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Apocalypse now? 30 days when the world didn't end
2008-09-09, Times of London (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4717864.ece

The beginning of the first serious experiments using CERN’s Large Hadron Collider this week has given rise to a welter of fanciful scare stories about the obliteration of the Earth by a pocket black hole or a cascade reaction of exotic particles. Similar predictions have been made around the launch of several other particle physics experiments and even the first atomic weapons tests. Predictions of the world’s end are nothing new though. We’ve picked out 30 of the most memorable apocalypses that never, for one reason or another, quite happened. 1: 2,800BC: The oldest surviving prediction of the world’s imminent demise was found inscribed upon an Assyrian clay tablet which stated: "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common." 4: Mar 25, 970 AD. The Lotharingian computists believed they had found evidence in the Bible that a conjunction of certain feast days prefigured the end times. They were just one of a wide scattering of millennial cults springing up in advance of that first Millennium. The millennial panic endured for at least 30 years after the fateful date had come and gone, with some adjustment made to allow 1,000 years after the crucifixion, rather than the nativity. 8: 1648: Having made close study of the kabbalah, theTurkish rabbi Sabbatai Zevi predicted that the Messiah would make a miraculous return in 1648, and that his name would be Sabbatai Zevi. 9: 1666: A year packed with apocalyptic portent. With a date containing the figures commonly accepted as the biblical Number of the Beast and following a protracted period of plague in England, it was little surprise that many should believe the Great Fire of London to be a herald of the Last Days.

Civil liberties group criticizes new FBI authority
2008-07-02, Boston Globe/Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/07/02/civil_libert...

Nearly 40 years ago, the FBI was roundly criticized for investigating Americans without evidence [that] they had broken any laws. Now, critics fear the FBI may be gearing up to do it again. Tentative Justice Department guidelines, to be released later this summer, would let agents investigate people whose backgrounds -- and potentially their race or ethnicity -- match the traits of terrorists. Such profiling ... echoes the FBI's now-defunct COINTELPRO, an operation under Director J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s and 1960s to monitor and disrupt groups with communist and socialist ties. Before it was shut down in 1971, the domestic spying operation -- formally known as Counterintelligence Programs -- had expanded to include civil rights groups, anti-war activists, ... state legislators and journalists. Among the FBI's targets were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and John Lennon, along with members of black [political] groups ... and student protesters. The new proposal to allow investigations of Americans with no evidence of wrongdoing is "COINTELPRO for the 21st century," said Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. "But this is much more insidious because it could involve more people. In the days of COINTELPRO, they were watching only a few people. Now they could be watching everyone."

Note: For many disturbing reports on threats to civil liberties, click here.

Rule by fear or rule by law?
2008-02-04, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees. According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people? The 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ... gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 ... allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who ... speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike. What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

Note: This important warning from former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg and Lewis Seiler should be read in its entirety. For more chilling reports on serious threats to our civil liberties, click here.

Judges OK warrantless monitoring of Web use
2007-07-07, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/07/BAGMNQSJDA1.DTL

Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves. In Friday's ruling, the court said computer users should know that they lose privacy protections with e-mail and Web site addresses when they are communicated to the company whose equipment carries the messages. The search is no more intrusive than officers' examination of a list of phone numbers or the outside of a mailed package, neither of which requires a warrant, Judge Raymond Fisher said in the 3-0 ruling. Defense lawyer Michael Crowley disagreed. His client, Dennis Alba, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being convicted of operating a laboratory in Escondido that manufactured the drug ecstasy. Some of the evidence against Alba came from agents' tracking of his computer use. The court upheld his conviction and sentence. Expert evidence in Alba's case showed that the Web addresses obtained by federal agents included page numbers that allowed the agents to determine what someone read online, Crowley said. The ruling "further erodes our privacy," the attorney said. "The great political marketplace of ideas is the Internet, and the government has unbridled access to it."

Note: So now every email you send and read can be monitored legally. Why didn't this make news headlines?

Pentagon restricting testimony in Congress
2007-05-10, Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/10/pentagon_res...

