Vermont Congress candidate calls on Pentagon to arrest Bush, Cheney

Former U.S. Army Lieutenant and candidate for Congress in Vermont, Dennis Morrisseau, today called for the arrest of President Bush and Vice President Cheney by the American military "if necessary" to prevent an unauthorized attack upon the nation of Iran.

The antiwar Vietnam vet is a Republican, but he has won approval from the State of Vermont to run on the ballot line “Impeach Bush Now,” rather than Democrat or Republican.

"American forces are apparently already active inside Iran, and Naval forces have received orders to deploy to that country," Morrisseau said. "The President has NO AUTHORITY to attack the nation of Iran whatsoever, in the absence of a full, formal Declaration of War on Iran by the sitting Congress."

Morrisseau said any order for an attack upon Iran or to deploy naval forces to its coastal waters is illegal, and called upon officers of the American military to "First, refuse to obey such an order. If the president persists and insists on ordering our forces into combat in or over Iran without a formal Declaration of War, then I call upon you, General Pace, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and upon such other military officers as clearly see their duty in these circumstances to detain both the President and Vice President, until such time as the Congress shall act."

Morrisseau's website

Modern-Day Secessionists Will Hold a Conference on Leaving the Union

Here come the new Green Mountain Boys. The Middlebury Institute, a think tank devoted to the study of separatism, secession, and self-determination, is planning the First North American Secessionist Convention in Burlington, Vt.

More than a dozen secessionist organizations are likely to send representatives to the gathering on November 3 and 4, the director of the institute, Kirkpatrick Sale, said. The room at the Wyndham Burlington hotel can hold about 50 people, he said. The organizers have picked the right state for this radical gathering: Vermont was an independent republic between 1777 and 1791.

Middlebury Institute website

Abramoff and Able Danger: Confirmed: US Intel told "hands off money laundering"

Excellent collection from Daily Kos that continues following the rabbit hole that will most likely lead to evidence directly linking Abramoff, Bush, drug money laundering, Al Qaeda and the attacks of 9/11

Letter to Thomas Kean from Sibel Edmonds

...To this date the public has not been told of intentional blocking of intelligence..This was the case prior to 9/11, and remains in effect after 9/11. If Counterintelligence receives information that contains money laundering, illegal arms sale, and illegal drug activities, directly linked to terrorist activities; and if that information involves certain nations, certain semi-legit organizations, and ties to certain lucrative or political relations in this country, then, that information is not shared with Counterterrorism, regardless of the possible severe consequences

CENTCOM Sergeant Details Traitorous Stand Down Orders On 9/11

In a letter that first appeared on the 9/11 Veterans For Truth Website, Sergeant Lauro "LJ" Chavez responds to a Cincinnati Post hit piece article by outlining his own doubts about the official version of 9/11 and his personal experiences of the strange prelude to the events of that morning.

Despite early (and healthy) reactions claiming this may be a hoax designed to poison the well of the 9/11 truth movement, Sergeant Chavez has now provided us with evidence of his credentials, his honorable discharge documents showing the military installations he was located inside. The last station he held was inside United States Central Command in Tampa - the pdf can be viewed here.

Mr Chavez worked within CENTCOM, one of the five American regional unified commands consisting of Marines, Navy and air force officers. CENTCOM's area of jurisdiction is in the Middle East, East Africa and Central Asia. CENTCOM has been the main American presence in many military operations, including the Persian Gulf War, the United States war in Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Chavez was stationed at CENTCOM's headquarters at MacDill AFB, in Tampa, Florida. His commanding officer was Four Star General Tommy Franks.

On the morning before 9/11 Chavez was in the Secure Compartmented Information Facility, the secure bunker at the base of CENTCOM HQ which is populated by high ranking military intelligence personnel. This is a facility that requires a top secret gamma clearance. Inside are systems that can monitor weather systems and flight paths of all aircraft within the country.

That day he was involved with supporting computer equipment being used in the Vigilant Guardian exercise and another exercise based in Egypt. On this day Chavez got to see information that he wasn't supposed to see.

"I was working on psyops commander's computer and next to his PC was a top secret document that was open, his neglect was my ally, I was sitting there working on his computer and was waiting for some patches to download and I look over and I'm reading the document, and it's the off order for the exercise that they are participating in."

This raises major questions because normally wargames or exercises are not classified as top secret as it is a requirement to let some information be public, especially if the exercise is taking place in a populated area.

Chavez continued:

"So I'm reading this document and it's giving proposed situations for scenarios for this wargame the scenarios include a hijacked plane, most of them were hijacked planes, I saw one that was like a car bomb trying to blow up something, but one of them was a hijacked plane crashing into a nuclear power plant in California, the Sears Tower, the World Trade Center, The Pentagon obviously, the White House, our building was one of the targets as well."

Chavez went on to describe how CENTCOM HQ was being heavily fortified the day before 9/11 and access to the base was restricted to top secret personnel only. This ties in with a declaration of Martial Law by Jeb Bush two days previously throughout the entirety of Florida.

Chavez also described how during the exercises the aerospace grid with "enemy" blips on it has to be piped in to the air traffic controllers of all the airports in the affected area so they know there is a military exercise going on. This ties in with the released NORAD/NEADS and FAA tapes and accounts that are riddled with references to the drills and exercises taking place on 9/11.

Chavez described the plot as "genius" and stated:

"If you want to crash planes into a building, and you've got the aerospace grid at your beckoning call, so you put a bunch of blips on it so no one knows which ones are real and which ones are fake... All you have to do is have someone in charge of the computer systems to put the blips on the screen and then you can do whatever you want."

Chavez proceeded to detail the key discussions that he heard inside the bunker on the day of 9/11:

"I didn't get to see tower one hit, I was in there talking with individuals and i was tired, I'd been there since four in the morning. Then all of a sudden everybody started hustling and bustling. it was like NASA when Apollo 13 was about to crash, everybody running around, and then they put it on the big screen, CNN with the tower on fire.

Then we see the other plane come in and hit it and at that point everybody is standing up. The air force had commanders in contact with NORAD. The plane, or whatever, hit the Pentagon and then we were like 'Why aren't they scrambling jets?' We were asking, there was eight or nine people... Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels asking the Lieutenant Colonel in charge of the air force 'why isn't NORAD scrambling jets? and he said 'we received an order to stand down''. And that just perplexed everybody."

