Bush take on world draws international skepticism

Tuesday, February 22, 2005 Updated at 8:49 AM EST
Associated Press

Washington — U.S. President George W. Bush is calling on European leaders to support his campaign to spread democracy abroad at a time people in many of those countries have doubts whether that should be the U.S. role in the world, Associated Press polling found.

A majority of people in eight countries – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea, Spain and Canada – said they thought it should not be the U.S. role to spread democracy, AP-Ipsos polls indicate.

Mr. Bush is on a five-day fence-mending trip to Europe after tensions were raised there by the war in Iraq. In a speech Monday in Brussels, he promoted democracy as the path forward for a host of countries, from Saudi Arabia to Iran and Syria, and urged European leaders to move beyond the rift over Iraq and join his pro-liberty campaign.

“This strategy is not American strategy, or European strategy, or Western strategy,” Mr. Bush said in an echo of the broad themes of his inaugural address a month ago. “Spreading liberty for the sake of peace is the cause of all mankind.”

Yet the public skepticism reflected in a new AP-Ipsos poll in Europe indicates that he faces plenty of work on that front – a development that analysts of international relations suggested was not surprising.

“There's still wariness and resentment of the United States in general,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a professor who specializes in European studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Mr. Bush's efforts, he said, were having a limited impact in spreading democracy.

“In the wake of the Iraq war, there's particular suspicion of this administration,” Mr. Mandelbaum added.

White House counsellor Dan Bartlett suggested that foreigners may misunderstand Mr. Bush's plan to spread the liberties that Europeans and North Americans take for granted.

“People get in their mind that spreading freedom means war, and that's not the case,” Mr. Bartlett said in an interview Tuesday on ABC's Good Morning America. “Some of those opinion polls are reading into it a little more than what President Bush intends.”

Resistance to Mr. Bush's plans was strongest in France, at 84 per cent, according to the polling conducted for the Associated Press by Ipsos, an international polling firm.

About as many Germans – 78 per cent – took that position, while two-thirds of those in Britain said they didn't think the United States should be exporting democracy. Just over half of those in Spain and Italy felt that way.

“It's hard to believe our allies are indifferent to the spread of democracy,” said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. “But they obviously don't feel comfortable with George Bush as the self-anointed spreader of democracy.”

In the United States, a slight majority, 53 per cent, said the United States should not be trying to spread democracy, while 45 per cent said that role is appropriate.

“Europeans in general – especially the European elites – tend to be more cynical about the possibilities of exporting democracy,” said Mr. Mandelbaum, author of the book Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets. “There is a general feeling that democracy just doesn't fit some cultures.”

While people in many of the countries polled do not approve of Mr. Bush's policies, that does not appear to be having much impact on how they view U.S. consumer goods.

For example, attitudes about U.S. goods in France, lukewarm at best, have not shifted significantly since December, 2001, before the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

About two in 10 of the French said they would rather buy U.S. goods than other types of goods available in their country if the price and quality were the same. About one in 10 said U.S. products were better quality than other goods available. Neither number has changed much since before the Iraq war.

“If anything there's been a little more traction to boycotting of French goods in America than of American goods in France, said John Quelch, a Harvard University professor who studies international marketing. “There is no evidence of significant spillover of tensions about American foreign policy into consumer purchase behaviour in Europe.”

In most of the countries polled, people were not likely to prefer American goods over local goods. They were inclined to think American goods – generally more expensive – were worth the money, but they did not think they were better quality than local products.

In most of the countries, young adults were more likely to be enthusiastic about buying American goods and working at American companies.

The findings are based on polling of about 1,000 adults in each of the countries surveyed from Feb. 9-17 and each poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

North Korea or Al Qaeda: Who's the Bigger Nuke Threat?

The true answer, breaking free from the limits of the question, would be the United States and Israel. The rest is pure fiction.

By Kathleen Rhodes
CNSNews.com Correspondent
February 21, 2005

(CNSNews.com) - The renewed fear of Kim Jong Il's North Korean regime possessing inter-continental ballistic missiles has overshadowed another threat - the possibility that al-Qaeda terrorists might detonate one or more suitcase nuclear bombs in the United States, using the same kind of coordination deployed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.

Investigative journalist and former FBI consultant Paul Williams, author of "Osama's Revenge: The Next 9/11," discussed what he sees as an inevitable al-Qaeda nuclear attack in the United States in an interview with NewsMax.com in July 2004.

"I believe that between now and 2005, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda will attack the U.S. with [stolen] nuclear weapons. I have no doubt about it," Williams said. "The best bang for the buck is nuclear; they (al Qaeda) know that."

Williams believes al Qaeda already has "10 or more" suitcase nuclear weapons already in place with terrorist sleeper cells in the United States and theorizes in his book that these weapons were either smuggled in through Mexico or Canada or on container ships from overseas.

Williams told NewsMax.com that these bombs have an approximate explosive strength of 10 kilotons and "could render Manhattan unlivable for 1,000 years."

Al Qaeda terrorists living in the United States are patient, Williams added, and "will attack when ready." He claims that New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Dallas are likely targets and that several bombs could be simultaneously detonated in different cities in the kind of coordinated attack that the hijackers of several jetliners conducted on 9/11.

Williams also named oil-rich Valdez, Alaska, which sits at one end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and Rappahannock County, Va., which may contain an underground command center where White House officials could relocate in the event of a war, as possible targets.

The idea that al Qaeda terrorists already have suitcase nuclear weapons is not new. Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir claims that in an interview he conducted in March 2004, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, bragged to him about having purchased "suitcase bombs" on the black market in central Asia.

Although U.S. intelligence agencies never confirmed the purchase, officials have long suspected al Qaeda of attempting to buy nuclear devices in this manner.

Michael Scheuer, who resigned last November from a CIA job that was focused on countering bin Laden and al Qaeda, has expressed a belief that the terror group's next attack against the U.S. is likely to be nuclear-based.

"I was not too sure until I heard U.S. politicians during the presidential campaign discussing whether Soviet-era nuclear assets will be under effective control in 2007 or 2010," Scheuer said in an interview with the Jamestown Foundation.

Scheuer was referring to the uncertain status, since the collapse of the old Soviet Union, of unsecured stockpiles of old Soviet weapons, including suitcase-sized tactical nuclear devices, which could provide ammunition for terrorists.

Those fears escalated when, according to a Center for Nonproliferation Studies report in 1997, former Russian Security Council secretary Alexander Lebed claimed that approximately 100 suitcase nuclear weapons from the Soviet era were missing.

Lebed reportedly told CBS' "60 Minutes" in September of that year that he had tried to investigate the weapons' whereabouts, but had been fired by then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin before he could finish.

Scheuer claimed that "bin Laden has a very professional procurement network involving scientists and engineers," who would be capable of obtaining these suitcase nuclear weapons if they were available.

"They have the money and they have shown the ability to work with unlikely people, like the Mafia. If a weapon is out there, they will do their utmost to secure it. Bin Laden is not looking for a deterrent; he is looking for a first strike weapon." Scheuer said.

If al Qaeda already possesses or in the future manages to obtain nuclear weapons, Scheuer said he is confident the terrorist group would not hesitate to use them. "I think there is no doubt about that. They would prefer to use a nuclear weapon, since chemical and biological weapons would be difficult to control. Moreover using such a weapon enhances their chances of winning this war."

He added that bin Laden and al Qaeda would disregard the possibility of the United States retaliating in the event of such an attack. "I don't think they care about that," Scheuer said, adding that "they are still confident that the Americans are not ruthless enough to do something like that.

"The real problem is that by virtue of being the most powerful military in the world, the U.S. has convinced its enemies that its response will always be measured and proportionate. Bin Laden and his people study these things closely and factor them into their planning and decision-making," Scheuer added.

Dirty bombs: A 'very serious problem'

R. James Woolsey, who served as CIA director during the Clinton administration, told the Cybercast News Service on Feb. 8 that the chances of al Qaeda planning a chemical, biological or "dirty bomb" attack in the United States was "probably pretty high."

But when asked about the chance that dirty bombs or suitcase nukes had already been smuggled into the United States, Woolsey was more skeptical. "I think it's probably unlikely right now, but it's a very serious problem," Woolsey conceded.

He explained that a radiological or dirty bomb was more likely to be used than a suitcase nuclear bomb. "A dirty bomb is a serious problem because there are a number of sources for the [bomb] that could be used and you don't have to have near the expertise to put together something like that you have to have with an actual nuclear weapon," Woolsey said.

"But about the location, I don't know. I mean one hopes that there's nothing here ... but nobody can guarantee that," he added

Woolsey also pointed out that the list of potential terrorist aggressors against the United States is not necessarily limited to members of al Qaeda. "Any terrorist organization - the one that is most solidly and clearly at war with us right now is al Qaeda -- but you know, it's a dark world out there ..." Woolsey said.

Michael Swetnam, former CIA officer and chairman/CEO of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, agreed that the threat of a dirty bomb is more serious that that posed by the missing Soviet built suitcase nukes.

"[The suitcase bombs] all have failsafe mechanisms and unless you've got the code to unlock the bomb ... [it] renders itself useless and you're just left with nuclear material," Swetnam told the Cybercast News Service Feb. 14. "A dirty bomb is probably more likely what you'll see."

Swetnam also discounted Paul Williams' contention that al Qaeda already has nuclear weapons here in the U.S. "I think if they had them here, they'd have used them, absolutely," Swetnam said.

He did not, however, rule out the possibility that such weapons might be brought into the U.S. in the future. "In today's world we're only able to search or screen five percent of the stuff that comes into the country, particularly by ship. So the odds of them being able to smuggle something in are pretty good," Swetnam said.

When asked if he thought American authorities would be able to stop an attack once the weapons had been smuggled into the country, Swetnam replied: "Well, [they] probably wouldn't."

North Korea, Pakistan selling nukes to terrorists?

Swetnam believes the U.S. should focus on the threat posed by countries such as North Korea or Pakistan selling nuclear weapons or materials to terrorists.

"What we're afraid of now with places like North Korea is that this crazy guy, Kim Jong Il ... might sell a real working nuclear weapon to some terror group just because he's a nutcase. That scares us. That scares us badly," Swetnam said.

North Korean officials recently announced that they had acquired nuclear weapons, citing the recent threat of U.S. aggression as the reason for needing them. And CIA Director Porter Goss told a congressional panel this week that he believes the North Korean nuclear arsenal involves inter-continental ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. soil.

Swetnam also discussed Pakistan as a potential source of nuclear weapons for terrorists. "What we have to worry about is any weapons that might have been built in Pakistan. Remember A.Q. Kahn, who gave nuclear secrets to Libya and other places. That's the type of thing that we really have to worry about," he said.

Swetnam was referring to Abdul Qadeer Kahn, former head of Pakistan's nuclear research program, who is thought to have sold nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.

What is the government doing?

President Bush's appointment Thursday of Ambassador John Negroponte to be America's first director of national intelligence is part of the government's greater emphasis on counter-terrorism work, which former Democratic U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana recently called "the number one national security interest in the United States."

