"Coincidences just aren't coincidences, there's some reason for it."

So said former FBI agent Danny Coulson in an April 17th Fox news report which investigates (to the extent that Fox news really investigates anything) the possiblity that McVeigh and Nichols were not alone in their alleged plot that blew up the Alfred P Murrah Building in Oklahoma on April 19th 1985, which killed 168 people.

The Fox report tell us:

One month after the bombing, authorities demolished what was left of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Officials said the implosion was a necessary part of the psychological recovery for the citizens of Oklahoma City. But critics question the FBI’s tactics and argue the building came down too soon and the implosion is one piece of a government cover-up.

Survivor VZ Lawton remembers the events after the attack.

“I was in my office at my desk signing papers and all of a sudden the building began to shake,” said Lawton. “The lights went out, debris started falling and then something hit me on the head and knocked me out before the truck bomb ever went off.”

The above paragraph is the most interesting of the entire Fox report, yet Fox completely ignores it, preferring to continue on with its implications that the "Aryan Republican Army" were the hidden accomplices and that the US government, for some reason, does not want this revealed to the public. The fact that a survivor of the explosion reported that the building began to shake and debris started to fall BEFORE McVeigh's alleged fertiliser truck bomb went off, is apparently not interesting to the pundits at Fox. The report reveals a number of other rather interesting facts which Fox either overlooks or attempts to use to further its "domestic terrorism" schtick. For example:

"Pictures made from surveillance video at the Regency Tower Apartments are the only images related to the attack that have been released to the public.

Oklahoma City attorney Michael Johnston said the FBI was not given all the tapes from as many as twenty-five cameras that he says were in and around the Murrah Building.

“If they're really non-consequential, it wouldn't hurt anything. If indeed they show something I think the American public, after a decade, has the right to know,” he said.

Johnston, on behalf of twenty-five victims’ families, filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request for all of the surveillance videos. FOX News also filed a FOI request. The FBI has denied both cases on account that the case is still open.

We wonder how many other videotapes of defining "terror" moments in US history the FBI has stashed away. Yet it was not only video tape evidence that the FBI refused to release in the Oklahoma bombing case, they also refused to hand over more than 3,000 pages of documents to the defence lawyers of Timothy McVeigh, who was subsequently executed by the US government. Pat Shannan of American Free Press has done much research into the events of the Oklahoma bombing and we present below an excerpt of his article FEDERAL MURDER INC. TIED TO OKC TERROR BOMBING:

It has been nearly 10 years since Oklahoma City's Murrah building was blown apart one quiet April morning. Contrary to news reports, the persons found guilty and sentenced for the Murrah bombing atrocity could not have been solely responsible. An Oklahoma City police sergeant became aware of this before anyone else, apparently during the first hour of rescue. He paid for that discovery with his life.

Yeakey, an African-American hero if there ever was one, was a giant of a man with a heart as big as the rest of him. As the first cop on the Murrah building scene following the explosions, he became a crusader for truth.

There is a memorable news photo of his 6-foot, 3-inch, nearly 300-pound frame sprinting down NW 5th Street toward the building on one of the many rescue missions he performed that ugly day. He worked for 48 hours without sleep.

After numerous private investigators produced evidence of multiple explosions, unexploded bombs being hauled away by the authorities, and the incapability of an ammonium nitrate fuel oil bomb to cause the kind of devastation seen in downtown Oklahoma City, a giant government cover-up became obvious.

But Yeakey knew it long before the rest of us. Only a couple of hours into the rescue, Yeakey became painfully aware of something disturbing. Did he somehow figure out that the building had been blown from the inside and that the news reports were fabrications?

Did he overhear a strange conversation from some of the many Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents who were on the scene sooner than they should have been?

Whatever it was, Yeakey was upset. He called his wife that morning crying, “It’s not true. It’s not what they are saying. It didn’t happen that way.”

Yeakey ran back and forth into that concrete mess of bricks and mortar all day long and continued beyond exhaustion, far into the night.

In a cadre of heroes that day, Yeakey’s performance was outstanding. On May 11, the following year he was scheduled to receive the Medal of Valor from the Oklahoma City Police Department (OCPD). He never got it. He was murdered on May 8, 1996, in the country, two and a half miles west of the El Reno Penitentiary. His body was found a mile from his blood-soaked car.

