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Dr. Ecstasy
2005-01-30, New York Times
Posted: 2007-02-15 11:36:57
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/magazine/30ECSTASY.html?ex=1264914000&en=0b...

By [Alexander] Shulgin's own count, he has created nearly 200 psychedelic compounds, among them stimulants, depressants, aphrodisiacs, ''empathogens,'' [and] convulsants. And in 1976, Shulgin fished an obscure chemical called MDMA out of the depths of the chemical literature and introduced it to the wider world, where it came to be known as Ecstasy. Most of the scientific community considers Shulgin at best a curiosity and at worst a menace. Now, however, near the end of his career, his faith in the potential of psychedelics has at least a chance at vindication. A little more than a month ago, the [FDA] approved a Harvard Medical School study looking at whether MDMA can alleviate the fear and anxiety of terminal cancer patients. And next month will mark a year since [the start of a] study of Ecstasy-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. Shulgin's knack for befriending the right people hasn't hurt. A week after I visited him, he was headed to Sonoma County for the annual ''summer encampment'' of the Bohemian Club, an exclusive, secretive San Francisco-based men's club that has counted every Republican president since Herbert Hoover among its members. For a long time, though, Shulgin's most helpful relationship was with the D.E.A. itself. The head of the D.E.A.'s Western Laboratory, Bob Sager, was one of his closest friends. In his office, Shulgin has several plaques awarded to him by the agency for his service. Shulgin has been credited with jump-starting today's therapeutic research.

Note: The sentence about the Bohemian Club is a very rare revelation in the major media on the influence of this secret society. For lots more reliable, verifiable information on secret societies, click here.

U.S. Issues Guidelines in Case of Flu Pandemic
2007-02-01, New York Times
Posted: 2007-02-07 20:49:21
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/health/01cnd-flu.html?ex=1327986000&en=0815...

Cities should close schools for up to three months in the event of a severe flu outbreak, ball games and movies should be canceled ... the federal government advised today in issuing new pandemic flu guidelines to states and cities. Health officials acknowledged that such measures would hugely disrupt public life, but they argued that these measure would buy the time needed to produce vaccines and would save lives. “We have to be prepared for a Category 5 pandemic,” said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of global migration and quarantine for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It’s not easy. The only thing that’s harder is facing the consequences.” The new guidelines also advocate having sick people and all their families' even apparently healthy members stay home for 7 to 10 days. Any pandemic is expected to move faster than a new vaccine can be produced. Current experimental vaccines against H5N1 avian flu are in short supply and based on strains isolated in 2004 or 2005. Although the government is creating a $4 billion stockpile of the antiviral drug Tamiflu, it is only useful when taken within the first 48 hours, and Tamiflu-resistant flu strains have already been found. The historian John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 flu, questioned an idea underpinning the study’s conclusions. There is evidence, he said, that some cities with low sickness and death rates in 1918 ... were hit by a milder spring wave of the virus. That would have, in effect, inoculated their citizens against the more severe fall wave and might have been more important than their public health measures.

Note: Why is it that government officials seem to want us to be afraid? Could it be that when we live in fear, we are more willing to give up our freedoms and money and allow them to be in control? For more, click here. And why would the government spend billions on stockpiling drugs of questionable use? For an answer, click here.

The people who control the world
2003-01-30, CNN
Posted: 2007-02-07 20:39:54
http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/01/30/ronson.them

The Middle Ages had the Knights Templar. The 18th century had the Masons and the Illuminati. Our modern age has golf-playing businessmen. [Jon] Ronson, a 35-year-old British writer, humorist and documentarian, kept reading and hearing about the "tiny elite [that] rules the world from inside a secret room" -- so he decided to go in search of it. He met with extremists of many stripes: Ku Klux Klansmen with a PR bent, Muslim rabble-rousers ... and others convinced that a New World Order meant the end of the world. He sought out the industrialists of groups such as the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove. He wrote about his experiences in "Them." Ronson's extremists seem rather normal. Some are very much aware of how their views marginalize them. The people of "Them" are people who are all too human -- even if they would deny others their humanity. As the saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone's not out to get you. Ronson doesn't deny that many of the extremists in "Them" are, well, extreme. Many have put together half-baked theories that blame the troubles of the world on wealthy businessmen, usually a code word for Jews. Ronson, who's Jewish himself, sometimes found it awkward to listen to their views. Conspiracy theorists tend to be fearful, less educated, less tied in to the power structure. Meanwhile, the leaders of corporations and countries do meet as part of conferences sponsored by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. While researching a Bilderberg Group meeting, [Ronson] was chased through parts of Portugal by shadowy security men. He found out just how thin the membrane between "us" and "them" may be.

