a "Summer of '07" terror attack on the U.S. Now an ABC News consultant, Clarke says these latest intelligence reports bear an eerie resemblance to those officials received in the summer of 2001. Yet again, the intelligence is of a high quality, but doesn't point to a specific date or target. So how should the country respond? (...)
Vandals burned down 266 cars in France, including 195 vehicles in a Paris district, on the night of Bastille Day celebrated in the country July 14, a national police spokesman said Saturday.
Police have already detained 100 suspects in the act of vandalism and took 46 of them into custody. (...)
Frederick Florin AFP
This is the equivalent of 266 "Glasgow airport terrorist attacks", and it's nowhere in the news. Imagine if Muslims did it...
When asked whether U.S. unilateral interventionism was on the agenda, Kissinger said that "nuclear proliferation" and "nuclear threats," rather than U.S. policies, are the biggest danger to world peace.
"I do not think that [U.S.] expansion is a problem of the period. The problem of the period is how to avoid nuclear conflict and in this case we believe that Russia and America should have common objectives." (...)
Our military sources report that the Enterprise, whose deployment with the US Fifth Fleet, was first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 300 on June 1, will in fact join the USS Stennis and USS Nimitz near the shores of Iran - not replace them, as reported in some media. The carrier which departed Norfolk Monday is heading for a six-month Middle East tour of duty with its strike group of four warships: the guided missile destroyers Arleigh Burke, Stout, James E .Williams and Forrest Sherman, as well as three more ships – and 7,500 sailors in all aboard.
All these contradictory stories are very suspicious.
Declaring the need for a timely decision on Kosovo’s desire for independence from Serbia, the United States threatened Friday to seek a solution outside the United Nations if Russia persisted in blocking Security Council action.
“We are determined to move forward, either within the Council or otherwise,” Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said in a conference call with news agency reporters. (...)
Republican presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, said the country is in "great danger" of the U.S. government staging a terrorist attack or a Gulf of Tonkin style provocation, as the war in Iraq continues to deteriorate.
The Texas congressman offered no specifics nor mentioned President Bush by name, but he clearly insinuated that the administration would not be above staging an incident to revive flagging support. (...)
Russia suspended its participation in a key pact limiting military forces in Europe on Saturday, fulfilling a threat after months of verbal sparring with the West. (...)
The U.S. Senate on Friday voted to double the bounty on Osama bin Laden to $50 million and require President George W. Bush to refocus on capturing him after reports al Qaeda is gaining strength.
By a vote of 87-1, the Senate set the reward for the killing or capture, or information leading to the capture, of the mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States. (...)
Good luck everyone! And remember, you'll need a shovel...
U.N. nuclear inspectors banned earlier this year by Iran from visiting a heavy water reactor will now be allowed to inspect it before the end of July the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.
In a further sign of compromise on the part of the Islamic republic, the IAEA said that Tehran also had agreed to answer questions on past experiments that the international community fears could be linked to a weapons program. (...)
by Robert Naiman
It may sound preposterous, but apparently Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs, is claiming that the US and Europe have given Israel a green light to attack Iran. Israel Today reports:
Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that he received the tacit blessing of Europe and the United States for an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the US will support us," Lieberman told Army Radio following a meeting earlier in the week with NATO and European Union officials...The message Lieberman said the NATO and EU officials conveyed to him is that Israel should "prevent the threat herself." (...)
US intelligence chiefs held a White House summit yesterday to discuss a classified report that concluded that al-Qaeda is now stronger than at any time since September 11, 2001.
Details of the five-page document, entitled “Al-Qaeda better positioned to strike the West”, were leaked amid growing signs that America is nervous about the prospect of another terrorist attack. There was particular concern that Europeans could be used to launch such operations. (...)
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Despite the discussions of détente in the Middle East, the peril of war is still a real menace that threatens to proliferate globally. The dialogue taking place between the U.S., the E.U., Russia, Syria, and Iran seems to be merely a transient point in the timeline of the Middle East and Central Asia. The ongoing international discussions focused on the Middle East are part of an instant in time and history that will come to pass. Attached to these discussions are the fate of the Middle East, or so it may seem. With certainty, only time will tell what will unfold in the Middle East and become recorded in the annals of history. (...)
