Get off the grid!
Yes, that’s right. I said it. Get of f the grid. That may be easy for an urbanite to say, but it’s just as easy said as done.
Yeah, I get it. You hate the system, you hate society, but there you sit, fat and oily in front of your state-of-the-art flat screen. Blissfully ignorant of the prehensile inky-black wire, snaking it’s filthy way into the pulsating nether hole of the local Con-Ed whore.
And you call yourself free?
Gain some much-needed self respect and pry those ashy lips off that electric teat.
Build yourself a solar power generator.
What I mean by that is simple. You can easily build a system that will allow you to generate electricity to power all of those anchors you wear around your neck, like your cancer inducing cell phone, that stylish ipod, and perhaps that very becoming computer your are chained to.
Intrigued? It’s simple. Type in build a solar power gererator in the search engine of your choice, Spend a couple hundred dollars seed capital, invest in a solar panel and a few electronic odds and ends, and become pseudo-self-sufficient.
Worst case scenario, you spend a few bucks on some cool looking gizmos that will impress the locals. People like a new-fangled contraption.
Best case scenario: when they decide to turn out the lights, you can power that 13”
television and watch the revolution, and with the right attachments, you can even pop some corn.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Monday, February 19, 2007
Bank of America Markets Credit Cards to Illegal Immigrants
Lender Risks Controversy Aiming New Credit Card at Illegal Immigrants
By MIRIAM JORDAN and VALERIE BAUERLEIN
LOS ANGELES -- In the latest sign of the U.S. banking industry's aggressive pursuit of the Hispanic market, Bank of America Corp. has quietly begun offering credit cards to customers without Social Security numbers -- typically illegal immigrants.
In recent years, banks across the country have begun offering checking accounts and, in some cases, mortgages to the nation's fast-growing ranks of undocumented immigrants, most of whom are Hispanic. But these immigrants generally haven't been able to get major credit cards, making it hard for them to develop a credit history and expand their purchasing power.
The new Bank of America program is open to people who lack both a Social Security number and a credit history, as long as they have held a checking account with the bank for three months without an overdraft. Most adults in the U.S. who don't have a Social Security number are undocumented immigrants.
The Charlotte, N.C., banking giant tested the program last year at five branches in Los Angeles, and last week expanded it to 51 branches in Los Angeles County, home to the largest concentration of illegal immigrants in the U.S. The bank hopes to roll out the program nationally later this year.
"We are willing to grant credit to someone with little or no credit history," says Lance Weaver, Bank of America's head of international card services, whose team designed the program based in part on the bank's experience in markets like Spain, which lack conventional credit bureaus to rate a client's credit-worthiness.
The credit cards involved aren't cheap. They come with a high interest rate and an upfront fee. And the idea of catering to illegal immigrants is controversial.
Bank of America defends the program, saying it complies with U.S. banking and antiterrorism laws. Company executives say that the initiative isn't about politics, but rather about meeting the needs of an untapped group of potential customers.
"These people are coming here for quality of life, and they deserve somebody to give them a chance to achieve that quality of life," says Brian Tuite, the bank's director of Latin America card operations and one of the architects of the program.
Critics say Bank of America is knowingly making a product available to people who are violating U.S. immigration law. "They are clearly crossing the line; they are actually aiding and abetting people who broke the law," says Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that advocates a crackdown on illegal immigration.
Typical of the new card's customers is Antonio Sanchez, a Mexican immigrant whose only major asset is a white 1996 Ford Thunderbird, which he drives to the two restaurants where he works each day on opposite sides of Los Angeles. Mr. Sanchez, who says he sneaked across the border a decade ago, has been a customer of Bank of America's East Hollywood branch for nine years. He has no borrowing history and no Social Security number.
Paying Balances
To obtain a Bank of America Visa card with a $500 line of credit, Mr. Sanchez had to put down $99. If he stays within his $500 limit and pays his balances in a timely fashion, he will receive his $99 security payment back in three to six months, and his credit limit might be increased.
"I always wanted to start building credit to buy a home, but I couldn't," says Mr. Sanchez, a father of three, who earns about $25,000 a year from his two jobs. "When a señorita at the bank told me about this card, I couldn't miss the opportunity to get it. You need credit to succeed in this country."
The variable annual percentage rate charged on Mr. Sanchez's card is 21.24%, higher than the average interest rate of 18.1% card issuers nationwide charge on unpaid balances, according to the Nilson Report, an industry newsletter based in Carpinteria, Calif.
David Robertson, publisher of the report, says a rate of 21.24% is "unquestionably high." "If that's the rate you're offered, it's a pretty safe bet you're in a high-risk group," he said.
To assess an applicant, the bank employs "judgmental lending," a concept pioneered by MBNA Corp., the credit-card company that Bank of America acquired in January 2006. In essence, the bank bases its evaluation of a potential client's credit-worthiness on a subjective review by its employees, rather than on standardized financial data crunched by a computer.
Unorthodox initiatives like the new credit-card program may be crucial to Bank of America's long-term success. In the past the bank, which operates in 31 states and the District of Columbia, grew mostly by buying up other banks. Now, however, it is bumping up against a regulatory cap that bars any U.S. bank from an acquisition that would give it more than 10% of the nation's total bank deposits. That means Bank of America's only way to grow domestically is to sell more products to existing customers and to attract new ones.
Opening Accounts
Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank after Citigroup Inc. in terms of market capitalization, estimates that there are 28 million Hispanics in its operating area and that most of them, regardless of their immigration status, don't have a bank. It hopes the allure of a credit card will persuade hundreds of thousands more Latinos to open accounts.
"If we don't disproportionately grow in the Hispanic [market]...we aren't going to grow" as a bank, says Liam McGee, Bank of America's consumer and small-business banking chief.
Illegal immigrants have typically relied on loan sharks and neighborhood finance shops for credit. But that has begun to change. A few years ago, a handful of community banks in the U.S. began offering mortgages to illegal immigrants, as long as they could prove they had stable employment and paid U.S. taxes with an individual tax identification number, or ITIN.
In December 2005, Wells Fargo & Co. began extending mortgages to consumers with an ITIN. The bank is currently evaluating a pilot program in Los Angeles and Orange counties before deciding whether to expand it.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said banking products aimed at illegal immigrants "reinforce the need for a temporary worker program" that the Bush administration has been promoting. That program would screen, tax and otherwise regulate immigrant workers and, the administration contends, would squeeze out illegal workers who now use forged or stolen documents to get jobs, driver's licenses and occasionally credit.
Anti-money-laundering regulations passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks put more pressure on banks to verify customers' identity and watch for suspicious transactions, but they don't require banks to ascertain whether account holders are in the U.S. legally. Most banks require a Social Security number or ITIN to open an account, but regulations also allow them to accept other government-issued forms of identification in some instances, including passport numbers, alien identification numbers or any government-issued document with photo showing nationality or place of residence.
A handful of retailers, such as Los Angeles's closely held La Curacao department store chain, have boosted their business by cultivating illegal immigrants with store credit cards. "Once you capture them, they become very loyal," says Ron Azarkman, chief executive of La Curacao, which has developed its own in-house credit-ratings system. "This is a promising market, as long as it is carefully managed," he says, adding that the average APR charged by his company is 22.9%.
Word of Mouth
Bank of America hasn't launched an ad campaign for the new card. For the time being, it is counting on word of mouth that starts with its employees at each banking center. Many of the Spanish-speaking account holders who come to teller Luz Quintanilla's window at Bank of America's East Hollywood branch, already have a Social Security number and regular credit card with the bank. But she suggests in Spanish that "maybe you have family or friends who don't have a Social Security number, but wish to build their credit."
In selling the card, a major challenge is to persuade immigrants who are sometimes wary of plastic that holding a credit card is an important step on the way to obtaining loans for big-ticket items, such as a car or even a home. Pictures of a check book, credit card, car and house in ascending order illustrate this concept in one pamphlet in Spanish and English titled "How to Build Your Credit, Step by Step."
--Ann Carrns contributed to this article
Study Finds No Link Between Marijuana Use And Lung Cancer
People who smoke marijuana--even heavy, long-term marijuana users--do not appear to be at increased risk of developing lung cancer.
Marijuana smoking also did not appear to increase the risk of head and neck cancers, such as cancer of the tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus, the study found.
The findings were a surprise to the researchers. "We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500-1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," said the senior researcher, Donald Tashkin, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles.
The study looked at 611 people in Los Angeles County who developed lung cancer, 601 who developed cancer of the head or neck regions, and 1,040 people without cancer who were matched on age, gender and neighborhood. The researchers used the University of Southern California Tumor Registry, which is notified as soon as a patient in Los Angeles County receives a diagnosis of cancer.
They limited the study to people under age 60. "If you were born prior to 1940, you were unlikely to be exposed to marijuana use during your teens and 20s--the time of peak marijuana use," Dr. Tashkin said. People who were exposed to marijuana use in their youth are just now getting to the age when cancer typically starts to develop, he added.
Subjects were asked about lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol, as well as other drugs, their diet, occupation, family history of cancer and socioeconomic status. The subjects' reported use of marijuana was similar to that found in other surveys, Dr. Tashkin noted.
The heaviest smokers in the study had smoked more than 22,000 marijuana cigarettes, or joints, while moderately heavy smokers had smoked between 11,000 to 22,000 joints. Even these smokers did not have an increased risk of developing cancer. People who smoked more marijuana were not at any increased risk compared with those who smoked less marijuana or none at all.
The study found that 80% of lung cancer patients and 70% of patients with head and neck cancer had smoked tobacco, while only about half of patients with both types of cancer smoked marijuana.
There was a clear association between smoking tobacco and cancer. The study found a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing both lung cancer and head and neck cancers, findings that were consistent with many previous studies.
The new findings are surprising for several reasons, Dr. Tashkin said. Previous studies have shown that marijuana tar contains about 50% higher concentrations of chemicals linked to lung cancer, compared with tobacco tar, he noted. Smoking a marijuana cigarette deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco. "Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Dr. Tashkin said. "And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers--they hold their breath about four times longer, allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lung."
One possible explanation for the new findings, he said, is that THC, a chemical in marijuana smoke, may encourage aging cells to die earlier and therefore be less likely to undergo cancerous transformation.
The next step, Dr. Tashkin says, is to study the DNA samples of the subjects, to see whether there are some heavy marijuana users who may be at increased risk of developing cancer if they have a genetic susceptibility for cancer.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Thoracic Society.
Marijuana smoking also did not appear to increase the risk of head and neck cancers, such as cancer of the tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus, the study found.
The findings were a surprise to the researchers. "We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500-1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," said the senior researcher, Donald Tashkin, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles.
The study looked at 611 people in Los Angeles County who developed lung cancer, 601 who developed cancer of the head or neck regions, and 1,040 people without cancer who were matched on age, gender and neighborhood. The researchers used the University of Southern California Tumor Registry, which is notified as soon as a patient in Los Angeles County receives a diagnosis of cancer.
They limited the study to people under age 60. "If you were born prior to 1940, you were unlikely to be exposed to marijuana use during your teens and 20s--the time of peak marijuana use," Dr. Tashkin said. People who were exposed to marijuana use in their youth are just now getting to the age when cancer typically starts to develop, he added.
Subjects were asked about lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol, as well as other drugs, their diet, occupation, family history of cancer and socioeconomic status. The subjects' reported use of marijuana was similar to that found in other surveys, Dr. Tashkin noted.
The heaviest smokers in the study had smoked more than 22,000 marijuana cigarettes, or joints, while moderately heavy smokers had smoked between 11,000 to 22,000 joints. Even these smokers did not have an increased risk of developing cancer. People who smoked more marijuana were not at any increased risk compared with those who smoked less marijuana or none at all.
The study found that 80% of lung cancer patients and 70% of patients with head and neck cancer had smoked tobacco, while only about half of patients with both types of cancer smoked marijuana.
There was a clear association between smoking tobacco and cancer. The study found a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing both lung cancer and head and neck cancers, findings that were consistent with many previous studies.