Note: Them is by far the most balanced, entertaining book you are likely to find on conspiracy theorists. It pokes a lot of fun both at the conspiracy theorists and at the powerful secret groups which he finds to be deluded almost as much as the conspiracy theorists themselves.

Rise and shine: Wake up to an enhanced life
2007-01-25, CNN News
Posted: 2007-01-31 18:17:34
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.

A New Way to Fight Cancer?
2007-01-23, Newsweek
Posted: 2007-01-31 18:00:30
http://www.newsweek.com/id/70212

There are no magic bullets in the fight against cancer: that's the first thing every responsible scientist mentions when discussing a possible new treatment, no matter how promising. If there were a magic bullet, though, it might be something like dichloroacetate, or DCA, a drug that kills cancer cells by exploiting a fundamental weakness found in a wide range of solid tumors. So far, though, it kills them just in test tubes and in rats infected with human cancer cells; it has never been tested against cancer in living human beings. DCA ... is an existing drug whose side effects are well-studied and relatively tolerable. Also, it's a small molecule that might be able to cross the blood-brain barrier to reach otherwise intractable brain tumors. Within days after a technical paper on DCA appeared in the journal Cancer Cell last week, the lead author, Dr. Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta, was deluged with calls and e-mails from prospective patients—to whom he can say only, “Hang in there.” DCA is a remarkably simple molecule. It acts in the body to promote the activity of the mitochondria. Researchers have assumed that the mitochondria in cancer cells were irreparably damaged. But Michelakis wondered if that was really true. With his colleagues he used DCA to turn back on the mitochondria in cancer cells—which promptly died. One of the great things about DCA is that it's a simple compound, in the public domain, and could be produced for pennies a dose. But that's also a problem, because big drug companies are unlikely to spend a billion dollars or so on large-scale clinical trials for a compound they can't patent. (Anyone interested in helping can click here.)

Note: Thank you Newsweek for publishing this important article. Why haven't any other U.S. media reported this major story? Notice how even Newsweek acknowledges that the drug companies are not interested in finding a cure for cancer if they can't make a profit from it. Some suspect that the pharmaceutical industry has even suppressed cancer cures found in the past. For one amazing example of this, click here.

Mind Games
2007-01-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2007-01-24 22:18:45
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.

A dangerous dose
2004-09-05, Boston Globe
Posted: 2007-01-06 06:05:32
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/09/05/a_dangerous_dose

Marcia Angell [is] a faculty member at the Harvard Medical School [and one of the] former editors of The New England Journal of Medicine. Her new book, "The Truth About the Drug Companies," is a sober, clear-eyed attack on the excesses of drug company power. How does the drug industry deceive us? It plies attending physicians with expense-paid junkets to St. Croix and Key West, Fla., where they are given honoraria and consulting fees to listen to promotional presentations. It promotes new or little-known diseases such as "social anxiety disorder" and "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" as a way of selling the drugs that treat them. It sets up phony front groups disguised as "patient advocacy organizations." It hires ghostwriters to produce misleading scientific articles and then pays academic physicians to sign on as authors. It sends paid lackeys and shills out onto the academic lecture circuit to ''educate" doctors about a drug's unapproved uses. It hires multinational PR firms to trumpet dubious studies as scientific breakthroughs while burying the studies that are likely to harm sales. It buys up the results of publicly funded research. It maintains a political chokehold on the American public by donating more money to political campaigns than any other industry in the country. For many years the drug industry has reaped the highest profit margins of any industry in America. In 2002, the top 10 American drug companies had profit margins of 17 percent; Pfizer, the largest, had profit margins of 26 percent. So staggeringly profitable is the drug industry that in 2002 the combined profits for the top 10 drug companies in the Fortune 500 were greater than those of all the other 490 companies combined.

Note: For an excellent 10-page summary of this revealing book written by the esteemed author, click here. For additional reliable information on the health cover-up, click here.