Hamilton, who also served as vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United Sates, (9-11 Commission) believes congressional oversight committees need to work as a "partner and critic" of the intelligence community. "The Congress needs to be looking at every nook and cranny at what happens in the intelligence community," he said, including the amount of money budgeted for such operations.

"In the past, intelligence has been handled by the defense subcommittees of the (House and Senate) appropriations committee[s]," Hamilton said. "The defense subcommittee has such an enormous job that giving the time and attention necessary to the intelligence budget is a very hard thing to do." He believes strengthening the congressional oversight committees would help alleviate this problem.

"We are dealing here with the safety and security of the American people and how best to protect them, so we think there is an urgency here and the urgency remains. It has not been eliminated or even diminished," Hamilton said. Increased congressional oversight, he said, is "a matter of national security of the United States."

Hamilton applauded the fact that Americans have not been attacked on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001, but wondered whether it was "because we're so smart, or we're lucky? I don't know," he said, answering his own question.

The strange story of White House reporter 'Jeff Gannon'

February 19, 2005
Donald P. Russo

Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's ''The Daily Show,'' returned recently to the Lehigh Valley for two appearances at Easton's State Theatre. During his stand-up routine, Stewart said, ''Bush's presidency is like 'The Truman Show,' it's a world of his own creation.'' (He was referring to the 1998 Jim Carrey movie.) Based upon recent events, it appears that George W. Bush creates not only his own reality, but also, his own news media.

There was a time, not long ago, when the media would have taken a president to task for launching a pre-emptive war under false pretenses. Media pundits of yesteryear may have actually questioned the notion of a president leading a nation into a protracted war based upon spurious assumptions about the provenance of a prior terrorist attack, or manufactured hysteria over weapons of mass destruction that failed to materialize.

Such skepticism today, though, is viewed as unpatriotic. Many White House reporters have become good puppies, eager to serve as cheerleaders for Bush's policies. Many of them refused to hold Bush accountable for misdirecting us about Iraq's alleged WMD and connections to 911. Now, they sanguinely carry water for Bush's new Iranian agenda. We are hearing news reports about Iran possibly constructing heavy water nuclear reactors. No one is asking why we should believe these accusations, given the sloppy prognostications about Iraq.

We are ill-served by an acquiescent White House press corps. Consider how they are downplaying the remarkable story of one Jeff Gannon. James Dale Guckert, who reported under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, resigned recently as Washington bureau chief for Talon News, a conservative on-line news service owned by the Web site GOPUSA.

A Feb. 9 story by Helen Kennedy of the New York Daily News reveals that Guckert has an unorthodox personal story — one that is anathema to the stated cultural beliefs of President Bush, a hero to the religious right. One can only speculate which name Mr. Guckert used when applying for White House press credentials. Which name was on the official daily press passes he was given? In this post-911 security environment, Guckert sat only a few feet away from the president during press conferences.

Guckert lobbed softball questions to the president and functioned as a lifeline for presidential press spokesman Scott McClellan. Guckert got some of his ''facts'' from Rush Limbaugh. The veracity of those facts was irrelevant to Guckert. Limbaugh invented statements by Democratic congressional leaders saying that President Bush's economic policies would bring back soup kitchens. Hearing this, Guckert parroted them, asking President Bush: ''You've said you're going to reach out to these people (Democrats). How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?''

This type of propaganda was allowed to permeate the public discourse by a White House fully aware that ''Jeff Gannon'' was not who he purported to be. Moreover, Talon News was created on March 29, 2003. It is owned by a Web site operated by a Texas-based Republican Party activist, Robert Eberle. Four days after Talon News began, ''Jeff Gannon,'' who had no background in journalism, secured White House press credentials. He also had access to classified information that named Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. The Washington Post reported last year that Guckert's name was on a list of reporters contacted by the special prosecutor who is investigating who leaked Plame's name to the press.

Imagine, if you will, a liberal on-line news service sending a reporter with a phony name to apply for White House press credentials. I'm sure the Secret Service would unhesitatingly invite that person to leave the building. Meanwhile, Guckert was turned down for a congressional press pass because he could not show that he wrote for a valid news organization. Nonetheless, he was welcomed into the heart of the White House press room.

We have previously heard about fake television commentary touting both the new Medicare law and the No Child Left Behind program; a study rating individual journalists on their ''favorability'' to Republican education policies; and payments to journalist Armstrong Williams. After the Williams controversy became public, Bush administration payments to two other journalists, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, were also disclosed.

''Gannon'' resigned from Talon News last week. Still, the White House owes us an explanation.

Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement

Ruppert and Hopsicker
Co-Opting the 9-11 Truth Movement

Or

Exposing the Big Con –
Lies and Disinformation At The End Of Civilisation As We Know It

Joe Quinn

Febuary 7 2005: In looking at the best known "big names" among those individuals allegedly attempting to uncover the truth about 9-11, high up on the list (at the moment anyway) we find Mike Ruppert of ‘From the Wilderness’.

Ruppert has been making alternative news headlines for the past few months over two issues: the flack he has been taking, and giving, in a war of words with several high profile 9-11 investigators, and the issue of "Peak Oil". Quite often the two controversies are related.

It all began, it seems, with another 9-11 investigator, Dick Eastman, and some comments that he made about Ruppert's focus, or lack thereof, on the Pentagon attack and the evidence for the "no plane" scenario. Ruppert, true to his apparent love of litigation, threatened to sue Eastman, which, not being the most diplomatic response, got Eastman all flustered and the games where on.

Allegations flew back and forth, but sadly for corporate America, no lawsuits. Enter Victor Thorn (real name Scott Makufka) and owner of the Wing TV website. Thorn, apparently just your average dedicated 9-11 investigator, soon became aware of the spat between Ruppert and Eastman and decided that the best place for Ruppert and Eastman to discuss the matter like civilised truth seekers was on Thorn’s internet radio show. Thorn however, made the mistake of mentioning Eastman’s allegations in his invitation email to Ruppert, which was construed by Ruppert as an attack and resulted in Thorn joining the ranks of those threatened with legal action by Ruppert.

Now I have never met nor corresponded with Mr Ruppert, so I have to rely on the opinions of others who have met him or had some interaction with him to come to some idea of what kind of a guy he is. In all of the opinions of Ruppert that have been bandied about in recent months, the one that keeps popping up, and which is admitted to by even his friends, is that he is somewhat ‘excitable’. Frankly, given Mike’s situation, I can understand.

If we look at what thrust Mike into a unique position among 9-11 researchers, we find that it was not his research into 9-11, but rather his shocking revelations about "peak oil". Now it is no surprise that, from Mike’s point of view, this particular issue would eventually eclipse the events of 9-11 altogether, as he stated in his recent lecture at Washington University. After all, what’s the point in pursuing the prosecutions of Cheney and the boys when a large percentage of the population, according to the peak oil scenario, will never get to enjoy the trial anyway?

Thinking a little more deeply about the matter, I would venture to say that, if it were I that had uncovered - (alone or with the subtle help of parties unseen) - information that "proved conclusively" that there was no more oil and that mechanised humanity was in for a very nasty surprise, complete with the whole die off scenario etc, I might be a little testy sometimes too. If I subsequently realised (by my own efforts or with the subtle help of parties unseen), that the dissemination of this all-important information was my responsibility alone, I hope I would be excused for getting a little paranoid now and then. And in the case that I had come to the conclusion (alone or with the subtle help of parties unseen), that there would be lots of people out there pretending to be 9-11 researchers who, in reality, were just attempting to discredit me and my very important message to humanity, I’m damn sure I might strike people as ‘uptight’. Heck, I might even get defensive and aggressive at times, especially in my dealings with people that I suspected to be such disinfo artists - which could be anybody. I might even threaten to sue a bunch of them.

We should all therefore be reading between the lines with Mike and his temperament, but we should not waste too much time on it, and look more closely instead at his message.

If we look at the situation dispassionately (not an easy thing to do given the subject matter - "you’re all gonna die" - tends to make people a little emotional don’t ya know), what seems to be true about Mike’s message is that it is so shocking that it tends to have the effect of suspending the critical thinking capabilities of people who hear it. In a way it is like one of those doomsday cults where blind faith is asked for and given because: "we’re all gonna be toast pretty soon anyway, so what have you got to lose?"

It is also, coincidentally, a very good way to focus attention away from 9-11.

Of course, I am not saying that Mike is running a cult of any description, I am just saying that, whether Mike is aware of it or not, his message tends to promote emotional rather than critical thought, and thinking with our emotions tends to exacerbate an already problematic situation.

I think I can say without much fear of disputel, that, whether he planned it or not (or whether someone else planned it with him in mind), Mike has become somewhat of a saviour for his followers.

By his own admission, the following are Mike’s core beliefs about what needs to be done:

Instead of advocating war I oppose it. Anyone who has attended any of my more than 35 lectures in eight countries (more than 15,000 live audience members) will know, of a certainty, that my position on solutions is absolutely clear. I advocate an immediate cessation of all military conquest and imperialism by the US government and industrialized powers; an end to the war on terror.

I advocate an immediate convening of political, economic, spiritual and scientific leaders from all nations to address the issue of Peak Oil (and Gas) and its immediate implications for economic collapse, massive famine and climate destruction (partially as a result of reversion to coal plants which accelerate global warming). This would, scientifically speaking, include immediate steps to arrive at a crash program – agreed to by all nations and in accordance with the highest spiritual and ethical principles – to stop global population growth and to arrive at the best possible and most ethical program of population reduction as a painful choice made by all of humanity.

I hope that the sharp and sudden increase in heart rate and blood pressure that the words "population reduction" must surely have caused in readers was not too much to handle, and that we can continue and rationally consider the practicality of just what is being suggested by Mike.

The first question that can be reasonably asked is: "What planet has Mike been living on for the past 50 years?"

Please tell me when exactly the wonderful, life-respecting, spiritual beings took over the planet? Was it while I was at the toilet?

Seriously though, can ANYONE imagine Cheney or Putin or Blair or Zhu Rongji, or any other world leader for that matter, who by definition of their position of power have been completely corrupted by that power, suddenly exhibiting "the highest spiritual and ethical principles"? Just about every world leader, including the supposedly "spiritual" ones, have been presiding over mass depopulation for centuries, and they didn’t need any stinkin’ ethics or morals to do it; glee and relish was all it took!

When Mike was challenged by Victor Thorn of Wing TV about his stance on the depopulation question, he stated that, ideally, the job of depopulation would:

" […] include people of more humane vocations than those of the economists, politicians, and financiers who are currently in charge of most domestic and international institutions".

Sure, we would all like to have those "of more humane vocations" included, Mike, but, last time I checked, it was still the "economists, politicians, and financiers" that were running the show. Better yet, let’s have more humane people make the decisions, not simply those who are in positions where the illusion of humaneness is part of the job description.