9/11 Fireman: Bomb in the building

Foreign central banks net sellers of US debt in wk

Foreign central banks were net sellers of Treasury bonds last week, leading to a reduction in their overall holdings of U.S. securities, Federal Reserve data showed.

The Fed said its holdings of Treasury and agency debt kept for overseas central banks fell by $13.04 billion in the week ended Sept. 20, to stand at a total of $1.67 trillion.

The breakdown of custody holdings showed overseas central banks sold $16.13 billion in Treasury debt to stand at a total $1.13 trillion.

'Just a comma'

George W. Bush appeared on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on the 24th of September and said the following:

BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

White House Said to Bar Hurricane Report

The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported. The possibility that warming conditions may cause storms to become stronger has generated debate among climate and weather experts, particularly in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - part of the Commerce Department - in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.

According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect.

In May, when the report was expected to be released, panel chair Ants Leetmaa received an e-mail from a Commerce official saying the report needed to be made less technical and was not to be released, Nature reported.

Newsweek helps to blindly lead Americans

Newsweek Cover from September 25th:

Carlyle poised to bid for Libyan oil giant, says son of Gaddafi

US private equity group with links to leading Republicans in talks to buy state-controlled Tamoil, valued at €3bn

US private equity giant Carlyle is in talks to acquire Libya's state-controlled oil refining and marketing operation, Tamoil.

Al-Saadi Gaddafi, the son of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the country's long-time leader, said Carlyle was one of four or five groups involved in an international tender to buy 100 per cent of Tamoil. It is thought the business will fetch close to €3bn (£2bn).

U.S. drops Libya from list of terrorist countries

The above makes much more sense in light of the Carlyle acquisistion...doesn't it?~!

UPDATE 9/30/06: Carlyle Group triumphs in $3bn Tamoil auction

U.S. gets ‘Sovietized’ by Eric Margolis

In the late 1980s, I was the first western journalist allowed into the world’s most dreaded prison, Moscow’s sinister Lubyanka. Muscovites dared not even utter the name of KGB’s headquarters, calling it instead after a nearby toy store, “Detsky Mir.”

I still shudder recalling Lubyanka’s underground cells, grim interrogation rooms, and execution cellars where tens of thousands were tortured and shot. I sat at the desk from which the monsters who ran Cheka (Soviet secret police) — Dzerzhinsky, Yagoda, Yezhov, Beria — ordered 30 million victims to their deaths.

Prisoners taken in the dead of night to Lubyanka were systematically beaten for days with rubber hoses and clubs. There were special cold rooms where prisoners could be frozen to near death. Sleep deprivation was a favourite and most effective Cheka technique. So was near-drowning in water fouled with urine and feces.

I recall these past horrors because of what this column has long called the gradual “Sovietization” of the United States. This shameful week, it became clear Canada is also afflicted.

We have seen America’s president and vice president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, advocating some of the same interrogation techniques the KGB used at the Lubyanka. They apparently believe beating, freezing, sleep deprivation and near-drowning are necessary to prevent terrorist attacks. So did Stalin.

The White House insisted that anyone — including Americans — could be kidnapped and tried in camera using “evidence” obtained by torturing other suspects. Bush & Co. deny the U.S. uses torture but reject the basic law of habeaus corpus and U.S. laws against the evil practice. The UN says Bush’s plans violate international law and the Geneva Conventions.

Will The Next Election Be Hacked? by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Fresh disasters at the polls -- and new evidence from an industry insider -- prove that electronic voting machines can't be trusted

The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress, always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9 billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in Cuyahoga County.

Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that can be recounted when equipment malfunctions - an omission that practically invites malicious tampering. "Every board of election has staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me. "Even one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to throw a presidential election."

Monsanto Whistleblower Says Genetically Engineered Crops May Cause Disease

It turns out that the damage done to DNA due to the process of creating a genetically modified organism is far more extensive than previously thought. GM crops routinely create unintended proteins, alter existing protein levels or even change the components and shape of the protein that is created by the inserted gene. Kirk’s concerns about a GM crop producing a harmful misfolded protein remain well-founded, and have been echoed by scientists as one of the many possible dangers that are not being evaluated by the biotech industry’s superficial safety assessments.

Bush Shields Dad on Chile Terrorism

Chilean investigators say the Bush administration is undercutting their case against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for his alleged role in the terrorist assassination of a political rival on the streets of Washington three decades ago, a crime that then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush appears to have tolerated and then helped cover-up.

Full background on CIA/Bush involvement from the National Security Archives


In his September 21, 2001 address to Congress Bush promised to "pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists."

Even though all the evidence in the terrorist bombing of Letelier and Moffitt points directly to Pinochet, Bush has not demanded that Chile extradite him to the United States. Nor did previous Administrations put the bite on Chile. Indeed, Bush has harbored anti-Castro terrorists like Luis Posada Carrilles and Orlando Bosch, both implicated in the sabotage of a Cuban commercial airliner three weeks after the Letelier bombing. Seventy-three people died in that terrorist act.



Cynthia McKinney statement on the issue

'American Inquisition' Fulfills Ike's Prophetic 1961 Warning

Over the course of history, the word inquisition has been restricted to refer to Spain in the Middle Ages. But if one seeks to explain the dangerous mix of religious prejudice, Christian holy war, Islamic jihad, ethnic profiling, racism, mock trials and eavesdropping by secret police, no other term comes to mind.

Not only that, like the export of the Spanish Inquisition, the American Inquisition too has been taken to the far flung corners of the earth. The torturing of victims in secret dungeons remains the same. Missing are burnings at the stake, but given the hideous wonders that white phosphorous can perform on human flesh, and in far less time, who requires such an inefficient procedure?

Although it's common knowledge, one never tires of quoting the prophetic words of President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower, spoke by him during his farewell address to his nation on January 17, 1961:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or our democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Bush Appoints Former ‘Big Dig’ Manager As Special Envoy To Darfur

The Bush Administration’s efforts to end the genocide in Darfur has been plagued by serious errors. Now, the President Bush is appointing Andrew Natsios as special envoy to Darfur to get things back on track.

Who is Andrew Natsios?