Undercover Congressional investigators set up a bogus company and obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March that would have allowed them to buy the radioactive materials needed for a so-called dirty bomb.
But if they had gone ahead with the plot — which would have required extracting the radioactive materials from the machines and combining them, a job that could harm anyone in close contact — they could have built a bomb that would have contaminated an area about the length of a city block, according to the regulatory commission.
As with any dirty bomb, the resulting low-level contamination would not have presented an immediate health hazard. Still, the area would have to have been evacuated and decontaminated. (...)
Kristol responded, "I think the president's going to have to take military action there over the next few weeks or months. ... Bush has to disrupt that sanctuary."
"I think, frankly, we won't even tell Musharraf," Kirstol continued. "We'll do what we have to do in Western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, 'Hey, they didn't tell me.'" (...)
Three top U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday that a resurgent Al Qaeda had stepped up training and worldwide operations from safe havens in Pakistan, a development they worry could lead to ambitious new attacks.
Even without seeing indicators of a specific attack, officials said, they do believe that the overall risk from Al Qaeda is rising. The U.S. attacks on Al Qaeda's former base in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 severely disrupted Osama bin Laden's network. But since then, Al Qaeda has rebuilt its headquarters in Pakistan and is more dangerous than at any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a new classified threat assessment. (...)
by Paul Joseph Watson
The West needs more terror attacks on the scale of 9/11 and 7/7 in order to save a failing foreign policy, according to Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario.
This alarming admission can be found right at the end of a long and academic Toronto Star article about the history of conflict and why the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are doomed. (...)
The leader of an al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shiites in Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape released Sunday.
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, who leads the group Islamic State in Iraq, said his Sunni fighters have been preparing for four years to wage a battle against Shiite-dominated Iran. (...)
But... wasn't Iran supporting al Qaeda?...
by Michael Schwartz
While the atlantist media is reporting more than 3 000 GI’s killed in Iraq and many civilian victims of inter-confessional violences, it looks away from the daily slaughter of civilians by US patrols conducting their search operations for suspects. Professor Michael Schwartz estimates that their number reached 10 000 a month in the first 3 years of occupation. And much more since Bush ordered his surge of operations. (...)
But the aircraft carriers, each accompanied by four or five other ships, could become big targets for Iran in the event of a war.
"It's going to be very hard to defend U.S. ships against small ships and volleys of missiles in the confines of the Persian Gulf," said Joseph Cirincione, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. (...)
Why all this talk about carriers suddenly?
"Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said of Al Qaeda. "We do worry that they are rebuilding their activities."
Chertoff said there were not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the threat levels nationwide. He indicated that his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by previous patterns of terrorist attacks, recent Al Qaeda statements and intelligence he did not disclose. (...)
by Jim Lobe
Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani announced his foreign-policy advisory team Tuesday, and it looks from the membership as if he’s bidding for the Likud vote (for which he will no doubt receive tough competition from John McCain, Fred Thompson, and, eventually perhaps, Newt Gingrich).
Of the seven other members of Giuliani’s “Senior Foreign Policy Advisory Board,” several have also been associated with PNAC and the CPD, most spectacularly, the legendary former editor of Commentary magazine, Norman “World War IV” Podhoretz, whose most recent contribution to Western-Islamic understanding was his article, “The Case for Bombing Iran” (an eight-minute “must-see” video version of which is available on YouTube. A founding father of neo-conservatism, Podhoretz is also, of course, the father-in-law of Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams whose own work in frustrating serious peace efforts between Israel and its Arab neighbors has been second only to Dick Cheney’s. Apparently relying on inside information, Podhoretz still believes that Saddam Hussein secreted his weapons of mass destruction to Syria for safe-keeping. (...)
Senior U.S. intelligence officials tell ABC News new intelligence suggests a small al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here.
The White House has convened an urgent multi-agency meeting for Thursday afternoon to deal with the new threat. (...)
Run for your lives!...
The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is deploying to the Gulf region where it will replace one and possibly both carriers already there, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
Navy officials had earlier raised the possibility that the Enterprise would increase the number of carriers in the region to three, which would be the biggest US naval presence in the Gulf since the US invasion of Iraq.
But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman denied that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has decided to up the number of carriers to three, and said the deployment of the Enterprise was part of a "routine swap." (...)