Mike continues in this vein with his basic point being that it would be better that the several billion of us that sadly have to "go", be put to sleep by the Dalai Lama than prematurely euthanised by the Nazi Neocons.

Again, really Mike, it’s not much of a choice. Either way you are asking us to make the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ in order to clear the board for the "economists, politicians, and financiers" to just start all over again. THAT is the reality of the situation and it’s time we all grew up and accepted it.

The bottom line with Ruppert is that, while his alarmist, doomsday message is a real attention grabber, his solution to the problem really isn’t a solution at all, and for this reason it would be better if he were to just make his point and quietly sit down.

Another troubling aspect of the whole Mike Ruppert travelling show is the fact that he enjoys a level of exposure that is denied most other 9-11 researchers. He seems to have few problems in securing speaking appointments in places like Washington University or the Commonwealth club and having his book "requested by more than 120 press agencies from around the world", including "the largest and most powerful", and certainly the many lawsuits that he has either started or threatened to start must require considerable cash flow.

If there is one thing that the honest modern day truth seekers must come to terms with, it is that nothing is ever made easy. Everything must be worked for, and exposing the truth generally does not pay well in monetary terms. That is not to say that all those penniless "alternative" editorialists are on the level, but if you have a product to sell and maintain, be it a lie or the truth, you need exposure, and the type of exposure Ruppert is getting is usually beyond the reach of those of us who ARE on the level and attempting to scrape a living from it.

It is indeed strange to realise that, for all Mike’s supposed savvy as an ex-LAPD cop, he, like Hopsicker, seems unable to really grasp the true nature of the people that control this planet. On the contrary, Mike would have us believe that he and his little band of researchers should be credited with uncovering and bringing the "reality" of Peak oil, not only to the little people, but also to the Finance Ministers of the world’s seven largest nations! As he triumphantly stated in an essay last October:

WE DID IT!

World’s Seven Largest Economies (G7) Admit They Have No Idea How Much Oil Is Left - Issue Emergency Call for Transparency at DC Summit

A Challenge to the Flat-Earth, Abiotic Oil Advocates and Cornucopian Economists - It’s Now or Never

by Michael C. Ruppert

In the article, Ruppert claims that he and, "a group of dedicated men and women, recognized as being in the forefront of the movement to place Peak Oil front and center on the world’s agenda" had singled-handedly brought the reality of peak oil to the attention of the world’s leaders. Misunderstood ‘new-age’ platitudes about a single person being able to ‘change the world’ aside, is it really reasonable to think that a group of citizens would just stumble upon information as important as "peak oil" BEFORE the people that have been using oil to control and manipulate the world for decades?

If your answer is yes, as Mike’s seems to be, then we humbly propose that both you and Mike are woefully ignorant of the true nature of the control system on this planet.

But then again, wishful thinking WILL get you, EVERY time.

In a final flourish to the article Ruppert states that: "this book may change the outcome of the (2004) election". To which we say: if Mike’s election predictions are anything to go by, we can all relax about "Peak oil" as he presents it.

According to Mike, when big government and big oil exploration and drilling companies proclaim to the world that "we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here folks", it is not that these patently corrupt men are attempting to manipulate world opinion, but rather that, faced with the dire consequences that peak oil portends for humanity, they are simply concerned for our well-being and future. Ruppert fails however to address the question of whether or not it is reasonable to believe that such men would suddenly undergo a complete reversal of the ethics that had motivated them up until that point in their lives.

As we all know, oil does not naturally flow out of the ground pre-refined into the various forms that are required to keep the post-industrial world turning and well-fed. There is a long and costly process involved in getting the oil to the gas station, and it would not happen if it were not financed by the large multinational oil companies that naturally have very close ties to the governments that require the oil in order for them to have a country and a population to rule over.

If there is an alleged shortage of oil, it is just as plausible that such claims are the result of some new government/corporate strategy rather than the actual drying up of resources.

Consider also the fact that, if we are to believe that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were solely to steal the oil resources of those countries, then things have not panned out as the Neocons hoped. Most reports have been telling us that the expected reserves in Iraq are just not there. Which begs the question: are we really to believe that all the big brains in the US "think-tanks" did not foresee this?

Of course I am not for a moment suggesting that depopulation does not form a part of the plans of ‘the powers that be’. There is too much evidence that governments have, for many years, been working on developing ever better ways to kill ever more people. My problem with Ruppert is that by promoting his "peak oil" debate, he ever so subtly diverts attention away from those who are really responsible for our current predicament and lays the blame for the impending demise of civilisation as we know it at the door of mother nature and the unfortunate fact that she has run out of oil.

How tragic.

While I cannot prove it, I would venture to say that Ruppert is being backed; possibly financially, probably with information, and almost definitely in terms of exposure. Having said that, it is possible - but not likely - that he himself knows little about where the money, information or exposure are really coming from. Such is the nature of the murky world of CoIntelPro and the fate of those who unwittingly become mired in it.

Which brings us to another high profile 9-11 investigator. Daniel Hopsicker of Mad Cow Morning News. The bulk of Hopsicker’s research centers around alleged chief hijacker Mohammed Atta and his association with the CIA and their drug running activities in Florida. Hopsicker’s "smoking gun" is that Atta and 6 other hijackers got their "wings" at a Florida Flight School that was also used for drug running by the CIA. Added to that is evidence that the hijackers received further training at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Hopsicker states:

"The most extraordinarily-damning fact that’s been dredged up so far about the 9-11 attack is this one, unearthed in Florida:

"During the same month that Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began flying lessons at his flight school, the flight school owner’s Lear jet was seized by DEA agents who found 43 pounds of heroin aboard."

It goes to the heart of the relationship between Mohamed Atta and his Hamburg cadre and their criminal hosts here in the U.S. and leads directly to the network supporting, employing, and/or doing business with the terrorists.

Now, I am not contesting any of these details, in fact, it is rather curious that Hopsicker is able to glean such detailed and explosive information about the undoubtedly "top secret" activities of the phoney hijackers, purely as a result of honest and diligent research. Get real!

Hopsicker raises further suspicion and further dilutes his credibility by insisting that all roads simply HAVE to lead to Saudi Arabia, summing up his stance by saying:

Any 9-11"expert" whose revelations don’t frequently use the word "Saudi" in conjunction with the word "Florida" is peddling a red herring.

There are a lot of problems with "the Saudis did it" argument, the most obvious being that this is the main allegation not-so-subtly hinted at by Michael Moore in his widely advertised docu-movie, Fahrenheit 9-11. Given what we know about the mainstream media and it’s subservience to US government interests, it is unlikely that such a movie would have received such publicity if the allegations therein were actually factual.

Secondly there is the problem of the Saudi/bin Laden link. By now most serious researchers should be aware that bin Laden has been a CIA asset since the time of the Russo-Afghan war. During those years, bin Laden was the CIA’s man in Afghanistan and was used to recruit, train and funnel money and arms to the small group of fundamentalist Islamic ideologists and fighters that gave the Russians such a hard time. Of course, the CIA did not dirty their hands directly, preferring to use bin Laden’s folks in the Saudi regime as their middlemen. Having successfully schooled this band of merry Islamophiles in the art of expelling a world superpower from their country, they were then used as the scapegoats in various false flag operations that culminated in the 9-11 attacks. The BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares" does a good job of summing up this aspect of the global shell game.

Thirdly there is the problem of the major source of the Saudi Arabia/9-11 link - Pakistani Intelligence – an organisation that is generally accepted as being little more than the CIA in SW Asia.

Did the Saudis know about 9-11?

A new book claims that Saudi princes and a Pakistani official knew Osama bin Laden would strike America that day. But some critics say the whole story could be a neoconservative fabrication.

By Mark Follman Oct. 18, 2003

When U.S. and Pakistani special forces raided a house on the outskirts of Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, and successfully nabbed top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, the mood at CIA headquarters was upbeat. Langley watched the early morning raid via satellite, and once a Pakistani intelligence officer and some quick voice prints confirmed Zubaydah’s identity, the CIA knew it had captured one of its most sought-after adversaries, a figure who could potentially reveal the full story of the 9-11 terrorist plot. Shot several times in the raid, Zubaydah was given enough medical treatment to ensure his survival and hauled away for questioning. According to a new book, what Zubaydah said -- after being subjected to highly controversial interrogation methods -- stunned intelligence officials.

In his book "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9-11," Gerald Posner makes an explosive allegation: Top figures in the Saudi and Pakistani governments had been directly assisting Osama bin Laden for years and knew al-Qaida was going to strike America on Sept. 11. Posner cites two unnamed U.S. government sources, both of whom he asserts are "in a position to know," who he said gave him separate, corroborating reports. One source is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official "inside the executive branch," he told Salon in an interview.

According to Posner’s account, four Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan’s air force were deeply involved with Osama bin Laden for years, some of them meeting with him well after al-Qaida began its terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas in the mid-1990s. The fact that some of the figures were so highly placed makes it hard to dismiss the possibility, if the allegations are true, that the heads of the Saudi and Pakistani governments signed off on the policy.

Saudi, Pakistani and U.S. government officials (the latter off the record) have dismissed the story as false. Zubaydah himself subsequently recanted his claims, saying he lied to avoid torture, according to Posner. But Posner thinks the allegations are credible -- not least because four of the five supposed conspirators died under strange circumstances -- and believes the U.S. wants to downplay them for an obvious reason: They’re too hot to handle, painting as they do two crucial allies as working hand-in-hand with America’s Public Enemy No. 1.

But several intelligence analysts and experts on Saudi Arabia doubt the story’s authenticity. While acknowledging that Saudi Arabia has supported fiery proponents of militant Islam and took an early see-no-evil approach to bin Laden, they say it would be highly unlikely that top members of the Saudi royal family would be so deeply involved with a global terrorist organization -- one that seeks to destroy the Saudi regime itself as part of a worldwide jihad against infidels and their allies.

As if to perpetuate the myth of a bona fide "war on terror", Hopsicker also repeatedly makes reference to "the terrorists", apparently taking as gospel the government - spun lie that "Arab terrorists" actually exist as an organised group dedicated to destroying everything American. Again, readers should watch the BBC-aired documentary "The Power of Nightmares" for evidence of this. It is hard to believe that a seasoned supersleuth like Hopsicker is not aware of the vast amount of evidence to suggest that the entire concept of an organised worldwide terrorist network is completely bogus.

Hopsicker is also insistent that the "no plane at the Pentagon" crowd are disinfo artists. Thankfully however, and as if to save us wasting any more time, Hopsicker graciously gives his CoIntelPro position away completely by claiming that anyone caught promoting the idea that the 9-11 airplanes could have been flown by remote control are obviously disinfo artists. Which, if Hopsicker is correct, means that Boeing must also be part of the 9-11 truth movement.