– As director of U.S. Agency for Intenational Development Natsios promised that the U.S. contribution to reconstruction of Iraq would be no more that $1.6 billion. Congress has already appropriated nearly $20 billion for reconstruction in Iraq. The CBO estimates the total cost of reconstruction will be between $50 and $100 billion.

– Natsios was the manager of Boston’s “Big Dig,” widely considered one of the most mismanaged public works projects in history.

Sounds like just the guy to help solve the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

It should also be noted that Natsios, as chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has said that those with AIDS in Africa should not get antiretroviral treatment as the wouldn't know when to take the pills (i.e. They can't read a clock).

Physicists seek to put one thing in two places

Physi­cists say they have made an ob­ject move just by watch­ing it. This is in­spir­ing them to a still bold­er proj­ect: put­ting a small, or­di­nary thing in­to two places at once.

It may be a “fan­ta­sy,” ad­mits Keith Schwab of Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in Ith­a­ca, N.Y., one of the re­search­ers. Then again, the first ef­fect seemed that way not long ago, and the sec­ond is re­lat­ed.

The re­search comes from the edge of quan­tum me­chan­ics, the sub­mi­cro­sco­pic realm of fun­da­men­tal par­t­i­cles. There, things be­have with to­tal dis­re­gard for our com­mon sense.

IMF's fears must be heeded

You can't expect the International Monetary Fund to come out and say the world is headed for a global financial crash. And it isn't saying that.

But what it is saying, in its own careful way, is that the risk of such a calamity is increasing.

This may sound quite strange, given the fact that its latest World Economic Outlook is forecasting for 2007 the fourth consecutive year of strong global growth.

But it is why Raghuram Rajan, the IMF's chief economist, told a press briefing in advance of the IMF and World Bank annual meetings that got underway in Singapore this weekend that he was feeling "a little schizophrenic."

As he put it, we are in a world with strong growth projections, but also one in which the downside risks are growing. And those risks have increased since the previous IMF economic outlook in April.

The most difficult risk is that of a "disorderly adjustment" of what finance officials call the global imbalances. This is a way of saying the global economy is skewed and it cannot keep on this way.

On one side is the huge and growing build-up of U.S. borrowings from the rest of the world to finance its unsustainable trade and budget deficits, and on the other, countries such as China and Japan ringing up huge trade surpluses with the United States and lending their surplus funds back to the U.S. to finance its deficits.

This cannot go on forever because the cost of servicing that debt would become too high, and well before that, the foreign investors in U.S. securities would become extremely nervous about continuing to add to their already high holdings of U.S. dollar assets.

The big question is whether these global imbalances can be corrected in an orderly way or whether there will be a disorderly adjustment instead. (If there is a disorderly adjustment, the IMF warns, there could be "a substantial further appreciation of the Canadian dollar.")

Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the IMF, warns that the U.S. "is now soaking up roughly two-thirds of all global net saving, a situation without historical precedent." This year, the U.S. is expected to borrow $800 billion (U.S.), or about $2.2 billion a day.

As he argues, though, "this borrowing binge might end smoothly," but world financial leaders are right to be worried about "a more precipitous realignment that would likely set off a massive dollar depreciation and possibly much worse. Indeed, if policymakers continue to sit on their hands, it is not hard to imagine a sharp global slowdown, or even a devastating financial crisis."
________________________________

The General Accounting Office of the US government generally agrees with the above conclusion. Just read their recent report titled: The Nation’s Long-Term Fiscal Outlook, September 2006 Update, The Bottom Line: Today’s Fiscal Policy Remains Unsustainable

PBS set to reveal 'stealth campaign' to cut healthcare, education

In the voting booth this fall, voters in states across the country will find ballot initiatives with titles like "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" and "SOS - Stop Over Spending."

The aim is to slash state spending, with the potential for deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? This week, NOW investigates how organizations associated with one wealthy New Yorker, Howard Rich, are secretly providing major funding for ballot measures. In some states, those contributions have been matched by ones from Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group headed by the politically well-connected Grover Norquist. Since 2001, Norquist visited the White House nearly 100 times, including six meetings with President Bush.

NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot. Is someone manipulating your state's laws, your vote, and you?

State by State: Ballot Issues and Campaign Finance

Scientists shocked as Arctic polar route emerges

European scientists voiced shock as they showed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe's most northerly outpost to the North Pole itself.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice -- thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer -- had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

Subaru Finds the Most Distant Galaxy

The powerful Subaru telescope in Hawaii has found the most distant galaxy ever seen, located 12.88 billion light-years away - this is only 780 million years after the Big Bang.

Next Stop: Conscription

In early August, about 300 Alaska-based soldiers of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, shortly after returning from Iraq, were ordered to return to Iraq immediately. Because of a bureaucratic bungle, the unit was not informed while in Iraq that its tour of duty had been extended. As a result, the soldiers and their families, relieved and grateful for their safe return, were torn apart once again without adequate time to prepare.

Shortly thereafter the Bush administration announced that at least 2,500 discharged Marines would be involuntarily reactivated for combat duty through the Marine Corps’ Individual Ready Reserves (IRR) program. Both of these developments illustrate just how over-extended the military has become as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how desperate it has become in seeking personnel to fill current needs — let alone those that will come if, as expected, military action is taken against Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or North Korea.

Meanwhile, “centrist” Republicans and Democrats alike are promoting a “Universal Service” program in which all 18-year-olds of both sexes would be required to give a year or two of federally approved “service” as a condition of college admission. This would likely include a military reserve commitment and the option of active-duty service in the military.

In their new campaign manifesto The Plan, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, call for “a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us by establishing, for the first time, an ethic of universal citizen service.... All Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 should be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic civil defense training and community service.... Universal citizen service will bring Americans of every background together to make America safer and more united in common purpose.” One function of that proposal would be to expand the military by at least 100,000 men — a target that belies Emanuel and Reed’s assurance that they don’t endorse a return to conscription.

Link to a post from June regarding the Universal Service bill introduced by Charles Rangel

Media ownership study ordered destroyed

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report "indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.

In a letter sent to Martin Wednesday, Boxer said she was "dismayed that this report, which was done at taxpayer expense more than two years ago, and which concluded that localism is beneficial to the public, was shoved in a drawer."
______________________________

This is one of two (possibly five) reports that were "deep sixed."

Link to the Radio Ownership study

Israeli Diplomat Carrying Large Quantity Of Explosives Arrested In Argentina

Note: This has yet to be corroborated.

