Propaganda Alert

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VEEP WHO COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN DICK CHENEY'S HUNTING "ACCIDENT"?

(Updated)
February 13, 2006

A smart mid-western friend who has a lot of quail-hunting experience writes:
Quail The entire Cheney hunting accident story stinks. The delay in announcing it isCheney_2 suspicious, obviously. I'll bet Cheney had a few beers in him, but I'm not sure that is illegal in Texas (drinking and hunting is illegal in most states, but I couldn't find out if that includes Texas).

But a few other points that may be worth noting: [...]

British troops videoed 'beating Iraqis'

Jo Revill and Ned Temko
Sunday February 12, 2006
The Observer

Details emerged last night of a shocking video which appears to show a group of British soldiers brutally beating and kicking defenceless Iraqi teenagers in an army compound.

The footage is said to show eight soldiers pulling four teenagers off the street following a riot and dragging them into their army base, before beating them with batons, as well as punching and kicking them.

An urgent Military Police investigation was under way last night into the events shown in the video. The Ministry of Defence issued the following statement: 'We are aware of these very serious allegations and can confirm that they are the subject of an urgent Royal Military Police investigation. We condemn all acts of abuse and treat any allegation of wrongdoing extremely seriously.'

But the emergence of the footage, given to the News of the World by an anonymous whistleblower, will spark a huge controversy about the conduct of the army in Iraq. There were also fears that it could lead to more attacks on the British soldiers currently serving there.

The MoD has repeatedly given assurances that Iraqis who are captured are treated with respect and decency by British troops. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal involving Americans, dating back to 2004, shocked the world but Downing Street was adamant that there could not be any similar scandal involving the UK forces. However, there have been investigations by MoD prosecutors into a series of serious allegations of abuse by its troops in southern Iraq.

The video was apparently shot in secret by a corporal at a time when troops around Basra were dealing on a daily basis with street riots and insurgencies. Taken from a rooftop, the footage is said to show troops engaged in a running battle with youths, who are seen throwing a grenade which hits their compound.

The footage shows soldiers in combat fatigues chasing the men away, but then cuts to eight soldiers who return with four prisoners, who are marched to the compound gate and dragged inside.

In one of the most brutal scenes, a soldier punches one of the prisoners in the head and the stomach. He is then headbutted and kicked further.

Another scene shows a soldier walking up to one of the boys and kicking him hard between the legs from behind. The boy is seen doubling up in pain.

In some of the worst footage, a prisoner is kicked in the back and the body six times by two soldiers. As he struggles on the floor, one of the soldiers grabs him again by the shoulder, kicks him twice and then begins to hit him on the legs with a baton.

According to the newspaper report, the video also shows shocking footage of a soldier drawing back the blanket over an Iraqi corpse to display it close up to the camera as if it is a trophy. Another scene is said to show an Iraqi man being grabbed by three soldiers and forced to kneel behind a wall where he is kicked hard in the chest.

The video, lasting just over three minutes, is said to show at least 42 blows rained upon the four teenagers. The cries of the prisoners can be heard clearly according to the newspaper report.

The News of the World said it had decided not to reveal the unit or regiment of the troops involved in the video for security reasons. A spokesman said they received the video a few days ago and had given a copy to the MoD.

The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith will also want to see that the fresh allegations of brutality are fully investigated. His office, along with the MoD, was made fully aware of the video last Friday when officials held discussions with News of the World over the contents. There appears to be little doubt on the part of officials that it is genuine footage.

The new allegations will put more pressure on the government to hasten the departure of troops from Iraq. At present, there are 8,500 troops serving in Iraq, and officials have said they plan to begin redeployment in the next few months, with a view to bringing some of them back home by the end of the year.

The whistleblower who gave the video to the News of the World told the paper his aim was to try to prevent further abuses. The informant is quoted as saying: 'These Iraqis were just kids. Most haven't even got shoes on.' He said the video had been shown by the corporal's friends at their home base in Europe.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Boo!

by Missy Comley Beattie
9 Feb 06


When the going gets tough, the president talks terror, terror, terror. Does this man have any credibility? Only with those who think that Osama and Saddam are one and the same and, of course, the people who still believe that Iraq attacked us on September 11, 2001. Yes, that's the answer. Oh, and the scared.

Actually, I don't buy this foiled plot Bush announced today--that al Qaeda planned to fly a plane into the Library Tower. And one of the many reasons is because he had to read it to us. If there were any truth to his success at preventing a disaster, he would have been capable of telling it.

When I speak against this war and the lies of the Bush Administration that took us to Iraq where my nephew died, I don't have to look down at a piece of paper, look up, stumble, and, then, look down again. This boob didn't even give us the correct name of the tower. He called it the "Liberty Tower." If the plot were true, he'd sure as hell know what tower because it would have been discussed in the inner sanctum of the White House over and over. But George knows he's in trouble. His polls are down and he's using the same tired trick, this time with a little twist of creativity. One of his handlers should've told him to memorize it though. I guess Karl wasn't there to help plan this tactic and then stamp it with his seal of approval

Please, America, wake up. Bush is the boogeyman.