True or not, this is the official version after all.
Over the weekend, the USS Enterprise Carrier Strike Group departed Norfolk for a six-month deployment to the region. The USS Enterprise and its accompanying vessels will swap out with the USS John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, the original "Second Carrier in the Gulf." (...)
This contradicts what the Navy spokesperson said. Who's telling the truth?...
Since April 2007, George W. Bush has had on his desk an exit plan from Iraq, built around the phased pull-back by early 2008 of a little more than half of the 170,000 or so troops there at present. Around 50-70,000 soldiers are to be redeployed to large strategic fortified enclaves in the south and the north as a semi-permanent US presence. They will be backed by four naval and aerial strike groups in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and a chain of giant air bases, some expanded, others built from scratch, in Oman, Qatar and Jordan.
Amid the furious political controversy over the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war, most Americans find it hard to imagine the US army capable of even contemplating taking on another conflict with Iran. It is seen by many as a nightmare scenario. But Tehran sees nothing far-fetched about it. Quite the reverse, Iranians are all but certain an US attack is inevitable this summer or, at latest, in the fall. (...)
Another US Navy aircraft carrier is heading towards the Middle East, boosting the number of the giant warships in the region to three, the navy said in a statement.
The nuclear-powered USS Enterprise and its strike group will join the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz in the navy's Fifth Fleet area of operation, which includes Gulf waters off Iran.
'The Enterprise is heading to Fifth Fleet waters and is not replacing any other ships in the area,' a US Navy spokesperson told Agence France-Presse without elaborating. (...)
A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.
The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said. (...)
Predicting that sanctions will ultimately fail to stop Teheran's nuclear program, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of Military Intelligence's Research Division, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that time to launch an effective military strike against Iran's nuclear installations was running out. (...)
What you probably won't hear at the Live Earth concert: a call for higher taxes on gasoline and fuel. (...)
Cindy Sheehan, who became a leading anti-war activist after her son died in Iraq, said on Monday she will run against House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi if the Democratic leader fails to seek the ouster of President George W. Bush within the next two weeks. (...)
SENIOR US officials are debating whether President George Bush should announce a gradual withdrawal of US troops from Iraqi cities following the defection of several key Republicans over the Administration's war strategy. (...)
If Israel doesn't vacate the strategic Golan Heights before September, Syrian guerrillas will immediately launch "resistance operations" against the Golan's Jewish communities, a top official from Syrian President Bashar Assad's Baath party told WND. (...)
A global missile defense system proposed by Russia could be created by 2020, a Russian first deputy prime minister said Sunday.
"We are proposing to create a single missile defense system for all participants with equal access to the system's control," Sergei Ivanov said in a televised interview with the Vesti Nedeli program on Rossiya television channel. (...)
Vyacheslav Zharko, a Russian ex-security service officer who admitted earlier working for British intelligence, said Saturday murdered Alexander Litvinenko and fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky introduced him to MI6. (...)
Fresh fears over a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism have been raised after a new study found that almost double the number of children could have the condition than previously thought. (...)
by Christopher Booker
The layers of spin and deceit that surround this wretched EU treaty are so convoluted that it takes some working out to disentangle the contradictions, U-turns and straight lies it has come to involve.
The fundamental problem is that the EU's leaders are determined to foist on the peoples of Europe the final components of a supranational government, as agreed in their constitution, without giving the peoples of Europe any say in the matter.
Ever since the constitution was rejected by the people of France and Holland, they have been trying to find a way of smuggling it back in, by pretending it was something else. (...)
Britain is a centre of intense plotting and faces a terrorist threat of "unprecedented scale, ambition and ruthlessness".
In a stark warning for the future, Dame Eliza added: "It remains a very real possibility that they may, sometime, somewhere attempt a chemical biological, radiological or even nuclear attack".
The former spy chief also warned that "it is inevitable that some terrorist plots will escape our combined attention," adding: "Even if we have the numbers of personnel engaged in looking at our own citizens as, say, the KGB or the Stasi did during the Cold War, and with the same authoritarian powers, some things would slip under the radar." (...)
In his first interview since his surprise appointment by Gordon Brown as security minister, Sir Alan called on people to be "a little bit un-British" and even inform on each other in an attempt to trap those plotting to take innocent lives.
"Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone," he said. "I'm afraid, in this situation, anyone who's got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life." (...)
With President Bush's war strategy clouded by limited results and mounting casualties, two scholars are proposing a partition plan that would divide Iraq into three main regions.
"The time may be approaching when the only hope for a more stable Iraq is a soft partition of the country," the report by Joseph and O'Hanlon said.
"Creating such a structure could prove to be difficult and risky," the report said. "However, when measured against the alternatives continuing to police an ethnic-sectarian war, or withdrawing and allowing the conflict to escalate the risks of soft partition appear more acceptable." (...)
This has been the plan since the beginning (divide and conquer). But it's supposed to appear as if it was a "forced" decision.
Related: Blood Borders - How a better Middle East would look by Ralph Peters (June 2006)
A powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc. (...)
Here's another of those "conspiracy theories" that will eventually turn out to be true...
While even in 2007 many express skepticism about a plot to integrate North America along the lines of the European Union, 14 years ago, one of world's most celebrated economists and management experts said it was already on the fast track – and nothing could stop it.
Peter F. Drucker, in one of his dozens of best-selling books, "Post Capitalist Society," published in 1993, wrote that the European Community, the progenitor of the European Union, "triggered the attempt to create a North American economic community, built around the United States but integrating both Canada and Mexico into a common market." (...)
Up to eight police officers and civilian staff are suspected of links to extremist groups including Al Qaeda.
Some are even believed to have attended terror training camps in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
Their names feature on a secret list of alleged radicals said to be working in the Metropolitan and other forces. (...)
They make it sound like "al Qaeda is infiltrating the police". Probably not the case...
A senior French politician, now a minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, suggested last year that U.S. President George W. Bush might have been behind the September 11, 2001 attacks, according to a website.
Asked in an interview last November, before she became minister, whether she thought Bush might be behind the attacks, Boutin says: "I think it is possible. I think it is possible." (...)
Evidence that Iranian territory is being used as a base by al-Qaeda to help in terrorist operations in Iraq and elsewhere is growing, say western officials. (...)
Iran supporting al Qaeda too?... Sure! Why not?
by Joseph Lieberman
No responsible leader in Washington desires conflict with Iran. But every leader has a responsibility to acknowledge the evidence that the U.S. military has now put before us: The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East.
The threat posed by Iran to our soldiers' lives, our security as a nation and our allies in the Middle East is a truth that cannot be wished or waved away. It must be confronted head-on. The regime in Iran is betting that our political disunity in Washington will constrain us in responding to its attacks. For the sake of our nation's security, we must unite and prove them wrong. (...)
We are now in full 'build up for war' mode.
by Prof. David F. Noble (May 4, 2007)
Don't breathe. There's a total war on against CO2 emissions, and you are releasing CO2 with every breath. The multi-media campaign against global warming now saturating our senses, which insists that an increasing CO2 component of greenhouse gases is the enemy, takes no prisoners: you are either with us or you are with the "deniers." No one can question the new orthodoxy or dare risk the sin of emission. If Bill Clinton were running for president today he would swear he didn't exhale.
How did we get here? How did such an arcane subject only yesterday of interest merely to a handful of scientific specialists so suddenly come to dominate our discourse? How did scientific speculation so swiftly erupt into ubiquitous intimations of apocalypse? These are not hypothetical questions but historical questions, and they have answers. Such events as these do not just happen; they are made to happen. On the whole our ideas tend not to be our own ideas; rarely do we come up with them ourselves but rather imbibe them from the world around us. This is especially obvious when our ideas turn out to be the same as nearly everyone else's, even people we've never met or communicated with. Where did this idea about the urgent crisis of global warming and CO2 emissions come from and get into our heads, given that so few of us have ever read, or even tried to read, a single scientific paper about greenhouse gases? Answering such a question is not as difficult as it might seem, for the simple reason that it takes a great amount of reach and resources to place so alien an idea in so many minds simultaneously so quickly, and the only possessors of such capacity and means are the government and the corporations, together with their multi-media machinery. To effect such a significant shift in attention, perception, and belief requires a substantial, and hence visible and demonstrable, effort. (...)
On the day of Al Gore's "Live Earth" concerts, this is a must read article.