Who killed Nick Berg?
2004-05-29, Sydney Morning Herald
Posted: 2007-01-05 21:52:52
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/28/1085641717320.html

Iraq in flames, Washington an object of disgust. What to do? At this pivotal moment, CNN and Fox News are tipped off to a clip of an American citizen being beheaded. The victim is ... Nick Berg.The vile deed is deemed the work of al-Qaeda. The timing of the video was brilliant for the West. Media pundits judged the crime a deeper evil than the systemic torture of innocent Iraqis. But some people sensed a rat. But if it was not al-Qaeda, who? While this video shows a human body having its head chopped off, it does not necessarily portray an act of murder. A month before the discovery of [his] corpse, Berg had been released from custody. But whose custody? Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt ... claimed he was in the custody of Iraqi police. However, the Iraqi police chief [stated] "the Iraqi police never arrested the slain American". Berg's family are certain his jailers were the US military. His father, Michael, had been told so by the FBI. He has produced an email from a US consular official ... confirming that his son was in the hands of the US. In his final moments on screen Berg is wearing an orange jumpsuit of the kind familiar from Guantanamo Bay. His white chair is identical to those in the photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison tortures. During the decapitation, starting at the front of the throat, there is little sign of blood. The scream is wildly out of sync, sounds female, and is obviously dubbed. Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons ... agrees with other experts who find it highly probable that Berg had died before his decapitation. There's something fishy about this video. In the end, the question is: who killed Nick Berg, and why?

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For a CNN article raising other serious questions on Berg, click here. For more reliable information on how government can control and manipulate public perception, click here.

Passports go electronic with new microchip
2004-12-09, Christian Science Monitor
Posted: 2007-01-05 21:22:32
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1209/p12s01-stct.html

The US passport is about to go electronic, with a tiny microchip embedded in its cover. The chip is the latest outpost in the battle to outwit tamperers. But it's also one that worries privacy advocates. The RFID (radio frequency identification) chip in each passport will contain the same personal data as now appear on the inside pages - name, date of birth, place of birth, issuing office - and a digitized version of the photo. But the 64K chip will be read remotely. And there's the rub. The scenario, privacy advocates say, could be as simple as you standing in line with your passport as someone walks by innocuously carrying a briefcase. Inside that case, a microchip reader could be skimming data from your passport to be used for identity theft. Or maybe authorities or terrorists want to see who's gathered in a crowd and surreptitiously survey your ID and track you. Why not choose a contact chip, where there would be no possibility of skimming, asks Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "There was another way to go, which was to put an electronic strip in the passport that would require contact." The State Department says it's just following international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), under the umbrella of the United Nations. The ICAO specified the RFID ... at the behest of the United States. All countries that are part of the US visa-waiver program must use the new passports by Oct. 26, 2005. Mr. Steinhardt ... says the US pushed through the standards against the reservations of the Europeans. "Bush says at the G8 meeting, 'We have to adhere to the global standard,' as though we had nothing to do with it," he says in exasperation.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on the risk of RFID chips, click here.

Warming Up to Cold Fusion
2004-11-21, Washington Post
Posted: 2007-01-05 20:26:16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54964-2004Nov16.html

Peter Hagelstein is trying to revive hope for a future of clean, inexhaustible, inexpensive energy. Fifteen years after the scientific embarrassment of the century ... a panel of scientists gathered. The panel's charge was simple: to determine whether [cold fusion] had even a prayer of a chance at working. The Department of Energy went to great lengths to cloak the meeting from public view. No announcement, no reporters. None of the names of the people attending that day was disclosed. Since 1989, hundreds of scientists working in dozens of labs around the world have claimed ... results. Supporters point to the written literature -- more than 3,000 papers -- as proof of the effect. But the most credible cold fusion advocates concede that the vast majority of those papers are of poor quality. "Brilliant," "genius" and "reclusive" were words used to describe [SRI scientist Peter] Hagelstein 20 years ago, when he rose to prominence as one of the young scientists behind President Ronald Reagan's plans to build a missile shield in outer space. Hagelstein [now] describes the mainstream scientific community as "mafias" that promote and publish their friends' work, unwilling to accept new ideas. As Hagelstein explains it, leading physicists came out swiftly and prematurely against cold fusion. Hagelstein says his acceptance of cold fusion was by no means immediate. It took several years before he was convinced. [Now] Hagelstein says, he has seen enough cold fusion data to convince him that the science is clearly real. The field's acceptance, he maintains, will be simply a matter of the scientific community's looking at the improved experimental results in the future and coming to understand them.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. Why all the secrecy around this important topic? To learn why the power elite don't want cheap energy, click here.