The official report said “suicide.” However, many people who knew Yeakey have questioned that, as the inside of Terry’s private automobile was described by witnesses as looking like someone had “butchered a hog” on the front seat. There was much blood on the back seat, too, but little or none where his body was found a mile away.

More suspiciously, his private bombing reports were missing from his car and have never been found.

According to the report, while still inside his Ford Probe that he had parked on a lonely country road, Yeakey slashed himself 11 times on both forearms before cutting his throat twice near the jugular vein. Then, apparently seeking an even more private place to die, he crawled 8,000 feet through rough terrain and climbed a fence before shooting himself in the head with a small caliber revolver, which he apparently took with him to the hereafter.

Independent investigators speculated that had Yeakey shot himself with his own gun, a Glock 9mm, there would have been significantly more damage to his head than was evident.

What appeared to be rope burns on his neck, handcuff bruises to his wrists, and muddy grass embedded in his slash wounds strongly indicated that he had some help in traversing his final distance.

However, the information about the victim undergoing a violent beating prior to his “suicide” was left off the medical examiner’s report.

The bullet’s entrance wound was in the right temple, above the eye. It went through the policeman’s head and exited in the area of the left cheek, near the bottom of the earlobe line. The trajectory was from a 40-45 degree angle above his head. There were no powder burns.

According to unnamed officers, 40 or more law enforcement personnel were at the scene combing the area for the “suicide” weapon, but were unsuccessful for more than an hour.

But after an FBI helicopter landed at the scene carrying FBI SAC Bob Ricks, “Yeakey’s weapon” was suddenly discovered only five minutes later. Of course, it was not Yeakey’s police issue handgun, and the description of the weapon has never been made public, but the official record immediately became that of “suicide.”

Yeakey had told friends that he was going out of town to hide or secure “evidence of a cover-up of the bombing by federal agents.”

The case of Sgt. Terry Yeakey is only one of a myriad of dramatic stories that could be told—stories just waiting for Hollywood, but out of bounds for public consumption.

Amazing New Evidence Emerges in Oklahoma Bombing

A recent raid on the one-time home of Terry Nichols has uncovered more evidence implicating federal agents in the bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995.

A source has told AFP that bomb components discovered at the former home of the OKC bombing accomplice have been linked to a federal informant who investigators believe lied during the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed after his conviction in the bombing.

There are now serious allegations that the FBI, using an informer as a conduit, supplied McVeigh and Nichols with the blasting components the two used to construct explosive devices, one of which may have been employed in the tragic Oklahoma City bombing.

Although there was much recent media hoopla surrounding the March 31 FBI raid on Nichols’s vacant home in Herington, Kan., the entire story, which is not being told by the mainstream media, suggests evidence of federal government complicity in events leading up to the OKC tragedy.

While the media reported that previously undiscovered explosives were found on the raid at Nichols’s home, adding further fuel to widespread public belief that Nichols—and McVeigh—were solely responsible for the OKC bombing, there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.

In fact, AFP has learned that Nichols himself apparently leaked the information about the previously undiscovered cache in his Kansas home.

Why Nichols did so is the real story behind the story that the media seems to be keeping under wraps. Nichols’s apparent goal in sharing this information was to provide information not only to bust the man who allegedly supplied the material, an FBI informant named Roger Moore—Nichols being certain that Moore’s fingerprints would be on the material—but also to expose the FBI’s role in supplying Moore the material in the first place.

Those familiar with the details of the case say Nichols has evidently come to conclude—as have many independent investigators—that he (Nichols) and McVeigh were being manipulated prior to the bombing by federal authorities in what was intended to be a “sting” the feds would use as “proof” of their skill in tackling domestic “terrorist threats” from “radical right wing extremists.”

However, it is believed, the sting went awry, possibly manipulated by others outside the loop, and the bombing occurred.

Now, in prison for life, Nichols evidently hopes to expose the role that Moore and his live-in girlfriend, Karen Anderson, played in the events.

Moore and Anderson gave testimony in the federal trial, helping to convict Nichols. But independent investigators have said all along—contradicting the FBI’s reliance on Moore and Anderson—that their testimony was obviously perjured.