Last week, (mid August 2006) a very serious event transpired at the Buenos Aires international airport which the local mainstream press did not however bring to the attention of the public. Today, Red Kalki, relying on reliable sources, brings this matter into the open.

On Wednesday 9th August 2006, Ezeiza airport police arrested an important Israeli diplomat carrying a considerable quantity of explosives. The Zionist representative was en route to Chile and was detained minutes before boarding a plane. Despite his protests, airport police arrested him and informed the Argentine interior ministry of the situation which ordered that the situation be contained.

Firstly, it should be noted that the airport police, all ex aeronautical military police, were previously under the control of the Defence ministry and military command. Since the 'Four winds' (drugs) scandal however, control of this unit has passed to political funcionaries of the Kirchner (Argentine President) government. For various reasons, the unit is experiencing serious problems, among which is the precarious nature of their job security caused by the many failures of their new bosses in the interior ministry of the Krichner government and the many conflicts between the two.

According to various airport sources, including the members of the airport security unit, a verbal argument erupted between members of the unit and and members of the Krichner government who wanted to free the Israeli diplomat because there was no precedent for this type of arrest, which included the implication that if anything were happen as a result of the release of the bomb-laden Israeli diplomat, the blame would fall on the airport security unit.

Bush blocks campaign to put pressure on Sudan over Darfur

The Bush administration and big business interests have been accused of undermining efforts to exert financial pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the killing in Darfur.

A bill that passed the US Congress endorsing state legislation to force publicly owned entities to sell off holdings in companies that do substantial business with Sudan, or sell Khartoum weapons, has now been blocked in the Senate, with campaigners blaming the White House. They say the long-delayed draft put forward last week by the Foreign Relations Committee had removed a clause known as Section 11 that would have thrown its weight behind a celebrity-backed campaign requiring publicly owned entities to dump stock.

Info on the conflict

Darfur has been embroiled in a deadly conflict for over three years. At least 400,000 people have been killed; more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in displaced-persons camps in Sudan or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad; and more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival. Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape, and mass slaughter.

The Bush Administration has recognized these atrocities – carried out against civilians primarily by the government of Sudan and its allied Janjaweed militias – as genocide...yet take a look at the title of this post again...

The ID Chip You Don't Want in Your Passport

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it -- even if it's not set to expire anytime soon. If you don't have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don't want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for "radio-frequency identification." Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it's too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don't want to be a guinea pig on this one.

Unknown Writing System Uncovered On Ancient Olmec Tablet

Science magazine this week details the discovery of a stone block in Veracruz, Mexico, that contains a previously unknown system of writing; believed by archeologists to be the earliest in the Americas.

The slab - named the Cascajal block - dates to the early first millennium BCE and has features that indicate it comes from the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. One of the archaeologists behind the discovery, Brown University's Stephen D. Houston, said that the block and its ancient script "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization."

"It's a tantalizing discovery. I think it could be the beginning of a new era of focus on Olmec civilization," explained Houston. "It's telling us that these records probably exist and that many remain to be found. If we can decode their content, these earliest voices of Mesoamerican civilization will speak to us today."

Construction workers discovered the Cascajal block in a pile of debris in the community of Lomas de Tacamichapa in the late 1990s. Surrounding the piece were ceramic shards, clay figurine fragments, and broken artifacts of ground stone, which have helped the team date the block and its text to the San Lorenzo phase, ending about 900 BCE; approximately 400 years before writing was thought to have first appeared in the Western hemisphere.

9/11 Toxic Dust Whistleblower Raided By SWAT Team

Ground zero hero Major Mike McCormack says he was deliberately targeted for helping release documents on EPA government cover-up, says 75% of police, firemen believe 9/11 cover-up

Major Mike McCormack is a hospital technician and civil air patrol pilot who worked the ground zero site for eight days after the collapse of the twin towers. He is one of the real heroes of 9/11 and was the man who found the American flag that was later displayed as a token of unity atop the rubble.

McCormack was part of the anniversary ceremonies on September 11 2006 and provided many hand-shaking photo-ops for numerous politicians, before returning to his family home in Pennsylvania that night. McCormack returned to his New York home the next morning in preparation to visit ground zero once again.

On the morning of September 12, McCormack's tenant opened the door to see half a dozen detectives outside who began asking questions and demanding to search the building. The detectives didn't have a warrant and needed McCormack's signature to conduct the search.

Having nothing to hide and wanting to assist the police, McCormack signed the paper and the detectives entered the house.

"Three minutes later as I'm walking out of my office with one of the detectives, I have a federal SWAT team that comes in....men in black and all of a sudden they have 9 millimeter handguns and MP5 machine guns aimed at my head," McCormack told the Alex Jones Show.

McCormack said the government had "abandoned" the heroes of 9/11 and that "when Alex tells you this is Nazi Germany, you best believe it," describing the events as "part of the new world order."

Bush Hails ‘Fiscal Responsibility’ As GAO Warns of ‘Ever-Larger’ ‘Out of Control’ Deficits

A follow-up to a report published by the GAO.

President Bush on our country’s fiscal health, 9/15/06:

If the American people would take a step back and realize how effective our policies have been, given the circumstances. … I’ve strongly believed the reason it is because we cut taxes, and at the same time, showed fiscal responsibility here in Washington with the people’s money. That’s why the deficit could be cut in half by 2009, or before.

Government Accountability Office on our country’s fiscal health, 9/15/06:

GAO’s current long-term simulations continue to show ever-larger deficits resulting in a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control. … [U]nder either optimistic (”Baseline extended”) or more realistic assumptions, current fiscal policy is unsustainable. … The question is how our current imprudent and unsustainable path will end. At some point, action will be taken to change the Nation’s fiscal course.

Earlier post on the GAO report

ORIANA FALLACI: BURIAL SUNDAY AT FLORENCE EVANGELICAL CEMETERY

Oriana Fallaci, who passed away at the Santa Chiara clinic in Florence on the night of September 14th, will be buried tomorrow in the Evangelical Cemetery of Laurels at Galluzzo. There will be no formal funeral, at her request, just a few old friends to say good-bye and then the burial.



Recent New Yorker article on Fallaci

Wikipedia entry on Fallaci

Reporter Palast Slips Clutches of Homeland Security

Forget the orange suit. Exxon Mobil Corporation, which admits it was behind the criminal complaint brought by Homeland Security against me and television producer Matt Pascarella, has informed me that the oil company will no longer push charges that Pascarella and I threatened “critical infrastructure.”