Right now, though, he's the one who's sweating. Jacko Abramoff says he was invited to the Crawford Compound, Republicans are abandoning the ship, and 'You're-doin'-a- heckuva-good-job-Brownie is ready to reveal his side of the Katrina disaster. "Hear that, George. Brownie's going to sing about the correspondence he was receiving from you while so many people lost everything."

And George W. Butcher was unable to escape his truth-teller tormentors at Coretta Scott King's funeral--all those luminaries who skewered him and his agenda. He shouldn't have been allowed to be in the presence of this great woman's coffin since every move he makes is a loud slap in the face to her ideals and dreams for this country.

We all know what we can expect from George, Dick, Karl, Rummy, and Condolethal in the months leading up to the 2006 elections--Bush will be out there reading about more terrorist plots he prevented, thus, saving thousands of lives. Oh, and he'll trot Laura out to talk about how focused he is. But those of us with good memories know he focuses best on biking and vacationing. Because that's exactly what he was doing after warnings about 9/11 crossed his desk. We're also thinking that Saddam, the one we've caught and spent a fortune in human life and money to pull out of that hole, is not the person who attacked us. Where's Osama? Could it be that Bush doesn't want to nab him because it's better to use him to scare us when the doo-doo is hitting George's fan and the impeachment word is becoming more than a whisper?

Things aren't looking good for the president and he's showing signs of wear and tear. It's about time.

How many lies have to be exposed before America says, "No more?" How many times does Bush get to tell us he's protecting us before there's a huge chorus screaming, "You must think we're stupid?"

And, finally, during all this turmoil over the Muhammad cartoons and Bush arrogantly says, "Stop the violence," isn't it time for Americans to say, "But, George, you started it?"

He did, you know. When George W. invaded Iraq, he ignited a fire that's engulfed our world.

Missy Beattie lives in New York City. She's written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. An outspoken critic of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq, she's a member of Gold Star Families for Peace. She completed a novel last year, but since the death of her nephew, Marine Lance Cpl. Chase J. Comley, in Iraq on August 6,'05, she has been writing political articles.

Diana conspiracy book to become a film

Feb 12, 2006, 13:30 GMT

LONDON, England (UPI) -- A book claiming Britain`s Princess Diana was killed by the CIA and FBI is getting made into a movie.

Jon King and John Beveridge`s 'Princess Diana: The Hidden Evidence' has been adapted for a British film called 'Hidden Truth,' Screen Daily reported on its Web site Friday.

William P. Cartlidge of 'Educating Rita' is producing with filming scheduled to start in the spring.

Princess Diana and her companion, Dodi Al Fayed, died in a Paris car crash in 1997.

The inquiry into her death is still being conducted in Britain.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Terrorism: a president's best friend

Bush morphs 'War on Terror' into war on common sense

Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
02.10.06

Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.

Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security -- 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping another $120 billion into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?

In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36 billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president re-elected after promising to expand, rather than curtail health-care services to seniors.

Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.

These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.

To begin with, we must remember that this "war" was launched against an enemy, still mostly at large, who on Sept. 11 accomplished phenomenal destruction and suffering with armaments no fiercer or costly than some box-cutters. Their key weapon, in fact, was suicidal fanaticism.

Yet, rather than sensibly investing in aggressive global detective work, collaborating with our European allies, engaging meaningfully with an independent and skeptical Arab world, and working to protect vulnerable U.S. sites such as nuclear-power plants, our leaders decided to turn logic on its head and make ignorance about the enemy into a virtue, slash civil liberties and recklessly invade a major Muslim country that had no connection to the attacks.

In other words, our response to Sept. 11 has been almost completely military in nature, granting the Defense Department an excuse to increase spending by 48 percent in just four years. Yet, despite all this spending, and the loss of life that has accompanied it, our standing in the Muslim world has been in freefall since we invaded Iraq, we have never captured or killed Osama bin Laden or his top strongman, we don't know how to "fix" Iraq or Afghanistan and we have greatly strengthened the hand of our rivals in Iran.

We don't even know, as the Sept. 11 commission report revealed, much of anything about the 15 Saudi hijackers and their four leaders from other parts of the Arab world who committed the Sept. 11 attacks. We do know, however, that they weren't from Iraq, weren't funded by Iraq and weren't trained by or in Iraq. Nevertheless, the huge elephant in the Bush budget is the war and occupation of Iraq, now approaching its third anniversary, not the effort to dismantle al-Qaida.

"Since 2001, the administration ... liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," boasts the Bush budget document. Ah, but if they have been liberated, then why the need for an additional $50 billion emergency "bridge funding" in 2007, itself coming on the heels of a supplementary $70 billion budget request last week? The answer provided by the report is that Iraq is far from being stabilized and that in Afghanistan "enemy activity has increased over the past year."

Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Congress is still unwilling to challenge the necessity of "winning" the war in Iraq, and as a result, its complaints about cutting needed domestic programs are framed exclusively as an argument against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. It is a losing argument, because it leaves Bush as both the big spender and the big tax-cutter once again, posturing as the savior of the taxpayer when he is in fact quite the opposite for all but the wealthiest Americans.