The more we look into the backgrounds of the main players involved in 9-11 research, the more links we find. Ruppert was a member of Hopsicker’s CIA drug running online discussion list. It is interesting therefore that Hopsicker and Ruppert have since had somewhat of a falling out in recent months, mainly due to information that Hopsicker dug up on Pinnacle Quest International (PQI), a company offering "little-known insider secrets of wealth creation" to its customers and from which Ruppert had accepted 4 all expenses paid trips to Cancun with a $1,000 dollar speaking fee. Hopsicker claims that PQI runs scam operations, and with a price tag of $7,500 for 21 CDs, we tend to agree with him. Unsurprisingly, as a result of this interaction with Hopsicker, Ruppert threatened to sue.

Now all of this gives the impression that Hopsicker and Ruppert are on opposing sides and one of them is telling the truth and the other is selling the lie. But as I have already mentioned, nothing is ever that simple in the world of CoIntelPro. You see, even with his "peak oil" slant, Ruppert and his message ran the risk of being just one more voice in the melee of 9-11 investigators and investigations currently entrenched on the internet. In the world of CoIntelPro, there are many ways to draw attention to the lie that you have to sell, and each particular method is tailored to be most effective in deceiving a specific audience. In the case of the conspiratorially-aware members of the alternative news communities on the net, one way to draw attention to disinformation is to have someone attack it AS disinformation.

The benefit of this tactic is that a very convincing argument can be made that the lie is in fact a lie, but care must be taken to leave the issue unresolved and ambiguous. Once the attack has been launched, it is then time to proclaim loudly that the lie is being attacked because it is the truth, which goes down well with conspiracy theorists. This type of CoIntelPro operation presents a more or less win-win scenario for CoIntelPro. In the best-case scenario, that section of public opinion that recognises that our leaders lie to us all of the time will tend to believe that the person being attacked is most likely to be telling the truth. If this is not successful, then, at the very least, much-needed attention is drawn to the lie and invariably infighting in the ranks of genuine truth seekers will have been fomented.

Not bad for a day's work.

The really interesting thing about Hopsicker and Ruppert however, is not what they disagree on but what they seem to agree on.

As stated, many people make the mistake of thinking that the job of CoIntelPro is to simply provide false leads and directly attack genuine 9-11 truth seekers. The fact is that their task is much more complex. Quintuple reverse psychology is not out of the question here, and I'm not joking.

Looking at the current infighting going on at present, it would appear that CoIntelPro agents have done a fine job. No one knows who is who anymore, everyone suspects everyone else, and those members of the public whose minds are not, as yet, welded shut will be the ones to suffer most from the lack of coherent information about what really happened on 911, who really is to blame, or what the real issue is.

For any 9-11 investigator to come out and say that a 757 plane definitely hit the Pentagon is to rob the public of the singularly most important aspect of 9-11 and the one that has the chance to blow the whole dastardly plot wide open.

Certainly, there is much evidence that shows that Flight 11 and Flight 175 really did hit the twin towers, forcing 9-11 investigators to resort to other, and less convincing, aspects of the events of that day to make their case that it was an inside job.

This brings us to the point about the Pentagon attack which is that there exists striking evidence to suggest that it was NOT a 757 that hit the Pentagon, and it is for this very reason that Flight 77 presents THE best opportunity to bring the 9-11 deception to public awareness.

Think about it. If it can be proven that something other than Flight 77 bored that hole through 3 rings of Rummy’s fortress, then it is not necessary to dig for non-existent "smoking gun" evidence that someone "stood down" America’s air defences or about any of the many other suspicious "anomalies" on 9-11, because the game would be up.

Even among those researchers who have spent time and effort on the Pentagon Strike, I know of very few that have looked at one of the most intriguing questions about that event. If we accept the evidence that points clearly to some sort of modified drone craft equipped with a warhead, like the "Global Hawk", having struck the Pentagon, the next question we must ask is, what reasoning was used to decide which part of the building to hit and who to ‘take out’?

Consider the following most interesting news report:

[…] Vice Adm. Darb Ryan, chief of naval personnel, was in his office at the Navy Annex about halfway between Trapasso’s home and the Pentagon. Having learned that New York had been attacked, he was on the telephone recommending the evacuation of the Pentagon "when out of the corner of my eye I saw the airplane" a split second before it struck.

Ryan was overheard reporting some of the initial damage assessment, which included spaces belonging to the chief of naval operations (CNO), the Navy’s tactical command center on the D-ring, an operations cell and a Navy intelligence command center. These included up to four special, highly classified, electronically secure areas. Many of the enlisted sailors involved were communications technicians with cryptology training who are key personnel in intelligence gathering and analysis. Some personnel were known to be trapped alive in the wreckage.

OTHER NAVY PERSONNEL confirmed the admiral’s initial assessment and said the dead numbered around 190, 64 on the aircraft. Among them was Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude, who was in the Army support and logistics section. Many others were Navy captains, commanders and lieutenant commanders with offices between the fourth and fifth corridors (the western wedge of the Pentagon). The Navy’s special operations office, which oversees classified programs, had moved out of the spaces only a few days before. All but one of the senior Navy flag officers were out of the building. Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn, deputy CNO for warfare requirements and programs, was near the impact area but escaped without injury.

One of the aircraft’s engines somehow ricocheted out of the building and arched into the Pentagon’s mall parking area between the main building and the new loading dock facility, said Charles H. Krohn, the Army’s deputy chief of public affairs. Those fleeing the building heard a loud secondary explosion about 10 min. after the initial impact.

The E-ring floors above the tunnel dug by the aircraft collapsed, leaving a gap in the Pentagon’s outer wall perhaps 150 ft. wide. Fuel triggered an intense fire that caused the roof of the damaged E-ring section to give way at 10:10 a.m. It was still burning 18 hr. later. Fire fighting was hampered by reports that twice sent personnel fleeing the area. First, at around 11:28 a.m., a warning that "an aircraft is in the air" sent police, FBI and other security personnel to passages under I-395 that lead away from the Pentagon. They quickly returned, but at 11:34, shouted and radioed warnings of another possible explosion sent people running again. However, by 11:40 FBI teams had returned with brown paper bags and gloves to scour the Pentagon grounds for debris in an area bordered by Pentagon City, Arlington Cemetery and the Potomac River.

F-16s from the District of Columbia Air National Guard periodically circled the Pentagon at altitudes low enough to frighten grade school teachers and students in nearby Alexandria. Later, the patrols were shifted to a higher altitude and continued through the night.

Confusion about what had happened, among the 20,000-24,000 employees leaving the Pentagon on foot in long lines, largely reflected where they were in the building when the aircraft struck. The Navy and Army spaces absorbed the damage. Navy officers not in the aircraft’s direct path reported heavy safes being flung across rooms and people thrown from their chairs. They variously identified major damage between the fourth and fifth or third and fourth corridors. No one knew the full extent of the damage. Air Force officers on the opposite side of the building heard or felt nothing until alarms went off. Even then, they thought it was a false fire alarm until orders were passed to evacuate the building.

Just what, we wonder, was so special about those "four special, highly classified, electronically secure areas" belonging to the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) that they had to be ‘taken out’ along with many Navy "communications technicians with cryptology training"? Clearly there is an important lead to be followed here, but both Hopsicker and Ruppert give it a wide berth, preferring to tell the public that Flight 77 really did hit the Pentagon piloted by Arab terrorists and "the 9-11 cause is no longer useful as a political tool by activists" respectively.

It is for these reasons that I frown upon researchers like Hopsicker, Ruppert and others who either refuse to seriously consider, or dismiss out of hand, the idea that a 757 did not hit the Pentagon. If we look at their reasoning for this stance, we find that there is none, other than that they appear to simply not like the idea that something other than Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Perhaps such a concept sits outside of their personal realm of belief, but, if so, it is, as I have already stated, a mistake to make emotional judgements when the intellect is called for, and it is an outright crime to attempt to pull the public into one’s subjective world. It is only through a rigorous pursuit of *objective* truth, without pity for our own illusions and beliefs that the big lie about 9-11 can and will be exposed.

Suspicions are further compounded when we discover that these same people who want us to suspect Saudi Arabia and to believe that a 757 hit the Pentagon, combine their promotion of this "party line" with vigorous condemnation of the "Israel did it" crowd. There is much to explore on the Israel question and much evidence, going way back, that Israel, to all intents and purposes, calls the shots in the US.

Just how far does the power of the Pro-Israel lobby go? Powerful enough to play a leading role in 9-11?

It is definitely NOT beyond the realm of possibility, and it is NOT for Ruppert Hopsicker or anyone else to assert outright that it is, particularly when they refuse to fully investigate the matter. Their position is similar to that of the Bush gang who also rule out, a priori, that it was something other than a conspiracy hatched by a man living in a cave and carried out by 19 crazed "Arab terrorists" several of whom happen to have been confirmed to be still living.

The truth is that the real reasons for the events of 9-11 are much more insidious than any of the theories that have to date been proffered. As part of the process of investigation, most 9-11 investigators have, at least once, suggested that if everyone were just to look to "who benefits", the solution to the whole enigma would quickly present itself. The important thing to remember about the "who benefits" approach however, is that, having identified the party that benefits the most from an event, that lead must be doggedly pursued, regardless of the lack of evidence of that party’s involvement in the event. Indeed, in such a case, a lack of evidence can constitute the most important piece of evidence if we consider that those with the most to gain often have the most to lose if their involvement were to be revealed. And in this case, the wherewithal needed to pull off such a major attack and deception is so vast, that those responsible would certainly have the means and know-how to plant evidence to blame it on others while eliminating the evidence that points back to the truly guilty parties.

As the twin towers crumbled to the ground, the average Western citizen’s perception of Arabs, already suffering from long years of subtle propaganda by the Western press, took an equally disastrous nose-dive. In one fell swoop, millions of people in that big nebulous area of the world known to many Americans as "the Middle East" became "dangerous terrorists" and the soon-to-be recipients of the whipped-up fury and indignation of the American people, conveyed on their behalf by the "world’s most awesome military machine". 9-11 then, certainly secured the enthusiastic consent of the American people for an invasion of whichever country the US government decided to frame for the attacks.

However, it is our contention that Ruppert’s argument that the 9-11 attacks were carried out to facilitate an oil grab by the US government in the face of "peak oil" also makes little sense.

As a result of the first gulf war and under the oil for food program, any Iraqi oil resources that were required for American consumption had already been secured by US interests, so there was therefore little to be gained by the US government embroiling its military in what was always going to be a costly and unwinnable guerrilla war. One has only to look at the pre-eminent global position of the US over the past 50 years to see that its policies were already working quite nicely. So why risk military and economic catastrophe by invading Iraq? Indeed, there was little to be gained from the most recent US invasion of the Middle East if it is understood only in terms of securing oil for consumption. The invasion, in fact, uses up VAST quantities of oil, to what end?

Imagine that, for whatever reason, you were planning a radical reshaping of the Middle East, and you had concluded that, to get the job done, war and the destruction of an entire race of people therein was necessary. Imagine also that you are well aware that you cannot just unilaterally set off a major conflagration, principally because public opinion and certain other nations would not stand for it. Realising that you need some way to mould public opinion towards accepting war and at the same time render impotent those nations that pose a threat to your plans, what might be the best way to do it?