The problem for Nichols, though, is that the record has shown that Moore was an admitted FBI informant as long as a decade ago and may be still protected.

Moore, a Royal, Ark. gun dealer, claimed to have been robbed by McVeigh and Nichols of some 66 guns, cash and gold coins in November 1994. The FBI and federal prosecutors claimed that the proceeds were used to finance the OKC operation.

However, the defense team undermined that theory by producing a signed motel receipt proving McVeigh was in Akron, Ohio, on the date in question. This did not keep either the prosecutors or the news media from repeating the robbery story. It is still widely believed.

Moore, who used the alias “Bob Miller,” according to Nichols, later changed his story and said that it definitely was not McVeigh and Nichols who had robbed him, but he apparently was attempting to plant the opposite impression at the time. Townspeople remembered Moore going from barroom to barbershop the week of the alleged robbery, describing McVeigh and asking if anyone had seen him in the area.

At the time, Moore was a confidential informant for two FBI agents named Ross and Hayes, out of the Hot Springs office. The two were the same agents who discovered the “stolen” guns in a sack behind the house trailer of Michael Fortier in Kingman, Ariz., a few days after the bombing.

Fortier was later implicated in the conspiracy and is serving a 20-year sentence. AFP has learned that the FBI had the information as early as March 1. Agents had received this information purportedly from the mouth of Nichols through an oftused informant named Gregory Scarpa, who is a convicted mobster serving a long stretch with Nichols in Florence, Colo.

At first, FBI officials scoffed at the idea, but then sent a polygraph expert to the prison on March 4. He concluded that Scarpa was lying.

Scarpa then called private investigators he had worked with in the past and, during a seven-hour meeting on March 10, showed a letter in Nichols’s handwriting attesting to his claim.

Not trusting the FBI, the investigators worked through a contact, who had high-level Homeland Security connections.

Then, on March 11, Scarpa provided the authorities with the address of the house and detailed descriptions of the location of the explosives.

Nichols had allegedly told Scarpa that he hid this second cache 10 years ago to be used as a follow-up to the Oklahoma City blast.

On March 31, the FBI finally made its move—calling in the Topeka bomb squad, evacuating the immediate neighborhood, and cordoning off a three-block area.

They worked through the night and into the next day.

The FBI would not confirm that its agents found anything, but mainstream news organizations were told by Oklahoma City’s FBI office that explosive devices were found. What little surfaced in a period of predictable news frenzy, was that the FBI was embarrassed for not having found this material 10 years ago.

NEW YORK -- A secret FBI report, obtained by ABC News, identifies 22 domestic terror organizations as the current subjects of 338 active FBI field investigations.

The Aryan Nations, and other white supremacist groups, are cited in the report for hate crimes, fire bombings, threats via mail, as well as robberies and murders. The National Alliance, one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the world, is subject to 51 FBI investigations alone, according to the report.

In fact there are "ticking time bombs," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, "who have the capacity, skill and hatred to carry out acts worse than what Timothy McVeigh carried out 10 years ago."

Levin, and other terrorism experts, say that the Internet has become the principal recruitment tool, attracting the loners and the disturbed who boast of finding viable U.S. targets.

"We are likely to see more terrorist attacks by lone wolves, or small cells," Levin said, "They're in their bedroom accessing bomb-making information on the Net, and accessing hateful rhetoric which empowers them."

James P. Wickstrom, who calls himself the world chaplain of the Aryan Nation, uses "Death to the Jew" as a mantra of sorts. He also regularly calls for the deaths of government leaders, including the president.

"There is none of them in this Cabinet that damnably deserves to breathe the air in this country today," Wickstrom said in a speech given at the Aryan Nations World Congress in Pennsylvania in July 2002.

Federal officials say his calls to action are not unlike those of the leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. Wickstrom has declared himself an enemy of the United States government.

"I tell you we do not need this Congress and legislative body," he said in the same speech. "We don't need these vile bastards telling us what to do on our property and with our water and with our children. We don't need to tell them we have to wear a seat belt. We don't need have to be told anything."

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation's security.

According to the list - part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security - between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups.

It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF.

DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or confirmation of the document's authenticity.

The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.

Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.

Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

'Still a Threat'

Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries.

"They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully it's an oversight."