Growing questions about whether Bush lied today about the supposed threat to LA that he supposedly foiled

by John in DC - 2/09/2006 04:58:00 PM
1. Los Angeles Mayor knows nothing about the supposed threat:
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by President Bush's announcement of new details on a purported 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown skyscraper, and described communication with the White House as "nonexistent."

"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't expect a call from the president — but somebody."
2. Bush's claim to have thwarted an attack on LA is disputed by former FBI official
TODAY BUSH SAID: Bush Touted Thwarting of Post 9/11 U.S. Terrorism Plot. In a speech today, Bush told members of the National Guard Association of a foiled 2002 Al Qaeda plot to fly a plane into LA's US Bank Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. Bush said that the terrorist's plan was put into place after 9/11 but "was derailed in early 2002, when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative." Bush added, "Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target and how al Qaeda hoped to execute" the plot, and helped other allies capture the ringleaders." - Washington Post, 2/9/06

BUT IN 2004: FBI Counterterrorism Official Said He Knew of No Thwarted Al Qaeda Attacks. After a CIA official claimed last year that the government had "probably prevented a few aviation attacks against both the East and West Coasts" since 9/11, John Pistole, the FBI's counterterrorism director, said he was "not sure what [the CIA] was referring to." - 9/11 Commission Testimony, 6/16/2004; New York Daily News, 6/17/04

Only on Fox: Cable channel aired photos of aliens attacking Library Tower

In a February 9 speech, President Bush disclosed details of what he described as a foiled Al Qaeda plot to fly a commercial plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles. Shortly after his speech concluded, Fox News aired numerous images from the 1996 film Independence Day (Twentieth Century Fox) showing the reported target of the attack -- the Library Tower, now known as the U.S. Bank Tower -- being destroyed by alien invaders.

On the February 9 edition of CNN Live Today, anchor Daryn Kagan also noted that the tower "was depicted as being blown up" in Independence Day, but, unlike Fox, CNN did not show movie images of the building being attacked.

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Devil lives in the detail: Demonising Iran

by William Bowles
Friday, 10 February, 2006

The latest dissection by Medialens of the corporate media’s devious and misleading coverage of Iran, is an excellent dissection of how the media distort and lie about events and, as the article points out, alleged intent on the part of the Iranians is almost always presented as a ‘slip of the pen’ eg,

“I accept that it would have been better to have said ‘alleged nuclear threat’. I am sorry that my wording was not as precise as it could have been.” (Email to Media Lens from James Robbins, BBC correspondent, January 24, 2005)

“We should have said ‘nuclear activities’, not ‘nuclear weapons activities’.” (Corrections and clarifications, The Guardian, February 7, 2006)

But of course the damage has not only already been done, it continues to be done. Take for example, a ‘background’ piece on the Iran ‘crisis’ (though it’s a ‘crisis’ entirely of the West’s making) on the BBC’s Website where we read

The best perhaps that diplomacy can do is delay. Indeed a senior British official with close knowledge of the process is now talking of all this going on for several years.

“Five years ago,” he said, “we said that Iran was five years away from being able to make a nuclear weapon. Now we still say that. That is progress.” – ‘Iran stand-off moves to new level’ news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4677114.stm


Odd when all the experts are telling us that today, Iran is at least ten years away from the ability (let alone the reality) of being able to make a nuclear device. And note the choice of words, that the ‘crisis’ can at best be “delay[ed]”, by what? Five, ten, fifteen years? Using the word “delayed” implies that it is Iran’s intention to make a nuclear weapon, an implication that is further reinforced in the BBC ‘background’ piece when it ‘informs’ us that

Up till now, Iran has been reluctant to go ahead too fast … It has held back from abandoning all restraint.


What, with it’s alleged nuclear weapons programme? Will we see yet another mea culpa from the BBC? So, five years ago did Iran also act with restraint? The devil lives in the detail, with every phrase minutely considered as to its effect on the reader, the net effect residing not in any single word or phrase but in the overall thrust, and one that is echoed in every news piece in every major media outlet.

An op-ed piece in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins on 20/1/06 puts the issue into some kind of perspective, and for once from the Iranian side

Iran … sits between nuclear Pakistan and [nuclear] India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has “no right” to nuclear defence?


What is revealed from the alleged news we are constantly subjected to is the sheer hypocrisy of the West’s position, for nowhere do we see in the media’s presentation even an inkling of the idea that Iran has every right to build nuclear weapons. After all, the countries doing the threatening already have nuclear weapons. So which country poses the real threat to peace, Iran or the United States and its nuclear-armed allies?

The Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and to which the BBC reluctantly concedes Iran is in compliance with, was as Simon Jenkins points out, pretty much set up by the then nuclear ‘club’, with the view to keeping everyone else out. Meanwhile, the US is adding to its nuclear arsenal as is the UK (even if the US keeps its finger on the Brits’ nuclear trigger). To add insult to injury, we read today (10/2/06) that France has been secretly upgrading its nuclear arsenal. The stench of hypocrisy rises, a menacing cloud, above these ‘guardians’ of ‘democracy’.