Professor Feels Himself Become Closer to the Machine
1998-09-23, ABC News
Posted: 2006-12-31 14:52:44
http://web.archive.org/web/20001109140100/http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections...

When Kevin Warwick enters his office building on the campus of Reading University, strange things happen. As Warwick heads down the main hall, lights turn on. When he turns to the right, an office door unbolts and opens. Each step is clocked and recorded. The building knows who he is, where he is, and what he expects to happen. The building [even] says, “Hello Professor Warwick.” The structure knows Warwick because of the electrical fuse-sized “smart card” implanted in his left arm. In Britain, he’s been dubbed “The Cyborg Man,” the first person known to have a microchip implanted in his body for communication with outside machines. Warwick predicts chip implants will one day replace time cards, criminal tracking devices, even credit cards. Capable of carrying huge amounts of data, they may, he says, one day be used to identify individuals by Social Security numbers, blood type, even their banking information. No one knows yet how the body will respond to this type of invasion. Warwick is not blind to the ethical questions of this technology. Implants ostensibly designed to clock workers in and out might be misused to monitor where people are at all times and who they are meeting. Governments could move to use implants instead of I.D. cards and passports, but what would stop them from using this new science to invade privacy? “I feel mentally different. When I am in the building I feel much more closely connected with the computer.

Note: Those who would like to control the public named these implants "smart cards" to encourage us to accept them. For more reliable information on important topic, click here and here.

Scientists Find Ways to Make Us Slaves
2004-10-17, WantToKnow.info/London Times
Posted: 2006-12-31 14:11:30
http://www.WantToKnow.info/monkeydrones

Scientists have discovered a way of manipulating a gene that turns animals into drones that do not become bored with repetitive tasks. The experiments, conducted on monkeys, are the first to demonstrate that animal behaviour can be permanently changed, turning the subjects from aggressive to "compliant" creatures. The genes are identical in humans and although the discovery could help to treat depression and other types of mental illness, it will raise images of the Epsilon caste from Aldous Huxley's futuristic novel Brave New World. The experiments... involved blocking the effect of a gene called D2 in a particular part of the brain. This cut off the link between the rhesus monkeys' motivation and reward. Instead of speeding up with the approach of a deadline or the prospect of a "treat," the monkeys in the experiment could be made to work just as enthusiastically for long periods. The scientists say the identical technique would apply to humans. [They] found that they could make the monkeys work their hardest and fastest all the time, without any complaint or sign of slacking, just by manipulating D2 so that they forgot about the expectation of reward. Methods of manipulating human physical and psychological traits are just around the corner, and the technology will emerge first as a lucrative add-on available from in vitro fertilization clinics. "There's no doubt we will be able to influence behaviour," said Julian Savulescu, a professor of ethics at Oxford University.

Note: For lots more reliable information on how human behavior is already being manipulated, click here.

Write More About Skull And Bones
2004-10-27, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: 2006-12-30 19:59:52
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/10/27/notes102704.DTL

I get this a lot: Hey Mark ... why don't you quit toeing the typical blasé journalism line ... and instead write about the real truths? Like for example how both Kerry and Bush are members of mega-yuppie Yale secret society/boys' club Skull & Bones. And why, furthermore, don't you talk about the real truths of 9/11? Haven't you seen that amazing [9/11] video on that Web site? And what about Building 7? Why did that 47-story tower adjacent to the WTC collapse when it had no fire and no plane crash? Why isn't the media reporting any of this? Does this make you laugh? Scoff? It is, after all, incredibly easy to dismiss conspiracy theories. But you know what? It's not that easy. These people ... have a point. They are indeed onto something quite large and ominous and it very much has to do with the media toeing the line of "safe" information. There is indeed ample evidence that the U.S. government, long before 9/11, had already discussed the quite plausible possibilities and strategic benefits of unleashing a "Pearl Harbor"-type event on America. There are plenty of strangely unanswered questions about 9/11, about the stunning inaction of NORAD and Bush's stupefying nonreaction upon hearing of the attack, not to mention his administration's incredible attempts to halt any independent 9/11 investigations. Of course, no one in any major media will touch this stuff. It is professional suicide to dare suggest an alternate truth to the one supplied by the Pentagon and regurgitated by the media. And the truth is, we don't really want such unstable questions answered. We simply cannot tolerate to have our world, our leaders, our foundations so questioned. We prefer stasis to growth, security to true knowledge.