Original post on Palast's run-in

Test nonlethal weapons on U.S. citizens, official says

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

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Air Force 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."

Rep. Ney Admits Selling Influence

Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) agreed yesterday to plead guilty to corruption charges after admitting to performing a variety of official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel, sports tickets and thousands of dollars in gambling chips. He is the first elected official to face prison time in the ongoing influence-peddling investigation of former GOP lobbying powerhouse Jack Abramoff.

After fiercely proclaiming his innocence for more than a year, Ney signed a two-count plea agreement Wednesday that the Justice Department filed in federal court yesterday. The charges of conspiracy and making a false statement could carry a prison sentence of up to 10 years, but prosecutors plan to seek a term of 27 months. He faces up to $500,000 in fines.

The six-term Republican said in a statement yesterday that he was seeking treatment for alcoholism and was sorry for "serious mistakes" that have brought pain to his family and constituents. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Washington on Oct. 13 to formally enter his plea.

Previous posts that include references to Ney

The Nation’s Long-Term Fiscal Outlook: September 2006 Update

The Bottom Line: Today’s Fiscal Policy Remains Unsustainable

GAO’s current long-term simulations continue to show ever-larger deficits resulting in a federal debt burden that ultimately spirals out of control. The timing of deficits and the resulting debt build up varies depending on the assumptions used, but under either optimistic (“Baseline extended”) or more realistic assumptions, current fiscal policy is unsustainable.

Simulations are not forecasts or predictions. They are designed to ask the question “what if?” GAO’s “what ifs” are that discretionary spending may grow faster or slower, and tax cuts may be renewed or allowed to expire – but in both cases, the Nation’s long-term fiscal future is “at risk.” Under any reasonable set of expectations about future spending and revenues, the risks posed to the Nation’s future financial condition are too high to be acceptable.
_________________________

Another one of the Bush lies exposed.

National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program

The DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Health Resources and Services Administration, National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is designed to compensate individuals in the event an "unforseen consequence" of taking a vaccine occurs.

The most recent list of petitioners is listed here.

Sadly, since 1988, there have been a total of 11,830 claims filed within this program. Of those claims, 4,340 of them were dismissed outright. 1,985 claims were compensated, and 945 claims were filed due to the death of the person vaccinated.

This should put it in better perspective:

36.9% of claims filed were dismissed by the Department

16.8% of claims filed were compensated by the Department

8.0% of claims filed were the result of a death
________________________________

CRS Report: Mandatory Vaccinations: Precedent and Current Laws

CRS Report: Federal and State Quarantine and Isolation Authority

Bush should remember Poppy

Presidential Determination No. 2006–23 of September 13, 2006: Continuation of the Exercise of Certain Authorities under the Trading with the Enemy Act

This determination extends for one year the authorities to control certain foreign assets, transactions, and, of course, Cuban assets and transactions.

Oddly, or ironically, in October of 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, the U.S. government halted operations at New York's Union Banking Corporation. A bank official was charged with "Running Nazi front groups in the United States."

His name: Prescott Bush.

Prescott Bush, father of future U.S President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, had been hard at work on behalf of his Nazi partners. In flagrant violation of U.S. law, Prescott Bush had worked tirelessly to launder money, procure raw materials, arrange transportation and provide guidance for the Nazi war effort and the German army he had helped to build.

For you skeptics, here is a link to an article from the British paper The Guardian about this topic

IAEA: US report on Iran 'outrageous'

United Nations nuclear inspectors have attacked as "outrageous and dishonest" parts of a US congressional committee intelligence report on Iran's nuclear work.

A senior aide to Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN's nuclear watchdog - sent a letter to Peter Hoekstra, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, complaining that the report included serious distortions of IAEA findings.

The letter said the errors suggested that Iran's nuclear fuel programme was much more advanced than a series of IAEA reports and Washington's own intelligence assessments had determined.

It also said the agency secretariat took "strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion" that the IAEA decided to remove a senior safeguards inspector for supposedly concluding that Iran intended to build nuclear weapons.

The congressional report contained "an outrageous and dishonest suggestion" the inspector was removed for having not stuck to an alleged IAEA policy barring its "officials from telling the whole truth" about Iran, said the letter.

Polar Ice is Melting Fast

New data gathered by NASA’s QuikScat satellite has found that ice at the Arctic polar ice cap is disappearing rapidly. Just between 2004 and 2005, the spacecraft measured a loss of 14% of the perennial sea ice; ice that normally lasts all year round. This is an amount of ice measuring 720,000 square kilometers (280,000 square miles), an area the size of Texas. Scientists expect that the coverage of perennial sea ice will continue to decrease this year as well.

The photo shows the difference between the polar ice cap from 2004 to 2005.

Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards dies

Former Gov. Ann Richards, the witty and flamboyant Democrat who went from homemaker to national political celebrity, died Wednesday night after a battle with cancer, a family spokeswoman said. She was 73.

The silver-haired, silver-tongued Richards said she entered politics to help others — especially women and minorities who were often ignored by Texas' male-dominated establishment.

Her single term as governor had ended in a 1994 defeat to George W. Bush, who went from besting his father's silver-haired critic to the governor's office to the presidency.

She once said about Bush I: “Poor George, he can’t help it… he was born with a silver foot in his mouth!”

RIP Gov. Richards

Book: Bush told reporter Jews are 'all going to hell'

In The Architect: Karl Rove and the Master Plan for Absolute Power, Austin-based journalist James Moore and Wayne Slater, senior political reporter for the Dallas Morning News, will allege that Bush once made anti-semitic comments to a reporter.

"You know what I'm gonna tell those Jews when I get to Israel, don't you Herman?" a then Governor George W. Bush allegedly asked a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman.

When the journalist, Ken Herman, replied that he did not know, Bush reportedly delivered the punch line: "I'm telling 'em they're all going to hell."

Bush's thoughts on the fate of non-Christian souls became a minor source of controversy after he told the Houston Post in 1993 that only those who "accept Jesus Christ" go to Heaven. However, the future president was also earlier briefly engaged to a half-Jewish woman.
_________________________________

Germany gets first rabbis since WW2

Tank low and running on fumes

From the Austrailan paper The Age:

A CONTROVERSIAL theory that global oil production will peak within 25 years has been embraced by a Senate committee with the warning: be worried now.