Everyone (in their right mind) agrees we should get rid of the damn things but by what right does the only country in the world that’s used them, decide who else should possess them and, threaten anyone who looks like they might develop them, with nuclear weapons?

If the BBC was reporting the issue properly, it would be informing its readers of the fact that theoretically, Iran is still at least ten years away from being able to produce enriched uranium in order for the reader to make their own assessment. And, that it is a nuclear-armed West that’s doing all the threatening, not Iran. Lies by omission, are still lies.

Meanwhile, the West has its own crazies wracking up the anté under pretence of informing readers,

A frisson of panic shudders around the globe: he [President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] has already threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth. Do something, someone! But what and who? – Polly Toynbee, the Guardian, Tuesday February 7, 2006


I love it, “A frisson of panic shudders around the globe”? Who, exactly is panicking here, Polly Toynbee, the war-crazed inhabitants of the White House and Whitehall or perhaps it should be the Iranians who are being threatened by at least three nuclear-armed belligerants, the US, the UK and Israel.

“Do something” Ms Toynbee? Perhaps you could start by not talking such utter bilge and making such outrageous statements. And the threats, are surely the ones emanating from the White House, with its talk of “all options being open”, not Tehran.

So what does Ms. Toynbee in her wisdom have to say on this?

Meanwhile, the Americans are grinding out ritual bellicose statements, Donald Rumsfeld refusing to rule out air strikes.


So as far the US is concerned, Toynbee presents it merely as “ritual”, whereas coming from Iran it’s a real threat? This is hypocrisy writ large, revealing the built-in prejudice of writers like Toynbee, literally schooled in imperial newspeak.

There are two messages that are hidden within all the OTT rubbish of Ms. Toynbee and her cohorts:

A deliberate demonisation of Islam and its ‘crazed fundamentalists’, a view that is intrinsic to the imperial culture that Ms. Toynbee is so much a part of, and one that is absolutely necessary to justify the imperial ambitions of the Anglo-US war machine.

This view is borne out by Ms. Frisson’s view of Iran

Even if no blood is spilt, the west may find itself in a cold jihad with a God-driven, nuclear-armed adversary, and no solution in sight. Nothing suggests that sanctions and fiery words will make the more moderate forces in Iran overthrow their mullahs and choose westernisation: under external pressure in this clash of civilisations, history suggests they will close ranks.

“God-driven, nuclear-armed adversary”? Ms. Toynbee’s choice of the term “adversary” is no idle, throwaway, it reveals exactly where she stands in the so-called clash of civilisations. Why should the Iranians ‘choose’ “westernisation” and do it under threat of nuclear attack no less? What makes Ms. Toynbee so sure about the superiority of Western ‘civilisation’, an especially galling view given the history of the Anglo-US involvement in Iran over the past century (and one that she also admits to in the same piece). Civilisation indeed!

Israel; where is Ms. Toynbee’s “frisson of panic” about the crazy God-driven Zionist fundamentalists of Israel who talk of exterminating the Palestinians, and who actually regard Palestinans as something less than human? Such outrageous statements made by individuals like Ariel Sharon are thick on the ground, yet draw no comparable ire from Ms. Frisson herself.


Ultimately, one has to ask the following question of Ms. Toynbee: what motivates her to become a mouthpiece for the imperial ambitions of the Anglo-US imperium? Is it her arrogant, racist views of anything that’s not white and European that drives her to make such virulent and poisonous statements?

One can understand the Cheneys and Rumsfelds of this benighted planet, they stand to gain directly from such war-mongering talk, but without the complicity of the Toynbees and her ilk as part of the state-sponsored media onslaught, the Cheneys and Rumsfelds are bereft of purportedly educated and ‘neutral’ mouthpieces. For whether Ms. Toynbee likes it or not, she is in actuality speaking directly on their behalf, peddling their poison to an ill-informed public under the guise of an outraged citizen, confronted by the ‘barbarians’.

The argument that it is merely a point-of-view and that counterviews are to be found avoids the fact that the central thrust of her ‘comment’ perpetuates a cynical mythology about such things as the ‘clash of civilisations’ and the all-pervading view found in the ‘news’ that ‘our’ way of life is under direct threat from the ‘jihadists’.

Thus Ms. Toynbee’s ‘comment’ is an integral component of a propaganda war being waged on an unsuspecting public by a specially trained elite. Ultimately the only difference between Ms. Toynbee and the British National Party is the choice of language and the intended target.

To argue that she is ‘merely’ an employee of the corporate media entirely misses point of the key role that she plays. Her piece is, after all presented as “comment” by the Guardian, comment that conveniently falls into line with the rest of the garbage rolled out by a compliant and complicit intelligentsia. Surely it’s time we stopped making excuses for the Ms. Toynbees of this world and called them out for what they are—the verbal rottweilers of the imperium.