The Pentagon has placed unprecedented restrictions on who can testify before Congress, reserving the right to bar lower-ranking officers, enlisted soldiers, and career bureaucrats from appearing before oversight committees or having their remarks transcribed. The guidelines, described in an April 19 memo to the staff director of the House Armed Services Committee, adds that all field-level officers and enlisted personnel must be "deemed appropriate" by the Department of Defense before they can participate in personal briefings for members of Congress or their staffs. In addition, according to the memo, the proceedings must not be recorded. Any officers who are allowed to testify must be accompanied by an official from the administration. Veterans of the legislative process -- who say they have never heard of such guidelines before -- maintain that the Pentagon has no authority to set such ground rules. A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the guidelines are new. The memo has fueled complaints that the Bush administration is trying to restrict access to information about the war in Iraq. [A] special House oversight panel, according to aides, has written at least 10 letters to the Pentagon since February seeking information and has received only one official reply. Nor has the Pentagon fully complied with repeated requests for all the monthly assessments of Iraqi security forces.

Note: When the military begins to control the legislative, democracy begins to shift towards dictatorship. And for reliable information how the Pentagon cannot account for hundreds of billions of dollars, click here.

A monstrous war crime
2007-03-28, The Guardian (One of the U.K.'s leading newspapers)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2044345,00.html

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable. Published in the Lancet ...it estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003. Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary ... said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap". President Bush said: "I don't consider it a credible report". Scientists at the UK's Department for International Development thought differently. They concluded that the study's methods were "tried and tested". Indeed, the Johns Hopkins approach would likely lead to an "underestimation of mortality". The Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser ... recommended "caution in publicly criticising the study". When these recommendations went to the prime minister's advisers, they were horrified. Tony Blair was advised to say: "The overriding message is that there are no accurate or reliable figures of deaths in Iraq". At a time when we are celebrating our enlightened abolition of slavery 200 years ago, we are continuing to commit one of the worst international abuses of human rights of the past half-century. Two hundred years from now, the Iraq war will be mourned as the moment when Britain violated its delicate democratic constitution and joined the ranks of nations that use extreme pre-emptive killing as a tactic of foreign policy.

Note: This article is written by Richard Horton, the editor of the highly esteemed British medical journal Lancet.

[N.Y.] City Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention
2007-03-25, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html?ex=1332475200&en...

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews. From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists. They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law. These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports. In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities. In addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe. To date, as the boundaries of the department’s expanded powers continue to be debated, police officials have provided only glimpses of its intelligence-gathering.

My National Security Letter Gag Order
2007-03-23, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR20070322018...

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me. Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power. Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy.

Call to reopen Oklahoma bomb case
2007-03-02, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/6275147.stm

The FBI man in charge of collecting evidence from the government building destroyed by the Oklahoma bomb has called for the case to be reopened. Former deputy assistant director Danny Coulson ... said a federal grand jury is now needed to find out what really happened. He argues this is the only way to prove whether other people were involved in the bombing in a wider conspiracy beyond Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Mr Coulson spent 31 years in the FBI. Between 1991 and 1997 he was the deputy assistant director of the Criminal Division of the FBI in Washington, responsible for all violent crime cases in the United States. Mr Coulson said there were some "very strong indicators" that other people were involved with Timothy McVeigh. The FBI interviewed 24 people who claimed to have seen McVeigh in Oklahoma City with someone else on the morning of the attack, yet the only known accomplice of McVeigh, Terry Nichols, was at home in Kansas over 200 miles away on that day. The FBI's investigation concluded that the eyewitnesses were unreliable. However, Danny Coulson says they were "extremely credible" and had no reason to make it up. "If only one person had seen it, or two of three, but 24?" he said. "I know FBI headquarters told [agents] to close down the investigation in Elohim City which has some very significant connections to Mr McVeigh. "Never in my career did I have FBI headquarters tell me not to investigate something." Last December a US Congressional report found no conclusive evidence of a wider conspiracy, but the report concluded that "questions remain unanswered and mysteries remain unsolved."

Note: Don't miss a highly revealing four-minute video-clip showing live media coverage of the Oklahoma City bomb available here. The official story is that one truck with a huge bomb was parked in front of the Oklahoma City federal building and only Timothy McVeigh and his partner were involved. The news footage proves that others must have been involved, as multiple unexploded bombs were recovered from points inside the building. Yet none of this was questioned in later testimony.