By far the most effective tool for shaping public opinion is fear. And by far the best way to control other nations is economically, or rather, through the control of their oil supply. Hence, 9-11 and the "war on terror".

Unless the US actually physically controls Middle Eastern oil reserves, however, they have no way of controlling to whom those reserves are sold. The only way to do so is to fabricate a reason for invading each oil-rich country in turn and either permanently occupy them or install a proxy government that will do your bidding. This, it would seem, is the process we see unfolding currently with the "war on terror" and the invasion of Iraq. Iran is probably next. Venezuela may follow. Of course, the public must be given a plausible reason as to why the wells have "run dry", which is the reason for the dissemination of the peak oil myth.

However, maintaining the military necessary for such a task demands tremendous economic and human resources. The costs are driving the United States further and further into debt. At the same time, Bush is giving tax breaks to his wealthy support base, narrowing the income base within the US to pay for his military follies. This makes the US more and more dependent upon foreign governments to shore up the US debt, to the cost of nearly $2 billion a day. The day that the rest of the world decides to take a hit on the value of their dollar reserves in order to bring the US predator to its knees, is the day the war machine will begin to collapse, bringing down with it the fabled "American Way of Life".

But what can be the motivation behind such an insane plot? What can drive a group of people, against all reason and logic, to risk the economic destruction of their own country and therefore their power base?

Such a question cannot be answered without looking at the one country for which successive US governments have bent over backwards to accommodate; which takes us back to Israel.

There is much evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation of the role played by agents of Israel in the 9-11 attacks. Yet the ubiquitous, tiresome and completely baseless threat of being labelled "anti-Semitic" for criticising the actions of the Israeli government effectively prevents all but the most courageous from following the leads. Coincidence? We think not.

During the Clinton years, significant efforts had been made to bring the plight of the Palestinian people and the need for a just solution to the Middle East conflict to the attention of the international community. While Israel had successfully scuppered the Camp David peace talks by making demands which they knew the Palestinian people, and therefore Arafat, could not accept, Israel was finding itself increasingly isolated and increasingly pressured to make the concessions that peace required. Once 9-11 happened, all bets were off.

In fact, on September 10th 2001, the Washington Times ran an article entitled, "U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study" which detailed the findings of an elite U.S. Army study center plan devised for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state. The most interesting aspect of the report was the mention of a 68-page paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) drafted to analyse the daunting task facing any international peacekeeping force if Israel and the Palestinians ever reached a peace agreement back by the United Nations.

In the report, we are told that:

"the School for Advanced Military Studies is both a training ground and a think tank for some of the Army’s brightest officers. Officials say the Army chief of staff, and sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask SAMS to develop contingency plans for future military operations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, SAMS personnel helped plan the coalition ground attack that avoided a strike up the middle of Iraqi positions and instead executed a ‘left hook’ that routed the enemy in 100 hours."

The exercise was undertaken by 60 officers dubbed "Jedi Knights," as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed. The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides. It calls Israel’s armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza [and the West Bank]. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: "Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act."

The day after the 9-11 attacks, then former Israeli Prime Minister and current Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked what he thought about the event, stated that it was "very good for Israel".

Indeed it was.

9-11 created much-needed sympathy and vindication for the "war on Arab terrorism" that Israel fraudulently claims it has been silently fighting for many years. Again we must ask, who had the motive AND the capability to carry out the 9-11 attacks, and who stood to benefit the most?

Just hours after the attacks, George Friedman proclaimed Israel as the primary beneficiary. "The big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel," wrote Friedman, who said on his Internet website at stratfor.com adding: "There is no question that the Israeli leadership is feeling relief." Again we come back to the question that all serious criminal investigators begin with – "Who benefits?"

There exists much evidence, conveniently overlooked by certain 9-11 investigators, including Ruppert and Hopsicker, to strongly suggest that agents of Israel were deeply involved in the events surrounding the 9-11 attacks. For example:

There is the fact of the Israeli spy ring, as exposed, surprisingly, by Fox News’ Carl Cameron. In the four part series aired on Fox News in December 2001 Cameron reports many interesting facts such as:

Two Israeli companies Amdocs and Comverse InfoSys, (now called Verint), manage just about every aspect of the US telephone system.

Amdocs is responsible for billing and records for almost all phone calls in the US. Cameron states: Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing. But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret National Security Agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands in Israel, in particular.

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. "Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific ‘behavior….’" Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

Note the comment that "the White House and other secure government phone lines are protected." Well, it just so happens that Comverse InfoSys provides the wiretapping equipment and software for US law enforcement agencies. Cameron tells us:

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Comverse insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

To this last comment we have to ask: Just what level of power do Israeli interests wield in the halls of power in the US that any investigation into Israeli spying activities on US soil against US intelligence agencies can be so completely quashed? Would this constitute a level of power and control that would allow those interests to carry off a terrorist attack like 9-11 and have it blamed on "Arab terrorists"?

Most assuredly.

Cameron goes on to tell us that a group of 140 Israeli spies were arrested prior to September 11, 2001, in the US as part of a widespread investigation into a suspected espionage ring run by Israel inside the US.

US Government documents refer to the spy ring as an "organised intelligence-gathering operation" designed to "penetrate government facilities". Most of those arrested had served in the Israeli armed forces – but military service is compulsory in Israel and a number also had an intelligence background. Many were posing as art students.

These spies were spread out across the US, usually living close to suspected Arab terrorist cells. One group were living just a few blocks away from chief Hijacker Mohammed Atta in Hollywood, Florida. Cameron reports that, according to intelligence sources within the US, a number of the terrorist cells that they had been watching changed their activities and routines immediately after having cover taps put on their communications by intelligence agents.

Now think about this. You have a group of at least 140 Mossad agents and/or their accomplices running around the US with apparent impunity prior to 9-11 conducting a "spying" operation that is designed to "penetrate government facilities". You have two Israeli companies that control the entire US telephone and telephone wiretapping technology that are suspected of passing sensitive information to Israel. You have US intelligence agencies realising that, on a number of occasions, terrorist suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes and acting much differently as soon as the, supposedly secret, wiretaps went into place.

But it doesn’t end there.

On the morning of September 11th and just as the WTC towers were crumbling the 5 Israelis were caught doing the "happy dance" as they videotaped the Twin Towers fall. They were spotted by a woman who called the police who contacted the FBI. The 5 were apprehended in a moving company van, which contained $4700 in cash, box cutters and recently taken photographs, one image showing a hand flicking a lighter in front of the destroyed buildings as if mocking the event. The driver of the van later told the arresting officers:

"We are Israeli. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are the problem."

Did this most interesting comment give the world a tantalising glimpse into the REAL reason for and, at the same time, reveal the perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks??

The 5 were detained for two months during which time at least two were identified as active Mossad agents. They were subjected to polygraph tests which one of them resisted for 10 weeks before failing. Now ask yourself: What questions might have been asked of this person during the test? We will probably never know, but we can speculate that he was probably asked direct questions about his involvement in the WTC attacks, and he, as a Mossad agent working for the state of Israel, lied.

On their return to Israel, the 5 appeared on an Israeli television show where they made the following telling remark:

"The fact of the matter is we are coming from a country that experiences terror daily. Our purpose was to document the event."

Which begs the question: How can you document an event if you do not know beforehand that it is going to happen?

We should not forget the fact that an Israeli firm was in charge of the security and passenger screening at Logan airport where both WTC planes took off and that an Israeli instant messaging company, Odigo, received a warning about the WTC attacks 2 hours before the first plane hit the WTC. This warning originated in Israel.

As reported by ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, the Mossad had a secret history of supporting radical Islamic groups for its own purposes, and as Seymour Hersh, veteran investigative journalist writing in The New Yorker on Oct. 8, pointed out:

"many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found."

Evidence for the fact that Israeli interests in the US possess vastly disproportionate power was highlighted by US Congressman Jim Moran (Democrat of Virginia) speaking at a 2003 public forum in his congressional district and reported in the New York Times of March 15, 2003, where he stated:

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

By "Jewish community" Moran was certainly not talking about the average Jewish American or the average Jew in Israel, but rather the leaders of the Jewish community, those that proclaim to be acting in the interests of ordinary Jews.

The above facts are indisputable and constitute just the tip of the iceberg of what is clearly deep involvement by the agents of the state of Israel in not only the 9-11 attacks but American politics in general.

We will leave it to our readers to decide if there is any disingenuousness in Ruppert and Hopsicker’s dismissal of the Israel question and ponder the implications that such a stance holds for their status as genuine 9-11 researchers.

One of the most interesting aspects of the broader 9-11 investigation that we have recently been exploring concerns the evidence for the fact that there are two very different types of "Jews". Briefly stated (and you will want to read the previous link to get the full and in-depth analysis) those Jewish/Zionist leaders that claim to be acting in the interests of the Jewish people may not in fact be Jewish, in terms of being Semites at all, but are in fact of Aryan origins. Then, there are the truly Semitic Jews - people closely related to the Palestinians, genetically speaking. In the event that the reader does not understand the importance of this issue, read again our report on Ethnic Specific Weapons. For the reader that can read between the lines, this fact should provide serious pause for thought when considered in light of the Nazi agenda during WWII and the many credible attestations of the disturbing actions of certain "Zionists" in relation to the suffering of Jews in the concentration camps and, of course, the events of 9-11 and all that had resulted. The fact is that one of the major results of the last Great War was the creation of the state of Israel at the cost of the lives of several million ordinary Jews along with 60 million other human beings. Strong evidence is available to suggest that that particular war was as manipulated as the current "war on terror" and that certain so-called "Zionists" played a major role in said manipulation. An extremely pressing question that we all need to ponder therefore is: Is another "Great War" looming? And, as has been the case so often in the past, will history once more repeat itself?

Now I understand that all of the above paints a complex and somewhat confusing picture, and you may be struck with the feeling that there is still something missing, some factor that is needed to explain that recklessness with which the main global players are toying with the planet and the lives of every individual on it. One might even say that they are acting like men who have nothing to lose. We have already made a case to suggest that peak oil is a distraction and certainly not the main issue.

So what IS the main issue?

In August 17, 1999, the Knight Ridder Washington Bureau published an article by Robert S. Boyd entitled: Comets may have caused Earth’s great empires to fall which included the following: (emphases, ours)

Recent scientific discoveries are shedding new light on why great empires such as Egypt, Babylon and Rome fell apart, giving way to the periodic "dark ages’’ that punctuate human history. At least five times during the last 6,000 years, major environmental calamities undermined civilizations around the world.

Some researchers say these disasters appear to be linked to collisions with comets or fragments of comets such as the one that broke apart and smashed spectacularly into Jupiter five years ago.

The impacts, yielding many megatons of explosive energy, produced vast clouds of smoke and dust that circled the globe for years, dimming the sun, driving down temperatures and sowing hunger, disease and death.

The last such global crisis occurred between AD 530 and 540-- at the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe -- when Earth was pummeled by a swarm of cosmic debris.