James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future."

Focusing on Left-Wing Movements

Last year, following arson and vandalism sprees on both coasts attributed to radical left-wing groups such as ALF and ELF, the FBI made those movements its top domestic terror priority. But right-wing groups remained a concern, according to one FBI official.

"That doesn't de-emphasize our interest in other domestic terror groups," stressed the official, who would not be named discussing the bureau's counterterror strategy, during a phone interview Friday. "For us, the right-wing patriot movement remains a continuing threat." (The FBI considers militias, tax protesters, and anti-government groups part of the right-wing movement, the official said; the bureau considers violent anti-abortion extremists a separate movement.)

The DHS document, entitled "Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011," is dated January 2005. Its pages are marked "Sensitive - Do Not Distribute Outside the Department of Homeland Security - Draft." Each paragraph in the document is marked "(U/FOUO)," which typically indicates it has been reviewed by a government censor and determined to be unclassified, but "for official use only."

Under a section marked "Threat and Vulnerability Assessment," the document asks and answers the question "Who are the adversaries?"

First and foremost, the draft document says, are al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Second are new radical Islamist groups that arise overseas amid the rubble of the old al Qaeda organization. These organizations "could try to supplant" al Qaeda and "would see a Homeland attack as a way to attain that goal," the document states.

Domestic radical Islamic groups concern the department, because of their potential to support al Qaeda operations within the country, or to serve as a "recruiting pool" for the movement.

"However," the document reads, "we are not convinced that any of these organizations acting alone would pursue a major attack against the Homeland."

As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who "will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to change policy." The document notes that although "publicly ALF and ELF promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks."

Priorities Questioned

The document lists several groups or sources of radical violence that DHS does not consider threats to the homeland.

Lebanese Hizballah and various Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, are unlikely to attack the United States, the report's authors conclude.

Several high-profile terror prosecutions, including cases against the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and Florida professor Sami al-Arian, rest on their connection to such groups.

"Why are we expending so many resources targeting people who have allegedly provided support to groups that don't threaten us?" asked David Cole, a professor of law at Georgetown University and a frequent critic of the U.S. government's war on terror. "How does that make us safer?"

State-sponsored terrorism also is not an immediate concern to the department, according to the document. "In the post 9/11 environment, countries do not appear to be facilitating or supporting terrorist groups intent on striking the U.S. homeland," it reads.

Comment: Weren't we told that Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, and that he could have been planning to use his nonexistent WMD's to strike the US?

In fact, of all the countries designated state sponsors of terrorism, only Iran "appears to have the possible future motivation" to use terrorist groups to plot against the United States.

Comment: Gee, could the "possible future motivation" to strike the US come from a US and/or Israeli attack on Iran in the near future?

In the past few years, according to MIPT researcher Ellis, left-wing violence has overtaken right-wing violence as the primary form of domestic terror. "When a conservative government comes to power, you see more activity from the opposite side of the spectrum," he explained. At the same time, the membership and activity of right-wing groups has suffered since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the broadcasting of images of the children who died in the building's second-floor day care center. [...]

The Pentagon is toying with the idea of black propaganda.

As part of George Bush's war on terrorism, the military is thinking of planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media.

A new department has been set up inside the Pentagon with the Orwellian title of the Office of Strategic Influence.

It is well funded, is being run by a general and its aim is to influence public opinion abroad.

Black and white

It has been canvassing opinion within the Pentagon on what it should do. [...]

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Alexandria is set to meet with Moussaoui this week to determine if he is mentally competent to enter a plea now, Washington Post cited the sources as saying.

Moussaoui tried to plead guilty in 2002 but withdrew his plea a week later. His mental state has been an issue in the case ever since.

The French citizen was indicted in December 2001, but his trial has been delayed three times. For most of the past two years, the case has been tied up in the appellate courts in a dispute over his access to key al Qaeda witnesses.

In recent letters to the U.S. government and to Brinkema, Moussaoui said he is willing to accept a possible capital punishment, Washington Post said.

If Brinkema accepts a plea, she would then probably set a death penalty trial, at which jurors would decide Moussaoui's fate.

White smoke from the top of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, perhaps reminiscent of the fumes that billowed from concentration camp chimneys during WWII, has announced the election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the next leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

"Read my lips, the holy spirit selected me."