The new findings are surprising for several reasons, Dr. Tashkin said. Previous studies have shown that marijuana tar contains about 50% higher concentrations of chemicals linked to lung cancer, compared with tobacco tar, he noted. Smoking a marijuana cigarette deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco. "Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Dr. Tashkin said. "And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers--they hold their breath about four times longer, allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lung."
One possible explanation for the new findings, he said, is that THC, a chemical in marijuana smoke, may encourage aging cells to die earlier and therefore be less likely to undergo cancerous transformation.
The next step, Dr. Tashkin says, is to study the DNA samples of the subjects, to see whether there are some heavy marijuana users who may be at increased risk of developing cancer if they have a genetic susceptibility for cancer.
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Thoracic Society.
Chemtrail Sunscreen Taught In US Schools
Chemtrail Sunscreen Taught In US Schools
Sanity for Sale
January 31st, 2007
A is for Apple.
B is for Boy.
C is for Chemtrails.
At least this is what one American father found while paging through his child’s science book. SmT was astonished to find seventh graders being taught about chemtrails. And geoengineeering their home planet.
Anyone with question about the “spray programs” he now says, “should perhaps just ask their kids.”
The chemtrails section is found in the Centre Point Learning Science I Essential Interactions science book. Under “Solutions for Global Warming”, section 5.19 features a photo of a big multi-engine jet sporting a familiar orange/red paint scheme.
The caption reads: “Figure 1- Jet engines running on richer fuel would add particles to the atmosphere to create a sunscreen”.
The logo on the plane says: “Particle Air”.
“I kid you not,” SmT insists. “Why did I spend all of that time doing research when I could have just asked my kids?”
Helping habituate children to a life under lethal sunshine and “protective” spray planes, this trippy textbook urges young readers to “Use Sun Block”. But its authors are referring to a sunscreen spread across the sky.
“Could we deliberately add particles to the atmosphere?” asks the text, before helpfully suggesting that “Burning coal adds soot to the air.”
You might be old enough to recoil at such a notion. But in a country where down is up and wrong is right, your kids could be learning that what used to be bad and a bummer is a now good thing!
“Be real interesting to see the politics of the folks putting this out.” SmT suggests.
In the current White House, those politics are as “crude” as invading oil-rich Iraq over a bogus nuclear threat - while permitting Pakistan to export atom bomb materials to terrorist organizations in return for the chance at an election-boosting capture of Osama bin Laden by US forces in the Hindu Kush later this month. [New Yorker Mar1/04]
Why shouldn’t the same petrol politics produce textbooks for children inheriting a nightmare? Led by a piggish petroleum president, with most major nations cutting back, US oil consumption is rising as steeply as supplies of cheap crude are collapsing.
The coal connection is this: In order to briefly “stretch the glide” of the fast-looming end of cheap oil that will utterly transform life as we know it, America’s unelected oil president recently revoked pollution regulations on more than 2,000 of the nation’s biggest polluting coal-fired power plants.
Ironically, this move - like so many others made by an oil-addled White House - will only hasten an Earthwreck as shattering to all onboard as a lurching square-rigger striking a rocky reef. Except our spaceship is surrounded by the cold, irradiated vacuum of deep space.
It turns out that a single 150-megawatt coal-burning power plant produces more emissions than 300,000 cars. Termed an “Extreme Human health Hazard” by the EPA, microscopic coal particles also rot lungs, stop hearts, kill lakes, choke cities - and stunt the lives of school kids with deadly sulphuric acid rain. [AP Aug27/03; LA Times Aug28/03]
Airborne soot also blocks sunlight, lowering greenhouse temperatures. Volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Pinatubo - and globe-circling soot from 1,000 burning oil wells during Desert Storm - belched enough sulphur into the stratosphere to cause a plunge in world temperatures, temporarily slowing global warming.
World scientists looking at deliberately putting megatons more sulphur into a closed, recirculating atmosphere already smoggy enough to depresses orbiting astronauts, decided that a sulphur sunscreen is not a swift idea.
But not this Jr. High science text. “Creating either kind of sunscreen would be cheap,” it tells young readers. As if “cheap” is the only consideration.
Even this claim is bogus. SmT says he looked, but the section on the downstream costs associated with the health and environmental effects of massive coal pollution - or the 10 million tons of a chemical sunscreen suggested by the late Edward Teller - “seemed to have been left out.”
Ditto “the cost to the solar industry”. Or cumulative impacts on kids, critters and plants on which our future depends.
Sunlight is already on the way out. Repeatedly expressing shock at how quickly our space colony’s life-support systems are failing, scientists are finding levels of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface decreasing by almost 3% a decade.
“Global Dimming” is too small to detect with the eye. “But it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis,” reports the Guardian.
All those jet-propelled vacations and car trips to the corner store add up. Since 1960, 10% less sunlight has reached Earth’s inhabitants. Levels of solar radiation reaching parts of the former coal-belching Soviet Union are down almost 20%.
In any greenhouse, the rule of a green thumb is that every 1% decrease in solar radiation results in a 1% drop in plant productivity.
“It’s actually quite a big deal, says Graham Farquhar, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. But get this: Farquhar doesn’t think that identified pollutants, “by themselves would be able to produce this amount of global dimming.” [Guardian Dec18/03]
The baffled Aussie should check out the role of contrails in turning off sunlight. Since the Jet Age took off in the 1960s, normal condensation trails from five million jet flights every year have been found to block 10% of sunlight across Europe and the USA. Over heavily trafficked Atlantic and American air-routes, artificial cloud cover caused by jet engine pollutants has increased 20%. [Chemtrails Confirmed ‘04]
Chemtrails are another major sunblock. Measurements taken with a calibrated photometer by Clifford Carnicom in Santa Fe show a rapid reduction in sunlight - from a value of 97% on a ‘clear day’ to around 80% during the early stages of heavy chemtrailing. Using a simple UV radiation meter, this reporter has confirmed similar drops in sunlight beneath artificial “chemcasts” on Canada’s west coast.
In a country whose self-appointed regime routinely censors scientific studies, at least some 7th grade science are more focused on indoctrinating kids with risky techno “quick-fixes” than conscious conservation and common sense.
Forget science. SmT gazed in disbelief at another schoolbook picture showing a helicopter seeding the ocean with iron particles. These desperate “IronX” experiments did indeed trigger plankton “blooms” that, in turn, transferred tons of atmospheric C02 underwater as those carbon-inhaling critters eventually died and sank to the seafloor.
But, oops!, his kid’s science book fails to mention that the resulting ocean blooms also sucked all available oxygen from the seawater, suffocating all marine life in massive, spreading “dead zones”. [Chemtrails Confirmed ‘04]
Where are the picture, SmT wonders, “of people planting trees, or turning down thermostats, or bicycling, or any of the other ways not to add to the problem?”
Though his family gave up the idea of home schooling, he says, “it’s perhaps time to reconsider.”
Perhaps it’s also time to reconsider state-sponsored brainwashing. And other escalating consequences of our carbon addiction, as well.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world, but it has no basis in fact
Loose Change is a sharp, slick film with an authoritative voiceover, but it drowns the truth in an ocean of nonsense George Monbiot
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The Guardian
There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and turns them into gibbering idiots. First cultivated in a laboratory in the US, the strain reached these shores a few months ago. In the past fortnight, it has become an epidemic. Scarcely a day now passes without someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam, trying to infect me.
The disease is called Loose Change. It is a film made by three young men that airs most of the standard conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11 2001. Unlike the other 9/11 conspiracy films, Loose Change is sharp and swift, with a thumping soundtrack, slick graphics and a calm and authoritative voiceover. Its makers claim that it has now been watched by 100 million people.
The Pentagon, the film maintains, was not hit by a commercial airliner. There was "no discernible trace" of a plane found in the wreckage, and the entrance and exit holes in the building were far too small. It was hit by a cruise missile. The twin towers were brought down by means of "a carefully planned controlled demolition". You can see the small puffs of smoke caused by explosives just below the cascading sections. All other hypotheses are implausible: the fire was not hot enough to melt steel and the towers fell too quickly. Building 7 was destroyed by the same means a few hours later.
Flight 93 did not crash, but was redirected to Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a Nasa building and never seen again. Their voices had been cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and used to make fake calls to their relatives. The footage of Osama bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the attacks, was faked. The US government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so that he could carry out his plans for world domination.
Even if you have seen or read no other accounts of 9/11, and your brain has not yet been liquidised, a few problems must occur to you. The first is the complete absence of scientific advice. At one point, the presenter asks: "So what brought down the twin towers? Let's ask the experts." But they don't ask the experts. The film-makers take some old quotes, edit them to remove any contradictions, then denounce all subsequent retractions as further evidence of conspiracy.
The only people they interview are a janitor, a group of firemen, and a flight instructor. They let the janitor speak at length, but cut the firemen off in mid-sentence. The flight instructor speaks in short clips, which give the impression that his pupil, the hijacker Hani Hanjour, was incapable of hitting the Pentagon. Elsewhere he has said the opposite: he had "no doubt" that Hanjour could have done it.
Where are the structural engineers, the materials scientists, the specialists in ballistics, explosives or fire? The film-makers now say that the third edition of the film will be fact-checked by an expert, but he turns out to be "a theology professor". They don't name him, but I would bet that it's David Ray Griffin, who also happens to be the high priest of the 9/11 conspiracists.
The next evident flaw is that the plot they propose must have involved tens of thousands of people. It could not have been executed without the help of demolition experts, the security firms guarding the World Trade Centre, Mayor Giuliani (who hastily disposed of the remains), much of the US air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defence Command, the relatives of the people "killed" in the plane crashes, the rest of the Pentagon's staff, the Los Alamos laboratories, the FBI, the CIA, and the investigators who picked through the rubble.
If there is one universal American characteristic, it is a confessional culture that permits no one with a good story to keep his mouth shut. People appear on the Jerry Springer Show to admit to carnal relations with their tractors. Yet none of the participants in this monumental crime has sought to blow the whistle - before, during or after the attacks. No one has volunteered to tell the greatest story ever told.
Read some conflicting accounts, and Loose Change's case crumbles faster than the twin towers. Hundreds of people saw a plane hit the Pentagon. Because it collided with one of the world's best-defended buildings at full speed, the plane was pulverised - even so, plane parts and body parts were in fact recovered. The wings and tail disintegrated when they hit the wall, which is why the holes weren't bigger.
The failure of the twin towers has been exhaustively documented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Far from being impossible, the collapse turns out to have been inevitable. The planes cut some of the support columns and ignited fires sufficient to weaken (but not melt) the remaining steel structures. As the perimeter columns buckled, the weight of the collapsing top stories generated a momentum the rest of the building could not arrest. Puffs of smoke were blown out of the structure by compression as the building fell.
Counterpunch, the radical leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and mechanical engineer - to test the official findings. He shows that the institute must have been right. He also demonstrates how Building 7 collapsed. Burning debris falling from the twin towers ruptured the oil pipes feeding its emergency generators. The reduction in pressure triggered the automatic pumping system, which poured thousands of gallons of diesel on to the fire. The support trusses weakened and buckled, and the building imploded. Popular Mechanics magazine polled 300 experts and came to the same conclusions.
So the critics - even Counterpunch - are labelled co-conspirators, and the plot expands until it comes to involve a substantial part of the world's population. There is no reasoning with this madness. People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues - global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality - while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously.
The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing, all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This, if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible theory than the one proposed in Loose Change.
www.monbiot.com
Tuesday February 6, 2007
The Guardian
There is a virus sweeping the world. It infects opponents of the Bush government, sucks their brains out through their eyes and turns them into gibbering idiots. First cultivated in a laboratory in the US, the strain reached these shores a few months ago. In the past fortnight, it has become an epidemic. Scarcely a day now passes without someone possessed by this sickness, eyes rolling, lips flecked with foam, trying to infect me.
The disease is called Loose Change. It is a film made by three young men that airs most of the standard conspiracy theories about the attacks of September 11 2001. Unlike the other 9/11 conspiracy films, Loose Change is sharp and swift, with a thumping soundtrack, slick graphics and a calm and authoritative voiceover. Its makers claim that it has now been watched by 100 million people.
