New Movie Review: Alien vs. Predator

Picture of the Day

Grand cumulonimbus le 16 août 2004
©2004 Pierre-Paul Feyte

UPDATE: The Exclusive SOTT 'Pentagon Strike' Flash Presentation created by a QFS member has been so popular that the maximum bandwidth for the original site where it was located has been easily surpassed.

We are working on a solution and hope to have the presentation posted again tomorrow.

In the meantime, if any of our readers have a copy and are able to pass it along or post it to other sites, please do so and let us know!

September 11th 2001 Revisited - Day of Infamy, Day of Deceit

US Companies Providing Indirect Service to Terrorist Websites, Report Says

By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
August 27, 2004

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - American Internet Service Providers are being used indirectly by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups to market their terrorist messages, Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies said in a report this week.

But following an inquiry by CNSNews.com into the allegations, two of the companies listed in the report said they were now in the process of correcting the situation.

"Palestinian and international terrorist organizations make massive use of the Internet to spread propaganda supporting terrorism and as a means of maintaining contact between organizations and headquarters, their infrastructures and their target populations," the report said.

As a case study, the report lists six separate websites belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, at least four them hosted by two different American Internet Service Providers.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad appears on State Department's list of terrorist organizations as well as on the European Union's list of terror groups. [...]

Comment: We firmly believe Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center when they state that "Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups are using US ISPs". Why? Because Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism community is behind most of the fake terror attacks and threats, including the attacks on September 11th 2001.

Remember Odigo?

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Odigo says workers were warned of attack

By Yuval Dror
Apr 04 2004

Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.

As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.

Comment: The rumour that Odigo had been warned of the 9/11 attacks was denounced as anti-Semitism after the attack because it implied that the force behind 9/11 was not "Islamic terrorists." In the two and one-half years since, much evidence has come out to suggest that this is in fact the case. The Bush administration has yet to produce the slightest hard evidence that the hijackers were the men they claim or to show the slightest proof that the attackers were part of the mythical al Qaeda.

Notice the ridiculous explanation by the CEO of the company that received the message. It is not clear whether "Odigo" is an American company, an Israeli company or an Israeli-American company. Whatever the case, Odigo, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, had an office in the WTC itself, as well as offices in Herzliya in Israel. The article states that the ISP information was eventually given to the FBI, and we assume that the FBI checked into the ISP and the sender, so who was it? Well, perhaps we don't need the FBI to make the first obvious connection. In the article we notice that that two employees of Odigo that received the warning immediately contacted Israeli intelligence. While the article above does not state it, this would seem to suggest that the two employees were in the Israeli office, and that the message originated either in Israel or somewhere else in the Middle East.

The Israeli offices of Odigo are noteworthy for their location - Herzliya, a resort city to the north of Tel Aviv, which was named after one of the founders of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl. Most significant however is that the actual office building of Odigo in Herzliya is right next to the "Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre", a private university financed by US donors, mainly the trader Marc Rich, the Israeli criminal and lobbyist that Clinton was "forced" to pardon. Thierry Mesan has this to say of the centre on his " Reseauvoltaire" site" (translated from the original French):

[...] the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre, a private university near Tel Aviv and financed by US donors, mainly the trader Marc Rich (Glencore). It comes from the International Institute on Politics and Counter-Terrorism that has made its specialty to the supposed links between Palestinian resistance movements, Al Quada, and the "Axis of Evil." The institute is notoriously linked to the secret services of the Israeli army, and two of its former directors sit on the Institute's Board of Directors: Generals Shlomo Gazit and Eli Zeira. The offices of the Institute are next to those of the private telecommunications firm Odigo that announced the attacks on the World Trade Centre two hours before they were perpetrated.

Interesting indeed. We find it unlikely that a internet messaging business would be located so close to the heart of Israeli intelligence without there being some co-operation between the two.

If we look at 9/11 from the point of view of who benefited, there are only two countries in the world - Israel and the United States. Israel has used the attacks to justify their ruthless murder of Palestinians; the United States to justify their intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ironically (or perhaps not), the following "elite US Army" report, detailing the US military's role in policing a peace accord between Israel and Palestine and the creation of a Palestinian state, was issued one day before 9/11 and contains a very significant analysis of the Mossad.

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Flashback: U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study

Rowan Scarborough; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 10, 2001

An elite U.S. Army study center has devised a plan for enforcing a major Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that would require about 20,000 well-armed troops stationed throughout Israel and a newly created Palestinian state.

There are no plans by the Bush administration to put American soldiers into the Middle East to police an agreement forged by the longtime warring parties. In fact, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is searching for ways to reduce U.S. peacekeeping efforts abroad, rather than increasing such missions.

But a 68-page paper by the Army School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) does provide a look at the daunting task any international peacekeeping force would face if the United Nations authorized it, and Israel and the Palestinians ever reached a peace agreement.

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

The cover page for the recent SAMS project said it was done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Maj. Chris Garver, a Fort Leavenworth spokesman, said the study was not requested by Washington.

"This was just an academic exercise," said Maj. Garver. "They were trying to take a current situation and get some training out of it."

The exercise was done by 60 officers dubbed "Jedi Knights," as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed.

The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides.

It calls Israel's armed forces a "500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza [and the West Bank]. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management."

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

On the Palestinian side, the paper describes their youth as "loose cannons; under no control, sometimes violent." The study lists five Arab terrorist groups that could target American troops for assassination and hostage-taking.

The study recommends "neutrality in word and deed" as one way to protect U.S. soldiers from any attack. It also says Syria, Egypt and Jordan must be warned "we will act decisively in response to external attack."

It is unlikely either of the three would mount an attack. Of Syria's military, the report says: "Syrian army quantitatively larger than Israeli Defense Forces, but largely seen as qualitatively inferior. More likely, however, Syrians would provide financial and political support to the Palestinians, as well as increase covert support to terrorism acts through Lebanon."

Of Egypt's military, the paper says, "Egyptians also maintain a large army but have little to gain by attacking Israel."

The plan does not specify a full order of battle. An Army source who reviewed the SAMS work said each of a possible three brigades would require about 100 Bradley fighting vehicles, 25 tanks, 12 self-propelled howitzers, Apache attack helicopters, Kiowa Warrior reconnaissance helicopters and Predator spy drones.

The report predicts that nonlethal weapons would be used to quell unrest.

U.S. European Command, which is headed by NATO`s supreme allied commander, would oversee the peacekeeping operation. Commanders would maintain areas of operation, or AOs, around Nablus, Jerusalem, Hebron and the Gaza strip.

The study sets out a list of goals for U.S. troops to accomplish in the first 30 days. They include: "create conditions for development of Palestinian State and security of [Israel]"; ensure "equal distribution of contract value or equivalent aid" . . . that would help legitimize the peacekeeping force and stimulate economic growth; "promote U.S. investment in Palestine"; "encourage reconciliation between entities based on acceptance of new national identities"; and "build lasting relationship based on new legal borders and not religious-territorial claims."