Connections And Then Some
2004-03-14, Washington Post
Posted: 2006-12-30 18:54:30
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A25...

The Carlyle Group [is] an investment house famous as one of the most well-connected companies anywhere. Former president George H.W. Bush is a Carlyle adviser. Former British prime minister John Major heads its European arm. Former secretary of state James Baker is senior counselor, former White House budget chief Richard Darman is a partner, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt is senior adviser -- the list goes on. Those associations have brought Carlyle enormous success. The Washington-based merchant bank controls nearly $14 billion in investments, making it the largest private equity manager in the world. It buys and sells whole companies the way some firms trade shares of stock. But the connections also have cost Carlyle. It has developed a reputation as the CIA of the business world -- omnipresent, powerful, a little sinister. Media outlets from the Village Voice to BusinessWeek have depicted Carlyle as manipulating the levers of government from shadowy back rooms. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) even suggested that Carlyle's and Bush's ties to the Middle East made them somehow complicitous in the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It didn't help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden. Former president Bush, a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. Bush['s] primary function is to give speeches for Carlyle that attract wealthy foreigners in places where the former president is especially revered, such as Asia. The company has rewarded its faithful with a 36 percent average annual rate of return.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. To understand the amazingly powerful role of this low-profile, yet extremely wealthy and influential group, click here to view free a 48-minute documentary shown on Dutch national TV which clearly depicts the depths of corruption and deceit at the highest levels of government. You will be thankful that you watched this highly educational film.

The 9/11 Secret in the CIA's Back Pocket
2004-10-19, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2006-12-30 18:07:39
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/19/opinion/oe-scheer19

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me. [The] release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA Director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief. The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible." By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation. The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain. And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more reliable, verifiable information on the 9/11 cover-up, click here.

Uncovering an Israeli jail that specializes in nightmares
2004-06-16, Newsweek
Posted: 2006-12-30 17:15:38
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5251751

What [Israeli historian Gad] Kroizer had discovered and later footnoted in an academic paper ... was the location of an ultrasecret jail where Israel has held Arabs in total seclusion for years, barred visits by the Red Cross and allegedly tortured inmates. Known as 1391, the facility is used as an interrogation center by a storied unit of Israel's military intelligence, whose members-all Arabic speakers-are trained to wring confessions from the toughest militants. Some of the methods are reminiscent of Abu Ghraib: nudity as a humiliation tactic, compromising photographs, sleep deprivation. In a few cases, at least, interrogators at 1391 appear to have gone beyond Israel's own hair-splitting distinction between torture and what a state commission referred to in 1987 as "moderate physical pressure." But the nightmare for those in 1391 is the isolation and the fear that no one knows where you are. The location of the compound is so hush-hush that a court this year banned a visit by an Israeli legislator. Prisoners describe being hooded everywhere at the facility except in their cells. Hassan Rawajbeh ... a member of the nearly disbanded Palestinian Preventive Security force ... was picked up by soldiers in Nablus 18 months ago. He was hooded, handcuffed and thrown on the floor of a van. When the hood was removed, he was in a tiny, windowless cell. The chamber contained no toilet, only a bucket in the corner, which ... his jailers would empty once every few weeks. A low buzzing droned constantly. For nearly four months, Rawajbeh saw no one but his interrogators, who kept him naked for days at a time and prevented him from going to the bathroom.

US seizes independent media sites
2004-10-11, BBC News
Posted: 2006-12-30 16:30:30
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3732718.stm

The FBI has shut down some 20 sites which were part of an alternative media network known as Indymedia. A US court order forced the firm hosting the material to hand over two servers in the UK used by the group. Indymedia says it is a news source for the anti-globalisation movement and other social justice issues. The reasons behind the seizure are unclear but the FBI has reportedly said the action was taken at the request of Italian and Swiss authorities. The servers affected were run by Rackspace, a US web hosting company with offices in London. It said it had received a court order from the US authorities last Thursday to hand over the computer equipment at its UK hosting facility. The reasons behind the action against the Indymedia websites are unclear. The group said the servers affected had hosted the sites of more then 20 local collectives and audio streams for several radio stations, as well as several other projects. The seizure has sparked off protests from journalist groups. "The constitution does not permit the government unilaterally to cut off the speech of an independent media outlet, especially without providing a reason or even allowing Indymedia the information necessary to contest the seizure," said EFF [Electronic Frontier Foundation] Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.