The Pentagon, the film maintains, was not hit by a commercial airliner. There was "no discernible trace" of a plane found in the wreckage, and the entrance and exit holes in the building were far too small. It was hit by a cruise missile. The twin towers were brought down by means of "a carefully planned controlled demolition". You can see the small puffs of smoke caused by explosives just below the cascading sections. All other hypotheses are implausible: the fire was not hot enough to melt steel and the towers fell too quickly. Building 7 was destroyed by the same means a few hours later.
Flight 93 did not crash, but was redirected to Cleveland airport, where the passengers were taken into a Nasa building and never seen again. Their voices had been cloned by the Los Alamos laboratories and used to make fake calls to their relatives. The footage of Osama bin Laden, claiming responsibility for the attacks, was faked. The US government carried out this great crime for four reasons: to help Larry Silverstein, who leased the towers, to collect his insurance money; to assist insider traders betting on falling airline stocks; to steal the gold in the basement; and to grant George Bush new executive powers, so that he could carry out his plans for world domination.
Even if you have seen or read no other accounts of 9/11, and your brain has not yet been liquidised, a few problems must occur to you. The first is the complete absence of scientific advice. At one point, the presenter asks: "So what brought down the twin towers? Let's ask the experts." But they don't ask the experts. The film-makers take some old quotes, edit them to remove any contradictions, then denounce all subsequent retractions as further evidence of conspiracy.
The only people they interview are a janitor, a group of firemen, and a flight instructor. They let the janitor speak at length, but cut the firemen off in mid-sentence. The flight instructor speaks in short clips, which give the impression that his pupil, the hijacker Hani Hanjour, was incapable of hitting the Pentagon. Elsewhere he has said the opposite: he had "no doubt" that Hanjour could have done it.
Where are the structural engineers, the materials scientists, the specialists in ballistics, explosives or fire? The film-makers now say that the third edition of the film will be fact-checked by an expert, but he turns out to be "a theology professor". They don't name him, but I would bet that it's David Ray Griffin, who also happens to be the high priest of the 9/11 conspiracists.
The next evident flaw is that the plot they propose must have involved tens of thousands of people. It could not have been executed without the help of demolition experts, the security firms guarding the World Trade Centre, Mayor Giuliani (who hastily disposed of the remains), much of the US air force, the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defence Command, the relatives of the people "killed" in the plane crashes, the rest of the Pentagon's staff, the Los Alamos laboratories, the FBI, the CIA, and the investigators who picked through the rubble.
If there is one universal American characteristic, it is a confessional culture that permits no one with a good story to keep his mouth shut. People appear on the Jerry Springer Show to admit to carnal relations with their tractors. Yet none of the participants in this monumental crime has sought to blow the whistle - before, during or after the attacks. No one has volunteered to tell the greatest story ever told.
Read some conflicting accounts, and Loose Change's case crumbles faster than the twin towers. Hundreds of people saw a plane hit the Pentagon. Because it collided with one of the world's best-defended buildings at full speed, the plane was pulverised - even so, plane parts and body parts were in fact recovered. The wings and tail disintegrated when they hit the wall, which is why the holes weren't bigger.
The failure of the twin towers has been exhaustively documented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Far from being impossible, the collapse turns out to have been inevitable. The planes cut some of the support columns and ignited fires sufficient to weaken (but not melt) the remaining steel structures. As the perimeter columns buckled, the weight of the collapsing top stories generated a momentum the rest of the building could not arrest. Puffs of smoke were blown out of the structure by compression as the building fell.
Counterpunch, the radical leftwing magazine, commissioned its own expert - an aerospace and mechanical engineer - to test the official findings. He shows that the institute must have been right. He also demonstrates how Building 7 collapsed. Burning debris falling from the twin towers ruptured the oil pipes feeding its emergency generators. The reduction in pressure triggered the automatic pumping system, which poured thousands of gallons of diesel on to the fire. The support trusses weakened and buckled, and the building imploded. Popular Mechanics magazine polled 300 experts and came to the same conclusions.
So the critics - even Counterpunch - are labelled co-conspirators, and the plot expands until it comes to involve a substantial part of the world's population. There is no reasoning with this madness. People believe Loose Change because it proposes a closed world: comprehensible, controllable, small. Despite the great evil that runs it, it is more companionable than the chaos that really governs our lives, a world without destination or purpose. This neat story draws campaigners away from real issues - global warming, the Iraq war, nuclear weapons, privatisation, inequality - while permanently wrecking their credibility. Bush did capitalise on the attacks, and he did follow a pre-existing agenda, spelt out, as Loose Change says, by the Project for the New American Century. But by drowning this truth in an ocean of nonsense, the conspiracists ensure that it can never again be taken seriously.
The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing, all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This, if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible theory than the one proposed in Loose Change.
www.monbiot.com
Response: Don't believe the official 'conspiracy' theory
We have to ask who stood to gain the most from the appalling events of 9/11, says Tim Sparke
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian
George Monbiot's explicit attack on the film Loose Change (A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world ..., February 6) has no basis in fact. While we accept that there are flaws in the current version of the film, we stand by its overarching theme that the official "conspiracy" theory of 9/11, constructed in the hours, days, weeks and months after 9/11, is false.
In uncritically endorsing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report, Monbiot neglects to say that the collapse mechanism for the entire World Trade Centre building was never documented by NIST - it didn't see it as its job. Additionally, in accepting that the towers collapsed at virtually free-fall speed ("the weight of the collapsing top storeys generated a momentum the rest of the building could not arrest"), Monbiot shows no awareness that this explanation violates the law of conservation of momentum.
Monbiot also appears oblivious to NIST's failure to explain that, although fire could not have melted any steel, there were pools of molten metal under the rubble, and these pools remained molten for weeks after the collapse; that dozens of people, including firefighters, news reporters and fleeing victims, all reported massive explosions; the clear video evidence of explosions taking place; that virtually all the concrete was pulverised into tiny particles; the apparent disintegration of the central steel core; and the destruction of all the evidence from America's biggest crime scene, which was covertly transported to Asian and African shores before any forensic examination could take place.
Monbiot then endorses the idea that Building 7 collapsed because "thousands of gallons of diesel [were poured] on to the fire" - oblivious to the fact that, even if an enormous fire could have caused a symmetrical collapse (which required all 81 steel columns to miraculously fail simultaneously), there was, as photographs and eyewitnesses reveal, no enormous fire. Monbiot also appears unaware that several engineers and demolition experts, after studying videos, have declared that this collapse can only have been caused by explosives.
Monbiot suggests that thousands of people must have been involved in the conspiracy, as if the official story must therefore be true. We have no clue as to how many (though some suggest probably fewer than 1,000); but wasn't the Manhattan project, involving 100,000, kept secret, even from Vice-President Truman, until weeks before the first atom bomb was dropped?
Monbiot then suggests that CounterPunch - by refuting the film's claims - has to be correct, because it is a left-leaning newspaper. But acceptance of the official "conspiracy" theory is not a left or right political issue. It is about whether we should accept unconditionally a story which defeats the laws of physics, denies the abundance of witness testimony, and rejects video evidence put forward by an organisation, which, in hindsight, we know had the means, motive and opportunity, and also has a record of being economical with the truth.
We agree that our movie can't answer all the questions that millions of people now have - but the fact that Loose Change is the most downloaded film in internet history is the strongest argument for an honest public debate, and a truly independent inquiry. As we say in the 9/11 Truth Movement: ask questions, demand answers, investigate 9/11.
Tim Sparke is executive producer of Loose Change Final Cut. tim@joiningthedots.tv
Tuesday February 13, 2007
The Guardian
George Monbiot's explicit attack on the film Loose Change (A 9/11 conspiracy virus is sweeping the world ..., February 6) has no basis in fact. While we accept that there are flaws in the current version of the film, we stand by its overarching theme that the official "conspiracy" theory of 9/11, constructed in the hours, days, weeks and months after 9/11, is false.
In uncritically endorsing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report, Monbiot neglects to say that the collapse mechanism for the entire World Trade Centre building was never documented by NIST - it didn't see it as its job. Additionally, in accepting that the towers collapsed at virtually free-fall speed ("the weight of the collapsing top storeys generated a momentum the rest of the building could not arrest"), Monbiot shows no awareness that this explanation violates the law of conservation of momentum.
Monbiot also appears oblivious to NIST's failure to explain that, although fire could not have melted any steel, there were pools of molten metal under the rubble, and these pools remained molten for weeks after the collapse; that dozens of people, including firefighters, news reporters and fleeing victims, all reported massive explosions; the clear video evidence of explosions taking place; that virtually all the concrete was pulverised into tiny particles; the apparent disintegration of the central steel core; and the destruction of all the evidence from America's biggest crime scene, which was covertly transported to Asian and African shores before any forensic examination could take place.
Monbiot then endorses the idea that Building 7 collapsed because "thousands of gallons of diesel [were poured] on to the fire" - oblivious to the fact that, even if an enormous fire could have caused a symmetrical collapse (which required all 81 steel columns to miraculously fail simultaneously), there was, as photographs and eyewitnesses reveal, no enormous fire. Monbiot also appears unaware that several engineers and demolition experts, after studying videos, have declared that this collapse can only have been caused by explosives.
Monbiot suggests that thousands of people must have been involved in the conspiracy, as if the official story must therefore be true. We have no clue as to how many (though some suggest probably fewer than 1,000); but wasn't the Manhattan project, involving 100,000, kept secret, even from Vice-President Truman, until weeks before the first atom bomb was dropped?
Monbiot then suggests that CounterPunch - by refuting the film's claims - has to be correct, because it is a left-leaning newspaper. But acceptance of the official "conspiracy" theory is not a left or right political issue. It is about whether we should accept unconditionally a story which defeats the laws of physics, denies the abundance of witness testimony, and rejects video evidence put forward by an organisation, which, in hindsight, we know had the means, motive and opportunity, and also has a record of being economical with the truth.
We agree that our movie can't answer all the questions that millions of people now have - but the fact that Loose Change is the most downloaded film in internet history is the strongest argument for an honest public debate, and a truly independent inquiry. As we say in the 9/11 Truth Movement: ask questions, demand answers, investigate 9/11.
Tim Sparke is executive producer of Loose Change Final Cut. tim@joiningthedots.tv
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Lawmaker Warns of Impeachment in Border Agent Case
GOP Lawmaker Warns of Impeachment in Border Agent Case
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 08, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Weeks after accusing President Bush of "shameful" behavior over the imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents who shot an unarmed suspected drug smuggler along the U.S.-Mexico border, a federal lawmaker turned up the heat further Wednesday, suggesting the president should be impeached if the two men are killed in prison.
Speaking after the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that agent Ignacio Ramos was assaulted by inmates in his Mississippi prison at the weekend, California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher had a warning for the White House.
"I tell you, Mr. President, if these men -- especially after this assault -- are murdered in prison, or if one of them lose their lives, there's going to be some sort of impeachment talk in Capitol Hill," he said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. (Listen to Audio)
"The president of the United States talks a lot about his Christian charity, and his religious beliefs," Rohrabacher said.
"He now is showing a mean-spirited side to him, an arrogance, in which he will turn his back, even after one of these officers in prison has been brutally assaulted."
When Ramos and colleague Jose Compean began their sentences of 12 and 11 years' imprisonment, respectively, last month, Rohrabacher slammed the president for not pardoning the men, calling it "the worst betrayal of American defenders I have ever seen."
Public outrage over the case has targeted both the administration and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, who prosecuted the two and offered an immunity deal to the suspected drug smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, in return for his testimony against the agents.
Sutton notes that the agents not only shot an unarmed man while he was fleeing toward the Mexican border, but also tried to cover up the crime by disposing of their shell casings and not reporting the incident to their supervisor.
After a two-week trial last year, the two were convicted by a jury on 11 out of 12 counts, including assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with serious bodily injury, discharge of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, willfully violating the illegal immigrant's constitutional rights, lying about the incident and failing to report the truth.
Rohrabacher said he does not believe the agents received a fair trail, and he noted that three of the jurors said afterwards they were inclined to deliver a not guilty verdict but had been told by the jury foreman that the judge wanted them to "go along with majority."