Maj. Garver said the officers who completed the exercise will hold major planning jobs once they graduate. "There is an application process" for students, he said. "They screen their records, and there are several tests they go through before they are accepted by the program. The bright planners of the future come out of this program."

Comment: Is it possible that some elements within the Israeli intelligence communities and government were aware that a US-inspired peace initiative was on the cards and decided to take decisive action to prevent that from ever happening? The fact that this is exactly what the 9/11 attacks have engineered lends credence to such a theory, as the following article, published on September 12th 2001, makes clear.

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Flashback: Attacks change shape of U.S. foreign policy

David R. Sands and Tom Carter; THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 12, 2001

The devastating terror attacks that rocked New York and Washington yesterday will produce aftershocks that will be felt in U.S. foreign policy for decades to come.

President Bush faced intense pressure to respond to the attacks before U.S. officials could even hazard a guess as to who had orchestrated and carried out the world's worst act of terrorism.

"Everything changes," said Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a specialist on states accused of harboring terrorists. "Terrorism has always been remote, but now it has touched us."

"This was clearly not an isolated attack," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in an interview yesterday on CNN. "It can't be dealt with by just one retaliatory blow."

Foreign policy experts predicted a vastly heightened sense of urgency in the global war against terrorism. With much of the early speculation focusing on Islamic fundamentalist groups with links to Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, the attacks could foreshadow a profound change in the dynamics of the Middle East peace process.

Some predict that current U.S. laws forbidding the use of assassination and infiltration of suspect terrorist groups abroad may be amended or repealed in the wake of the attacks.

"There was clearly an intelligence failure of massive, international proportions here," said George Friedman, chairman of the Texas-based forecasting service Stratfor. "It really raises question of whether our intelligence capabilities are up to par."

As expressions of sympathy and outrage poured in from leaders around the globe, several pointed to the attacks as proof of the need to coordinate the response to terrorism. Many of the calls came from states who fear the resurgence of militant Islamic fundamentalist movements on their own borders.

Said Russian President Vladimir Putin: "What happened today underlines the relevance of the offer of Russia to unite the powers of the international community in the fight against terrorism, the plague of the 21st century."

Scrambling for clues yesterday, U.S. officials said in private briefings they suspected the attacks were the handiwork of bin Laden, whom intelligence officials accuse of running an anti-American terrorist network from his sanctuary in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is run by the Taliban, a strict Muslim fundamentalist movement.

"We need to call our allies on the carpet, especially those like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that recognize the Taliban," said Jim Prince of Control Risks Group, a former Middle East specialist for the House International Relations Committee and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, suggested yesterday that the United States must strike hard at the Taliban if bin Laden and his supporters are linked to the attack.

"Bin Laden sits in Afghanistan," said Mr. Barak. "We know where the terror sites are. It's time for action."

Taliban spokesman Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel denied in a brief press conference in Kabul yesterday that his government had any knowledge of yesterday's events. He condemned the attacks but said his own government had been the target of terrorist activity as well.

Ariel Cohen, a defense analyst at the Heritage Foundation, noted that U.S. relations with both Saudi Arabia and Yemen have been strained over friction in the investigation of past terrorist attacks on U.S. targets.

"We may be in for a period of protracted turbulence in the Middle East because of these attacks," said Mr. Cohen, although he and others cautioned that the identities of the terrorists still had not been determined.

Stratfor's Mr. Friedman said Israel, which is dealing with its own wave of suicide bombers in the latest violent stand-off with the Palestinians, could emerge as a "big winner" from yesterday's events.

"I can see this changing the whole dynamic of the American approach to that conflict," he said.

"If [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat had been counting on U.S. pressure on Tel Aviv on the terms of a cease-fire, he can pretty much forget it now. The whole game has changed," he said.

Several analysts and lawmakers said Mr. Bush was under pressure to respond more effectively than President Clinton did after previous bin Laden attacks, which they said had barely dented the Saudi terrorist's network.

"This cannot be a Clintonesque response, a slap on the wrist," said the Hoover Institution's Mr. Henriksen.

Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, has authored legislation to lift the ban on assassinations of foreign leaders deemed a threat to the United States. "We have to be smart about our retaliation," said Mr. Barr. "It needs to be swift and decisive."

Virtually every observer agreed that the attacks have pushed intelligence and security to the top of the American foreign policy agenda.

"This is the kind of shock that can be a turning point," said Edward S. Walker Jr., president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute and former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs.

"The fact that we are so vulnerable to such an extraordinarily well-conceived attack is going to bring a sense of urgency and cooperation to the terrorism issue that wasn't there before," he said.

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Comment: As we can see, the attacks were immediately seized upon by Israel and Jewish Neocons in Washington as justification to initiate one of their decades-old plans to reshape the Middle East. Did they really know the attacks were going to happen, have they really been lying to the world about what they know? Well, we will let Rumsfeld speak for himself...

Flashback: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine

Friday, Oct. 12, 2001

Q: This is a question that's been asked by many Americans, but especially by the widows of September 11th. How were we so asleep at the switch? How did a war targeting civilians arrive on our homeland with seemingly no warning?

Rumsfeld: There were lots of warnings. The intelligence information that we get, it sometimes runs into the hundreds of alerts or pieces of intelligence a week. One looks at the worldwide, it's thousands. And the task is to sort through it and see what you can find. And as you find things, the law enforcement officials who have the responsibility to deal with that type of thing -- the FBI at the federal level, and although it is not, it's an investigative service as opposed to a police force, it's not a federal police force, as you know.

But the state and local law enforcement officials have the responsibility for dealing with those kinds of issues. They [find a lot] and any number of terrorist efforts have been dissuaded, deterred or stopped by good intelligence gathering and good preventive work. It is a truth that a terrorist can attack any time, any place, using any technique and it's physically impossible to defend at every time and every place against every conceivable technique.

Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them.

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Flashback: All 911 Airports Serviced by Same Israeli Security Firm

RMN Agents Forum

It's one of those times when an innocuous comment in an unrelated news report triggers a revelation. In the article at http://afrocubaweb.com/news/israelispying.htm there is the following paragraph.

"To make the situation worse, a private security company called ICTS, owned by an Israeli, Ezra Harel, and registered in the Netherlands, was employed at Charles de Gaulle airport to screen passengers boarding US planes. Most of its personnel are ex-Shin Bet officers. The company covers security at Boston's Logan airport, where the American Airlines plane came down after flight attendants and passengers overpowered Reid."

The point of thie article was that ICTS knew Reid was dangerous, but allowed him on board a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. Maybe they did and maybe they didn't. But the idea that an Israeli owned company had inside access to the airport used to launch an abortive terror attack brought to mind the strange message Odigo Systems, another Israeli owned company with offices near the World Trade Towers, received that warned of the impending attacks before the hijacked planes had even left the ground.