The committee says that, like Sweden, which plans to be oil-free by 2020, Australia should be preparing for an irreversible decline in world oil supplies.

A report released last week by the Senate's rural and regional affairs and transport committee is the first official recognition at a national level of the "peak oil" theory. This suggests that global oil production will peak before 2030, then start declining, with terrible social and economic consequences.

Palast Charged with Journalism in the First Degree

It’s true. It’s weird. It’s nuts. The Department of Homeland Security, after a five-year hunt for Osama, has finally brought charges against… Greg Palast. I kid you not. Send your cakes with files to the Air America wing at Guantanamo.

Though not just yet. Fatherland Security has informed me that television producer Matt Pascarella and I have been charged with unauthorized filming of a “critical national security structure” in Louisiana.

Click here to Read the full story. Click here for the first part and here for the second part of the Democracy Now! report.

Everyone's First Reaction Was "Controlled Demolition"

Rarely highlighted footage of an NBC news anchor commenting that the collapse of the twin towers was by no means accidental and that it was a "planned" event, emphasizes the point that before the official mind control script was introduced and parroted forevermore, everybody's first reaction was "controlled demolition."

The NBC anchor featured in this clip is simply reacting to the events he is witnessing with common sense in stating that the collapse of the trade towers was obviously a planned event and by no means an accident or a simple consequence of jets hitting the buildings.

"This was clearly -- the way the structure is collapsing -- this was the result of something that was planned."

"This is not, it's not accidental that the first tower just happened to collapse and then the second tower just happened to collapse in exactly the same way."

"How they accomplished this, we don't know. But clearly this is what happened."

Duke scientists set sights on cloak of invisibility

After years of work, David Schurig and David R. Smith at Duke University will finish their research and have absolutely nothing to show for it: They're making a cloak of invisibility.

Really.

So unusual is this undertaking for a serious academic electrical engineering team that Smith has created an elaborate Web site discussing the dream of invisibility as viewed in science fiction--Harry Potter and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft are mentioned--and relating such ideas to scientific fact.

In theory, Smith said, it's possible to make light follow curved lines that skirt an object rather than illuminate it. Light "circulates around the void--like water flowing past a rock in a stream," Smith explained.

This would create a void in space--a place that is invisible.

Bush to hold talks on Ali G creator after diplomatic row

US President George Bush is to host White House talks on British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen, 35, creator of Ali G, has infuriated the Kazakhstan government with his portrayal of Borat, a bumbling Kazakh TV presenter.

And now a movie of Borat's adventures in the US has caused a diplomatic incident.

The opening scene, which shows Borat lustily kissing his sister goodbye and setting off for America in a car pulled by a horse, had audiences in stitches when it was first shown last week.

But the film, which has just premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, has prompted a swift reaction from the Kazakhstan government, which is launching a PR blitz in the States.

Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev is to fly to the US to meet President Bush in the coming weeks and on the agenda will be his country's image.
___________________________________

Becasue of the important position Kazakhstan holds in the realm of oil politics, I'm sure that Bush will have Cohen arrested for "terrorizing" the population of Kazakhstan in a sign of solidarity with the repressive government of that country.

Big Government Solutions Don't Work/ The Law of Opposites

By HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS:

...

Our support for dictatorial Arab leaders is a thorn in the side of the large Muslim population in the Middle East, and one of the main reasons Osama bin Laden declared war against us. We talk of democracy and self-determination, but the masses of people in the Middle East see through our hypocrisy when we support the Sunni secular dictators in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan and at one time, Saddam Hussein.

In the late 1970s and the 1980s the CIA spent over $4 billion on a program called “Operation Cyclone.” This was our contribution to setting up training schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, including the U.S. itself, to teach “sabotage skills.” The purpose was to use these individuals in fighting our enemies in the Middle East, including the Soviets. But as one could predict, this effort has come back to haunt us, as our radical ally Osama bin Laden turned his fury against us after routing the Soviets. It is estimated that over 12,000 fighters were trained in the camps we set up in Afghanistan. They were taught how to make bombs, carry out sabotage, and use guerilla war tactics. And now we’re on the receiving end of this U.S. financed program-- hardly a good investment.

It’s difficult to understand why our policy makers aren’t more cautious in their efforts to police the world, once it’s realized how unsuccessful we have been. It seems they always hope that next time our efforts won’t come flying back in our face.

...

9/11 Kean Commission Report Exposed as 'Fraud of Historic Proportions' on 9/11 Fifth Anniversary by Former 'Star Wars' Program Director

On the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, three hours before the Kean-Hamilton luncheon address at the National Press Club, the former Air Force officer and director of the 'Star Wars' program who just won Florida's 15th District Democratic primary with 54 percent of the vote on an explicit platform to expose the fraud of the Kean Commission Report, and top 9/11 researchers, authors and activists will present hard proof that the official narrative of the Kean-Hamilton Commission and Bush- Cheney Administration is a fraud of world historic proportions.

Proposed legislation for a new and genuinely independent expert investigation, the first reality-based 9/11 feature film, and the International Grand Jury on the Crimes of 9/11 will be announced.

Comments on the state of the US by Dr. Robert Bowman, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), one of the nation's foremost authorities on national security, directed all 'Star Wars' programs under Presidents Ford and Carter, flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, has a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech, and has chaired eight international conferences. Dr. Bowman is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, and the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, among many others.

More info on this meeting as it becomes available...

Bush Aims to Kill War Crimes Act

The US War Crimes Act of 1996 makes it a felony to commit grave violations of the Geneva Conventions. The Washington Post recently reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. Observers on The Hill say the Administration plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed Republican majority--perhaps as part of the military appropriations bill, the proposals for Guantánamo tribunals or a new catch-all "anti-terrorism" package. Why are they doing it, and how can they be stopped?

American prohibitions on abuse of prisoners go back to the Lieber Code promulgated by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The first international Geneva Convention dates from the following year.

After World War II, international law protecting prisoners of war and all noncombatants was codified in the Geneva Conventions. They were ratified by the US Senate and, under Article II of the Constitution, they thereby became the law of the land.