Other Republican lawmakers taking part in Wednesday's press conference included Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who said, "The president has lost my respect because he will not step forward to do what is right," and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who voiced concern about future implications for the rule of law.
In the absence of a pardon, the lawmakers said the administration should at least consider allowing the agents to go free while their case is heard on appeal.
As a result of additional information that will be brought up during the appeals process, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said, the agents stood a "good chance" of being acquitted. Nevertheless, Tancredo said he is still holding out for a pardon.
"The president has shown compassion in the past with pardons," Tancredo said. "Over Christmas he pardoned 18 people, five of whom were drug dealers. So the president has shown compassion, just not to people who have enforced the law."
Tancredo said he has been in touch with Ramos' family and has learned that injuries sustained by the imprisoned man on Saturday included bleeding from the ear, "a degree of paralysis" that has developed in the agent's left arm and migraine headaches.
"I think the president is a good man," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). "I'm optimistic he's going to pardon these guys...we are going to keep working. This is an extreme injustice and these guys have been given the equivalent of a murder sentence."
"Even if you accept every fact exactly as stated by the prosecuting attorney, the verdict handed out was an extreme injustice," he said. "They were given more time than the average convicted murderer."
Hunter also said he wants the administration to open an investigation into the attack on Ramos.
He produced a letter which he had sent on Jan 17 - the day Ramos and Compean began their sentences - to Harley Lappin, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, asking that the two be separated from other prisoners "to ensure their safety."
An assistant to Lappin replied that the two men had been classified under the "Central Inmate Monitoring System" in an effort to afford additional protection.
Nevertheless, Ramos was circulated back into the general prison population after being initially segregated, Hunter claimed.
Since almost 30 percent of federal prisoners are criminal illegal aliens, many of whom are drug dealers, the agents face "substantial danger," he said.
Hunter said Lappin should be removed from his position for "ineptitude."
Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), who was not in attendance, issued a statement saying the government "continues to be on the wrong side of the border war." Poe said lawmakers investigating the case had been "misled" and "stonewalled."
Ramos is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Yazoo City, Miss., while Compean is an inmate at a facility in Elkton, Ohio.
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 08, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Weeks after accusing President Bush of "shameful" behavior over the imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents who shot an unarmed suspected drug smuggler along the U.S.-Mexico border, a federal lawmaker turned up the heat further Wednesday, suggesting the president should be impeached if the two men are killed in prison.
Speaking after the Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed that agent Ignacio Ramos was assaulted by inmates in his Mississippi prison at the weekend, California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher had a warning for the White House.
"I tell you, Mr. President, if these men -- especially after this assault -- are murdered in prison, or if one of them lose their lives, there's going to be some sort of impeachment talk in Capitol Hill," he said during a press conference in Washington, D.C. (Listen to Audio)
"The president of the United States talks a lot about his Christian charity, and his religious beliefs," Rohrabacher said.
"He now is showing a mean-spirited side to him, an arrogance, in which he will turn his back, even after one of these officers in prison has been brutally assaulted."
When Ramos and colleague Jose Compean began their sentences of 12 and 11 years' imprisonment, respectively, last month, Rohrabacher slammed the president for not pardoning the men, calling it "the worst betrayal of American defenders I have ever seen."
Public outrage over the case has targeted both the administration and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, who prosecuted the two and offered an immunity deal to the suspected drug smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, in return for his testimony against the agents.
Sutton notes that the agents not only shot an unarmed man while he was fleeing toward the Mexican border, but also tried to cover up the crime by disposing of their shell casings and not reporting the incident to their supervisor.
After a two-week trial last year, the two were convicted by a jury on 11 out of 12 counts, including assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with serious bodily injury, discharge of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, willfully violating the illegal immigrant's constitutional rights, lying about the incident and failing to report the truth.
Rohrabacher said he does not believe the agents received a fair trail, and he noted that three of the jurors said afterwards they were inclined to deliver a not guilty verdict but had been told by the jury foreman that the judge wanted them to "go along with majority."
Other Republican lawmakers taking part in Wednesday's press conference included Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), who said, "The president has lost my respect because he will not step forward to do what is right," and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who voiced concern about future implications for the rule of law.
In the absence of a pardon, the lawmakers said the administration should at least consider allowing the agents to go free while their case is heard on appeal.
As a result of additional information that will be brought up during the appeals process, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) said, the agents stood a "good chance" of being acquitted. Nevertheless, Tancredo said he is still holding out for a pardon.
"The president has shown compassion in the past with pardons," Tancredo said. "Over Christmas he pardoned 18 people, five of whom were drug dealers. So the president has shown compassion, just not to people who have enforced the law."
Tancredo said he has been in touch with Ramos' family and has learned that injuries sustained by the imprisoned man on Saturday included bleeding from the ear, "a degree of paralysis" that has developed in the agent's left arm and migraine headaches.
"I think the president is a good man," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). "I'm optimistic he's going to pardon these guys...we are going to keep working. This is an extreme injustice and these guys have been given the equivalent of a murder sentence."
"Even if you accept every fact exactly as stated by the prosecuting attorney, the verdict handed out was an extreme injustice," he said. "They were given more time than the average convicted murderer."
Hunter also said he wants the administration to open an investigation into the attack on Ramos.
He produced a letter which he had sent on Jan 17 - the day Ramos and Compean began their sentences - to Harley Lappin, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, asking that the two be separated from other prisoners "to ensure their safety."
An assistant to Lappin replied that the two men had been classified under the "Central Inmate Monitoring System" in an effort to afford additional protection.
Nevertheless, Ramos was circulated back into the general prison population after being initially segregated, Hunter claimed.
Since almost 30 percent of federal prisoners are criminal illegal aliens, many of whom are drug dealers, the agents face "substantial danger," he said.
Hunter said Lappin should be removed from his position for "ineptitude."
Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), who was not in attendance, issued a statement saying the government "continues to be on the wrong side of the border war." Poe said lawmakers investigating the case had been "misled" and "stonewalled."
Ramos is serving his sentence at a federal prison in Yazoo City, Miss., while Compean is an inmate at a facility in Elkton, Ohio.
CIA analysts 'disagreed with more than 50%' of Pentagon team's 'controversial' Iraq WMD findings
Intelligence agencies disagreed with many of its prewar findings.
By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writers
February 10, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda.
Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.
The dueling groups sat down at CIA headquarters in late August 2002 to try to work out their differences. But while the CIA agreed to minor modifications in some of its own reports, Gimble said, the Pentagon unit was utterly unbowed.
"They didn't make the changes that were talked about in that August 20th meeting," Gimble said, and instead went on to present their deeply flawed findings to senior officials at the White House.
The work of that special Pentagon unit — which was run by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — is one of the lingering symbols of the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq.
The Bush administration's primary justification for invading Iraq was always its assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Iraq's supposed ties to Al Qaeda — and therefore its connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — were an important secondary argument, and one that resonated with many Americans in the lead-up to the war with Iraq.
The CIA and many other intelligence agencies were wrong in their assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. But the agency was always deeply skeptical about the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Most of the evidence that Feith's Office of Special Plans cited in making its case for significant collaboration between Baghdad and Al Qaeda has crumbled under postwar scrutiny. The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Saddam Hussein was so wary of the terrorist network that he barred anyone in his government from dealing with Al Qaeda.
Although the Pentagon Inspector General's report released Friday did not address the accuracy of such assessments, it documented the unusual efforts by Defense Department policymakers to bypass regular intelligence channels and influence officials at the highest level of government.
Feith's work was of critical importance to Vice President Dick Cheney, who once referred to the Pentagon team's conclusions as the "best source" for understanding the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The activities of Feith's group weren't illegal, Gimble concluded. But they were, "in our opinion, inappropriate, given that the intelligence assessments were [presented as] intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."
The Pentagon team touted a series of claims that have not survived postwar review. Among them was the allegation that Mohammed Atta, the presumed ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before the attacks.
A critical question raised by the inspector general's report is whether Feith and his office were just critiquing CIA analysis, or were creating their own intelligence assessment, a role that is supposed to be left to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted Friday that Cheney has referred to Feith's work as an "assessment," suggesting it was a formal intelligence document. But Feith maintained in interviews he was not creating an intelligence "product," but was just checking the work of the CIA.
Laurence H. Silberman, a semiretired U.S. appeals court judge and co-chairman of a presidential commission on Iraq's weapons, said it is appropriate to question intelligence.
"Policymakers, whether they are in Defense, State, the White House or Congress, are absolutely entitled to question the intelligence community, look over the material and come up with their own views," he said.
Feith's work had the blessing of his boss, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The operation was set up at the behest of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with approval from Rumsfeld, Gimble noted. By most accounts, those three officials had distrust, if not disdain, for the work of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
But Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of Defense and former CIA director, said that groups outside the CIA and other chartered intelligence agencies should not be involved in freelance analysis.
"Based on my whole career, I believe all intelligence activities need to be carried on by the established institutions, where there is appropriate oversight," he told reporters traveling with him in Europe for meetings on security.
Gimble provided new details on the chain of events leading from the creation of the Feith team, through a series of briefings it made for senior officials and culminating in a presentation before deputies in the National Security Council at the White House.
The initial instruction to search for links between Iraq and Al Qaeda came from Wolfowitz in January 2002, Gimble said.
By that July, Feith had assembled a group of analysts detailed from other agencies to draft a document outlining evidence that the officials thought other agencies had ignored.
The team presented its findings to Rumsfeld on Aug. 8. Rumsfeld found it so compelling that he urged Feith to arrange a briefing for then-CIA Director George J. Tenet at the CIA. In the meantime, the team's paper began to circulate among analysts at other agencies who took issue with more than half of its contents.
"There were like 26 points," in the Feith team's paper, Gimble said. "And essentially [experts at other agencies] disagreed with more than 50% of it, and either agreed or partially agreed with the remainder."
When the team briefed Tenet and other senior CIA officials on Aug. 15, the audience was polite but unimpressed. Tenet described the meeting as "useful," Gimble said, but "in our interviews with him he later said that he only said that it was 'useful' because he didn't agree with it and he was just trying to, you know, nicely end the meeting."
That encounter led to the "roundtable" meeting at the agency five days later where CIA experts urged the Pentagon unit to at least include footnotes acknowledging the long list of disagreements.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon team pressed on.
P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.
"They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war," Crowley said. "Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process."
greg.miller@latimes.com
julian.barnes@latimes.com
Times staff writer Peter Spiegel in Seville, Spain, contributed to this report.
By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writers
February 10, 2007
WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda.
Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.
The dueling groups sat down at CIA headquarters in late August 2002 to try to work out their differences. But while the CIA agreed to minor modifications in some of its own reports, Gimble said, the Pentagon unit was utterly unbowed.
"They didn't make the changes that were talked about in that August 20th meeting," Gimble said, and instead went on to present their deeply flawed findings to senior officials at the White House.
The work of that special Pentagon unit — which was run by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — is one of the lingering symbols of the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq.
The Bush administration's primary justification for invading Iraq was always its assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Iraq's supposed ties to Al Qaeda — and therefore its connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — were an important secondary argument, and one that resonated with many Americans in the lead-up to the war with Iraq.
The CIA and many other intelligence agencies were wrong in their assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. But the agency was always deeply skeptical about the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
Most of the evidence that Feith's Office of Special Plans cited in making its case for significant collaboration between Baghdad and Al Qaeda has crumbled under postwar scrutiny. The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Saddam Hussein was so wary of the terrorist network that he barred anyone in his government from dealing with Al Qaeda.
Although the Pentagon Inspector General's report released Friday did not address the accuracy of such assessments, it documented the unusual efforts by Defense Department policymakers to bypass regular intelligence channels and influence officials at the highest level of government.
Feith's work was of critical importance to Vice President Dick Cheney, who once referred to the Pentagon team's conclusions as the "best source" for understanding the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
The activities of Feith's group weren't illegal, Gimble concluded. But they were, "in our opinion, inappropriate, given that the intelligence assessments were [presented as] intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."