So, I went back to another story that had surfaced briefly, reported here about how at least one hijacker had smuggled a GUN aboard one of the hijacked planes. Even prior to 9-11, getting a gun on board a passenger plane represented a serious lapse of security. I wondered why this story of a gun was being concealed behind talk of box cutters and screwdrivers.

Then I went back to the first article and its mention that ICTS handled security at Logan International Airport, from which two of the 9-11 hijacked planes had departed.

Sure enough, a visit to ICTS' own web site at www.icts-int.com/ confirms that ICTS is in fact an Israeli owned company, and that it sells services to every airport from which the hijacked planes operated, including security, sometimes through wholly owned subsidieries like Huntleigh USA Corporation.

It has been suggested that the incredible feat of hijacking four aircraft without a single arrest at the gate would require the resouces of a nation-state. This is even more true with the revelation that at least one gun had managed to be aboard a hijacked plane. One company had automatic inside access to all of the airports from which hijacked planes departed on 9-11, and to the airports used by Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. An Israeli company. One that Mossad agents could easily find employment with without the management knowing who they were or what their purpose really was.

But one thing is clear. By virtue of the Odigo warning, someone knew enough about the planned attacks to warn Odigo before the planes had even departed the airport gates, yet they did not call the Israeli security company at the airports which could have stopped the flights from leaving.

Think about that one for a while.

"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." -US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring.

"Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide." - Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale

"While I agree with you, if I say anything about US geopolitical interests with Israel, I might as well clean off my desk. - Unnamed reporter as quoted in American Media Censorship and Israel

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Flashback: The Attacks Of 11 September Who Profits From The Crime?

A terrifying conclusion: the official version is a lie.

Whence the agonising questions: what caused the explosion that went off at the Pentagon and led to one hundred and twenty-five deaths? What became of American Airlines Flight 77 and its sixty-four passengers? - And above all, why lie? Of what secret is this bloody con trick the smokescreen? - What "conspiracy" at the highest summit of the State lies hidden behind this "phantom plane" which did indeed exist, but which was diverted from its path… in what direction? - The clearly established fact of a first deception at Washington leads one to ask questions about the attacks in New York. The entire world looked on horrified, their eyes riveted to the television screen. Surely no deception was possible here? And yet…

How explain that an article warning of an imminent terrorist attack by Osama bin Laden appeared on the internet site of the New York Times on 9 September, but not in the paper edition, and was then withdrawn from the site to avoid embarrassing questions?

How explain that two employees of the Israeli-American firm, Odigo, with offices in the Twin Towers, received an email warning of an imminent terrorist attack two hours before it took place?

How is it that with a budget of more than 30 billion dollars devoted to the intelligence service, not one of the main American agencies managed to detect the imminent threat: neither the FBI nor the CIA nor the NSA (National Security Agency)? Are we dealing with an enormous breakdown or a deliberate decision to remain passive even while keeping highly alert?

A first clue in favour of this last hypothesis is provided by the strange confession of George Bush on 4 December 2001, relating how he watched a live television broadcast of the first crash into the World Trade Centre:

"I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card – actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading programme that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower – the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom [busy for half an hour, specifies Emmanuel Ratier, reading a book about goats, which is plainly staggering after the first impact!], and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America is under attack.""

"It is one of two things, comments Ratier: either the president of the most powerful country in the world had no idea what he was talking about despite all the details, or he was fully informed of the attack about to take place and watched it on a private television circuit." For there was no reason for a television network to film the Twin Towers in a live broadcast at the time of the first attack. The pictures of this were taken by amateurs and were broadcast by the television networks well after the president had left the school he was at. "They were, therefore, secret pictures, concludes Meyssan, broadcast live in the security communication room installed in the school ready for his visit."

But "who profits from the crime?"

The cumulative force of all the evidence leaves no place for doubt. "The existence of a conspiracy within the US Armed Forces to perpetrate the attacks of 11 September.

The famous video of bin Laden's "confessions" claiming responsibility for the crash on the Pentagon, confirms the Abbé de Nantes' intuitions according to which Bush was in communication with bin Laden. They have spared one another by virtue of an agreement to wage a "phoney war"; everything passes off as if the two protagonists were bound by a pact of non-aggression preventing them from directly attacking one another (Resurrection no 11, November 2001, p. 3).

If bin Laden accredited the lie of the "phantom Pentagon plane", it is because he effectively remains, even today, the secret ally of the United States.

On 7 October 2001, war broke out. Not only the air raids on Kabul, but the war of press releases. Bush against bin Laden.

"Victory in Afghanistan" is supposed to have been won, but the war continues. Against whom? Against "terrorism". What is "terrorism"? It is not a State, nor an organisation, nor a doctrine, but a mode of action, observes Meyssan. The expression "War on terrorism" makes no more sense than "War on war". At a concrete level, George Tenet, director of the CIA, presented Bush on 15 September 2001 with a "Worldwide Attack Matrix". Approved by Rumsfeld, this secret war has been launched against anything that stands in the way of the absolute supremacy which the United States is on the way to exercising over the entire universe.

Was the war in Afghanistan a reprisal for the attacks of 11 September? Or were these attacks a windfall for the people who had already planned this war a long time back?

Rereading the message which President George W Bush addressed to his people on the evening of 11 September, one might think that the war in Afghanistan was an act of legitimate defence:

"America was targeted for attack because she is the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw Evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America", etc.

It is all there, even, and above all, an appeal to the Bible, with a quotation from Psalm 23: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me." God is with America, as He was with David… And too bad if appearances make her look more like Goliath…

The day afterwards, 12 September, in the course of a press conference, President Bush preached the Crusade of the democracies: "The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. This will require our country to unite in steadfast determination and resolve. Freedom and democracy are under attack […]. This enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world." And the president declared his determination: "We will rally the world." Whether they like it or not.

In fact the Anglo-American forces, were already in place well before the attacks. From the beginning of September they were deployed on "manoeuvres" in the Sea of Oman, ready to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban regime. As if by chance… The only thing missing was the casus belli: "The United States has always been reluctant to take the initiative in a war, recalls Thierry Meyssan. In the past, they have always worked hard to present their military engagements as legitimate reprisals. With the attacks of 11 September, they found a perfect opportunity…"

Found or created? Old Henry Kissinger answered this question when, immediately after the president's televised speech, he declared that he expected from the government "a systematic response" to the attacks of 11 September "which, one hopes, will end the way that the attack on Pearl Harbour ended – with the destruction of the system that is responsible for it. That system is a network of terrorist organisations sheltered in capitals of certain countries."

That same day, the United Nations Security Council recognised the USA's right to violate the sovereignty of States which protect the agents of attacks, in order to arrest these terrorists and arraign them before international justice (Resolution 1368).