In a forthcoming book, Catastrophe, the Day the Sun Went Out, British historian David Keys describes a 2-year-long winter that began in AD 535. Trees from California to Ireland to Siberia stopped growing. Crops failed. Plague and famine decimated Italy, China and the Middle East.

Keys quotes the writings of a 6th-century Syrian bishop, John of Ephesus:

"The sun became dark. ... Each day it shone for about four hours and still this light was only a feeble shadow."

A contemporary Italian historian, Flavius Cassiodorus, wrote:

"We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon. We have summer without heat."

And a contemporary Chinese chronicler reported, "Yellow dust rained like snow."

Dendrochronologist, Mike Baillie, established that:

Analysis of tree rings shows that at in 540 AD in different parts of the world the climate changed. Temperatures dropped enough to hinder the growth of trees as widely dispersed as northern Europe, Siberia, western North America, and southern South America.

A search of historical records and mythical stories pointed to a disastrous visitation from the sky during the same period, it is claimed. There was one reference to a "comet in Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire" in 540-41.

According to legend, King Arthur died around this time, and Celtic myths associated with Arthur hinted at bright sky Gods and bolts of fire. In the 530s, an unusual meteor shower was recorded by both Mediterranean and Chinese observers. Meteors are caused by the fine dust from comets burning up in the atmosphere. Furthermore, a team of astronomers from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland published research in 1990 which said the Earth would have been at risk from cometary bombardment between the years 400 and 600 AD.

[...] Famine followed the crop failures, and hard on its heels bubonic plague that swept across Europe in the mid-6th century. [...]

Now these are not the voices of the evangelical, "the end of the world is nigh", types, but rather sober university professors who have spent many years in scientific research in their chosen fields. The conclusions they have come to are shocking for sure, but it behooves all of us to put aside our sacred cows for a moment and look at the facts. Over the past few years the incidence of meteorite sightings and impacts around the world has gone through the proverbial roof, as have several of the meteorites, although in opposite directions. We have been charting these events for the past 2 years, and we can safely say that something is definitely ‘up’.

Given the controlled nature of not only the media, but also the academic world, if there was a threat to our planet from some sort of cyclical cometary shower as suggested by Ballie and Boyd, the chances of such information coming to general public awareness, against the wishes of the ruling elite, are very slim. The likelihood is that our leaders would do everything within their power to conceal such information, forcing those members of the public with a drive to know the truth to collect and decipher the bits and pieces of ‘loose’ data themselves. This is exactly what we have been doing for many years now.

The fact is that the idea that the earth experiences cyclical catastrophes, and that a select few of the "elite" are in possession of this information, explains rather well the current warmongering by the US and the political maneuvering by other major powers.

Think about it. If the people who are really in control of the US government know that, in the very near future, the demographics and power balance on the planet are going to be radically and unpredictably restructured by meteorite impacts, they would surely seek to prepare for such an event. Having held power for so long, their preparations would most likely center around a strategy to ensure that, when the dust settles and they emerge from their bunkers, they are able to retake control of the planet. Practically, this would involve a process of conquering as much of the planet and its resources as possible, and we note that this is essentially what successive US governments have been doing for the past 50 years.

If there is one thing above all others that has lead to the precipice upon which we currently sit as a species, it is knowledge, or the lack of it, and the fact that certain small groups of so-called ‘elite’ have always sought to maintain a monopoly on it at the expense of the masses of humanity. Clearly, therefore, it is knowledge that is and always has been the most prized ‘commodity’ on this planet. Unfortunately, the catch 22 to beat them all is the fact that almost no one realises this.

Why?

Because the knowledge that knowledge is key has been deliberately and rigorously denied them by the propaganda of religion where "faith" and "blind belief" in the leader is the key to salvation. The salient point is that it is, and always has been, only in the darkness of ignorance of the true state of their reality that ordinary people can be merrily led down the path that leads, over and over again, to their own destruction.

In summing up, I will leave the final words to Patrick Mooney of Unlearning.org

Whether Peak Oil is true or not is ultimately irrelevant. The energy crash and the economic chaos it causes have been on the agenda of the Bilderbergers and like organizations for some time now. It is a necessary step to re-drawing the political lines of power across the globe to more accurately reflect the one world police state of inhuman design.

The Earth has reached the point where human consciousness will no longer tolerate authoritarian controls on its destiny. The Illuminists know this and plan to break this spirit with a harvest of blood reaped with war, famine and misery. Ruppert would have us spare the Illuminati the trouble of such an expensive use of energy by getting the most "enlightened" of us to sheepishly march to our own end. Those who remain alive must do so in communities that will seem more medieval than post-modern.

Fortunately, there is a way out of all this, if the planet is willing to see through the present "crisis". The crisis we are in is not one of energy or economy, but of consciousness. As long as our consciousness remains mired in the present problems, we will not be able to transcend them to arrive at enlightened solutions

This discordant HAARP ain't music to my ears

I spend a good deal of time searching through the various online news sites for stories and such that I think would make good subjects for commentary on the Propaganda Alert Blog. And though I've never mentioned it before, oftentimes I am amazed at how groups of similar events tend to cluster together at various points in time.

Sometimes it will be a rash of small plane crashes, or several busloads of tourists smashing through bridge guardrails and plunging into rivers on the same day. Sometimes it will be eerily similar patterns of freaky weather in seemingly distant and unconnected places, or even a certain number of dead and wounded will keep apearing in totally different stories and from different sources.

As a researcher, I don't usually ascribe too much meaning to these anomalous but seemingly connected events other than to note their occurance as being somehow odd or abnormally coincidental, and leave it at that.

Well, I recently came across a story by Laura Knight-Jadczyk called The Canary in the Mine, which details similar strange phenomenon grouped together in time, and relates it to the possibility of the HAARP array in Alaska as somehow being connected.

Now, I don't know much about this whole HAARP deal, other than the odd news report that crosses my desk, but this article has peaked my interest for a number of reasons. The first being that it gives a good introduction as to what this HAARP array is claimed to be used for by the military people who run the thing and then compared to the claims made by conspiracy theorists who have their own ideas as to what HAARP is actually for.

According to the article, many new-age and alternative researchers claim that HAARP is NOT a sceintific device used to measure atmospheric changes, or to develop advertising billboards in space, as the military would have us believe, but is really designed to be an environmental weapon of sorts that can be directed to any area on the globe and cause any number of catastrophes such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami's, or what have you. Now, Laura Knight-Jadczyk in her article The Canary in the Mine makes a strong case against either of these two claims as being the real reason for HAARP's existence.

She agrees that HAARP's real hidden purpose is a weapon of sorts, but not an environmental weapon as claimed by many new-age researchers, but a "psychological weapon" designed to alter human conciousness, and backs it up with much eerily circumstantial evidence that strongly suggests that many reports of anomalous phenomenon like exploding cell phones, mystery blackouts and setting off of groups of car alarms and garage door openers, among others, is all related to the use of this HAARP array upon our planet.

Correlated to these weird events are reports of groups of humans going berserk at certain times, unusual deaths, accidents, a spike in war, conflicts and protests and and even being possibly related to Arnold's election as govenor of California. While much of the article is in the speculative arena, it does make fascinating reading, to which this little report hardly does it justice. To get the full story on HAARP as described in this Blog, please follow the appropriate links.

One last thing I wanted to mention that seems significant to me, is that once and a while I tend to get extraordinarily depressed after reading through all the news stories that come into my inbox each day. Up until now I have rationalized this away as being an unfortunate but necessary side effect of truly SEEing the horrible state of the planet as it slowly slides into greater and greater levels of pain, war and chaos, and how it seems completely fruitless at times trying to make any kind of difference at all, or to even continue publishing the propaganda as I see it.

What I have now realized that this depression may indeed be related to the ramping up of HAARP frequencies on the planet, and for my own personal research, I plan to be more aware of these bouts of depression and see if they correspond at all to strange happenings on our world.

Stay tuned to this frequency, ;-)

Relic

Embrace of freedom

This is a good example of Anti-Muslim propaganda by the spinmasters at the Canadian chain of SUN newspapers.

Iraq vote reveals Muslim 'spin doctors' as fakes

By Ezra Levant -- Calgary Sun
Mon, February 7, 2005

Since 9/11, millions of Canadians and Americans have been asking: "Where are the Muslim moderates?"

Where are Muslims who will renounce terrorism without then saying the word "but" and then making excuses? Who will say terrorism is wrong, full stop?

No "official" Muslims have done so. Take Mohamed Elmasry, the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, just to pick one.

This unelected "spokesman" for Muslims said last year that all adult Israelis are legitimate targets for terrorism.

He was trying to spin-doctor terrorism.

Muslim spokesmen like Elmasry are to al-Qaida what Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army: Apologists who feign opposition to the violent tactics, with a nudge and a wink.

Watching official Muslims respond to terrorism has been a depressing spectacle for those who want to believe that the spirit of freedom and democracy is universally appealing to humanity.

It lent credence to the old canard that liberal democracy just isn't suited to Arabia -- a soft prejudice that oddly goes by the name "Arabism" in diplomatic and political circles.

Well, for the first time ever, an Arab nation held free elections. Now we know where all Muslims who value freedom and democracy are: Under the jackboot of dictators throughout Arabia. Those spokesmen we've been hearing from? Merely mouthpieces for the dictators and their cruel philosophy.

Eight million Iraqis dared to vote, in the face of fatwas and terrorist threats -- a higher voter turn-out than in Canada.

Compare that bravery, that commitment to freedom, to the cowering election monitors from Canada and elsewhere, who "observed" the elections from neighbouring Jordan, afraid of terrorism.

Since the liberation of Iraq, the Iraqi people had not been heard from. They were in their homes, while coalition forces and the residue of Saddam's regime duked it out, with the world's press corps unable to contain their contempt for the coalition.

But during the past two years, Iraqis had a chance to make up their minds, in private - and on Jan.30, they resoundingly rejected Saddam's threats, and international media pessimism. They voted jubilantly. As one Iraqi said, it was like "a wedding for all Iraq."

This is not a column about the Iraqi election. That has been written.

This is a column about how that election debunked the false moral authority carried by the Elmasry's of the world. This is about asking real Arabs, real Muslims, for the first time ever, to choose between freedom and Islamofascism, and getting the answer that optimistic Westerners had all hoped for.

This is about the last drops of the UN's moral authority finally evaporating, a UN whose sole contributions to Iraq's future had been to embezzle billions from the so-called "oil for food" program, and then to stall the toppling of Saddam as long as possible, and then to natter at the liberating coalition for two years.

This is about the Canadian and American left's haughty sophistication about "nuance" and "multilateralism" being proved nothing more than a parlour fashion -- that the coalition, led by a U.S. President they regarded as a cowboy simpleton, actually understood Iraq better than they did, and, more importantly, did something about it, at lightening speed, with a better result than anyone had hoped.

This is about the delegitimization of every remaining Arab dictatorship, which is to say, every other Arab government. And it is about revealing the Elmasry's of the world as being anything but spokesmen for the true hopes of Arabs and Muslims.