The Pentagon team touted a series of claims that have not survived postwar review. Among them was the allegation that Mohammed Atta, the presumed ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before the attacks.
A critical question raised by the inspector general's report is whether Feith and his office were just critiquing CIA analysis, or were creating their own intelligence assessment, a role that is supposed to be left to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted Friday that Cheney has referred to Feith's work as an "assessment," suggesting it was a formal intelligence document. But Feith maintained in interviews he was not creating an intelligence "product," but was just checking the work of the CIA.
Laurence H. Silberman, a semiretired U.S. appeals court judge and co-chairman of a presidential commission on Iraq's weapons, said it is appropriate to question intelligence.
"Policymakers, whether they are in Defense, State, the White House or Congress, are absolutely entitled to question the intelligence community, look over the material and come up with their own views," he said.
Feith's work had the blessing of his boss, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The operation was set up at the behest of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with approval from Rumsfeld, Gimble noted. By most accounts, those three officials had distrust, if not disdain, for the work of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
But Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of Defense and former CIA director, said that groups outside the CIA and other chartered intelligence agencies should not be involved in freelance analysis.
"Based on my whole career, I believe all intelligence activities need to be carried on by the established institutions, where there is appropriate oversight," he told reporters traveling with him in Europe for meetings on security.
Gimble provided new details on the chain of events leading from the creation of the Feith team, through a series of briefings it made for senior officials and culminating in a presentation before deputies in the National Security Council at the White House.
The initial instruction to search for links between Iraq and Al Qaeda came from Wolfowitz in January 2002, Gimble said.
By that July, Feith had assembled a group of analysts detailed from other agencies to draft a document outlining evidence that the officials thought other agencies had ignored.
The team presented its findings to Rumsfeld on Aug. 8. Rumsfeld found it so compelling that he urged Feith to arrange a briefing for then-CIA Director George J. Tenet at the CIA. In the meantime, the team's paper began to circulate among analysts at other agencies who took issue with more than half of its contents.
"There were like 26 points," in the Feith team's paper, Gimble said. "And essentially [experts at other agencies] disagreed with more than 50% of it, and either agreed or partially agreed with the remainder."
When the team briefed Tenet and other senior CIA officials on Aug. 15, the audience was polite but unimpressed. Tenet described the meeting as "useful," Gimble said, but "in our interviews with him he later said that he only said that it was 'useful' because he didn't agree with it and he was just trying to, you know, nicely end the meeting."
That encounter led to the "roundtable" meeting at the agency five days later where CIA experts urged the Pentagon unit to at least include footnotes acknowledging the long list of disagreements.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon team pressed on.
P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.
"They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war," Crowley said. "Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process."
greg.miller@latimes.com
julian.barnes@latimes.com
Times staff writer Peter Spiegel in Seville, Spain, contributed to this report.
The tiny airline spy that spots bombers in the blink of an eye
Tiny cameras the size of a fingernail linked to specialist computers are to be used to monitor the behaviour of airline passengers as part of the war on terrorism.
UK Mail On Sunday | February 11, 2007
CHRISTOPHER LEAKE
Cameras fitted to seat-backs will record every twitch, blink, facial expression or suspicious movement before sending the data to onboard software which will check it against individual passenger profiles.
Scientists from Britain and Germany are spending £25million developing a system which they hope will make it virtually impossible to hijack an airliner by providing pilots and cabin crew with an early warning of a possible terrorist attack such as 9/11.
They say that rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something.
A separate microphone will hear and record even whispered remarks. Islamic suicide bombers are known to whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.
The software being developed by the scientists will be so sophisticated that it will be able to take account of nervous flyers or people with a natural twitch, helping to ensure there are no false alarms.
"We're trying to develop technologies that indicate the differences between normal passengers and those who may be a threat to others, or themselves," said Catherine Neary of BAE Systems.
Mrs Neary, team leader of the Onboard Threat Detection System for the Paris-based Security Of Aircraft In The Future European Environment (SAFEE) project, added: "Blink rates come from lie-detection research and suggest the stress level is higher than normal."
The project is also developing automated flight controls that will prevent a hijacker taking over an airliner and sensors at the aircraft's doors to detect if someone is carrying explosives or chemicals.
Mrs Neary said that under the Data Protection Act, all video, audio and other recordings would be destroyed at the end of every flight so that passengers' civil liberties were not infringed.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: "Watching people constantly on aircraft and trying to work out patterns of behaviour is a difficult road to travel.
"I suspect that it will put people off flying because they will feel uncomfortable if their every blink and twitch is being monitored."
Airlines gave the scheme a cautious welcome, indicating it would be too expensive to fit on existing commercial aircraft and that it would probably be ten years before such systems were fitted to new planes.
A British Airways spokeswoman said: "While we welcome new research and development which advances aviation security, we believe the emphasis and funding for any new initiatives would be better placed on preventing terrorists boarding aircraft in the first place.
"For example, research and development of better screening and detection equipment on the ground would be of more value at this time."
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Mistrial ends Watada court-martial
War objector may have to be tried again.By MIKE BARBER
P-I REPORTER
FORT LEWIS -- The court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada ended in a mistrial Wednesday.
The case's judge, Lt. Col. John Head, declared the trial over after a day of wrangling over a stipulation of facts that Watada had signed before the trial and that would have been part of the instructions to the jury. The judge decided that Watada never intended when he signed the stipulation to mean that he had a duty to go to Iraq with his unit.
Again the issue was Watada's views on the Iraq war -- opinions that kept him from going with his unit to the conflict and that the judge didn't want brought up at the court-martial.
Watada, a Stryker Brigade soldier, is the first commissioned officer to refuse to be deployed to Iraq. Watada's unit left this sprawling base for Iraq in June, but Watada remained behind. He said he believes the war is illegal and that his duty is to not abide by illegal orders.
But Head tried to keep the court-martial from becoming a tribunal on the war and its legality and has ruled that Watada's attorney cannot present witnesses to question the war's legality. Outside the base, that has been the issue as peace activists from across the country have rallied to Watada's side.
Watada is charged with missing movement to Iraq and with two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. Those last two charges result from statements Watada made against the war in a video tape released to reporters after he made his refusal to go to Iraq public and to a Veterans for Peace convention at the University of Washington.
He had been charged with two other counts of conduct unbecoming for interviews he gave. Prosecutors dropped those charged in return for Watada's signing a stipulation that he had given the interviews. He also acknowledged in the stipulation that he didn't go with his unit to Iraq, though he didn't admit his guilt to the missing movement charge.
With the jury of officers out of the courtroom Wednesday morning, Head wanted to question Watada about the stipulation to make sure that it was accurate and to protect the lieutenant against any mistakes in it.
But Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, objected to the questioning. He said the stipulation should include Watada's reasons for not going to Iraq: His views that the war is illegal.
"It has always been his position that not only would he miss movement but he would not participate in a war he considered illegal" and not participate in war crimes, Seitz said.
"His specific intent was of a different character all together" than simply missing his unit's deployment to Iraq, Seitz said.
To prove a charge of missing movement, the prosecutors need to show that Watada did not report when he had a duty to do so. The disagreement that prompted the mistrial was about whether Watada admitted missing troop movement and having a duty to report, or only missing troop movement.
"I see there is an inconsistency in the stipulation of fact," the judge said Wednesday. "I don't know how I can accept (it) as we stand here now."
Because much of the Army's evidence was laid out in the document, rejecting it would hurt its case, Head acknowledged. He granted the prosecutors' request for a mistrial, which Watada's lawyer opposed.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or michaelbarber@seattlepi.com.
P-I REPORTER
FORT LEWIS -- The court-martial of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada ended in a mistrial Wednesday.
The case's judge, Lt. Col. John Head, declared the trial over after a day of wrangling over a stipulation of facts that Watada had signed before the trial and that would have been part of the instructions to the jury. The judge decided that Watada never intended when he signed the stipulation to mean that he had a duty to go to Iraq with his unit.
Again the issue was Watada's views on the Iraq war -- opinions that kept him from going with his unit to the conflict and that the judge didn't want brought up at the court-martial.
Watada, a Stryker Brigade soldier, is the first commissioned officer to refuse to be deployed to Iraq. Watada's unit left this sprawling base for Iraq in June, but Watada remained behind. He said he believes the war is illegal and that his duty is to not abide by illegal orders.
But Head tried to keep the court-martial from becoming a tribunal on the war and its legality and has ruled that Watada's attorney cannot present witnesses to question the war's legality. Outside the base, that has been the issue as peace activists from across the country have rallied to Watada's side.
Watada is charged with missing movement to Iraq and with two counts of conduct unbecoming an officer. Those last two charges result from statements Watada made against the war in a video tape released to reporters after he made his refusal to go to Iraq public and to a Veterans for Peace convention at the University of Washington.
He had been charged with two other counts of conduct unbecoming for interviews he gave. Prosecutors dropped those charged in return for Watada's signing a stipulation that he had given the interviews. He also acknowledged in the stipulation that he didn't go with his unit to Iraq, though he didn't admit his guilt to the missing movement charge.
With the jury of officers out of the courtroom Wednesday morning, Head wanted to question Watada about the stipulation to make sure that it was accurate and to protect the lieutenant against any mistakes in it.
But Eric Seitz, Watada's attorney, objected to the questioning. He said the stipulation should include Watada's reasons for not going to Iraq: His views that the war is illegal.
"It has always been his position that not only would he miss movement but he would not participate in a war he considered illegal" and not participate in war crimes, Seitz said.
"His specific intent was of a different character all together" than simply missing his unit's deployment to Iraq, Seitz said.
To prove a charge of missing movement, the prosecutors need to show that Watada did not report when he had a duty to do so. The disagreement that prompted the mistrial was about whether Watada admitted missing troop movement and having a duty to report, or only missing troop movement.
"I see there is an inconsistency in the stipulation of fact," the judge said Wednesday. "I don't know how I can accept (it) as we stand here now."
Because much of the Army's evidence was laid out in the document, rejecting it would hurt its case, Head acknowledged. He granted the prosecutors' request for a mistrial, which Watada's lawyer opposed.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Mike Barber can be reached at 206-448-8018 or michaelbarber@seattlepi.com.
Letter From a New Jersey 9/11 Emergency Medical Technician
9/11 Blogger
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Dylan Avery posted the following letter which he and Mark of "Screw Loose Change" received. Well worth the read.
I don't know what to say, I'm not sure where I stand, and I don't know what to think anymore... not about 9/11, but society in general.
I was a NJ EMT for 6 years. I was in NY at the WTC before, during, and after the collapse. I ran from the falling towers. I hid behind a plexi-glass bus stop panel, as if that would have helped me if anything large came hurtling in that direction. My lungs are full of dust and I can barely breathe without holding back a cough and the ever-present faint taste of blood in the back of my throat. I wake up gasping for air. Those towers fell, and I was there. I don't know why the "official story" of what happened isn't questioned more than it is. Nobody listens to the people who KNOW. The 9/11 commission was made up of puppeteers, and the tesimony was given by the puppets. It's so obvious. It was a failure. If the things I, and hundreds of other people saw, felt, and heard didn't make it into that attrocious failure called the 9/11 Commission Report, then there is no other con clusion than accepting the fact that the whole thing was a whitewash.
Mark... listen to me. There were explosions. There were flashes. There was molten metal running down the I-beams of the basement levels like lava flows. I've never seen anything like it. Yes, planes hit the buildings- anybody who says otherwise is a moron. But the explosions- the rapid, symmetrical, sequential explosions- they happened. We were in the basement, helping a man who had been struck by pieces of flying concrete and rebar, and there was one of the huge steel and concrete support pillars with an 8 foot section blown out of the center of it. We looked around and there were other support columns that were the same. We spoke about it right then and there... we were discussing as we were carrying this man, saying "how could someone have rigged all these explosives?". That sort of thing does not happen from an airplane hitting the building 70, 80 stories up. We stood outside listening to the explosions. One after the other, every minute or so. At one point, about 10 minutes before the first collapse, a 30 foot or so section of the courtyard exlploded straight up into the air. Just before the collapses, a series of deep, below ground explosions, then numerous explosions in the buildings upper floors. Then we ran. We felt the same deep explosions before the second collapse. This was not just the planes. THE BUILDINGS WERE RIGGED. There is no question about it. Hundreds of people know this, Mark. People were told, the crowds of people were TOLD over bullhorns, that building 7 was going to be pulled (and YES that is the term they used). There was a 20 second countdown over the radios, there were bright flashes up and down the sides of building 7, you could see them through the windows...and it collapsed. We all knew it was intentionally pulled... they told us! There was no question about it until a day or so later when the news was reporting that it had collapsed due to fire. We kept wondering when they were going to correct the news reports. Eventually, it became "official story".