"Posing as the spiritual leader of America and the civilised world", writes Meyssan, President Bush decreed that Friday 14 September 2001 should be a National Day of Prayer and Commemoration for the victims of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. President Bush ascended the pulpit and pronounced a "homily" in the presence of a cardinal, a rabbi and an imam: "Our responsibility to History is clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of Evil." How? Through implacable revenge: "Our nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger."

"By manipulating religious sentiment, the American government has not only sacralized the victims of the attacks but also its own version of the facts. Henceforth, throughout the world, any contestation of the official truth will be considered as a sacrilege." (Thierry Meyssan, p. 87) The falsehood is there in all its enormity, not Meyssan's lie, but that of Bush, for "no plane crashed into the Pentagon."

The ultimatum addressed by President Bush to the Taliban on 20 September before a full session of Congress, was but the first stage of a "war on terrorism" which, little by little, will lead to conferring on the president full powers… over the world! The special law, the USA PATRIOT Act, adopted by Congress after three weeks of debate, abolishes fundamental freedoms for a period of four years in the land of Human Rights!

Numerous measures were taken to strengthen the secret-défense: "President George Bush personally contacted Congress leaders to ask them not to endanger national security by creating a commission of inquiry into the events of 11 September. To save face as well as to turn the page, parliamentarians decided instead to create a commission of inquiry… into the measures taken since 11 September to prevent further terrorist activities."

Ratier notes with astonishment that there exist no video recordings or photographs of the Pentagon crash, although the Pentagon is visited every day by thousands of tourists, cameras and video-recorders slung across their shoulders. The FBI seized the video films from a hotel and a service station, both situated right next to the Pentagon, whose cameras may have contained images of the plane landing (or on the contrary shown that no plane ever did land…)

Not one of the eight black boxes (two per plane) are of any use, it would appear, although they are designed to withstand crashes and fires: "We do not know what was said in the cockpits either by the crew members or by the hijackers." (the FBI spokesman to CNN) What is known, on the other hand, is that the four planes all followed routes very different from their flight plans. According to the procedures of the FAA (Federal Aviation Agency), as soon as a plane deviates from the corridor assigned it, the agency immediately attempts to make contact with the pilots. Should this not succeed, the alarm is sounded and the entire regional airspace is placed under surveillance. It appears that the transponders were turned off. Yet another reason to activate the emergency procedures. For the plane does not disappear from the radar screens; these continue to follow its trajectory, and the alarm is raised. Now, on 11 September, the fighter planes remained grounded.

"A SPACE PEARL HARBOUR"

The expression is Donald Rumsfeld's. It can be read in a report issued on 11 January 2001 by the commission he headed, responsible for evaluating the organisation and planning of the security of the United States in matters of space: "History is replete with instances in which warning signs were ignored and change resisted until an external, "improbable" event forced resistant bureaucracies to take action. The question is whether the US will be wise enough to act responsibly and soon enough to reduce US space vulnerability. Or whether, as in the past, a disabling attack against the country and its people – a "Space Pearl Harbour" – will be the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the US government to act."

Is Rumsfeld a prophet? On 11 January 2001, eight months before the attacks of 11 September, he held up the threat of suicide planes, like those of the Japanese air force in 1941, sixty years earlier, as "the only event able to galvanize the nation and cause the US government to act". Did you say: Pearl Harbour? In other words: suicide planes? The man is a prophet! Or else, it was he who created the event…

Why "space"? Because, according to the report of the Rumsfeld Commission, "space" is the new theatre of operations – distinct from that of the air – which the United States must appropriate.

In a press conference given at the Pentagon at the end of the afternoon of 11 September, in the presence of the Democrat and Republican leaders of the Senatorial Commission for Defence, Rumsfeld took Democrat Senator Carl Levin to task:

"You and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don't have enough money for the large increase in defence that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defence, and you fear that you'll have to dip into the Social Security funds to pay for it. Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defence spending, to dip into Social Security, if necessary, to pay for defence spending – increase defence spending?"

For the last twenty-five years, Abbé de Nantes has repeatedly sounded this warning: "The Free World, the West, Christendom, call it what you like, this vast worldwide reality under the leadership of the USA is being betrayed, surrendered and dismantled by the USA itself at its highest echelons of power." (French CRC no 100, December 1975, page 11) He has denounced by name the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), a branch of international high finance which aims to control American politics and to enslave France through the intermediary of Europe (French CRC no 112, December 1976, p. 5-6), and also the Trilateral Commission and its mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski (French CRC no 122, October 1977, and passim). And again in December 1982, he was under no illusion when he wrote: "But no one will tell the truth." (French CRC no 184, p. 7-8)

And now that Yugoslavia is in its death throes, whose turn is it next? France's? "The Americans have been betraying France since 1918, wrote the former ambassador Albert Chambon. Since 1918 they have been seeking to suppress the French nation and to create a new world order which will do away with the ancient nations and France in the first place." (quoted in the English CRC no 328, p. 12)

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Investigators Simulate WTC Floor Fire

By TARA BURGHART
Associated Press Writer
August 25, 2004, 8:40 PM EDT

NORTHBROOK, Ill. -- Federal officials re-created a floor system of the World Trade Center and conducted a fire test on it Wednesday as part of an investigation into the towers' collapse on Sept. 11, but results didn't immediately provide clear answers.

A 17-by-14-foot slab of concrete was placed in a furnace, where flames soon licked at the steel trusses, fireproofing material and metal decking underneath the floor.

Images from inside the furnace of buckling trusses and cracking concrete were beamed onto a video screen for journalists, engineers and family members of victims invited to view the test, conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology at Underwriters Laboratories in suburban Chicago.

The floor system failed after about an hour and 15 minutes because of excessive temperatures on the trusses and concrete. A test last week of the floor system as it was actually installed in the towers passed the 2-hour fire rating required by New York City code in the 1960s, when the trade center was built. [...]

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"When Israels Mossad set out to break me, it found its helpers here at home"

by Victor Ostrovsky

Victor Ostrovsky published two books on his experiences as a former Intelligence agent working for the State of Israel: By Way of Deception and The Other side of Deception.

In these he recorded his personal observations made within Israel's external security service, The Mossad. He wrote an article on what subsequently happened to him for the authoritative journal, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (October/November 1997, pp 37, 84-85).

Here we reproduce the article:

"We will get to him by other means, we will break him economically", stated the chief of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, to a Knesset committee after the failure of the government of Israel's attempt to ban publication of my first book, By Way of Deception, in the U.S. and Canada. This statement made on camera was purposely leaked to an Israeli reporter and printed in the weekend edition of Ma'ariv, Israel's leading daily newspaper, with the military censor's approval. Since that day, Israel's foreign intelligence agency has waged a war of attrition against me with the enthusiastic cooperation of its cabal of North American Zionist organizations.