Hidden away in their secret conclave for the past 2 days, the 115 Cardinals finally opted for 78 year-old Ratzinger, who will henceforth be known as Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger appeared on the balcony of the Vatican palace to the cheers of the thousands of deluded yet devoted Pilgrims that thronged St Peter's square.

The appointment of Ratzinger, who has been head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the Vatican's guardian of orthodoxy since 1981, is unlikely to be good news for a world already suffering from a "war on terror" spawned by extremist and racist views.

The New York Post informs us:

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger joined the Nazi children's corps in 1941 as a 14-year-old and was later an anti-aircraft gunner.

At one point, he guarded a factory where slaves from a concentration camp were forced to work. He was later shipped to Hungary, where he reportedly saw Jews persecuted.

Ratzinger, a staunch conservative dubbed "God's Rottweiler," has said he joined the Hitler Youth when membership became compulsory. He and his brother were later drafted but deserted. The cardinal claims he never fired a shot and that resistance would have meant death.

Not so, Germans from his hometown of Traunstein told The Times of London.

"It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others," recalled Elizabeth Lohner, 84. "The Ratzingers were young — and they had made a different choice."

As noted, Ratzinger is known as the "guardian of orthodoxy", which is just another way of saying that he is a religious despot, determined to perpetuate the type of existential lies upon which most organised religions are based. Lies that have served for millennia to constrict and control the truth about the nature and reason for human life on earth.

Four people were indicted today for the murder of Italian financier Roberto Calvi, a banker with close ties to the Vatican whose body was found hanging under a London bridge in 1982, reports said.

Businessman Flavio Carboni; his ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinzig, and two men with alleged ties to the Mafia, Pippo Calo and Ernesto Diotallevi, will stand trial in October for Calvi’s murder, the Italian news agencies ANSA and Apcom said.

Calvi was dubbed “God’s banker” because of his ties with the Vatican’s bank and its former top official, the American Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus.

Calvi’s body was found within days of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, where he was president and in which the Vatican’s bank held a significant stake. The collapse was Italy’s biggest post-war banking scandal.

Banco Ambrosiano fell apart following the disappearance of €1bn. The Vatican’s bank agreed to pay €190m to the Italian bank’s creditors but denied any wrongdoing. Marcinkus also denied wrongdoing.

Italian prosecutors issued a report in July 2003 concluding that Calvi did not commit suicide, but was killed.

British police announced in 2003 that they had begun a murder inquiry into Calvi’s death after a detailed review of the case.

In December 2003, a 42-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, and of perjury.

Aid worker Marla Ruzicka was photographed the day before she died in Baghdad.

Californian Marla Ruzicka was the head of an NGO whose blend of tenacity and optimism kept her in Iraq long after almost every other humanitarian aid organization had left.

Marla and her Iraqi driver died Saturday when their car was tragically caught between a suicide car bomber and a US military convoy.

Marla was more than a source for a story, she was one of those quiet cheerleaders that kept me - and the Iraqis she touched - going almost from the moment that I arrived here three years ago.

I first met her in Jordan, just before the war. A reporter friend told me that I should get to know this young activist who made a name for herself working for Global Exchange, the US organization that sent field workers to Afghanistan to count civilian casualties.

After the Iraq war, she moved her push for an accurate count of civilian casualties to Baghdad. At a time when the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations were leaving Iraq, Marla started the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict. Through that, she helped Iraqi families navigate the process of claiming compensation from the US military for injuries and deaths.

When she died Marla was traveling to visit some of the many Iraqi families she was working to help. Lately, she had been attempting to aid the relatives of a toddler whose parents were killed after the mini-bus they were traveling in was hit by what was believed to be an American rocket. The baby was thrown out of a window to save her life.

It's still unclear exactly how Marla and her driver, Faiz, were killed. But early reports indicate that they were traveling on the dangerous route between Baghdad and the airport when a suicide car bomber tried to attack a military convoy. Faiz was an Iraqi Airways pilot, who at one time worked as an interpreter for Monitor correspondents in Iraq.