I tried to explain that wasn't what happened. I kept telling people there were explosions. I kept explaining what I saw, and wrote to the newspapers, the networks, and the government about what I saw. I called to speak to the FDNY, and NYPD. I told them what I knew and wanted know why the news reports were wrong. I wasn't told I was wrong. I wasn't even given a different explaination. I was just told to "shut up", "forget about it", or "let it go, for my own good". I told my EMT Coordinator In Charge what we saw. The four of us from my squad who went were first congratulated for responding and doing such a good job, and later, two of us (the two that refused to "let it go") were brought up on charges of disorderly conduct, fired, and fined for the uniforms and equipment we used on 9/11 because they were ruined. The other two (who are women, one a mother of two, the other a mother of 3) now ref use to admit they were even there, even to us! They just won't speak about it. The four of us were heroes. Two of us were harrassed and fired, and the other two have to deny ever being there.
There is no doubt in my mind what happened in New York on 9/11. Yes, some of the conspiracy theories are far fetched. A few are even rediculous. But MOST of them, hold much more validity than the "official story". The government has one theory, and it is very weak, at best. Loose Change may be questionable, but that's what it is doing... providing theories and asking questions. Some of those questions get answered, others come up. THAT is why there is a 2nd Edition and a future final cut. Yes, the truth must be updated, of course it does. To say it doesn't is silly. What do you think an investigation is? You formulate a theory, ask questions, and get answers. When you come across new information or rule out false information, you update your theory. Why do you ridicule that concept? Why do you take so much pride in claiming "I didn't know the truth needed a 2n d Edition"? That's like your main motto and it's the weakest thing I've ever heard. Would it make more sense to you to write a story, or make a documentary, and NOT update it if you found new information? Would you want today's school children learning out of a 1977 1st Edition History textbook? Would you criticize an updated edition for them to learn out of? What about following editions? Of course not. My point is this: Loose Change may not be 100% accurate or complete, but it offers more plausible explanations, no matter how diabolical, than the 9/11 commission report fiasco.
In case you are wondering, no. I'm not going to give you my full name or what city I worked for. I had enough trouble having it dragged through local newspapers for two years. I don't want to lose another job. I don't want you unfoundedly slandering my name all over the net like you do with Dylan, Jason, and whoever else offers a point of view other than yours. I'm not giving you my name, so do as you wish with what I've told you. Just remember something. It's very easy to deny something, and even easier to "debunk" it with a simpler story, and simpler still to present that information to millions of people who not only have heard it as truth before, but WANT to believe it. It is much harder to piece together a series of events that makes much more sense, provides a motive, a means, and more capable suspects, and harder yet to present that information to millions of people who not only DON'T want it to be true, but have already heard a much happier story that they would rather believe.
Trust me, I'd much rather believe the official story. I'd also rather believe that Columbus discovered America and DIDN'T torture and murder the natives he encountered on the way here. But history had a 2nd Edition to that story. I can't wait for the Final Cut.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Dylan Avery posted the following letter which he and Mark of "Screw Loose Change" received. Well worth the read.
I don't know what to say, I'm not sure where I stand, and I don't know what to think anymore... not about 9/11, but society in general.
I was a NJ EMT for 6 years. I was in NY at the WTC before, during, and after the collapse. I ran from the falling towers. I hid behind a plexi-glass bus stop panel, as if that would have helped me if anything large came hurtling in that direction. My lungs are full of dust and I can barely breathe without holding back a cough and the ever-present faint taste of blood in the back of my throat. I wake up gasping for air. Those towers fell, and I was there. I don't know why the "official story" of what happened isn't questioned more than it is. Nobody listens to the people who KNOW. The 9/11 commission was made up of puppeteers, and the tesimony was given by the puppets. It's so obvious. It was a failure. If the things I, and hundreds of other people saw, felt, and heard didn't make it into that attrocious failure called the 9/11 Commission Report, then there is no other con clusion than accepting the fact that the whole thing was a whitewash.
Mark... listen to me. There were explosions. There were flashes. There was molten metal running down the I-beams of the basement levels like lava flows. I've never seen anything like it. Yes, planes hit the buildings- anybody who says otherwise is a moron. But the explosions- the rapid, symmetrical, sequential explosions- they happened. We were in the basement, helping a man who had been struck by pieces of flying concrete and rebar, and there was one of the huge steel and concrete support pillars with an 8 foot section blown out of the center of it. We looked around and there were other support columns that were the same. We spoke about it right then and there... we were discussing as we were carrying this man, saying "how could someone have rigged all these explosives?". That sort of thing does not happen from an airplane hitting the building 70, 80 stories up. We stood outside listening to the explosions. One after the other, every minute or so. At one point, about 10 minutes before the first collapse, a 30 foot or so section of the courtyard exlploded straight up into the air. Just before the collapses, a series of deep, below ground explosions, then numerous explosions in the buildings upper floors. Then we ran. We felt the same deep explosions before the second collapse. This was not just the planes. THE BUILDINGS WERE RIGGED. There is no question about it. Hundreds of people know this, Mark. People were told, the crowds of people were TOLD over bullhorns, that building 7 was going to be pulled (and YES that is the term they used). There was a 20 second countdown over the radios, there were bright flashes up and down the sides of building 7, you could see them through the windows...and it collapsed. We all knew it was intentionally pulled... they told us! There was no question about it until a day or so later when the news was reporting that it had collapsed due to fire. We kept wondering when they were going to correct the news reports. Eventually, it became "official story".
I tried to explain that wasn't what happened. I kept telling people there were explosions. I kept explaining what I saw, and wrote to the newspapers, the networks, and the government about what I saw. I called to speak to the FDNY, and NYPD. I told them what I knew and wanted know why the news reports were wrong. I wasn't told I was wrong. I wasn't even given a different explaination. I was just told to "shut up", "forget about it", or "let it go, for my own good". I told my EMT Coordinator In Charge what we saw. The four of us from my squad who went were first congratulated for responding and doing such a good job, and later, two of us (the two that refused to "let it go") were brought up on charges of disorderly conduct, fired, and fined for the uniforms and equipment we used on 9/11 because they were ruined. The other two (who are women, one a mother of two, the other a mother of 3) now ref use to admit they were even there, even to us! They just won't speak about it. The four of us were heroes. Two of us were harrassed and fired, and the other two have to deny ever being there.
There is no doubt in my mind what happened in New York on 9/11. Yes, some of the conspiracy theories are far fetched. A few are even rediculous. But MOST of them, hold much more validity than the "official story". The government has one theory, and it is very weak, at best. Loose Change may be questionable, but that's what it is doing... providing theories and asking questions. Some of those questions get answered, others come up. THAT is why there is a 2nd Edition and a future final cut. Yes, the truth must be updated, of course it does. To say it doesn't is silly. What do you think an investigation is? You formulate a theory, ask questions, and get answers. When you come across new information or rule out false information, you update your theory. Why do you ridicule that concept? Why do you take so much pride in claiming "I didn't know the truth needed a 2n d Edition"? That's like your main motto and it's the weakest thing I've ever heard. Would it make more sense to you to write a story, or make a documentary, and NOT update it if you found new information? Would you want today's school children learning out of a 1977 1st Edition History textbook? Would you criticize an updated edition for them to learn out of? What about following editions? Of course not. My point is this: Loose Change may not be 100% accurate or complete, but it offers more plausible explanations, no matter how diabolical, than the 9/11 commission report fiasco.
In case you are wondering, no. I'm not going to give you my full name or what city I worked for. I had enough trouble having it dragged through local newspapers for two years. I don't want to lose another job. I don't want you unfoundedly slandering my name all over the net like you do with Dylan, Jason, and whoever else offers a point of view other than yours. I'm not giving you my name, so do as you wish with what I've told you. Just remember something. It's very easy to deny something, and even easier to "debunk" it with a simpler story, and simpler still to present that information to millions of people who not only have heard it as truth before, but WANT to believe it. It is much harder to piece together a series of events that makes much more sense, provides a motive, a means, and more capable suspects, and harder yet to present that information to millions of people who not only DON'T want it to be true, but have already heard a much happier story that they would rather believe.
Trust me, I'd much rather believe the official story. I'd also rather believe that Columbus discovered America and DIDN'T torture and murder the natives he encountered on the way here. But history had a 2nd Edition to that story. I can't wait for the Final Cut.
Ground Zero EMT: We Were Told Building 7 Was to Be "Pulled"
New Jersey Emergency Medical Technician asked "how could someone have rigged all these explosives?" before towers collapsed, support columns had been blown out
Prison Planet | February 8, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
A New Jersey EMT has gone public on how emergency workers were told that Building 7 was going to be "pulled," before a 20 second demolition countdown broadcast over radio preceded its collapse. The ground zero rescue worker also blows the whistle on how he witnessed multiple underground support columns of the WTC towers that had been severed before the buildings imploded.
In a letter to Loose Change producer Dylan Avery, the individual who wishes to remain anonymous refering to himself only as Mike, 30, NJ, describes how he has repeatedly tried to alert numerous authorities to what he saw on 9/11 but was ignored or told to "shut up" on every occasion, and ultimately fired for disorderly conduct.
The EMT now dismisses the official government explanation of events and slams the 9/11 commission as a "whitewash."
Having been in his profession for six years, the individual states that he was at ground zero before, during and after the collapse. He was forced to flee from the falling towers and take cover under a bus shelter as debris rained down all around him, leaving his lungs poisoned today with the toxic dust that 9/11 heroes were exposed to as a result of a cover-up on behalf of Condoleezza Rice and the EPA that assured workers ground zero air was safe to breathe.
The EMT made the decision to make his claims public after becoming aggrieved at how 9/11 debunkers were viciously attacking the creators of Loose Change for questioning the events of 9/11 in their film, which has now aired on numerous international television stations and has been seen by millions on the Internet.
In his enthralling testimony, the EMT goes into graphic detail of how he and others personally witnessed a plethora of explosions at all points of the buildings before their collapse.
"There were explosions. There were flashes. There was molten metal running down the I-beams of the basement levels like lava flows. I've never seen anything like it. Yes, planes hit the buildings - anybody who says otherwise is a moron. But the explosions - the rapid, symmetrical, sequential explosions - they happened," states 'Mike'.
He explains how he and others were in the basement of one of the towers helping injured victims when he saw "One of the huge steel and concrete support pillars with an 8 foot section blown out of the center of it." Looking around, Mike saw other support columns that were in the same condition, prompting rescue personal to ask "how could someone have rigged all these explosives?"
"We stood outside listening to the explosions," states Mike, "One after the other, every minute or so. At one point, about 10 minutes before the first collapse, a 30 foot or so section of the courtyard exploded straight up into the air. Just before the collapses, a series of deep, below ground explosions, then numerous explosions in the buildings upper floors. Then we ran. We felt the same deep explosions before the second collapse. This was not just the planes."
The rescue worker concludes emphatically, "The buildings were rigged, there is no question about it."
Perhaps of even more interest, the EMT relates the fact that hundreds of emergency rescue personnel were told over bullhorns that Building 7, a 47 story skyscraper adjacent the twin towers that was not hit by a plane yet imploded symmetrically later in the afternoon on 9/11, was about to be "pulled" and that a 20 second radio countdown preceded its collapse.
Following news reports in the days after the attack that Building 7 had collapsed due to fire damage, Mike fully expected this mistake to be corrected after the chaos had subsided, but was astonished when it became part of the official story.