For years as a Canadian-born, Israel-raised former Mossad caseworker I was unwilling to accept the possibility of a wide conspiracy against me. After all, my book had finally been published. What more harm could I do to the country I had left in disgust to return to the land of my birth. Only hitting rock bottom has finally jolted me out of this state of innocence - and optimism that a change of luck is just around the corner. I'm now convinced that I am the target of a broad collusion between elements of the Israel government and their gofers, mostly in the American Jewish community.

Following publication of my By Way of Deception I wrote a spy novel, Lion of Judah, using the spycraft I'd learned with the Mossad as background. The book described a fictional Mossad operation aimed at thwarting a secret peace process underway in the Middle East. (The book was written and published before the real-life, year-long secret negotiations that led to the Oslo accord came to light.)

In the book I revealed considerably more about Mossad techniques than I had in By Way of Deception. But, despite the wide publicity garnered by my first book due to the Israeli government's unsuccessful effort to suppress it, my second book was ignored.

Radio and television interviews that were scheduled by my publisher were canceled almost as soon as they were booked. A speaker's bureau in Toronto, which seldom had trouble arranging speaking engagements with student and other groups eager to have me as a speaker, found that the engagements were cancelled before I could appear. In fact, the cancellations occurred each time a loal B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL) chapter got wind of them, and they always did.

But, of course, the less I spoke, the more time I had to write. In 1995, when my third book, The Other Side of Deception, another work of non-fiction, was published, the efforts against me were stepped up.

So, on Oct. 21, 1995, I was surprised to be invited by Canadian Television (CTV) producer Ron Fine to do a guest appearance on "Canada AM", the widely viewed Canadian version of "Good Morning America". Scheduled to appear on the same program, via satellite from Israel, was Israeli journalist Yosef Lapid, the former head of Israeli television.

An Appeal To Murder

Lapid had earned his 14 minutes of North American media fame by appealing openly on the Israeli television show "Popolitica" for the Mossad to seek me out in Canada and kill me for writing my books. He had followed this with an article making the same appeal in the Tel Aviv daily Ma'ariv headlined "By Virtue of Murder" [see accompanying article].

On cue, Lapid repeated, as I listened, his call for my assassination on the Canadian television show, but this time with a twist. He said that, since Israel's Mossad could not kill me in Canada without causing a diplomatic incident, "I hope that there would be a decent Jew in Canada who would do the job for us".

My reaction was horror mixed with relief. Now it was going to be hard for media gatekeepers to pretend that there were not "ugly Israelis" every bit as vicious and fanatical as the Iranian ayatollah who had called for the assassination in Britain by a British Muslim of author Salman Rushdie.

Along with the producers of the show, a large percentage of the Canadian public had just seen for themselves a former Israeli government official calling upon Canadian Jews to murder me on Canadian soil for the books I had written. But, to my astonishment, there seemed no inclination by the Canadian media to follow up the story when it was an Israeli rather than an Iranian inciting the murder of a published author. I had never felt more alone and isolated in my life.

Mt spirits brightened when a reporter from USA Today viewed the tape of the "Canada AM" show and was outraged. "I'm going to write a story about this", he declared, and proceeded to interview me for over an hour. Then, while I was still in his office, his editor told him by telephone to kill the article. "It's not a story", the editor said. The silence around me intensified.

It was a year later that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing zealot who got his legitimization for murder from an extremist rabbi and his marching orders from the likes of Lapid. If by Lapid's rules I should be killed according to category "D" [see the acompanying article], in the eyes of Yigal Amir, Rabin's assassin, so should Rabin. I have no doubt in my mind that all those like Lapid who make their own rules as to who may live and who must die are partners in Rabin's murder.

A radio host named Tim Kern from a station in Denver, Colorado, called me up for an interview. Several days later he sent a file on me he had received from the "Mountain state regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith". The ADL communication suggested that the station drop the interview, claiming that I am an unreliable subject. This sequence was repeated over and over at radio and television stations in the United States and Canada. Ironically, supposedly separate Jewish organizations around the United States kept coming up with the same wording in their efforts to shut me up.

The same people who presumably would praise someone from the CIA or the U.S. armed forces who exposed serious wrongdoing in those institutions were now hard at work to smother my criticisms of an intelligence agency for a foreign country that, to put it as charitably as possible, does not have America's best interests at heart. The Americans who call me a traitor to Israel for exposing the Mossad's efforts to kill the peace process hail as a hero Jonathan Pollard, a traitor to the U.S. who spied on the American government for Israel.

In an attempt to break the vicious cycle, I decided to sue in a Canadian court Yosef Lapid for inciting my murder and "Canada AM" for airing his incitement to the public. I assumed that bringing the issue to public attention would expose the attempts of organizations in both the U.S. and Canada that in fact are agents of Israel to suppress the truth through intimidation and, if necessary, economic or physical terrorism.

After accepting a hefty retainer and completing the preparations for trial, my lawyer, Paul B. Kane of Perley-Robertson, Panet, Hill and McDougall in Ottawa, Canada, informed me that he could not continue with the case. His explanation was that the safety of his staff would clearly be jeopardized if he proceeded.

Then HarperCollins, my publisher, informed me it was keeping the last portion of my advance, some $46,000, against advertising. I pointed out that since this was something I had never agreed to, they had no right to do it. "Sue us", was their response.

At the same time, my daughter, a television producer, was denied a job she had been offered in a Vancouver television station after its Toronto head office learned of her relationship to me.

Then my Canadian publisher, Stoddart, informed me it had decided not to publish my newest spy novel, Dominion of Treason, and also that it was holding back all the monies coming to me from By Way of Deception and Lion of Judah.

Meanwhile I had suggested to my agent in Toronto a new (fifth) book on the American militia movement. I proposed to interview supporters of the movement to ascertain their motivations, and then define the movement in terms of its members rather than simply labeling them as the enemy and shutting the door on them. I believe the growth of misunderstanding and mistrust within a nation, and particularly between regions as is the case between America's Eastern seaboard on the hand and its Midwest and Far West on the other, is courting disaster.

My agent was enthusiastic about the proposed project . We called it We the People. For several months he told me how this proposed book was being received in literary circles of New York. Then he dropped out of sight, and I have not been able to make contact with him to this day. I know he is in his office and doing business, but he will not return my calls.

In 1996, a new, New York-based agent struck a light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. Regnery Inc., a Washington-based publisher, signed a contract with me for a tongue-in-cheek guide to espionage called The Spy Game. They had some suggestions, however, for making the book more serious on the grounds that readers don't regard spying as a laughing matter.

As I was in the final stages of the first draft, however, my house burned to the ground. The fire marshal's report declared it arson. No one was hurt, since we had moved out several weeks earlier and I was using only one room in the house for writing. Luckily, aside from the house itself, very little was lost - only my computer and several boxes of documents.

As I was sifting through the ashes of what used to be my bedroom, however, I realized that things were starting to get out of hand. By then, under the Likud government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, both the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and the Israeli ambassador to Canada were former Mossad officers. I couldn't identify the perpetrators of the fire, or blame it on one group or another, but it was clear to me that those who had vowed to break me "economically" were becoming more confrontational and taking greater risks.