I was always amazed at how composed Marla remained amid the violence and confusion of Iraq. One of my favorite memories of her was when I was sitting in the middle of the Palestine Hotel lobby in Baghdad, surrounded by a confusing swirl of soldiers, officials, and reporters. Fear swept over me. What was I doing here? I had come as a freelancer, with no experience covering a war. Just as I was quietly freaking out, Marla appeared in the dusty, harried scene. She was the picture of calm in a perfect French braid and long blue dress. She was like a breeze blowing through, so tranquil, so clean.

Later in the fall of 2003 when I moved here and was despairing of my sputtering freelance work she would always say, "Jill, good for you. You're working so hard. I'm so proud of you." She was the eternal supportive cheerleader. One night she slipped a note in my hotel mailbox. It was a small essay of encouragement and praise from out of the blue, scribbled in black ink on a scrap of notebook paper.

I found out that Marla had died several hours after she didn't show up for a party that she planned at the Hamra, a hotel occupied mostly by foreign journalists. I was tired and wasn't going to go. My friend Scott went and called me about 11 p.m. He said no one had heard from Marla since about 2 o'clock that afternoon. The other journalists and I all feared a kidnapping. I went over to the Hamra lobby and asked at the reception desk if they knew Marla's driver's family. They said his brother had just called because they were worried they hadn't seen him. A bad sign.

Then we got a call from the US military saying a woman fitting her description had been in an accident, but that she was in the military hospital and in good condition. We were relieved. In Baghdad's strange logic, we all thanked God it was a car accident and not a kidnapping. Then we received another call. It was the military again. This time they said the woman was dead on arrival.

The only thing we can say now is at least she died doing what she wanted, doing what she really, really believed in. If she were still here, she'd be most worried now about her driver's family and who will take care of all the other Iraqi families she was working with.

She would point out, this happens to Iraqis every day and no one notices or even cares. There are no newspaper articles or investigations into what happens to them. For most of them, there was only Marla.

The ordeal of journalists caught in the Iraq conflict has intensified over the last four days with reports of five killings of journalists, says the International Federation of Journalists. The IFJ says that safety and security for media staff and civil society must be a "top priority" for the new government.

Two Al-Hurriya television journalists were killed in suicide bombings while on their way to an assignment in Baghdad on April 14th. Producer Fadhil Hazim and cameraman Ali Ibrahim Isa were killed en route to an event honouring the new president, Jalal Talabani. They were in a car when the bombs exploded outside the Interior Ministry. Two other Al-Hurriya employees in the car, Shakir Awad and Mohammed Ibrahim, were injured.

Al-Hurriya, a station financed by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has now lost three journalists in the war. Fadhil and Isa are both Iraqi; their deaths continue a 16-month trend in which the vast majority of journalist fatalities in Iraq have involved local people.

The day after this attack, the IFJ affiliate in the region, the Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate, reported the killing of another two television journalists, Shadman Abdulla, working for Kirkuk TV, and Laiq Abdulla, from Kurdistan Satellite TV (KTV).

The Syndicate also reported that at the weekend another journalist, Ahmed al-U'badi, working for al-Sabah newspaper, was beheaded in Baghdad, apparently by a group known as al-Jihad and al-Tawhit.

"The death toll among Iraqi journalists continues to rise," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "Some 75 journalists and media staff have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003 - and around 55 of them have been local Iraqis. It is an appalling level of loss. The new government must give top priority to the protection of media staff."

The IFJ backs a statement from the Kurdistan Syndicate protesting over the killings and terrorist acts and calling on the Iraqi authorities to ensure safety for journalists. The Syndicate is working with the IFJ and other Iraqi groups in a programme to assist and protect media staff in the country.

The IFJ represents over 500,000 journalists in more than 110 countries.

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhuanet)-- Many U.S. soldiers - some recently returned from Iraq, others still there - have set up their own Web logs or "blogs" and chat rooms to communicate with their families and friends. This has raised discussions about morale and discipline.

With the easy access to high-speed Internet connections and phone service in Iraq, American soldiers and military families can communicate freely and in real time via e-mail and cellphone, and follow closely the situation in Iraq, The Christian Science Monitor reported on Tuesday.

"The Internet and digital communications devices have democratized the global flow of information for friend and foe alike," the report quoted military analyst Loren Thompson as saying.