Questions about Building 7 came to the fore in January 2004 when footage of WTC complex owner Larry Silverstein telling a September 2002 PBS documentary that after consultation with the FDNY the decision was made to "pull" the building surfaced on the Internet.
Why You Should Avoid Taking Vaccines
Dr. James Howenstine, MD.
Dr. James R. Shannon, former director of the National institute of health declared, "the only safe vaccine is one that is never used."
Cowpox vaccine was believed able to immunize people against smallpox. At the time this vaccine was introduced, there was already a decline in the number of cases of smallpox. Japan introduced compulsory vaccination in 1872. In 1892 there were 165,774 cases of smallpox with 29,979 deaths despite the vaccination program. A stringent compulsory smallpox vaccine program, which prosecuted those refusing the vaccine, was instituted in England in 1867. Within 4 years 97.5 % of persons between 2 and 50 had been vaccinated. The following year England experienced the worst smallpox epidemic[1] in its history with 44,840 deaths. Between 1871 and 1880 the incidence of smallpox escalated from 28 to 46 per 100,000. The smallpox vaccine does not work.
Much of the success attributed to vaccination programs may actually have been due to improvement in public health related to water quality and sanitation, less crowded living conditions, better nutrition, and higher standards of living. Typically the incidence of a disease was clearly declining before the vaccine for that disease was introduced. In England the incidence of polio had decreased by 82 % before the polio vaccine was introduced in 1956.
In the early 1900s an astute Indiana physician, Dr. W.B. Clarke, stated "Cancer was practically unknown until compulsory vaccination with cowpox vaccine began to be introduced. I have had to deal with two hundred cases of cancer, and I never saw a case of cancer in an un-vaccinated [2] person."
There is a widely held belief that vaccines should not be criticized because the public might refuse to take them. This is valid only if the benefits exceed the known risks of the vaccines.
Do Vaccines Actually Prevent Disease?
This important question does not appear to have ever been adequately studied. Vaccines are enormously profitable for drug companies and recent legislation in the U.S. has exempted lawsuits against pharmaceutical firms in the event of adverse reactions to vaccines which are very common. In 1975 Germany stopped requiring pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination. Today less than 10 % of German children are vaccinated against pertussis. The number of cases of pertussis has steadily decreased[3] even though far fewer children are receiving pertussis vaccine.
Measles outbreaks have occurred in schools with vaccination rates over 98 % in all parts of the U.S. including areas that had reported no cases of measles for years. As measles immunization rates rise to high levels measles becomes a disease seen only in vaccinated persons. An outbreak of measles occurred in a school where 100 % of the children had been vaccinated. Measles mortality rates had declined by 97 % in England before measles vaccination was instituted.
In 1986 there were 1300 cases of pertussis in Kansas and 90 % of these cases occurred in children who had been adequately vaccinated. Similar vaccine failures have been reported from Nova Scotia where pertussis continues to be occurring despite universal vaccination. Pertussis remains endemic[4] in the Netherlands where for more than 20 years 96 % of children have received 3 pertussis shots by age 12 months.
After institution of diphtheria vaccination in England and Wales in 1894 the number of deaths from diphtheria rose by 20 % in the subsequent 15 years. Germany had compulsory vaccination in 1939. The rate of diphtheria spiraled to 150,000 cases that year whereas, Norway which did not have compulsory vaccination, had only 50 cases of diphtheria the same year.
The continued presence of these infectious diseases in children who have received vaccines proves that life long immunity which follows natural infection does not occur in persons receiving vaccines. The injection process places the viral particles into the blood without providing any clear way to eliminate these foreign substances.
Why Do Vaccines Fail To Protect Against Diseases?
Walene James, author of Immunization: the Reality Behind The Myth, states that the full[5] inflammatory response is necessary to create real immunity. Prior to the introduction of measles and mumps vaccines children got measles and mumps and in the great majority of cases these diseases were benign. Vaccines "trick" the body so it does not mount a complete inflammatory response to the injected virus.
Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome SIDS
The incidence of Sudden Infant Death syndrome SIDS has grown from .55 per 1000 live births in 1953 to 12.8 per 1000 in 1992 in Olmstead County, Minnesota. The peak incidence for SIDS is age 2 to 4 months the exact time most vaccines are being given to children. 85 % of cases of SIDS occur in the first 6 months of infancy. The increase in SIDS as a percentage of total infant deaths has risen from 2.5 per 1000 in 1953 to 17.9 per 1000 in 1992. This rise in SIDS deaths has occurred during a period when nearly every childhood disease was declining due to improved sanitation and medical progress except SIDS. These deaths from SIDS did increase during a period when the number of vaccines given a child was steadily rising to 36 per child.
Dr. W. Torch was able to document 12 deaths in infants which appeared within 3½ and 19 hours of a DPT immunization. He later reported 11 new cases of SIDS death and one near miss which had occurred within 24 hours of a DPT injection. When he studied 70 cases of SIDS two thirds of these victims[6] had been vaccinated from one half day to 3 weeks prior to their deaths. None of these deaths was attributed to vaccines. Vaccines are a sacred cow and nothing against them appears in the mass media because they are so profitable to pharmaceutical firms.
There is valid reason to think that not only are vaccines worthless in preventing disease they are counterproductive because they injure the immune system permitting cancer, auto-immune diseases and SIDS to cause much disability and death.
Are Vaccines Sterile?
Dr. Robert Strecker claimed that the department of defense DOD was given $10,000,000 in 1969 to create the AIDS virus to be used as a population-reducing[7] weapon against blacks. By use of the Freedom of Information Act Dr. Strecker was able to learn that the DOD secured funds from Congress to perform studies on immune destroying agents for germ warfare.
Once produced, the vaccine was given in two locations. Smallpox vaccine containing HIV was given to 100,000,000 Africans in 1977. Over 2000 young white homosexual males in New York City were given Hepatitis B vaccine that contained HIV virus in 1978. This vaccine was given at New York City Blood Center. The Hepatitis B vaccine containing the HIV virus was also administered to homosexual males in San Francisco, Los Angeles, St.Louis, Houston and Chicago in 1978 and 1979. U.S. Public Health epidemiology studies have disclosed that these same 6 cities had the highest incidence of AIDS, Aids related Complex (ARC) and deaths rates from HIV, when compared to other U.S. cities.
When a new virus is introduced into a community. It takes 20 years for the number of cases to double. If the fabricated story that green monkey bites of pygmies led to the HIV epidemic, the alleged monkey bites in the 1940s should have produced a peak in the incidence of HIV in the 1960s at which time HIV was non existent in Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO) began a African smallpox vaccination campaign in 1977 that targeted urban population centers and avoided pygmies. If the green monkey bites of pygmies truly caused the HIV epidemic the incidence of HIV in pygmies should have been higher than in urban citizens. However, the opposite was true.
In 1954 Dr. Bernice Eddy (bacteriologist) discovered live monkey viruses in supposedly sterile inactivated polio vaccine[8] developed by Dr. Jonas Salk. This discovery was not well received at the NIH and Dr. Eddy was demoted. Later Dr. Eddy, working with Sarah Stewart, discovered SE polyoma virus. This virus was quite important because it caused cancer in every animal receiving it. Yellow fever vaccine had previously been found to contain avian (bird) leukemia virus. Later Dr. Hilleman isolated SV 40 virus from both the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. There were 40 different viruses[9] in these polio vaccines they were trying to eradicate. They were never able to get rid of these viruses ontaminating the polio vaccines. The SV 40 virus causes malignancies. It has now been identified in 43 % of cases of non-Hodgekin lymphoma[10] , 36 % of brain tumors[11] , 18 % of healthy blood samples, and 22 % of healthy semen samples, mesothiolomas and other malignancies. By the time of this discovery SV 40 had already been injected into 10,000,000 people in Salk vaccine. Gastric digestion inactivtes some of SV 40 in Sabin vaccine. However, the isolation of strains of Sabin polio vaccine from all 38 cases of Guillan Barre Syndrome[12] GBS in Brazil suggests that significant numbers of persons are able to be infected from this vaccine. All 38 of these patients had received Sabin polio vaccine months to years before the onset of GBS. The incidence of non-Hodgekin lymphoma has"mysteriouly" doubled since the 1970s.
Dr. John Martin, Professor of Pathology at the Univ. of Southern California, was employed by the Viral Oncology Branch of the Bureau of Biologics (FDA) from 1976 to 1980. While employed there he identified foreign DNA in the live polio vaccine Orimune Lederle that suggested serious vaccine contamination. He warned his supervisors about this problem and was told to discontinue his work as it was outside the scope of testing required for polio vaccine.
Later Dr. Martin learned that all eleven of the African green monkeys used to grow the Lederle polio virus Orimune had grown simian cytomegalovirus from kidney cell cultures. Lederle was aware of this viral contamination as their Cytomegaloviral Contamination Plan[13] clearly showed in 1972. The Bureau of Biologics decided not to pursue the matter so production of infected polio vaccine continued.
In 1955 Dr. Martin identified unique cell destroying viruses termed stealth viruses in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. These viruses lacked genes that would enable the immune system to recognize them. Thus they were protected by the body's failure to develop antiviral antibodies. In March of 1995, Dr. Martin learned that some of these stealth viruses had originated from African green monkey simian cytomegalovirus of a type known to infect man.
The Lederle vaccine experience suggests that the higher-ups are not concerned about sloppy and dangerous preparation of vaccines. Animal cross infection is a huge unsolved current problem for all vaccine manufacturing. If this vaccine production sounds like an unbelievable mess to you, you are right.
The influential Club of Rome has a position paper in which they state that the world population is too large and needs to be reduced by 90 %. This means that 6 billion people must be reduced to 500 to 600 million. Obviously, creating famines and genocidal wars such as wrecked havoc in Africa, and loosing new laboratory-created diseases (HIV, Ebola, Marburg[14] , and probably West Nile virus and SARS) can help reduce the population. Other elitist groups (Trilaterals, Bildenbergers) have expressed similar concerns about excess people on planet Earth.
The company that was projected to produce the new smallpox vaccine in the U.S. was in serious trouble in England because of unsatisfactory quality of operations before setting up their facility in the U.S. Why would their performance here be any better than it was in England?
If there are important powerful groups of people that are determined to reduce the world population, what could be a more diabolically clever way to eliminate people than to inject them with a cancer-causing vaccine? The person receiving the injection would never suspect that the vaccine taken 10 to 15 years earlier had caused the cancer to appear.
Other Dangers From Vaccines
In the March 4, 1977 issue of Science Jonas and Darrell Salk warn, "Live virus vaccines against influenza or poliomyelitis may in each instance produce the disease it intended to prevent. The live virus against measles and mumps may produce such side effects as encephalitis (brain damage).
The swine flu vaccine was administered to the American public even though there had never been a case of swine flu identified in a human. Farmers refused to use the vaccine because it killed too many animals. Within a few months of use in humans this vaccine caused many cases of serious nerve injury (Guillan Barre syndrome).
An article in the Washington Post on Jan. 26, 1988 mentioned that all cases of polio since 1979 had been caused by the polio vaccine with no known cases of polio from a wild strain since 1979. This might have created a perfect situation to discontinue the vaccine, but the vaccine is still given. Vaccines are a wonderful source of profits with no risks to the drug companies since vaccine injuries are now recompensed by the government.
The steady escalation in the number of vaccines administered has been followed by an identical rise in the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, asthma) seen in children. While there is a genetic transmission of some of these diseases many are probably due to the injury from foreign protein particles, mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde and other toxic agents injected in vaccines.
In 1999, the rotavirus vaccine was recommended by the Center for Disease Control for all infants. When this vaccine program was instituted several infants died and many had life endangering bowel obstructions. Prelicensure trials[15] of the rotavirus vaccine had demonstrated an increased incidence of intussusception 30 times greater than normal but the vaccine was released anyway without special warnings to practitioners to be on the lookout for bowel problems. Children's vaccines are often not studied for toxicity possibly because such study might eliminate them from being used.
A large study from Australia showed that the risk of developing encephalitis from the pertussis vaccine was 5 times greater than the risk of developing encephalitis by contacting pertussis by natural methods.