After several days of soul-searching I realized I could no longer allow my wife, who had stood by me through thick and thin, to remain in the line of fire. This was my battle, my choice. Knowing full well she would not abandon me, as almost everyone else had, I told her I needed to be alone, to sort things out for myself.

Our separation lasted several weeks. But we both realized we couldn't remain apart.

So I wasted no more time and re-wrote The Spy Game, having kept my notes on Regnery's suggested revisions with me. The work on the book was moving along well, and most of the editing had already been completed. The publisher, through his project editor, asked that I add a chapter on espionage and the Internet and also bring in some biographical material on myself. I complied and he expressed his satisfaction in a letter to me.

On July 9 of this year the Regnery publicity department faxed me a copy of their catalog page depicting my book, slated to be released in October. One day later, on July 10, 1997, I received a letter from Regnery informing me that the company had decided not to publish my book. I felt as though I had been hit by a freight train.

It suddenly occurred to me, for the first time, that the forces of racism, bigotry and apartheid may win, even here in North America. In calling out, finally, for help, I suddenly fear that I may only be shouting into the wind.

To all who believe that "it can't happen here", I say beware.

It is immensely satisfying to take a stand and speak out against coercion and tyranny. But eventually there may be a price to pay.

And when that day comes, and the bill is handed out, you may find that although your friends cherish you, they may choose to do it from a distance. I wonder now if the thousands who have called and written still think of me as a prophet and a hero, or only a fool?

Comment: We urge all those who have not done so, to obtain copies of Victor Ostrovsky's books "By way of deception" and "The other side of deception" Read the stories, understand the mind set and MO of the Mossad and then consider them in terms of the current "war on terror". Things will begin to become much clearer.

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Caving in to Sharon

Mike Whitney August 26, 2004
ZDNet

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." Ariel Sharon; as Israeli Foreign Minister

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.

Less than one week ago, Uri Avnery, peace activist and former member of the Israeli Knesset, offered these prescient thoughts about election season in the US and its affects on Israeli politics:

"…the months before the American elections are a kind of open season for Israel. The basic assumption is that no candidate for the White House would dare to provoke the American Jewish voters at election times. They are an extremely well organized and highly motivated political bloc, ready to donate heaps of money, which gives them political clout well beyond their numbers."

Avnery probably had no idea how prophetic his words would be.

Understanding Bush's vulnerability, Ariel Sharon blind sided the President by announced the building of 1,000 new units in the West Bank.

Bush, who has repeatedly committed himself to the Road Map as well as to Palestinian statehood, quickly reversed himself and caved in to everything "The Man of Peace" wanted.

Ironically, the announcement came on the same day that:

"The 115-member developing states of the Non-Aligned Movement condemned Israel's "Apartheid Wall," saying it infringes Palestinians' rights, and urged all of its members to act "individually or collectively" to impose sanctions both against Israeli settlements and international companies that participate in settlement activity, including construction of the Wall."

Not that this would have had any affect on Bush's decision. The wishes of the broader world community rarely enter into the machinations of the superpower or its proxy, Israel.

Needless to say, the information of the Non-Aligned Movements' condemnation was unreported in America's "free press"; there's no sense in recording the frustrations of those who rail against the actions of trusted ally, Israel.

When the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned Israel's Apartheid wall just months earlier (following the unanimous ruling of the World Court) the coverage was equally lacking. The American media continues to be a reliable partner in the facilitation of unjust policy.

The actions taken by the Non Aligned Movement, the World Court and the UN illustrate that there's no real argument about these issues; nor is there any significant disagreement about the 1967 internationally established borders.

Israel's settlement policy is universally condemned as an unlicensed intrusion on Palestinian land and an incitement to regional violence.

These things have already been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Now, it is simply a matter of whether Israel will follow the dictates of international law or continue to defy UN resolutions with impunity?

The Oslo Ruse

During the eight years of the Oslo negotiations, Israel never slowed its settlement of either the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Ironically, the steepest increases in home building actually occurred under "liberals" Peres and Barak. (A lesson to Kerry supporters that he may in fact carry out the Bush policies with even greater zeal than the president) Much like politics in the US, the faces at the head of government may change, but the brutal policies remain unaltered.

Oslo provided welcomed cover for the inexorable colonization of Palestinian land and the systematic destruction of Palestinian identity. Noam Chomsky who has observed the process as carefully as anyone says that Oslo was intended "to establish a ‘neocolonial dependency' for the Palestinians which would be permanent. That is what was promised at Camp David." (Noam Chomsky, "Hegemony or Survival" Owl Books, page 170)

The ultimate goal of Oslo was to disguise the ever-increasing repression in the territories while the carefully managed public relations gambit (the "peace talks") continued.

There was no "olive branch", just a well placed "boot heel" under which a population of three million were required to survive.

As former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said many years earlier, "We have no solution, you (Palestinians) shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes, may leave." (Ibid., page 184)

His words should be boldly inscribed over every checkpoint in the West Bank.

The "facts on the ground" that we see in the West Bank now, were announced as early as 1968 in the Allon Plan; a plan that precluded any Palestinian state between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. However concealed, (by political necessity) these have always been the long-range goals of the Israeli state.

The practical application of this plan is modeled on South Africa's Apartheid system of small population reserves or "Bantustans". In fact, this is how the West Bank is divided right now. Israel's "apartheid wall only adds some of the finishing touches.

Bush's acceptance of new settlement in the West Bank is a tacit endorsement of this apartheid system. It puts Bush at odds with the world community, international law, UN resolutions and 30 years of American Middle East policy. It applies the Presidential Seal to the final dissolution of the Palestinian state.

Bush's capitulation to Sharon should come as no surprise. He is intimidated by Sharon. We all remember when Sharon was carrying out his vicious operation in Jenin and Bush angrily ordered an immediate withdrawal. Sharon, of course, just brushed off the blustery president and carried on his rampage. Bush was left slinking away like a wet cat.

Things haven't changed…they've only intensified.

Sharon says a 1,000 homes…Bush says 2,000…Why not?

The building all takes place under the rubric of "natural growth"; a cheerful sounding euphemism that puts a benign face on the colonization.

We know all about that in America…we orchestrated our own lethal campaign under the equally friendly-sounding, "Manifest Destiny". It legitimized the butchering of 8 million Native Americans who got in the way of God's Will.

It was the most horrific act of genocide in the 19th century, but, fortunately, the history books have been effectively purged of any detail that casts the onslaught in a critical light. Most of that grisly tale has been faithfully scrubbed from the public record and replaced with apocryphal tales of hardship and heroism.

Israel's "natural growth" cannot compare to the barbarity that characterized America's move Westward, but the language is equally deceptive; camouflaging the cruelty of continued expansion.