An Orwellian solution to kids skipping school
2007-02-20, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta's leading newspaper)
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/02/19/0220truants.html

Let's say your teenager is a habitual truant and there is nothing you can do about it. A Washington area politician thinks he might have the solution: Fit the child with a Global Positioning System chip, then have police track him down. "It allows them to get caught easier," said Maryland Delegate Doyle Niemann (D-Prince George's), who recently co-sponsored legislation in the House that would use electronic surveillance as part of a broader truancy reduction plan. "It's going to be done unobtrusively. The chips are tiny and can be put into a hospital ID band or a necklace." Niemann's legislation mirrors a bill sponsored by state Sen. Gwendolyn Britt (D-Prince George's). Both would provide truants and their parents with better access to social services, such as mental health evaluations and help with schoolwork. Electronic monitoring would be a last resort. Still, the prospect of tagging children and using them in some "catch and release" hunt by police casts a pall over everything that's good about the plan. Odd how billions and billions of dollars keep going to a war that almost nobody wants, but there's never enough to fund the educational programs that nearly everybody says are needed. Aimed solely at students in Prince George's — the only predominantly black county in the Washington area — the truancy effort is called a "pilot program," a first-of-its-kind experiment. It would cost $400,000 to keep track of about 660 students a year.

Note: For more reliable information on the push to microchip the entire population, click here.

Carlyle Changes Its Stripes
2007-02-12, BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_07/b4021001.htm

In the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they've been called a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only [the Carlyle Group] has been tagged in the popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government conspiracies. Carlyle, founded 20 years ago in the shadow of Washington's power centers, long went about its business far from the public eye. Its ranks were larded with the politically connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime Minister John Major. It used its partners' collective relationships to build a lucrative business buying, transforming, and selling companies -- particularly defense companies that did business with governments. Carlyle's radical makeover has turned the firm into the biggest fund-raising juggernaut the private equity world has ever seen. By the end of this year it expects to have an unprecedented $85 billion in investor commitments under management, up sixfold from 2001 and more than any other firm. [Founder David] Rubenstein sees the total swelling to as much as $300 billion by 2012. Make no mistake--Carlyle is already massive. It owns nearly 200 companies that generate a combined $68 billion in revenue and employ 200,000 people. Last year it bought a new company approximately once every three days and sold one almost once a week -- all while dabbling in increasingly esoteric investments. Since its founding in 1987 it has generated annualized after-fee returns of 26%, compared with the industry average in the mid-teens.

Note: With former presidents including George H.W. Bush and many other top world politicians helping to sway huge military contracts, could this be considered a form of insider trading? Those 26% yearly returns are placing our tax monies in the hands of individuals and companies that are already among the wealthiest in the world. For lots more on manipulation of your tax money, click here. And for a Washington Post article showing Osama Bin Laden's brother met with George H.W. Bush at a Carlyle meeting one day before 9/11, click here.

Rise and shine: Wake up to an enhanced life
2007-01-25, CNN News
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/01/25/ft.newdrugs

A new breed of lifestyle drugs could allow us to choose how much we sleep, boost our memories and even allow us to enjoy ourselves more, without any side effects. Will they unleash human capabilities never seen before or create a dystopian 24-hour society where we are dependent on drugs to regulate our lifestyle and behavior? One drug already available is modafinil, marketed as the vaguely Orwellian-sounding Provigil. It enables those who take it to stay awake and alert for 48 hours. It is a eugeroic that delivers a feeling of wakefulness without the physical or mental jitter. There is already a market for it for those without any medical need - it is developing a cult following among workaholics and students studying for exams. The military is also very interested in eugeroic. Their reliance on amphetamines for lengthy operations have had catastrophic consequences in the past. The "friendly-fire" incidents in Afghanistan in 2002 when U.S. pilots killed Canadian troops was blamed on the "go pills" they had taken. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tested a compound called CX717 in its quest to find a drug that can create a "metabolically dominant war-fighter of the future" able to function for seven days without sleep. CX717 is an ampakine, a compound that increases the brains computing powers. It re-writes the rules of what it takes to create a memory and just how strong those memories can be. Will cans of soda containing eugeroics or ampakines be as common as caffeine drinks on the shelves of 24-hour stores? The potential is certainly there for a brave new world of personality medication.