Naturally acquired immunity by illness evolves by spread of a virus from the respiratory tract to the liver, thymus, spleen, and bone marrow. When symptoms begin, the entire immune response has been mobilized to repel the invading virus. This complex immune system response creates antibodies that confer life long immunity against that invading virus and prepares the child to respond promptly to an infection by the same virus in the future.
Vaccination, in contrast, results in the persisting of live virus or other foreign antigens within the cells of the body, a situation that may provoke auto-immune reactions as the body attempts to destroy its own infected cells. There is no surprise that the incidence of auto-immune diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, subacute lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, asthma, psoriasis) has risen sharply in this era of multiple vaccine immunization.
Vaccine Induced Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
Dr. John Classen has published 29 articles on vaccine-induced[16] diabetes. At least 8 of 10 children with Type 1 (insulin needing) diabetes have this disease as a result of vaccination. These children may have avoided measles, mumps, and whooping cough but they have received something far worse: an illness that shortens life expectancy by 10 to 15 years and results in a life requiring constant medical care.
Dr. Classen has shown in Finland, the introduction of hemophilus type b vaccine caused three times as many cases of type 1 diabetes as the number of deaths and brain damage from hemophilus influenza type b it might have prevented.
In New Zealand, the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in children rose by 61 % after an aggressive vaccine program against hepatitis B.. This same program has been started in the U.S.A. so we can now look forward to many cases of Type 1 diabetes in children. Similar rises in Type 1 diabetes have been seen in England, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark after immunization programs against Hepatitis B.
Toxic Substances Are Needed To Make Vaccines.
Vaccines contain many toxic substances that are needed to prevent the vaccines from becoming infected or to improve the performance of the vaccine. Among these substances are mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum.[17]
In the past 10 years, the number of autistic children has risen from between 200 and 500 percent in every state in the U.S. This sharp rise in autism followed the introduction of measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in 1975.
Representative Dan Burton's healthy grandson was given injections for 9 diseases in one day. These injections were instantly followed by autism. These injections contain a preservative of mercury called thimerosal. The boy received 41 times the amount of mercury which is capable of harm to the body. Mercury is a neurotoxin that can injure the brain and nervous system. And tragically, it did.
In the United States the number of compulsory vaccine injections has increased from 10 to 36 in the last 25 years. During this period, there has been a simultaneous increase in the number of children suffering learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder. Some of these childhood disabilities are related to intrauterine cerebral damage from maternal cocaine use, but probably vaccines cause many of the others.
Many vaccines contain aluminum. A new disease called macrophagic myofasciitis causes pain in muscles, bones and joints. All persons with this disease have received aluminum containing vaccines. Deposits of aluminum are able to remain as an irritant in tissues and disturb the immune and nervous system for a lifetime.
Nearly all vaccines contain aluminum and mercury. These metals appear to play an important role in the etiology of Alzheimer's Disease. An expert at the 1997 International Vaccine Conference related that a person who takes 5 or more annual flu vaccine shots has increased the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's Disease by a factor of 10 over the person who has had 2 or fewer flu shots.
When we take vaccines we are playing a modern version of Russian Roulette. We not only get exposed to aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde and foreign cell proteins but we may get simian virus 40 and other dangerous viruses which can cause cancer, leukemia and other severe health problems because the vaccine pool is contaminated due to careless animal isolation techniques. Congress has protected the manufacturers from lawsuits, so dangerous vaccines simply increase profits at no risk to the drug companies.
U.S. children aged 2 months began receiving hepatitis B vaccine in December 2000.No peer-reviewed studies of the safety of hepatitis B in this age bracket had been done. Over 36,000 adverse reactions with 440 deaths were soon reported but the true incidence is much higher as reporting is voluntary so only approximately 10 % of adverse reactions get reported. This means that about 5000 infants are dying annually from the hepatitis B vaccine. The CDC's Chief of Epidemiology admits that the frequency of serious reactions to hepatitis B vaccine is 10 times higher than other vaccines. Hepatitis B is transmitted sexually and by contaminated blood, so the incidence of this disease must be near zero in this age bracket. A vaccine expert, Dr. Philip Incao, states that "the conclusion is obvious that the risks[18] of hepatitis B vaccination far outweigh the benefits. Once a vaccine is mandated the vaccine manufacturer is no longer liable for adverse reactions.
Dr. W.B. Clarke's important observation that cancer was not found in unvaccinated individuals demands an explanation and one now appears forthcoming. All vaccines given over a short period of time to an immature immune system deplete the thymus gland (the primary gland involved in immune reactions) of irreplaceable immature immune cells. Each of these cells could have multiplied and developed into an army of valuable cells to combat infection and growth of abnormal cells. When these immune cells have been used up, permanent immunity may not appear. The Arthur Research Foundation in Tucson, Arizona estimates that up to 60 % of our immune system may be exhausted[19] by multiple mass vaccines (36 are now required for children). Only 10 % of immune cells are permanently lost when a child is permitted to develop natural immunity from disease. There needs to be grave concern about these immune system injuring vaccinations! Could the persons who approve these mass vaccinations know that they are impairing the health of these children, many of whom are being doomed to requiring much medical care in the future?
Compelling evidence is available that the development of the immune system after contracting the usual childhood diseases matures and renders it capable to fight infection and malignant cells in the future.
The use of multiple vaccines, which prevents natural immunity, promotes the development of allergies and asthma. A New Zealand study disclosed that 23 % of vaccinated children develop asthma , as compared to zero in unvaccinated children.
Cancer was a very rare illness in the 1890's. This evidence about immune system injury from vaccinating affords a plausible explanation for Dr. Clarke's finding that only vaccinated individuals got cancer. Some radical adverse change in health occurred in the early 1900s to permit cancer to explode and vaccinating appears to be the reason.
Vaccines are an unnatural phenomena. My guess is that if enough persons said no to immunizations there would be a striking improvement in general health with nature back in the immunizing business instead of man. Having a child vaccinated should be a choice not a requirement. Medical and religious exemptions are permitted by most states.
When governmental policies require vaccinations before children enter schools coercion has overruled the lack of evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. There is no proof that vaccines work and they are never studied for safety before release. My opinion is that there is overwhelming evidence that vaccines are dangerous and the only reason for their existence is to increase profits of pharmaceutical firms.
If you are forced to immunize your children so they can enter school, obtain a notarized statement from the director of the facility that they will accept full financial responsibility for any adverse reaction from the vaccine. Since there is at least a 2 percent risk of a serious adverse reaction they may be smart enough to permit your child to escape a dangerous procedure. Recent legislation passed by Congress gives the government the power to imprison persons refusing to take vaccines (smallpox, anthrax, etc). This would be troublesome to enforce if large numbers of citizens declined to be vaccinated at the same time.
Footnotes:
1 Null Gary Vaccination: An Analysis of the Health Risks- Part Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients Dec. 2003 pg 78
2 Mullins Eustace Murder by Injection pg 132 The National Council for Medical Research, P. O. Box 1105, Staunton, Virginia 24401
3 Gary Null Interview with Dr. Dean Black April 7, 1995
4 de Melker HE, et al Pertussis in the Netherlands: an outbreak despite high levels of immunization with whole-cell vaccine Emerging Infectious Diseases 1997; 3(2): 175-8 Centers for Disease Control
5 Gary Null Interview with Walene James, April 6, 1995
6 Torch WS Diptheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) immunizations: a potential cause of the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) Neurology 1982; 32-4 A169 abstract.
7 Collin Jonathan The Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients 1988 abstracted in Horowitz L. Emerging Viruses Aids & Ebola pg 1-5
8 Harris RJ et al Contaminant viruses in two live vaccines produced in chick cells.J Hyg (London) 1966 Mar:64(1) : 1-7
9 Horowitz Leonard G. Emerging Viruses AIDS & Ebola pg 484
10 Vilchez RA et al Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgekin lymphoma Lancet 2002 Mar 9;359(9309):817-823
11 Bu X A study of simian virus 40 infection and its origin in human brain tumors Zhonghu Liu Xing Bing Xue Zhi 2000 Feb;21 (1):19-21
12 Friedrich F. et al temporal association between the isolation of Sabin-related poliovirus vaccine strains and the Guillan-Barre syndrome Rev Inst Med Trop Sao Paulo 1996 Jan-Feb; 38(1):55-8
13 Horowitz Leonard Emerging Viruses: Aids and Ebola pg 492
14 Horowitz Leonard G Emerging Viruses: Aids & Ebola pg 378-88 Tetrahedron Inc. Suite 147, 206 North 4th Ave. Sandpoint, Idaho 83864 1-888-508-4787 tetra@tetrahedron.org
15 Null, Gary Vaccination: An Anatysis of the health risks-Part 3 Townsend letter for doctors & patients Dec. 2003 pg 78
16 Classen, JB et al. Association between type 1 diabetes and Hib vaccine BMJ 1999; 319:1133
17 Brain 9/01
18 Incao, philip M.D. Letter to representative Dale Van Vyven, Ohio House of Representatives March 1, 1999 provided to www.garynull.com by The Natural Immunity Information Network
19 Rowen Robert Your first consultation with Dr. Rowen pg 20
(c) 2003 Dr. James Howenstine - All Rights Reserved
Dr. James A. Howenstine is a board certified specialist in internal medicine who spent 34 years caring for office and hospital patients. Curiosity sparked a 4 year study of natural health products when 5 of his patients with severe rheumatoid arthritis were able to discontinue the use of methotrexate (chemotherapy agent) after trying an extract of New Zealand mussels for the therapy of severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr. Howenstine is convinced that natural products are safer, more effective and less expensive than pharmaceutical drugs. This research led to the publication of his book 'A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work'. This book and the recommended health products are available from www.naturalhealthteam.com
Lawmaker: U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said Tuesday.
The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.
Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.
On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.
It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 30.
Bremer: Cash requested by Iraqis
L. Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance.
"He said, 'I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place, I won't know how to get the money here,"' Bremer said.
"So these shipments were made at the explicit request of the Iraqi minister of finance to forward fund government expenses, a perfectly, seems to me, legitimate use of his money," Bremer told lawmakers.
Democrats led by Waxman also questioned whether the lack of oversight of $12 billion in Iraqi money that was disbursed by Bremer and the CPA somehow enabled insurgents to get their hands on the funds, possibly through falsifying names on the government payroll.
"I have no knowledge of monies being diverted. I would certainly be concerned if I thought they were," Bremer said. He pointed out that the problem of fake names on the payroll existed before the U.S.-led invasion. (Watch Waxman outline questions and Bremer respond )
The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.
"We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer told lawmakers. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.
Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.
"We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.
Copyright 2007 Reuters.
The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.
Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.
On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.
It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 30.
Bremer: Cash requested by Iraqis
L. Paul Bremer, who as the administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority ran Iraq after initial combat operations ended, said the enormous shipments were done at the request of the Iraqi minister of finance.
"He said, 'I am concerned that I will not have the money to support the Iraqi government expenses for the first couple of months after we are sovereign. We won't have the mechanisms in place, I won't know how to get the money here,"' Bremer said.
"So these shipments were made at the explicit request of the Iraqi minister of finance to forward fund government expenses, a perfectly, seems to me, legitimate use of his money," Bremer told lawmakers.
Democrats led by Waxman also questioned whether the lack of oversight of $12 billion in Iraqi money that was disbursed by Bremer and the CPA somehow enabled insurgents to get their hands on the funds, possibly through falsifying names on the government payroll.
"I have no knowledge of monies being diverted. I would certainly be concerned if I thought they were," Bremer said. He pointed out that the problem of fake names on the payroll existed before the U.S.-led invasion. (Watch Waxman outline questions and Bremer respond )
The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.
"We were in the middle of a war, working in very difficult conditions, and we had to move quickly to get this Iraqi money working for the Iraqi people," Bremer told lawmakers. He said there was no banking system and it would have been impossible to apply modern accounting standards in the midst of a war.
Republicans argued that Bremer and the CPA staff did the best they could under the circumstances and accused Democrats of trying to score political points over the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.
"We are in a war against terrorists, to have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," said Rep. Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican.
Copyright 2007 Reuters.
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