"Information democratization" has had both positive and negative impacts on the "good order and discipline" that the U.S. military demands in its regulations and traditions. Morten Ender, a sociologist at the US Military Academy at West Point calls it a "double-edged sword."

It facilitates communication between soldiers and society and yet "creates new leadership challenges, an explosion of information fostering multiple truths, information overload, and the potential for operational security issues," The Christian Science Monitor quoted Dr. Ender, a researcher on military personnel communication, as saying.

Earlier this year, coalition spokesman Lt. Col. Steven Boylan said "sometimes a blog might contain subtle nuances from which you can put together a complete picture of our operations, which insurgents can use to attack us."

Another concern is that a soldier may become distracted by or worried about something back home and make a mistake that could put his own life or the lives of his companions at risk.

That concern can work in the other direction as well, especially with many websites on the Internet that can tell a dire story in Iraq.

Robert Zoellick, former trade-rep and current Deputy Secretary of State, "toured" Fallujah:

"It was a wonderful opportunity to see a city coming back to life in part through a town council, which just took office at the beginning of April, and have a sense of the Iraqi people determining their own destiny," he told reporters.

Well, "toured" because this is how it was done:

Yet Zoellick, who wore body armor under his suit jacket, was told by military commanders he could not leave his armored Humvee because of security concerns during his quick tour of the shattered downtown. His heavily armored motorcade briefly paused before a restarted water-treatment plant -- within view of the Euphrates River bridge where the charred bodies of American security contractors were suspended after four of them had been ambushed and killed in Fallujah a year ago.

Then the motorcade moved so quickly past an open-air bakery restarted with a U.S.-provided micro loan that workers tossing dough could be glimpsed only in a blink of an eye.

And the town council he attended? That took place in a fortified military compound:

Zoellick had expected to tour a water pumping station and a bread-making factory to observe signs of the city's progress.

But Zoellick was confined to a caravan of armored transport vehicles -— except for a meeting with Fallujah's civic leaders at a fortified military compound. Marines said the security situation in the city remained tenuous, although daily attacks were down.

Still, the people at the town council complained bitterly about their destroyed homes, about their undrinkable water, and about the non-construction reconstruction. Not that it matters. All is well because we say so:

Despite inhabitants' complaints about the destruction of their homes, Zoellick insisted that "most of the fighting took place in more industrial and commercial areas".

Here's a bit more of what they said about how their city was "coming back to life":

Mounds of debris from crumpled structures filled each city block, and interim city council members expressed frustration about how long it was taking for residents to get reimbursement checks for their damaged homes. Some officials said residents weren't being paid enough compensation for all that had been destroyed.

They also complained of unsafe drinking water, an inadequate sewer system and little food aside from rationed goods. Residents fretted about not having enough jobs.

Now, now. Repeat after me: all is well. All is well.

"Things are almost back to normal here. We have teachers and books. Things are getting better."

New York Times 3-26-05 "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja"

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today"my own government."

Rev. Martin Luther King

Cameras aren't allowed in Falluja; neither are journalists. If they were then we would have first-hand proof of America's greatest war crime in the last 30 years; the Dresden-like bombardment of an entire city of 250,000. Instead, we have to rely on eyewitness accounts that appear on the internet or the spurious reports that sporadically surface in the New York Times and Associated Press. For the most part, the Times and AP have shown themselves to be undependable; limiting their coverage to the details that support the overall goals of the occupation. For example, in the last few weeks both the NYTs and the AP ran stories on the alleged progress being made in Falluja. The AP outrageously referred to the battered city as "the safest place in Iraq"; a cynical appraisal of what most independent journalists have called nearly total destruction. One can only wonder if the editors at the AP would approve of similar security measures if they were taken in their own neighborhoods.

The NYTs also ran a lengthy story, "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja", which portrayed Falluja as a city on the mend' after a healthy dose of imperial medicine: "Classes have started again two months ago and the cheerful shrieks of children can be heard in the hallways." This was just one of the more contemptuous quotes lifted from the NYT's story of "rebirth" from the epicenter of American devastation. The quote was accompanied by a picture of a Marine in full-combat gear bending over to tie the shoe of a seven or eight year old Iraqi boy; a threatening image used to convey the spirit of American generosity.