Mind Games
2007-01-14, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR20070110013...

A community of people who believe the government is beaming voices into their minds ... may be crazy, but the Pentagon has pursued a weapon that can do just that. An academic paper written for the Air Force in the mid-1990s mentions the idea of [such] a weapon. "The signal can be a 'message from God' that can warn the enemy of impending doom, or encourage the enemy to surrender." In 2002, the Air Force Research Laboratory patented precisely such a technology: using microwaves to send words into someone's head. The patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility. The official U.S. Air Force position is that there are no non-thermal effects of microwaves. Yet ... the military's use of weapons that employ electromagnetic radiation to create pain is well-known. In 2001, the Pentagon declassified one element of this research: the Active Denial System, a weapon that uses electromagnetic radiation to heat skin and create an intense burning sensation. While its exact range is classified, Doug Beason, an expert in directed-energy weapons, puts it at about 700 meters, and the beam cannot penetrate a number of materials, such as aluminum. Given the history of America's clandestine research, it's reasonable to assume that if the defense establishment could develop mind-control or long-distance ray weapons, it almost certainly would. And, once developed, the possibility that they might be tested on innocent civilians could not be categorically dismissed.

Note: For lots more reliable, verifiable information on the little-known, yet critical topic of nonlethal weapons, click here. For an excellent two-page summary of government mind control programs, click here.

Does Israel have the bomb or not? Olmert: Yes, we do.
2006-12-13, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15archive/&entry_id=11779

For decades, Israel coyly has refused to confirm or deny what, since 1986, the whole world has known for sure: that is that the Jewish state is the one country in the Middle East that has a well-developed, nuclear arsenal. It was 20 years ago that Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert, informed Britain's Sunday Times about the weapons program, leading "defense analysts to rank the country as the [world's] sixth largest nuclear power." Vanunu was jailed for 18 years for revealing state secrets. Israel calls its refusal to deny or confirm the existence of its nuclear arms its "nuclear ambiguity" policy. Why? Explains the Times (U.K.): "For many years, Israel was the only country outside the five declared nuclear powers to have built an atomic weapon ... It wanted its enemies in the region to know that it had nuclear capability if threatened. But it also wanted to keep the existence secret so that it did not fall [a]foul of international action designed to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, particularly strict U.S. laws which could have jeopardized billions of dollars in annual aid." The Jerusalem Post notes that "Nuclear ambiguity was a comfortable arrangement for both Israeli and U.S. administrations, designed to allow Israel to get on with whatever it was doing ... without too much international pressure, and [to allow] the U.S. to not seem too hypocritical by not demanding its Middle East ally sign the [Non-proliferation Treaty]. Ambiguity might have worked for four decades, but ... it is now hopelessly outdated."

Note: The media has been quite reluctant to discuss these issues openly. Could it be they fear people might question the amount of U.S. aid? Israel's population is 6.5 million. Official U.S. yearly foreign aid to Israel has been about $2.5 to 3.0 billion for many years. If you do the math, U.S. taxpayers are giving every man, woman, and child in Israel about $400/year -- over ten times the per capita rate paid to any other country. That's quite a yearly gift! A Christian Science Monitor article says if all forms of aid are considered, the figures are even higher.

To Fill His Shoes, Mr. Bernanke, Learn to Dance
2005-10-30, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR20051028024...

In his 18 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Greenspan has occasionally drawn criticism, but no one disputes his technical prowess or sniffs at his track record of low inflation and steady, almost uninterrupted growth. Enter Ben S. Bernanke, President Bush's nominee to take Greenspan's place. The former Princeton economics professor is currently the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers. The following are excerpts from [a speech] by Ben S. Bernanke. "On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday," Nov. 8, 2002: "I first read 'A Monetary History of the United States' early in my graduate school years at M.I.T. I was hooked, and I have been a student of monetary economics and economic history ever since. Friedman and [his co-author Anna J.] Schwartz made the case that the economic collapse of 1929-33 was the product of the nation's monetary mechanism gone wrong. What I take from their work is the idea that monetary forces, particularly if unleashed in a destabilizing direction, can be extremely powerful. "I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

Note: The chairman of the Federal Reserve Board admits here that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve is owned by powerful private banks. It was created in 1913 largely in secrecy and fought by many who understood the dangers involved. For more reliable information on this, click here.