Note: This important news was not covered by any major U.S. media. Why? Is it a coincidence that these websites were taken down shortly after they started promoting a video clip showing President Bush may have been using an electronic hearing aid during the presidential election debates with John Kerry? Website founder Fred Burks had personal experience suggesting Bush may have used electronic feeds in high-level meetings while Burks worked as a language interpreter for him. For more, click here.

Conspiracy Theories Flourish on the Internet
2004-10-07, Washington Post
Posted: 2006-12-30 14:12:39
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13059-2004Oct6.html

Darren Williams spent four weeks this summer making a short but startling video that raises novel questions about the 2001 attack. The video, "9/11: Pentagon Strike," suggests that it was not American Airlines Flight 77 that slammed into the Pentagon, but a missile or a small plane. The video offers flashes of photographs taken shortly after impact, interspersed with witness accounts. The pictures seem incompatible with damage caused by a jumbo jet. Firefighters stand outside a perfectly round hole in a Pentagon wall where the Boeing 757 punched through; it is less than 20 feet in diameter. Propelled by word of mouth, Internet search engines and e-mail, the video has been downloaded by millions of people around the world. Williams created a Web site for the video, www.pentagonstrike.co.uk. Then he e-mailed a copy to Laura Knight-Jadczyk [who] posted a link to the video on the group's Web site, www.Cassiopaea.org. Within 36 hours, Williams's site collapsed under the crush of tens of thousands of visitors. But there were others to fill the void. In Texas, a former casino worker who downloaded the video began drawing almost 700,000 visitors a day. In Louisiana, a young Navy specialist put the video on his personal Web page. Suddenly, the site was inundated by more than 20,000 hits. "Pentagon Strike" is just the latest and flashiest example of a growing number of Web sites, books and videos contending that something other than a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon. Knight-Jadczyk said she never imagined anyone outside her group would ever view "Pentagon Strike." "The fact everybody's been sending it to his brother and his cousin ... reflects the fact that there is a deep unease," she said.

Note: This five-minute video is well worth watching, even though it was made a few years ago. To view it free online, click here. For lots more information suggesting a major 9/11 cover-up, click here.

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
2004-08-14, Los Angeles Times
Posted: 2006-12-28 20:27:09
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-turley14aug14.story

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace. Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants. Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy. Aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps. Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. We have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable. We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty. For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty. Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. This aritcle was written by Jonathan Turley, a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University. Though Ashcroft resigned, the laws he crafted remain in place.

Was Use of Cell Phones on 9/11 Flights Possible?
2004-12-15, WantToKnow.info/Washington Post/SF Chronicle/Associated Press
Posted: 2006-12-28 20:10:38
http://www.WantToKnow.info/911cellphonecalls

”Once you get to a certain height, you are no longer in the range of the cellular network, because cell phone towers aren't built to project their signals that high.”

Washington Post, 12/9/04

“Today's vote by the FCC is intended to address whether technology has improved to the extent that cell phone calls now are possible above 10,000 feet -- they weren't in the past.”

San Francisco Chronicle, 12/15/04

"With television cameramen hovering, Qualcomm chief executive Irwin Jacobs sat in the front row of coach and made one of the first legal cell phone calls from a commercial jetliner. Jacobs pronounced the [brand new] technology behind the airborne phone call a success, although adding that it will be improved over the next couple years. Connections from the plane were generally good, although some calls were dropped."

USA Today/Associated Press, 7/16/04

Note: To find articles showing multiple cell phone use on Sept. 11, 2001, type "9/11" and "cell phone calls" into your favorite search engine, or click here for a Washington Post report on an alleged 30-minute uninterrupted cell phone call from Flight 93. Click here for a CNN report on another call from that flight. Tests have shown it is not possible to have an extended cell phone conversation above 10,000 feet.

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