Email connections for the above should you choose to accept the mission are:

Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

Credibility

Eli Stephens
Left I on the News

February 10, 2006

Without exception in any media I've been listening to today, the story of what George Bush said today goes like this: "George Bush disclosed today new details of a terrorist plot aimed at the tallest building in Los Angeles." Why do they do that? George Bush and his administration have no credibility whatsoever. This is the administration which claimed there were WMD in Iraq. This is the administration which says that the people locked up in Guantanamo are all members of al Qaeda and the "worst of the worst," when a recent report reveals that only 8% of them were actually al Qaeda (and I suspect even that number utilizes a loose interpretation). This is an administration which has repeatedly lied to the American people and the world about all sorts of things. And yet, when George Bush says something like he did today, rather than reporting it accurately as "George Bush alleged today that an alleged terrorist plot to blow up a building in Los Angeles had been disrupted," they report it as I described above. If anyone was throwing around those "allegeds," it wasn't on any news I was listening to or watching.

If this plot was so concrete, as Bush alleges, and all of its intended participants were arrested, also as Bush alleges, why is it they haven't been put on trial? People were certainly tried and convicted after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But not, as far as I know, in this case. If Bush is telling the truth, why weren't they?

Update: More on this from Holden at First Draft, with focus on the press briefing specifically on the subject held yesterday. By the way, Holden and some other bloggers (and some reporter at the press "gaggle") are all verklempt about the idea that blowing a cockpit door with a shoe bomb doesn't make sense; the reporter claims "you either blow off your feet or you blow off the front of the airplane." But that's just silly. No one says you have to leave your shoes on when you ignite a shoe bomb, so there's no reason to "blow off your feet," and there's also no reason you can't make a charge weak enough to just blow a door and not blow up a plane. But the whole issue is a red herring, which is why I really think bloggers shouldn't dwell on it. The precise details of the alleged plot are completely beside the point. Anyway, read what Holden reports on.


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Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Harper can still do a lot of damage

by Linda McQuaig
February 6, 2006

There was an almost audible sigh of relief in many parts of the country when Stephen Harper was denied a majority government. After all, how much damage can even an earnest right-wing ideologue do with only a slim minority?

Sadly, quite a bit.

First, Harper effectively has a majority for at least a year, since no party will be ready to face him in an election. Of course, he'll tread carefully during this period, since his eye is on winning a majority.

Still, Harper can do a lot of damage to Canada's relatively progressive social and political systems without entering into any high-profile battles in Parliament.

George W. Bush accomplished much of his agenda by appointing right-wing radicals who rolled back progressive regulations governing the environment, food and drug inspections and the legal system.

Harper could do the same. His government could, as business has been urging, adopt U.S. drug and biotechnology testing, dismantle plans to meet our Kyoto targets, and ease up on environmental regulations, particularly those that could stall development of Alberta's oil sands — Washington's key hope for reducing its Middle East oil dependency.

Harper could also press forward with ongoing talks aimed at integrating Canada more with the U.S., and could sign an energy-sharing deal ensuring Washington even greater access to our energy.

There is also a lot Harper could do to weaken medicare, without taking a direct shot at the Canada Health Act. He could allow private medicine to flourish. Indeed, his promise of a “wait-time guarantee” for health care will deliver patients into the arms of private health providers.

Until now, Canada has managed to resist some of the worst aspects of the right-wing tide of Thatcherism and Reaganism that swept Britain and the U.S. — despite vigorous efforts here by corporate-funded organizations to push us down the same path.

Harper has been in the thick of those organizations, serving as head of the anti-medicare National Citizens Coalition. Back in 1989, he urged the Reform Party to become “a modern Canadian version of the Thatcher-Reagan phenomenon.”

He doesn't talk like that now. Like other sophisticated right wingers, he's discovered that the most effective way to sell unbridled capitalism is to camouflage it.

At a conference in Vancouver last fall, medicare opponents openly discussed how to repackage their message to make it more palatable to Canadians. As The Star's Thomas Walkom reported, one privatization guru told the crowd they'd have more success selling private medicine if they pitched it, not as a way for the affluent to jump the queue, but as a way to “strengthen” medicare.

If Harper keeps his views wrapped in the garb of moderation, he'll have a good shot at winning a majority. And then our unique Canadian social system — preserved against great odds — will be in the hands of a man who's devoted much of his life to figuring out how to destroy it.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

'Talkin' Texan' Means Lyin' Big

By Robert Parry
February 5, 2006

On Feb. 1, the day after his State of the Union Address, George W. Bush stood on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and delighted his audience by talking “Texan,” which in Bush’s lexicon must mean lying big.

Bush’s biggest lie that day was his claim that his warrantless wiretaps inside the United States were needed to intercept calls in which “one of the people making the call has to be al-Qaeda, suspected al-Qaeda, and/or affiliate.”

The President said, “Let me put it to you in Texan: If al-Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know.” His listeners laughed and applauded.

With his folksy style, Bush again got away with his false assertion that existing law wouldn’t let U.S. intelligence intercept these al-Qaeda telephone calls when, in fact, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 set up procedures for just such intercepts and even let the Executive tap first and get approval from a secret court later.

But “talkin’ Texan” is apparently like telling tall tales about Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill, except Texas-sized.

Bush’s wiretap lie was abetted a day later, when Deputy Director of National Intelligence Michael Hayden refused to divulge to the Senate Intelligence Committee – even in closed session – how many Americans were subjected to Bush’s warrantless wiretaps.