Already, according to B'Tselem, (Israeli Peace Group) Israeli settlements control 42% of the West Bank; leaving only 12% of what was original Palestine. The ongoing development insures that the Palestinian state (promised by Bush and Powell) will be a virtual impossibility.

While Bush's submission to Sharon signals the demise of the Road Map, it is not really a departure from previous US policy. Prior administrations simply kept their ambitions hidden behind a curtain of diplomacy. The difference now, is that both Bush and Sharon are boldly stating the ultimate objectives.

There was no "terrorist incident" that precipitated the dramatic shift in policy. Bush and Sharon are so drunk with hubris they didn't even attempt to rationalize their actions in terms of their "all purpose" excuse, terrorism.

That should prove to skeptics that the occupation never had anything to do with terrorism; that was simply the pretext for further settlement. Now, that Sharon has done away with the pretenses, we should expect to see him despoil the West Bank according to plan.

As for Bush, his string of broken promises remains intact. There's simply no commitment "so great" that George W won't discard it when the opportunity arises. His pledge to the Road Map is just another pitiable addition to a long litany of lies.

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An armor-clad Big Apple

Call it Fort New York.

Street barricades are going up, heavily armed antiterror squads are making unannounced rounds, bomb-sniffing dogs are inspecting cars and trucks, Coast Guard boats are patrolling the Hudson, and new high-tech helicopters are hovering in the skies over Manhattan. That's not to mention the thousands of officers who've been taken off their desk jobs to ride the rails underground. And the Republican convention doesn't even start until Monday. In the ramp-up to what officials are calling the most "intense and comprehensive" security effort ever to protect a national political convention, the New York Police Department - in conjunction with the US Secret Service, state, and other federal agencies - are putting on a show of force designed to give any Al Qaeda operative pause.

While there's been no new intelligence indicating that a terrorist threa! t is imminent, the Joint Terrorism Task Force continues to comb through the hundreds of Al Qaeda files and computer disks discovered last month in Britain and Pakistan that indicated New York financial institutions had been thoroughly cased. They are also analyzing all new intelligence that comes in "24/7."

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Comment: On the one hand, one could look at this militarisation of New York as a sensible and responsible reaction to an obvious threat, but only in the case where one lacks pertinent facts and desires to maintain one's illusory comfort zone intact. Once one is exposed to, and accepts, the reality of the situation - that the entire "terrorist" threat has been carefully fabricated by the US government and other unnamed forces - the fear mongering and it's concomitant mobilisation of "civil defence" forces assumes a very different and more sinister meaning.

Given the evidence that the "terrorist" threat is bogus, what might be the real reason for the clamp down on civil liberties and the sudden appearance of the phrase "domestic terrorism"? Despite the lofty credentials we attribute to ourselves as a highly evolved species, it appears that we are as easily manipulated as, say, the average sheep...

The average human being

Flashback: Friendly faces calm stressed sheep

Helen Pilcher
24 August 2004

Exposing isolated sheep to photos of other sheep lowers their stress levels, shows a recent study. Researchers suggest the practice could be used to soothe solitary and sick animals and hope the work will help elucidate the brain mechanisms behind the ability to link faces with emotion.

Like many of us, sheep do not like being alone. They are also excellent at recognizing individual faces, and can remember the features of up to 50 sheep and 10 humans over a two-year period.

So Keith Kendrick and colleagues from the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, UK, wondered if photos of sheep faces could be used to appease lonely bleaters. Their findings are reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London

The team took 40 sheep of a Welsh lowland breed called Clun Forest, and isolated them one at a time in a funnel-shaped enclosure. For the first 15 minutes, four identical pictures of a white inverted triangle were projected on to the rear wall. For the next 15 minutes, the animals were shown either four photos of an unfamiliar sheep face or four photos of an unknown goat face.

As soon as the animals were left alone, their heart rates began to soar. At the end of the first 15 minutes, adrenalin and stress hormone levels had increased, indicating clear signs of stress.

But after 15 minutes of simulated sheep company, the animals became calmer. Heart rates fell to pre-isolation levels. Stress hormone and adrenaline levels more than halved, and the number of unhappy bleating noises dropped by 20-fold.

The animals seemed to ignore the triangle pictures, but they actively spent time looking at the sheep photos and even moved to be close to them. "The face pictures affected every single measure of fear and stress that we took," says Kendrick. [...]

Comment: Now simply turn this around and consider that exposing "sheep" to images and "ideas" that generate stress and fear would have exactly the opposite effect - discombobulation, irrational thinking, susceptibility to being manipulated etc. The point is, we are little different than the sheep in this study. The "appearance" of a threat or safety is all that is required to convince us that what we are seeing is reality when, in fact, it is merely an illusion.

How do we avoid being toyed with in this way? First, we must make conscious and deliberate efforts to remove from ourselves the tendency to believe only that which we want to believe. We must begin to "tune" our "reality reading instruments" in order to be in a position to recognise the difference between truth and lies. We begin this reworking at the source, with our personal lives and relationships. We must reassess our beliefs about literally everything, we must seek out and introduce new, objective data about every situation and assign to each element that which it is due; we must stop lying to ourselves. As Mouravieff says in the first volume of Gnosis:

[...] Having reached this point, man has entered a path. He is placed face to face with Life: his own life, with its own soluble and insoluble problems.

This is his first esoteric test. This test consists of a general reassessment of values. The results obtained depend upon the objectivity and courage .brought to the task. One must exert a conscious effort upon oneself so as : not to 'dodge the issue' or lie to oneself during this reevaluation. One must consider and analyze those about one, face facts and attribute their intrinsic value to them without compromise or pity for oneself or others. One must, naturally, keep the results of this re-evaluation to oneself.

This done, one must draw certain conclusions. Is one losing interest in exterior life, which unfolds exclusively under the sway of factors of influence ‘A', and to what extent? Is the centre of gravity of the Personality being displaced towards the magnetic centre? Is a real emphasis being given to it? ( Fig.20 ).
At this time, a choice must be made.

It would be better to withdraw before crossing the first Threshold than, having cut oneself off from the region of bourgeois happiness, to wish to regain it later. The Way is a one-way street. After the Threshold there is only one option: either to progress on the Way or to fall. From now on, any return to the original state will be forbidden. Gnosis Vol. 1 P 217

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Flashback: The IRS Claims New Patriot Act Type Powers to Punish Political Dissenters

November 28,2003

In a precendent-setting case, the IRS wielded new power to punish the political speech of those who "espouse views" the government considers "inconsistent" with government-held beliefs. In a hearing originally closed to the public in a secret tribunal on a military island, but moved to a public location after protests from the press and the public, the IRS wants to wield this power against a former IRS whistleblower, who was forced to resign upon his discovery of fraud in the agency.