Noting that the statute "prohibits the commission of a 'war crime' by or against a US person, including US officials," he warned that "it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges." The President's determination that the Geneva Conventions did not apply "would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."

Unfortunately for top Bush officials, that "solid defense" was demolished this summer when the Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruled that the Geneva Conventions were indeed the law of the land.

The Court singled out Geneva's Common Article 3, which provides a minimum standard for the treatment of all noncombatants under all circumstances. They must be "treated humanely" and must not be subjected to "cruel treatment," "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," or "the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples."

As David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center pointed out in the August 10 issue of The New York Review of Books, the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rusmfeld "suggests that President Bush has already committed a war crime, simply by establishing the [Guantánamo] military tribunals and subjecting detainees to them" because "the Court found that the tribunals violate Common Article 3--and under the War Crimes Act, any violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime." A similar argument would indicate that top US officials have also committed war crimes by justifying interrogation methods that, according to the testimony of US military lawyers, also violate Common Article 3.

Lo and behold, the legislation the Administration has circulated on Capitol Hill would decriminalize such acts retroactively. Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the Associated Press on August 10, "I think what this bill can do is in effect immunize past crimes. That's why it's so dangerous." Human rights attorney Scott Horton told Democracy Now! on August 16 that one of the purposes of the proposed legislation is "to grant immunity or impunity to certain individuals. And these are mostly decision-makers within the government."

Link to the original The Nation article

Indications add up to government conspiracy

An Aug. 8 Seattle P-I editorial asked, "Where are the facts? Where is the evidence?" about government complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

The case for complicity begins with motive and benefit. In his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard," Zbigniew Brzezinski argues that the key to global dominance in the 21st century lies in control of Central Asian oil and gas reserves. Establishing a U.S. presence there would require the kind of military deployment that only "a direct external threat" could justify.

And in a 2000 paper titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," Project for a New American Century, whose founding members were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, argued for vast increases in military spending to assure American global dominance. Such a process, PNAC said, would take time absent "a catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Military deployment into Central Asia followed 9/11, as well as their desired increases in military spending.

The symmetry between the 9/11 attacks and U.S. policy goals is but the backdrop to the case for government complicity. The picture becomes clearer through considering the following:

Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, the head of the Pakistani intelligence service, was in Washington when the attacks occurred, conferring with government officials. The Indian press subsequently implicated him in wiring $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker. When the story broke, he was pressured into retirement at U.S. insistence. His link to the attacks was never pursued.

Two FBI agents approached attorney David Schippers with specific foreknowledge about the attacks. His repeated calls to Attorney General John Ashcroft were never returned. An article in New American on March 11, 2002, corroborated the agents' story. They claimed that knowledge of the plot was widespread within the FBI for months before 9/11.

The air defense system breakdown on the day of Sept. 11 was unprecedented. Well-practiced protocols for dealing with suspected hijackings failed to function for an astonishing 90 minutes. The little-known existence of "coincidental" military war games has since been exposed, which undoubtedly caused confusion. And now, the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission claim (in a new book, "Without Precedent") that the military was less than completely honest.

The collapse of steel-frame buildings -- such as the World Trade Center Towers -- due to fire is unprecedented. The collapse of Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, is especially inexplicable. Its collapse late in the afternoon of Sept. 11 exhibited 10 specific features of a controlled demolition, as did the collapse of the Twin Towers. More important, numerous eyewitnesses attest to hearing multiple explosions at the time. And, Steven Jones, a professor at Brigham Young University, discovered Thermate, an incendiary compound, in two molten steel samples taken from the site.

From the beginning, the Bush administration delayed and otherwise impeded the investigation, preferring to focus on the foreign invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq enabled by the attacks.

Those are but some of many indications that together add up to government complicity. In the words of David Ray Griffin, world-renowned theologian and truth advocate, the agenda and events surrounding 9/11 reveal a "deeply perverted value system" at odds with that of the American people. For the sake of the common welfare, the truth behind 9/11 must be exposed.
________________________________

White House Targets Conspiracy Theorists As Terrorist Recruiters

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.

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."

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

Federal agency releases 'rebuttal' to 9/11 theories on the destruction of WTC towers

In the face of polls which suggest that many Americans are skeptical about the government's official version of what happened on September 11, 2001, a federal agency has released a "rebuttal" to some prevalent "conspiracy theories" about the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

A few days ago, as the five-year anniversary of the attacks approaches, the National Institute of Standards and Technology posted a FAQ sheet on it's website entitled "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions", based upon its three-year building and fire safety investigation.
______________________________

THE TOP 40
REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001

The above is an absolute must read, and a great link to send anyone of your friends and family who still believe the official account.

Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees

Stealth Repeal of Clean Water Act Protections by Invoking "Sovereign Immunity"

The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

Citing an "unpublished opinion of the [Attorney General's] Office of Legal Counsel," the Secretary of Labor's Administrative Review Board has ruled federal employees may no longer pursue whistleblower claims under the Clean Water Act. The opinion invoked the ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity which is based on the old English legal maxim that "The King Can Do No Wrong." It is an absolute defense to any legal action unless the "sovereign" consents to be sued.

The opinion and the ruling reverse nearly two decades of precedent. Approximately 170,000 federal employees working within environmental agencies are affected by the loss of whistleblower rights.

EPA BEGINS CLOSING LIBRARIES BEFORE CONGRESS ACTS ON PLAN

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is moving ahead this summer to shut down libraries, end public access to research materials and box up unique collections on the assumption that Congress will not reverse President Bush’s proposed budget reductions, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA’s own scientists are stepping up protests against closures on the grounds that it will make their work more difficult by impeding research, enforcement and emergency response capabilities.

In an August 15, 2006 document entitled “EPA FY 2007 Library Plan,” agency management indicates that it will begin immediately implementing President Bush’s proposed budget cuts for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, without waiting for Congress to act. The memo describes what EPA terms “deaccessioning procedures” (defined as “the removal of library materials from the physical collection”) for its network of 26 technical libraries.

• Regional libraries, located in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City, serving 15 Midwestern and Southern states will be closed by September 30. Other regional library hours and services will be gradually reduced;

• Public access to EPA libraries and collections will end as soon as possible;

• As many as 80,000 original documents which are not electronically available will be boxed up (“put their collections into stasis,” in the words of the EPA memo) and shipped for eventual “digitizing.”