By keeping the scope of the operation secret, Hayden protected Bush’s account, since the President had depicted the eavesdropping as “limited,” affecting only a “few” people who supposedly were in direct touch with al-Qaeda operatives.

If Hayden had admitted the truth – that many thousands of Americans had been spied on under Bush’s warrantless wiretaps and few, if any, had any links to al-Qaeda – Bush’s story would collapse.

So, Bush administration officials have contended they can’t divulge the numbers or other details to avoid “helping al-Qaeda.” But people knowledgeable about U.S. eavesdropping capabilities say the number would be of no help to al-Qaeda, nor was the New York Times disclosure in December 2005 that Bush was conducting wiretaps without warrants.

Al-Qaeda operatives have long assumed the United States has the capacity to intercept their phone calls and e-mails, so they go to great lengths to deliver messages face-to-face or to send messages by courier. When they do communicate electronically, they make only brief cryptic references because they expect the message may well be intercepted.

Sept. 11 Prevention

Bush and Hayden also have tried to justify the warrantless wiretaps by speculating that the Sept. 11 terror attacks might have been prevented if this extra-legal “terrorist surveillance” program was in place in 2001.

But the September 11th Commission found that the failure to stop the terrorist attacks resulted from the U.S. government fumbling the interpretation of available evidence, not from a lack of electronic eavesdropping.

Bush’s first counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke faulted the President for failing to show decisive leadership and “shake the trees” of the federal bureaucracy after being warned in August 2001 about an impending al-Qaeda attack.

Yet, Bush appears to be counting on the weak memories of Americans and their susceptibility to emotional arguments. To make that work, however, Bush has had to keep the numbers of wiretaps secret so he can mislead about the scope of the operation.

What the domestic spying actually seems to entail is the National Security Agency scooping up conversations and e-mails of vast numbers of Americans – possibly in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions – and then mining that data.

Federal officials told the New York Times that this wiretap data generates thousands of tips each month, which are then passed on to the FBI for further investigation.

“But virtually all of [the tips], current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans,” the Times reported. “FBI officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. … Some FBI officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.” [NYT, Jan. 17, 2006]

In other words, this widespread wiretapping of Americans is not restricted to a small number of people who are chatting with al-Qaeda associates; it is prying into the communications of innocent Americans and burdening U.S. law enforcement with worthless tips that divert investigative resources away from more promising leads.

An investigation by the Washington Post reached a similar conclusion.

“Intelligence officials who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use,” the Post reported on Feb. 5, 2006.

The Post cited two “knowledgeable sources” who said the number of Americans spied on through the warrantless wiretaps was in the thousands, with one source putting the number at about 5,000.

But the Post added, “the program has touched many more Americans than that” because the technology sifts through hundreds of thousands of e-mails, faxes and phone calls before selecting Americans for closer examination.

These depictions of a vast program don’t square with Bush’s down-home claims about the government having the phone numbers of some al-Qaeda operatives and just wanting to know who they’re talking to in the United States.

Caught Lying

Though Bush is telling the American people to trust him, he already has been caught lying about this wiretapping program, which he first authorized in 2002. Two years later, he went out of his way to give assurances that he was following the law and getting warrants for terrorism-related wiretaps.

In 2004, Bush told a crowd in Buffalo, N.Y., that “by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. … Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

On New Year’s Day 2006, Bush lied again, insisting that his warrantless wiretaps only involved communications from suspicious individuals abroad who were contacting people in the United States. Bush said the eavesdropping was “limited to calls from outside the United States to calls within the United States.”

But Bush’s explanation was at odds even with what his own administration had previously admitted to journalists – that the wiretaps also covered calls originating in the United States. The White House soon “clarified” Bush’s remarks to acknowledge that his warrantless wiretaps did, indeed, involve communications from the United States. [NYT, Jan. 2, 2006]

But Bush apparently has decided that – if framed right – the wiretap issue can help him politically. Bush’s aides have begun counterattacking, accusing Democrats and the news media of jeopardizing the safety of Americans.

“Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why,” declared deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove in a speech on Jan. 20. “Some important Democrats clearly disagree.”

Rove didn’t specify who any of these “important Democrats” were, most likely because no prominent Democrat has disagreed with the need to know who al-Qaeda is calling or why. They only are saying that the existing FISA law set legal standards for permitting this surveillance and that Bush has chosen to circumvent the law.

For his part, Bush is painting his detractors as helping the enemy by just mentioning the wiretaps.

While talkin’ Texan at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., Bush said, “I'm sure you can understand why you don't want the President or anybody talking about the operating details. … If you're at war, and you're trying to stop an enemy from attacking you, why in the world would you want to tell the enemy what they're doing to stop them, because they'll adjust.”

Bush then assured the appreciative crowd, “We are safeguarding your liberties.”

Killing Children

Bush also bathed his Grand Ole Opry listeners in feel-good rhetoric about the fundamental decency of the American people.

“What a fantastic country,” Bush said. “We deeply care about every human life. The life of a child in Baghdad is precious. And so when we see these killers kill somebody – a young child outside a hospital where one of our soldiers is handing out candy, we weep, because Americans have a deep compassion for every human being.”