That's what this is about.

Of course it's a coincidence that this editorialist is Jewish.

The Violent Majority: a veritable Sign of the Times

Every once in a while a small story will emerge in the mainstream press that seems to epitomize the true horrors of war and encapsulate the type of person that would willingly volunteer to participate in such an endeavor.

Now, I'm not talking about the obvious outrageous scandals such as the sadistic torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, but smaller less significant events like the odd comment from a soldier in a an interview that betrays their narrow-minded bigotry and disdain for anyone who is "different" from them.

Well, a few days ago, two news stories appeared in my inbox, both exemplary of the kind of attitude that seems inherent in the modern soldier and their patriotic supporters and indicative of the essence or internal orientation of such a person.

The first article comes form the San Francisco Chronicle...

Marine general counseled for saying "it's fun to shoot some people"

Thursday, February 3, 2005

(02-03) 12:20 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- The commandant of the Marine Corps said Thursday he has counseled a senior subordinate for saying publicly, "It's fun to shoot some people."

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, an infantry officer who has commanded Marines in both Afghanistan and Iraq, made the comments Tuesday while speaking to a forum in San Diego about strategies for the war on terror. Mattis is the commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va.

According to an audio recording of Mattis' remarks, he said, "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot. ... It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling."

He added, "You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil," Mattis continued. "You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."

Thursday, Gen. Mike Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, issued a statement saying, "I have counseled him concerning his remarks and he agrees he should have chosen his words more carefully."

"While I understand that some people may take issue with the comments made by him, I also know he intended to reflect the unfortunate and harsh realities of war," Hagee said. "Lt. Gen. Mattis often speaks with a great deal of candor."

Hagee also praised Mattis, calling him "one of this country's bravest and most experienced military leaders."

He said the commitment of Marines "helps to provide us the fortitude to take the lives of those who oppress others or threaten this nation's security. This is not something we relish, yet we accept it as a reality in our profession of arms."

He said he was confident Mattis would continue to serve.

Now, what kind of sick and twisted individual actually takes pleasure in taking the life of another? Can we ascribe such inhuman and seemingly psychopathic behaviour to the effects of nationalistic mind-programming alone? Or perhaps there is something else that separates this soldier from another, one who may also be brainwashed by patriotic propaganda and the humiliation of basic training, but still feels a sense of remorse when forced by external circumstances to take the life of another. These questions are most important and deserve a closer examination, and are ones which I will come back to later on in this essay.

The second story that caught my eye appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald...


School halts Adopt-a-Sniper fund-raiser

February 4, 2005 - 2:10PM
Reuters

A U.S. university in Wisconsin has blocked an attempt by Republican students to raise money for a group called "Adopt-a-Sniper" that raises money for US sharp-shooters in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The students were selling bracelets bearing the motto "1 Shot 1 Kill No Remorse I Decide".

"Clearly the rhetoric of that organisation raised some questions and we had some strong objections as a Jesuit university," Marquette University school spokeswoman Brigid O'Brien said on Thursday.

The students, representing a group called College Republicans, originally got permission to set up a table at the student union to raise money for US troops in Iraq.

But they chose to promote a group called Adopt-a-Sniper, which says on its website it supports snipers deployed by the United States armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The group says it "helps real snipers get the real gear they need to help keep us safe."

The brainchild of a Texas police SWAT officer Adopt a Sniper (www.adoptasniper.org) has raised thousands of dollars in cash and gear to supplement the kit of sharp shooters in US combat platoons.

Among products sold on the site is a $US15 coin with the imprinted phrase "Assistance From A Distance".

Here we are not dealing the combat soldier directly but those jingoistic supporters who take so much pride in their killers-by-proxy, that they are motivated to raise funds in order to sustain their hero's cowardly acts of murder with catchy slogans from half a world away.

What do these two articles have in common? They both involve individuals who appear to enjoy it when others are killed. The Germans have a word for this obvious emotional disconnect; they call it schadenfreud, or taking pleasure in another's suffering. What seems to a major telling sign of this phenomenon is the apparant inability of the offending person to feel empathy for their victims, one of the main characteristics of the psychopath.

Now, keep these ideas in mind while reading the next article; one that was published in The Spokesman Review last year...

'It's a sniper's dream'

Marine sharpshooters use stealth, high-powered rifles in Fallujah

Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, April 17, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Taking a short breather Friday, the 21-year-old Marine corporal explained what it is like to practice his lethal skill in the battle for this city.

"It's a sniper's dream," he said in polite, matter-of-fact tones. "You can go anywhere and there are so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

Sniping -- killing an enemy from long distance with a single shot -- has become a significant tactic for Marines in this "Sunni Triangle" city as three battalions skirmish daily with armed insurgents who can find cover among the buildings, walls and trees.

Marine sniper teams are spread in and around the city, working night and day, using powerful scopes, thermal imaging equipment and specially modified bolt-action rifles that allow them to identify and target armed insurgents from 800 yards or more.

Sniping experts -- there are several here with the Marines -- say there might not have been such a "target-rich" battlefield for such shooters since the World War II battle for Stalingrad, during which German and Russian snipers dueled for months.

As a military tactic, sniping is centuries old; the first snipers used bows and arrows. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have been a sniper against the Holy Roman Empire.

Weapons change, but the goal of the sniper remains the same: harass and intimidate the enemy, make him afraid to venture into the open, deny him the chance to rest and regroup.

The Marines believe their snipers have killed hundreds of insurgents, although that figure alone does not accurately portray the significance of sniping. A sign on the wall of sniper school at Camp Pendleton, Calif., displays a Chinese proverb: "Kill One Man, Terrorize a Thousand." "Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies," said the Marine corporal. "Then I'll use a second shot."

In negotiations aimed at ending the standoff in the city, the insurgents have demanded that the Marines pull back their snipers.

A shaky truce exists between the Marines who surround the city and the fighters within the circle. But the cease-fire allows the Marines to carry out defensive operations within the city, which among other things they define as allowing fire on insurgents who display weapons, break the curfew or move their forces toward U.S. troops.

While official policy discourages Marines from keeping a personal count of people they have killed, the custom continues. In nearly two weeks of conflict here, the corporal from a Midwestern city has emerged as the top sniper, with 24 confirmed kills. By comparison, the top Marine Corps sniper in Vietnam killed 103 people in 16 months.

"As a sniper your goal is to completely demoralize the enemy," said the corporal, who played football and ran track in high school and dreams of becoming a high school coach. "I couldn't have asked to be in a better place. I just got lucky: to be here at the right time and with the right training."

The military has asked that sniper names not be published. Insurgents were said to have placed a bounty for the killing of any Marine sniper. A Web site, linked to the insurgents, attempts to provide information on snipers and their family members. During Vietnam, the Viet Cong also put a bounty on snipers.

Marine snipers, whose motto is "one shot, one kill," fire from rooftops in crowded urban areas of Fallujah, as well as exploring the city by foot. It sometimes takes hours to set up a shot, as the sniper hides in the distance, waiting for the opportune moment.

Marine officers credit the snipers, all of whom are enlisted men, with saving Marine lives by suppressing enemy fire and allowing their comrades greater freedom of movement.

"The snipers clear the streets for us," said Capt. Douglas Zembiec. "The snipers are true heroes."

Sniper teams have come under fire and suffered casualties. Marine intelligence suggests that the insurgents -- using Russian- and Chinese-made rifles and optics -- have their own sniper teams, but there have been no reports of Marines killed by sniper fire.

Unlike other infantry troops, the sniper has a greater confidence that his shot is not as likely to hit a civilian or a "friendly."

The corporal hopes to get back home by late fall in time to take his girlfriend to a college football game and go deer hunting with his father.

"When I go hunting for whitetail, it's for food and sport," he said. "Here, when I go hunting, it's personal, very personal."

Again we see not only a callous disregard for human life, even if it is from a so-called "enemy", but also a certain joy experienced by the sniper as they pick off their targets one by one, and proudy add more notches to their ever-growing kill count. There is something despicably creepy about people like the ones described above, who seem to exist on this earth for no other purpose than to serve themselves.

Now compare the articles above to the following story that describes an wholly different war-time experience for the soldiers in question. In these accounts, published in the Christian Science Monitor, we see the great toll that the killing of other human beings take on certain soldiers, and the devastating aftermath of guilt and remorse that follows when one is coerced or persuaded to act in a way that contradicts their inner nature.

Is anyone ever truly prepared to kill?

By Jane Lampman
Christian Science Monitor
Sept 29, 2004

One dark night in Iraq in February 1991, a U.S. Army tank unit opened fire on two trucks that barreled unexpectedly into its position along the Euphrates river. One was carrying fuel and burst into flames, and as men scattered from the burning trucks, the American soldiers shot them.

"To this day, I don't know if they were civilians or military - it was over in an instant," says Desert Storm veteran Charles Sheehan-Miles. But it wasn't over for him.

"For the first years after the Gulf War it was tough," says the decorated soldier. He had difficulty sleeping, and when he did, the nightmares came. "I was very angry and got drunk all the time; I considered suicide for awhile."

Like many young Americans sent off to war, he was highly skilled as a soldier but not adequately prepared for the realities of combat, particularly the experience of killing.

Much is rightly made of the dedication and sacrifice of those willing to lay down their lives for their country. But what is rarely spoken of, within the military or American society at large, is what it means to kill - to overcome the ingrained resistance most human beings feel to slaying one of their own kind, and the haunting sense of guilt that may accompany such an action. There is a terrible price to be paid by those who go to war, their families, and their communities, say some experts, by ignoring such realities.

"We never in our military manuals address the fact that they go forward to kill," says Lt. Col. David Grossman, a former Army Ranger. "When the reality hits them, it has a profound effect. We have to put mechanisms in place to help them deal with that.

"Every society has a blind spot, an area into which it has great difficulty looking," Colonel Grossman says. "Today that blind spot is killing."

It may seem strange that a central fact of war for millenniums should become an urgent concern now. But some close to the scene say modified warfare training that makes it easier to kill - and a US cultural response that tends to ignore how killing affects soldiers - have taken an unprecedented emotional and psychological toll. A lengthy conflict in Iraq, they worry, could increase that toll dramatically.

Society has a moral obligation, some argue, to better prepare those sent to war, to provide assistance in combat, and to help in the transition home.

"We have a profound responsibility because we send these people into combat on our behalf, to kill for us," says Shannon French, who teaches ethics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Postwar tragedy may have been averted, says Mr. Sheehan-Miles, if help had been available to his tank unit. "Within my own tank company, half of the married soldiers were divorced within a year after the Gulf War; one shot another over a girl," he says. "They didn't know how to get help, and the Army essentially did nothing."

Psychological injuries of war can't be tied solely to killing alone - seeing close comrades die and other horrors of war are also factors. But mental-health professionals and chaplains who've worked closely with veterans see killing as a significant contributor, along with other demoralizing elements of combat that soldiers experience or see as "a betrayal of what's right," says Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Jonathan Shay.