The truth about Falluja is far different than the bogus reports in the AP and Times. The fact that even now, a full 6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is still being held without explanation and there is no indication when he will be released. This illustrates the fear among the military brass that the truth about Falluja will leech out and destroy whatever modest support still exists for the occupation. Journalists should realize that Falluja may turn out to be the administration's Achilles heel; a My Lai-type atrocity that turns the public decisively against Bush's war.

The fairytales in the Times and AP are typical wartime propaganda; no different from the fabrications about Jessica Lynch's heroics or the Dear Leader larking-about in Baghdad with a plastic turkey in tow (Bush's "surprise" Thanksgiving day visit) The articles suggest that the administration has settled on a strategy for concealing the unpleasant facts about the obliteration of the city. Along with an active disinformation campaign featured in the nation's leading newspapers, the administration has put together a PR operation to shape public perceptions. This explains why the State Dept's number two official, Robert Zoellick, popped up in Falluja last week for a photo-op at a bread-making factory and a water-pumping station. Zoellick's visit was supposed to draw attention the progress being made in Falluja's restoration. Instead, his plans were disrupted by threats to his personal safety and he was hustled-off to a fortified military compound in the center of town. There he was beset by the cities tribal leaders' complaining about the dismal pace of reconstruction.

Zoellick's appearance was intended to highlight the alleged return of 90,000 Fallujans to the city and the reparations that have been made to the city's water system. In fact, there's no way to verify the administration's claims about the numbers of returning residents, and its doubtful that there have been any measurable improvements to the water-treatment plants, sewage facilities, electrical grid or hospital; all of which were intentionally bombed during the siege.

Zoellick's "confidence-building" trip turned out to be just another in a long list of bungled public relations gambits. If anything, it only further proved that the US still has no control over the security situation on the ground, and that the majority of Iraqis were better off under Saddam.

The Bush administration claims that the military is slowly providing compensation to the people whose homes were destroyed during the Falluja offensive but, again, there's no independent source that can verify those claims and it seems inconsistent with the existing policy. Zoellick summarized the Bush policy succinctly in his remarks to the Fallujan leaders, "I know it won't be easy. There will be many days of frustration, even threats. We can help, but YOU have to make it happen."

Zoellick's comments are little more than a distillation of the Bush ethos, "You're on your own;" the underlying theme of "compassionate conservatism".

It's doubtful that anyone in Falluja is so naïve that they believe the administration will actually help-out with the reconstruction. Two years have passed since the initial invasion and Baghdad is still limited to three or four hours of electricity per day. The problems with water and sewage systems are equally grave. Only one in five Iraqis has access to clean water and there are still many places in Baghdad where raw sewage can be seen on the city streets. As a result there have been reports of outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea and other more obscure water-borne illnesses.

Falluja is undoubtedly doomed to the same fate as Afghanistan. The media will create the illusion of improvement for the American public; celebrating the meaningless trappings of democracy (sham elections, claims of sovereignty, and the writing of a constitution) while the nation remains fractured and under the brutal rule of the regional war-lords. Afghanistan is a lawless, drug-colony run by gangsters and narco-smugglers. By any standard of measurement, our involvement there has been a complete failure. The real Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the flourishing democratic republic that graces the pages of American newspapers.

Falluja and the rest of Iraq can expect the very same treatment. There is no Plan B; the Bush strategy for toppling regimes and replacing them with the Neoliberal model is a cookie-cutter approach to governance; a one-size-fits-all formula for global rule.

In Naomi Klein's article "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism", Klein points out that there really is no intention on the part of the US to rebuild Iraq or anywhere else for that matter. When the State Dept gets involved, through its Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) "the mandate is not to rebuild any old states, but to create democratic and market-oriented' ones". That entails selling off "state owned enterprises that created a nonviable economy" and, thereby, "changing the very social fabric of a nation."

There it is! Deregulation, privatization and control of resources; the same model applied over and over again. The real goal is a radical, fundamental change to the system; "shock therapy", the all-purpose antidote prescribed by the global banking and financial establishment. These changes are facilitated through their political surrogates in the Bush administration, and executed by their own private security apparatus (aka; the US Military). After Iraq has passed through this vicious transition from semi-socialist government to deregulated capitalist colony, it will be entered into the new world order of American protectorates; stripped of its resources and subjected to the tyrann