EPA scientists represented by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest federal employee union, had previously sent a “Demand to Bargain” on the issue, but EPA managers dismissed that demand as premature. The August 15th EPA memo, however, shows that the union concern was far from premature. On August 16, the AFGE National Council of EPA Locals filed a formal grievance demanding that all library closures be put on hold until affected scientists can negotiate the matter as required in the collective bargaining agreement.

Links to earlier posts on the topic, going back to 3/2006

And there is no Republican war on science?!...

FDA APPROVES VIRAL ADULTERATION OF OUR FOOD SUPPLY

On Friday, August 18, 2006, the FDA approved a viral cocktail to be sprayed on foods we eat. This is the first time viruses have been approved for use as food additives. The FDA wants you to believe it will be safe to consume these viruses every day for the rest of your life with no adverse health effects. This is a monumental announcement by the FDA, indicating they are throwing all caution to the wind regarding the safety of our food supply.

The stated goal of the new FDA-approved viruses is to kill a rare bacterium known as Listeria monocytogenes. This bacterium is killed by cooking; however, it poses a problem in meats that are cooked during processing and not cooked again prior to consumption, so it can readily infect foods such as deli meats.
_______________________

Of the approximate 5,000 food related deaths per year in the US, about 500 (or 10%) are caused by Listeria. This is something to watch...

US Department of State Final Rule on International Agreements

This final rule regards the Publication, Coordination, and Reporting of International Agreements. As discussed in an earlier post, the rule will prevent State from disclosing certain international agreements and treaties to the Congress and the public at large.

Earlier post.

Rep. Jim Cooper: Bush is Hiding the True National Debt. It's Worse than You've Heard. Much Worse.

Though the Bush Administration's official budget lists the national debt and deficit as being incredibly high, they are actually far worse than reported, according to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). But don’t just take his word for it, even if Cooper is a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law graduate. The following figures appear in the official U.S. Financial Report, released by the Treasury Department:

The true national debt is $49 trillion, not the $8.3 trillion Bush reported.

What accounts for the huge discrepancy? Unlike businesses, the government uses "cash" instead of "accrual" accounting. This means that the government does not report future spending promises like Medicare and Social Security, or even future spending guarantees like veterans' benefits and federal employee pensions.

President Tells Katie Couric That Connecting Iraq To War On Terror Is Hardest Part Of His Job

I repeat: President Tells Katie Couric That Connecting Iraq To War On Terror Is Hardest Part Of His Job

President Tells Katie Couric That Connecting Iraq To War On Terror Is Hardest Part Of His Job

President Tells Katie Couric That Connecting Iraq To War On Terror Is Hardest Part Of His Job

President Tells Katie Couric That Connecting Iraq To War On Terror Is Hardest Part Of His Job

Link to the statement made to Couric

At Bill library, Bush sounds sub-versive

President Bush once daydreamed about blasting Bill Clinton's presidential library to smithereens, according to a new book.

In "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime," former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal recounts a November 2004 visit by Bush and his political guru Karl Rove to the William J. Clinton Library in Little Rock, Ark., on the banks of the Arkansas River.

"Bush appeared distracted and glanced repeatedly at his watch," Blumenthal writes about a presidential tour during the library's dedication. "When he stopped to gaze at the river, where Secret Service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said: 'Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there.' Bush replied: 'A submarine could take this place out.'"

Mexican leftist will never accept rival's win

Mexico's leftist opposition leader said on September 3rd, he will never recognize his right-wing rival as president and vowed a "radical transformation" of the country by setting up a parallel government.

"We will never accept usurpation nor recognize a president-elect who is illegitimate," the former mayor of Mexico City told a rally of thousands of supporters in the capital's main square.

For more than a month, his leftist supporters have been protesting the election result by occupying the giant Zocalo square, the symbolic center of power in Mexico since Aztec times. They have also taken over a long section of the main Reforma boulevard, paralyzing the city center and causing traffic chaos.

Lopez Obrador did not say how he plans to set up a parallel government but in the past he said his supporters could continue the current street protests for years if necessary. He has also promised to avoid violence.

New doubts about Mexico's election Judges who determined the outcome are not releasing details about recount

9/9/2006: Top electoral officials and judges are feeding doubts about the outcome of Mexico's presidential vote by declining to release details about a recount of 4 million ballots and by moving quickly to destroy all 41 million ballots, legal experts said Friday.

The seven judges of the Federal Electoral Tribunal declared conservative candidate Felipe Calderon president-elect Tuesday. But the tribunal's 300-page ruling on the election left some experts shaking their heads.

John Ackerman, a professor of law at the National University of Mexico, said the judges had made no attempt to investigate improprieties in electoral financing and other charges made by losing leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The ruling also failed to cite a single legal precedent in its rejection of a Lopez Obrador bid to have the election annulled, Ackerman said.

The court opened ballot boxes and recounted 4 million votes, but did so only to determine whether there was evidence of outright fraud -- and declared that it had found none. The actual tallies from the recount were not released to the public.

Scientists Erase Memories in Rat Brains

Scientists have for the first time erased long-term memories in rats and also directly seen how the brain is changed by learning.

The research points to potential human benefits.

These findings could prove key "to understanding how memories can be augmented, for example in diseases that affect memory, like Alzheimer's," said neuroscientist Mark Bear at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.
______________________________

Remember the "flashy thing" from the Men in Black movie?

Iran says U.S., Israel ordered September 11 attacks

The Supreme Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, DC.

“The events of September 11 were ordered by U.S. [officials] and Mossad so that they could carry out their strategy of pre-emption and warmongering and unipolarisation in order to dominate the Middle East”, Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi told military commanders on Tuesday. His comments were reported by the state-run news agency ISNA.

Gene-altered flies testify to global warming

Populations of fruit flies on three separate continents have independently evolved identical gene changes within just two decades, apparently to cope with global warming.

“What we’re showing is that global warming is leaving its imprint on genes,” says Raymond Huey at the University of Washington in Seattle, US, who made the discovery with colleagues. “For this to happen in such a short time-frame in so many parts of the world is rather disturbing,” he says.

The researchers analysed DNA from Drosophila subobscura, a species of fruit fly originating in Europe, but which spread to the west coasts of South and North America in the late 1970s. They took samples in 26 locations in Europe, South America and North America where the fly species had been analysed before for chromosomal changes.