The devastating impact of war on soldiers was visible after World Wars I and II and the Korean War as well. But particularly evident today is the ongoing toll of the Vietnam War, whose vets are overrepresented in the homeless and prison populations. One-third are said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In July, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 16 percent of veterans of the war in Iraq suffer from depression or PTSD, and that fewer than 40 percent have sought help.

Along with several studies, the efforts of two men are stirring thinking within the US military: Grossman, who wrote "On Killing: the Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society," and Dr. Shay, who has worked with vets for 20 years at the VA Outpatient Clinic in Boston. Shay has written two books ("Achilles in Vietnam" and "Odysseus in America") that provide in-depth analyses of how combat can affect individual character and the homecoming to civilian society.

The military has hired both to help improve training and recommend changes to military culture.

A natural resistance to killing

The military's responsibility to respond is great, Grossman says, because of the way combat has been transformed since World War II. Interviews by a US Army historian during that war showed that only 15 to 20 percent of infantrymen in the European and Pacific theaters chose to fire at the enemy when they were under fire. Resistance to killing was strong.

Whether because of religious and moral teachings or what he terms "a powerful, innate human resistance toward killing one's own species," soldiers' apparent willingness to die rather than kill stunned military officials.

To overcome that resistance, the military revamped its training to program soldiers, through psychological conditioning, to make shooting reflexive. The techniques were applied with "tremendous success," Grossman says, raising the firing rate to 55 percent in the Korean conflict and 95 percent in Vietnam. But little thought, he adds, went to the aftereffects of overriding the soldiers' natural inclinations.

Shay also flags concerns about combat leadership, citing instances when soldiers have been treated unfairly, lacked necessary equipment, been asked to do things they considered wrong, or seen questionable behavior rewarded. These are all experiences he includes under the heading of "the betrayal of what is right." People don't have to be injured by their wartime experience, he adds, but that requires "assuring them cohesion in their units; expert and ethical leadership; and highly realistic training for what they have to do."

The first responsibility of leadership and the public, many say, is not to put the country's sons and daughters at risk unless going to war is essential.

If it is, then they need help sorting through the issues. Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain, calls for "spiritual force protection."

"We have a responsibility to understand the dangers war poses to the humanity of our people and do all we can to protect them, to develop 'moral muscle,' " he says.

In "The Code of the Warrior," his course at the Naval Academy, Dr. French focuses on moral distinctions - the historical legacy of the warrior and rules of war, and how to be alert to crossing the boundaries, as occurred at Abu Ghraib prison.

"It has been very well documented that there is a close connection between severe combat stress and the sense of having crossed moral lines," she says.

While the military academies offer officers some ethical training, the rank and file learn mostly from their commanders. Recent training Grossman has provided to Marine battalions heading to Iraq included distinguishing between killing and murder.

"Many have 'Thou shalt not kill' in the back of their minds, and think they've broken a profoundly moral law," he says. Grossman helps them see that the Judeo-Christian ethos generally accepts the idea that killing can be justified at times, and he emphasizes the importance of close adherence to the rules of engagement.

But there are gray areas, particularly in urban conflict, where it is not always clear whether to shoot, says Paul Rieckhoff of the Army National Guard, who led a platoon through combat patrols, raids, and ambushes in Baghdad until February of this year.

During one operation, "a female truck driver dropped us off and was guarding the truck when a kid about 10 years old came around the corner and started shooting at her," he says. "What does she do - shoot him or get shot?"

Vital to the health of soldiers is what happens after each combat experience. It's essential to have "after-action reviews," many say, in which units sort through experiences that were disturbing to them. These may include killing, or seeing their comrades or innocent civilians killed. "The worst thing is to not think about it. You can't not think about something for a lifetime," Grossman says.

At the end of the 1989 US invasion of Panama, Army chaplain R. Ryder Stevens, now retired, and another chaplain sought out soldiers individually. "One guy talked, but kept his M-16 between us and kept taking it apart, cleaning it, and putting it together again," says Colonel Stevens. "Finally he blurted out, 'I murdered a woman and her baby the other day and I'm going to burn in hell!' " He had followed the rules of engagement and shot at a car that didn't stop fully at a checkpoint. After he was assured that God's love was big enough to forgive him, "he fell into my arms crying," Stevens recounts.

In Iraq, there may be one chaplain for every 1,500 soldiers, Rieckhoff says. Those who need help must be encouraged to seek it. But the system is failing, many insist. Seeking help carries a stigma, and procedures for getting help lack privacy. [...]

So, here is where we come to the very root of the problem, what appears to be two totally different responses to a terrible but similar situation that can perhaps be explained by the possibility of two distinctly different types of people. This idea may be unorthodox, however it is not new and is elucidated by comments made in regards to this last story that was published on the October 1, 2004 edition of the Signs of the Times alternative news site.

Comment: Having faced the reality of life on this planet over the past few years, we have come to a tentative hypothesis that in a very general way, there may well be two very different "types" of human beings sharing said planet.

The theory goes like this:

The first group of humans, as evidenced in the story above, naturally experience a great deal of remorse and psychological problems when ordered by their government to kill another human being. It seems that, for these people, despite relentless indoctrination and brainwashing at the hands of the military, they still can't cope with the after effects of taking another life. They cannot help but feel EMPATHY for their victims, and realize deep down that by committing such crimes is akin to a "sin against the soul". Their internal conflict arises from what they are told is true; that Arabs are the enemy and must be wiped out at all costs, and what they feel inside is true; that Arabs are human beings too and are really no different from you or I.

On the other side of the coin are people who not only seem to enjoy killing other people, but seem to derive some sick and twisted sense of power from holding another's life in their hands. These people appear to lack any empathy or compassion for their victims and seem to become more ruthless and energized as their "kill count" rises.

For this second "type" of human, killing is merely a mechanical task like any other, and far from requiring counseling, they are usually the ones who rapidly rise up through the ranks to become commanders, generals and presidents. According to the theory, our social system is structured in such a way that such unconscionable behaviour is rewarded and, in the end, we find our societies being run by the "worst of the worst" - aka psychopaths and madmen - albeit very able and sometimes even "charming"examples.

Perhaps such a theory can answer some of the questions that have troubled "free thinkers" throughout the ages - questions which truly need answers if we are to ever wake up and understand just "what this whole show is all about, before it's out".


Now, if this theory of two outwardly similar but genetically distinct races is true, then it clearly explains the two very different responses to war, among many other human behavioural phenomenon that have puzzled scientists and psychologists throughout history.

In the tradition of Esoteric Christianity as presented by Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and later Mouravieff, the human race is seemingly composed of two different groups of people. Both groups do share the similar characteristics of the three lower centres; moving, emotional and intellectual, which allows them to function and survive on the terrestrial plane, and on the surface makes them impossible to tell apart from one another. However, according to Mouravieff, the first group identified as pre-adamic humanity lacks the three higher centres which are the key to esoteric evolution. The second class of human beings, and that which separates them from the first, do have these three centres, but for most remain only in the "potential" stage, and must be developed by the persistent honing of consciousness and will in order to develop further.

Without going into the details and mechanics of such evolution, which would be well beyond the original scope of this article, for our purposes it is important to understand how these two groups can coexist on the planet at the same time, and what might be the experience of each in regards to our subject.

The pre-adamic human, being devoid of the possibility of esoteric evolution would likely feel right at home here on the earthly plane, for this is their domain, so to speak, where they and others like them thrive, prosper and due to their probable self-serving orientation, ultimately rise to the top echelons of society. For them, their is nothing else but the material world, to be exploited and used at their will and for their own personal gain.

For the adamic human, one with the latent higher centres, might be more likely to feel out of sorts with the world in general, and feel as if there must be something more to life than mere worldly success and possessions. This group retains, even if in potential or as a distant memory, a direct link to something higher or perhaps more spiritual for lack of a better term. They often feel themselves at odds with the pre-adamic humans and their entropic and seeming self-serving behaviour.

It is those with a connection to their higher centres that would likely feel a sense of disgust or remorse when forced to take the life of another, whereas those without such a connection probably wouldn't think anything of it, and some may even take pleasure in the killing and suffering of others.

This last group can be considered as kind of an exaggeration or extreme abberation of the pre-adamic type. The materialist oriented human that not only lacks the higher centres, but seems to revel in their brutal, mechanical, unconscious, and animalistic nature (no insults to animals intended). What might be defined by the DSM-IV as clearly being psychopathic. It is these human beings that appear to be the most successful in this material world. Whose ruthless self-serving nature and obvious lack of compassion acts as a evolutionary adaptive strategy. Those most willing to sacrfice others in their rise to power, whose predator-like nature seizes personal power at the expense of others, and who seemingly suffer no remorse, guilt or compliance with social laws and norms are likely to be the ones who end up as the rulers and leaders of our world.

No wonder the adamic-types are at an immediate disadvantage in this power hungry world, and whose empathy towards others, the link to their higher centres, that very characteristic that makes them more than human, are always preyed upon by those who are not hindered by such feelings. Gives a whole new meaning to that well worn phrase... "nice guys finish last", for indeed in this world at least, it seems they do.

Of course there are no hard and fast rules, and being only a hypothesis must be tested and validated by long and careful observation by the perceiver. There are likely to be exceptions to this theory and those who may appear to be of one orientation are perhaps struggling with finding that connection they may or may not have. The universe is an open ended system, and the purpose of this essay is not to classify or identify one group from another with any certainty, but only notice and recognize patterns to see if they fit.

Taking a clue from the traditions mentioned above, it is imperative that each person test this hypothesis for themselves to see if any accuracy can be acertained in their own lives and relationships.

Now, according the the above Esoteric Christian sources, it appears as though the population of the planet is roughly divided equally between the two races of humans, those with the higher centres and those without, which seems to contradict the title of this essay which suggests that those materialist oriented humans far outnumber those more spiritually oriented. While their numbers may be more or less equal, it does seem that those with the higher centres who allow themselves to be controlled, manipulated or preyed upon by those of the pyschopathic variety, as well as those with higher centres who immerse themselves in the trappings of earthly materialism in denial of their higher nature, do add to the great number of pre-adamic humans, so that in the end they make up what I have named for the purpose of this essay, the violent majority.

Also, as our earth spins towards greater and greater level of chaos, including all manner of climate and earth changes, perpetual war and the looming apocalyptic finale that Dubya and his fundamentalist followers so ardently desire in the Middle East, their numbers appear to be growing. And so, it will be left up to us, a small minority of like-minded, truth-seeking individuals who see the real "terror of the situation", and are fed up with the domination of this world by soulless psychopaths, and whose only option remains is to continue speaking the truth to the lie, and perhaps by doing so, reach other similar humans who are also looking for a way to escape from this nightmare we call the human condition.

These and other disturbing stories that detail the true horrors of our reality can be found updated daily at the very best alternative news site on the internet today (in my opinon, of course); the Signs of the Times.

For those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear...

Relic