The IRS claims it can exercise this authority in a secret proceeding without allowing a person the opportunity to cure any alleged mistakes, the opportunity to prepare a defense by knowing the exact facts they are accused of, without any opportunity for discovery, without any opportunity to call witnesses necessary for their defense, without any opportunity to cross examine their accusers, without any opportunity to testify at their own hearing about the merits of their position, without being forced to testify against themselves without such an assertion being held against them, and without even an opportunity for a hearing on the evidence.

This power of this little office with a Napoleonic vision goes even beyond the Patriot Act type authority and stories of FBI monitoring of war protestors. Too Hoover-ish to be true in modern America? Just read the case of the IRS against Joe Banister scheduled for a "hearing" -- a hearing where the IRs prohibited Banister from introducing any witnesses or presenting any evidence as to his defenses, and even discussing the sincerity, the truth or the "reasonableness" of his positions -- on December 1 in the city by the bay, in the Tax Court chambers of the federal courthouse in San Francisco. History is being made.

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General Ashcroft's Detention Camps

September 4 - 10, 2002
Nat Hentoff

Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional and public-interest law at George Washington University Law School in D.C. He is also a defense attorney in national security cases and other matters, writes for a number of publications, and is often on television. He and I occasionally exchange leads on civil liberties stories, but I learn much more from him than he does from me.

For example, a Jonathan Turley column in the national edition of the August 14 Los Angeles Times ("Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision") begins:

"Attorney General 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." Actually, ever since General Ashcroft pushed the U.S. Patriot Act through an overwhelmingly supine Congress soon after September 11, he has subverted more elements of the Bill of Rights than any attorney general in American history.

Under the Justice Department's new definition of "enemy combatant"—which won the enthusiastic approval of the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld—anyone defined as an "enemy combatant," very much including American citizens, can be held indefinitely by the government, without charges, a hearing, or a lawyer. In short, incommunicado.

Two American citizens—Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla—are currently locked up in military brigs as "enemy combatants." (Hamdi is in solitary in a windowless room.) As Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe said on ABC's Nightline (August 12):

"It bothers me that the executive branch is taking the amazing position that just on the president's say-so, any American citizen can be picked up, not just in Afghanistan, but at O'Hare Airport or on the streets of any city in this country, and locked up without access to a lawyer or court just because the government says he's connected somehow with the Taliban or Al Qaeda. That's not the American way. It's not the constitutional way. . . . And no court can even figure out whether we've got the wrong guy."

In Hamdi's case, the government claims it can hold him for interrogation in a floating navy brig off Norfolk, Virginia, as long as it needs to. When Federal District Judge Robert Doumar asked the man from the Justice Department how long Hamdi is going to be locked up without charges, the government lawyer said he couldn't answer that question. The Bush administration claims the judiciary has no right to even interfere.

Now more Americans are also going to be dispossessed of every fundamental legal right in our system of justice and put into camps. Jonathan Turley reports that Justice Department aides to General Ashcroft "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."

It should be noted that Turley, who tries hard to respect due process, even in unpalatable situations, publicly defended Ashcroft during the latter's turbulent nomination battle, which is more than I did.

Again, in his Los Angeles Times column, Turley tries to be fair: "Of course Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable." (Emphasis added.)

Turley insists that "the proposed camp plan should trigger immediate Congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties." (Emphasis added.)

On August 8, The Wall Street Journal, which much admires Ashcroft on its editorial pages, reported that "the Goose Creek, South Carolina, facility that houses [Jose] Padilla—mostly empty since it was designated in January to hold foreigners captured in the U.S. and facing military tribunals—now has a special wing that could be used to jail about 20 U.S. citizens if the government were to deem them enemy combatants, a senior administration official said." The Justice Department has told Turley that it has not denied this story. And space can be found in military installations for more "enemy combatants."

But once the camps are operating, can General Ashcroft be restrained from detaining—not in these special camps, but in regular lockups—any American investigated under suspicion of domestic terrorism under the new, elastic FBI guidelines for criminal investigations? From page three of these Ashcroft terrorism FBI guidelines:

"The nature of the conduct engaged in by a [terrorist] enterprise will justify an inference that the standard [for opening a criminal justice investigation] is satisfied, even if there are no known statements by participants that advocate or indicate planning for violence or other prohibited acts." (Emphasis added.) That conduct can be simply "intimidating" the government, according to the USA Patriot Act.

The new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, shows the government, some years hence, imprisoning "pre-criminals" before they engage in, or even think of, terrorism. That may not be just fiction, folks.

Returning to General Ashcroft's plans for American enemy combatants, an August 8 New York Times editorial—written before those plans were revealed—said: "The Bush administration seems to believe, on no good legal authority, that if it calls citizens combatants in the war on terrorism, it can imprison them indefinitely and deprive them of lawyers. This defiance of the courts repudiates two centuries of constitutional law and undermines the very freedoms that President Bush says he is defending in the struggle against terrorism."

Meanwhile, as the camps are being prepared, the braying Terry McAuliffe and the pack of Democratic presidential aspirants are campaigning on corporate crime, with no reference to the constitutional crimes being committed by Bush and Ashcroft. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis prophesied: "The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people." And an inert Democratic leadership. See you in a month, if I'm not an Ashcroft camper.

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Dissent is dangerous in the land of the free: And Michael Moore is an anti-American traitor.

by Steven Laffoley
August 25, 2004

A young pastor with a peace pin, a retired landscaper with a bumper sticker, and a poorly dressed filmmaker with a populist streak. In America, they are dangerous dissenters. At least, many now believe so.

Freeport, Maine is a wonderland of American consumer capitalism. Its pristine 19th century buildings on a narrow main street give the familiar comfort of small town America — with the comfortable familiarity of big mall brand names: L.L. Bean, Abercrombie and Fitch, The Gap, Polo. And times are good among the wealthy in America. The street is jammed with well-dressed people carrying bags in both hands.

First Parish Church is also on the main street. It too was built in the nineteenth century. Out front, on the grass, sits a white, wooden peace sign three feet across. Inside, curved pews and arches pull the viewer's attention to the front stained glass window. Below that, two men talk by the pulpit. They see me and come to talk.

Ted is in his early sixties and wears a tee shirt and ball cap with the local fire department insignia. He speaks with a thick, Maine accent. Next to Ted stands the Reverend, John. He is younger, not yet 40. Passionate about their church, they describe it in detail — its history and its congregation of 100 or so.

After a while, I ask them about the peace sign on the grass. Reverend John tells me it was made by local high school students celebrating the life of Martin Luther King. I ask how the tourists, given the war, have reacted to the sign. The two men talk of some hostility, some vandalism. I ask about the congregation and where they stand on the war. "Split down the middle," says Ted.

"We work," offers Reverend John, "to find, common ground." He is uncertain, though. Common ground in America isn't so common. Ted says he supports the president, the war. But he is restrained. He notices the peace pin on my notebook. We talk for a while more, and then Ted leaves. Reverend John and I continue talking as we walk toward the exit.

At the door I ask, "Where do you stand on the war