But Bush didn’t mention how his invasion of Iraq has led to the killing and maiming of tens of thousands of civilians, including many children.

For instance, at the start of the war, Bush authorized the bombing of a restaurant in Baghdad because some faulty intelligence suggested that Saddam Hussein might be having dinner there. As it turned out, Hussein wasn’t there, but 14 civilians were killed, including seven children. One mother collapsed when her decapitated daughter was pulled from the rubble.

Some legal scholars have cited this bombing and similar incidents as evidence of war crimes committed by Bush, but the President has never apologized for killing civilians in Iraq, instead claiming that Hussein was the one who “chose war.”

Bush reprised that favorite chapter of his revisionist history during his Grand Ole Opry speech, too.

“We gave Saddam Hussein a chance to deal with the world in good faith by honoring the United Nations Security Council resolutions,” Bush said. “He chose – it was his choice – he chose to defy the resolutions. And so we took action.”

In other speeches, Bush has gone even further, rewriting the history to say that Hussein hadn’t let the U.N. inspectors in, even though the inspection teams entered Iraq in November 2002 and were citing good Iraqi cooperation before Bush forced them to leave in March 2003 so the invasion could proceed. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “President Bush, With the Candlestick…”]

New evidence also has emerged in Great Britain, revealing that Bush planned to invade Iraq regardless of what the U.N. inspectors discovered or whether the U.N. Security Council approved a war resolution.

“The US would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would ‘twist arms’ and ‘even threaten’. But [Bush] had to say that if ultimately we failed, military action would follow anyway,” according to minutes of the Jan. 31, 2003, meeting obtained by human rights lawyer Philippe Sands for a new edition of his book, Lawless World. The minutes were reviewed by British Channel 4 News.

Bush and Blair also discussed the possibility of creating a pretext for war. According to Bush, “The US was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of U.N. resolutions.

”It was also possible that a defector could be brought out who would give a public presentation about Saddam’s WMD, and there was also a small possibility that Saddam would be assassinated,” Bush said, according to the minutes.

At the meeting, Bush added that after the invasion, he “thought it unlikely that there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.”

Though Bush was wrong about Iraq’s WMD stockpiles and the likelihood of sectarian violence under the U.S. occupation, he continues to urge the American people to trust his judgment on a plan for “victory in Iraq.”

Talkin’ Texan at the Grand Ole Opry, Bush said, “I want to describe right quick our plans for victory in Iraq. First of all, anytime we put our troops in harm's way we got to go in with victory in mind.” The audience responded with warm applause.

In his Nashville remarks, Bush did back away from one longtime canard that he’s used to justify seizing broad powers domestically, invading Iraq and ignoring international law. In speech after speech, Bush has insisted that before Sept. 11, 2001, Americans thought the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protected them from foreign attack.

But no American growing up during the Cold War felt that way. They knew that Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles could obliterate American cities in minutes.

At the Grand Ole Opry, Bush finally took note of complaints about this misleading argument by acknowledging the fact that the oceans really wouldn’t have protected Americans from nuclear attack.

“When we grew up, oceans protected us, it seemed like,” Bush said. “We felt pretty safe and secure from an attack on American soil. We were concerned about a nuclear threat, but nevertheless, we felt secure because we were isolated from threats it seemed like.”

In “talkin’ Texan,” the phrase “it seemed like” must be synonymous with “almost the same as true.”

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Propaganda Alert! - Flight 93 Movie Ignores Officially Reported Facts About The Fate Of Flight 93

SOTT
Joe Quinn
31/01/2006

While browsing the news websites recently, I noticed an advertisement for an upcoming movie about Flight 93 that 'crashed' in the Pennsylvannia countryside on September 11th 2001.

Here's the ad:

Without doubt, this is a deliberate government-sponsored/inspired attempt to further brainwash the masses about the truth of what happened on 9/11. Unfortunately for the Bush gang, the officially recorded events about the final moments of Flight 93 present us with some of the clearest evidence that the U.S. government is lying about what really happened to Flight 93, and by implication, about all other aspects of the 9/11 event. Consider the following facts:

According to NORAD’s initial statement, Flight 93 was hijacked at 9: 16 a.m., yet they were unable to say when the FAA notified them of the hijacking or how the FAA knew. Flight 93 is the only flight where NORAD could not at least supply this time of notification of hijacking. Despite this, the 9/11 Commission concluded that the hijacking of Flight 93 began at 9:28 a.m. saying only that the original statement by NORAD was incorrect without giving any explanation as to how or why such an error was made. At this same time, Cleveland flight controllers noticed Flight 93 climbing and descending in an erratic way, and shortly thereafter screams and shouts of “get out of here” were heard by controllers over the cockpit transmission. Arabic voices are also heard. At this point contact was lost with Flight 93. Yet despite this, we are told that no one notified NORAD.
According to the 9/11 Commission, at 9:36 a.m. Cleveland flight control specifically asked the FAA Command Center whether someone had requested the military to launch fighters toward Flight 93. Cleveland offered to contact a nearby military base. The Command Center replied that FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command have to make that decision and were working on the issue.