Hurricane Katrina: Compilation of FEMA's Rejections of Qualified Help
2005-09-12, Chicago Tribune/New York Times/Washington Post/CNN/More
http://www.WantToKnow.info/femafailureskatrina

FEMA refuses hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles - Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-050902daley,1,2011979.story

FEMA won't let Red Cross deliver food - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm

FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board - Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0509040369sep04,1,4144825.story

FEMA turns away state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina - CNN, 9/5/05
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/

FEMA won't accept Amtrak's help in evacuations - Financial Times, 9/5/05
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel - New York Times, 9/6/05
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05blame.html

FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid - News Sentinel, 9/8/05
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/12595873.htm

FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead - Washington Post, 9/8/05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702126.html

FEMA turns back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food - Spiegel, 9/12/05
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,374268,00.html

FEMA: "First Responders Urged Not To Respond" Unless Dispatched - FEMA's own website
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470

For those who are ready to go even deeper, read about FEMA's shady beginnings by clicking here. Then, to see Online Journal's revealing analysis article "New Orleans: Dress rehearsal for lockdown of America," click here.

Court Rules U.S. Can Indefinitely Detain Citizens
2005-09-09, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR20050909007...

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital to protect the nation from terrorist attacks. The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who was arrested in Chicago in 2002 and designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. The decision by a three-judge panel was written by Judge J. Michael Luttig, who is one of a number of people under consideration by President Bush for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rove leak is just part of larger scandal
2005-07-15, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0715/p09s02-cods.html

The underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war. In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report ... provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States. The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.

London Bombings: Strange Coincidences Raise Serious Questions
2005-07-13, BBC/MSNBC/London Times/More
http://www.WantToKnow.info/050713londonbombingcoverup

At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now. -- Former Scotland Yard Official Peter Power on BBC Radio, 7/7/05 (the day of the bombings)

"The explosives appear to be of military origin, which is very worrying," said Christophe Chaboud, head of the French Anti-Terrorism Coordination Unit and one of five top officials sent by Paris to London immediately after Thursday's attacks. -- Reuters, 7/11/05

A SINGLE bombmaker using high-grade military explosives is believed to be responsible for building the four devices that killed more than 50 people last week. Similar components from the explosive devices have been found at all four murder sites, leading detectives to believe that each of the 10lb rucksack bombs was the work of one man. They also believe that the materials used were not home made but sophisticated military explosives. -- London Times, 7/12/05

Translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony. "This is not something al-Qaida would do." he said. - MSNBC News, 7/7/05

No Boundaries
2005-06-09, CNN News
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0506/09/ldt.01.html

A panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations wants the United States to focus not on the defense of our own borders, but rather create what effectively would be a common border that includes Mexico and Canada. CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On Capitol Hill, testimony [is] calling for Americans to start thinking like citizens of North America and treat the U.S., Mexico and Canada like one big country. That's the view in a report called "Building a North American Community." It envisions a common border around the U.S., Mexico and Canada in just five years, a border pass for residents of the three countries, and a freer flow of goods and people. [Task force member Robert] PASTOR: What we hope to accomplish by 2010 is a common external tariff which will mean that goods can move easily across the border. We want a common security perimeter around all of North America. ROMANS: Security experts say folding Mexico and Canada into the U.S. is a grave breach of that sovereignty. [The report calls for] temporary migrant worker programs expanded with full mobility of labor between the three countries in the next five years. The idea here is to make North America more like the European Union. [CNN Anchor Lou] DOBBS: Americans must think that our political and academic elites have gone utterly mad at a time when three-and-a-half years, approaching four years after September 11, we still don't have border security. And this group of elites is talking about not defending our borders, finally, but rather creating new ones. It's astonishing.

Note: This agenda is being promoted in key political forums with practically no media reporting. For one of the few media articles reporting on this important topic, click here.

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