This single fact suggests that somewhere along the chain of command someone was preventing the implementation of standard procedures taken in respect of suspect aircraft, which is the immediate scrambling of fighter jets.

At about 9:36 am Flight 93 made a 180 degree turn and headed back to Washington. Still no fighters were scrambled.

From 9:30 am until Flight 93 "crashed", several passengers were alleged to have made calls to their family members and to phone operators specifying that a hijacking was taking place. According to NORAD, Flight 93 crashed at 10:03 am. However, a seismic study authorized by the US Army to determine when the plane crashed concluded that the crash happened at 10:06:05. Furthermore, according to a CNN report, the cockpit voice recording of Flight 93 was recorded on a 30-minute reel which started at 9:31am and ended at 10:02 am, with the last minute of recording apparently missing. This fact led some victim’s family members to wonder if the tape had been tampered with.


So what exactly happened in that last minute before flight 93 hit the ground in Pennsylvania? Several eyewitness reports of the crash of Flight 93 attest to the presence of a white unmarked military-style jet over-flying the crash scene. The mayor of Shanksville, the closest town to where Flight 93 "crashed" stated:

"I know of two people - I will not mention names - that heard a missile, They both live very close, within a couple of hundred yards...This one fellow served in Vietnam and he says he's heard them, and he heard one that day." The mayor adds that based on what he knows about that morning, military F-16 fighter jets were very, very close.


Another eyewitness stated that he heard two loud bangs before watching the plane take a downward turn of nearly 90 degrees. It is also a matter of record that the debris of the crash was strewn across an area of approximately 8 miles. Ask yourself: how could parts of a commercial jet that allegedly hit the ground intact be 8 miles from the crash site!?

Even CNN reported that:

"Near the end of [Flight 93’s] cockpit voice recording, loud wind sounds can be heard."


And the UK Mirror then confirmed:

"Sources claim the last thing heard on the cockpit voice recorder is the sound of wind—suggesting the plane had been holed."


All of these facts are clearly consistent with the idea that Flight 93 was shot down. Heck, the evidence that Flight 93 was shot down is so stark that even Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld couldn't help blurting it out:

According to the CNN transcript of the event, while he was addressing U.S. troops in Iraq in December 2004, Rumsfeld made the following remark:

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And to change
that way of living, would strike at the very essence of our country.

And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be.


Of course, if Flight 93 was shot down and did not crash as claimed by the US government and 9/11 Commission, not only does this pose serious questions about the authenticity of the alleged phone calls made by passengers to the effect that they were going to try and "do something" to take control of Flight 93 from the hijackers, but it throws all other facets of the official story of what happened on 9/11 into doubt..

Assuming some kind of government conspriracy then, how, you might ask, could the conspriators have possibly faked at least some of the famous cell phone calls?

Consider a 1999 report in the Washington Post entitled When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing, where it was stated:

“’Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government.’ So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command.

At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.

But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice “morphing” technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner’s voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.

Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun’s team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating, ‘I am being treated well by my captors.’

‘Once you can take any kind of information and reduce it into ones and zeros, you can do some pretty interesting things’, says Daniel T. Kuehl, chairman of the Information Operations department of the National Defense University in Washington, the military’s school for information warfare.

Digital morphing — voice, video, and photo — has come of age, available for use in psychological operations. PSYOPS, as the military calls it, seek to exploit human vulnerabilities in enemy governments, militaries and populations to pursue national and battlefield objectives.

To some, PSYOPS is a backwater military discipline of leaflet dropping and radio propaganda. To a growing group of information war technologists, it is the nexus of fantasy and reality. Being able to manufacture convincing audio or video, they say, might be the difference in a successful military operation or coup.”


“The nexus of fantasy and reality” indeed. Given the scope and depth of the conspiracy with which we are dealing, it is entirely possible that at least some of the cell phone calls that were made from the planes on 9/11 - if those reporting them are sincere and believe they received such calls - were actually the result of a ‘real time’ application of this voice morphing technology.

Who could forget the rousing reports of the “soldier citizens” on Flight 93 who courageously decided to “do something” about the hijackers with the words “let’s roll”?

Mark Bingham, a California PR executive, was a passenger on Flight 93 and one of those involved in the alleged attempts to take back the plane. According to his mother, Bingham called her to tell her that his flight had been hijacked. Bizarrely however, the very first words that Bingham said to his mother, with whom he was very close by all accounts, were, "hi mom, this is Mark Bingham."

The only other words he is claimed to have said before hanging up were, "I love you".

Now think about this: Why would anyone use their full name when calling their mother?! Would you, in a similar circumstance, call your mother and announce your full name? Really stop and think about it a moment. Could this small and seemingly innocuous detail be an example of the faking of the cell phone calls and just one of the many flaws in the general cover-up attempts by the conspirators?

Due to these many striking facts that point to Flight 93 having been shot down, we decided that it was our duty to modifiy the Flight 93 movie advertisement in such a way that it more closely reflects the reality of the situation

For the full details of what really went on behind the scenes on the day of September 11th 2001 and a unique expose on who was ultimately responsible for the attacks, see Laura Knight-Jadczyk's new book 9/11:The Ultimate Truth