Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets.

The Pearl Harbor base containing America's naval might was thought to be invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the morning of September 11, security at three different airports was successfully breached, the crews of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits commandeered, navigation coordinates reset.

In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes probably far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat of suicidal aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly audacious, with eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming the Potomac before driving right through the low lying Pentagon perimeter, in a sector housing Planning and Logistics.

The two Trade Center Buildings were struck at what structural engineers say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed so its lead architect said only last week - to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force Tuesday morning by Boeing 737s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the long flights to the West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts both buildings collapsed. By evening, a third 46-story Trade Center building had also crumbled.

Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire.

There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of US intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden, now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that he planned "very, very big attacks against American interests."

Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on US installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though the attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and even though CNN has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating group al-Qa'ida had been using an airstrip in Afghanistan to train pilots to fly 767s.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when hijacking was a preoccupation, the possibility of air assaults on buildings such as the Trade Center were a major concern of US security and intelligence agencies. But since the 1980s and particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted to more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear weapons launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat had the allure of justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile Defense aka Star Wars. One of the biggest proponents of that approach was Al Gore's security advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed plaintively amid Tuesday's rubble that "In effect the country's at war but we don't have the coordinates of the enemy."

But the lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant. By early evening on Tuesday America's national security establishment were calling for a removal of all impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush, they were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.

The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of which, like the Taleban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US intelligence). The target at home will of course be the Bill of Rights. Less than a week ago the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based web host for Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms of the CounterTerrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process. The explosions of Tuesday were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy" adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive for a national ID card system.

Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and control in Washington was Laura, who happened to be waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.

Other members of the cabinet were equally elusive. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has managed to avoid almost every site of crisis or debate was once again absent from the scene, in Latin America. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained invisible most of the day, even though it would have taken him only a few short steps to get to the Pentagon pressroom and make some encouraging remarks. When he did finally appear the substance of his remarks and his demeanor were even more banal and unprepossessing than those of his commander in chief. At no point did Vice President Cheney appear in public. The presidential contenders did expose themselves. John McCain curdled the air with threats against America's foes, as did John Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and who stuck the knife firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet as having told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending attack by bin-Laden.

Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation fell as usual upon the TV anchors, all of whom seem to have resolved early on to lower the emotional temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a declaration of War against Terror. Tuesday's eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least for those who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with the anguished cry of the reporter, "Oh the humanity, the humanity". Radio and TV reporters these days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of vivid language or dramatic emotive power.

The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks; that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to bin-Laden.

In fact September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary of the Camp David accords, which signaled the US buy-out of Egypt as any countervailing force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have been the motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come, as Israel's leaders advise America on how exactly to deal with Muslims. The attackers probably bet on that too, as a way of making the US's support for Israeli intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.

"Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all Tuesday's mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit: the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short-term: hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.

Published on Wednesday, September 12, 2001 in Counterpunch

Sense and Nonsense About September 11

by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair

Did Osama bin-Laden outwit US intelligence agencies in a deadly game of decoy or double bluff? CounterPunch has learned from two sources that a) three weeks before the attack of September 11 security at the World Trade Center was abruptly heightened and that b) six weeks before the attack a US army base in New Jersey was placed on top security alert.

As regards the heightened security at the Trade Center, we are told that according to a businessman working in World Trade Building number 7 (the 41-story structure that collapsed after having been evacuated) "security was heightened three weeks ago, including the introduction for the first time of sniffer dogs and the physical search of all trucks prior to their being waved into the entrance from the street.

The US army base in New Jersey is the Arsenal at Picatinny. Our informant says that at the start of July the Arsenal was placed at a very state of alert, with some staff locked in their offices for a period.

Set this information against the fact that Osama bin Laden, now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that he planned "very, very big attacks against American interests." On the night of September 11 Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts told CNN that CIA director George Tenet informed him before the attack that the Agency had recently thwarted an attack by bin Laden's organization.

So, was there an attempted attack some time in August, or was it merely a feint by the bin Laden units, to prompt an alert, then a relaxation of US security procedures?

US intelligence agencies, stung with charges that they are responsible for a failure of catastrophic proportions, are successfully pressing for bigger funding, with the likelihood that the present $30 billion outlay will soar upward.

The September 11th onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets.

The two Trade Center buildings were struck at what structural engineers say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed - so its lead architect said only last week - to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force on the morning of September 11 by Boeings 767s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the long flights to the West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts both buildings collapsed. By evening, a third 46-story Trade Center building had also crumbled.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when hijacking was a preoccupation, the possibility of air assaults on buildings such as the Trade Center were a major concern of US security and intelligence agencies. But since the 1980s and particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted to more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear weapons launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat had the allure of justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile Defense aka Star Wars. The national security budget is grotesquely tilted towards high tech, costly items, and this is reflected in the procurement policies of the intelligence agencies which have poured money into satellites, spy planes and snooping technologies, (which are so incompetent they even failed to detect India's nuclear detonations in June of 1998), all at the expense of human intelligence.

One of the biggest proponents of the bio-chemical threat was Al Gore's security advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed plaintively amid the rubble of the Pentagon that "In effect the country's at war but we don't have the coordinates of the enemy."

In the aftermath of the attack, calls for retribution mounted rapidly, few with more venom that the oration in Congress from the junior senator from New York, who was positively blood curdling in contrast to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's commendable performance as a leader and as a public voice counseling against over-hasty identification of the attackers.

The phrases "faceless coward" and "faceless enemy" have been bandied about. This phrase has a savage resonance to those who recall its use in America's war in Vietnam. In 1965 CIA officer George Carver wrote an infamous article in Foreign Affairs titled "The Faceless Vietcong", which rationalized the US campaign of assassination and torture of civilians in South Vietnam that came to be known as the Phoenix Program.

The lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant. By early evening, September 11, America's national security establishment was calling for a removal of all impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush, they were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America.

Declan McCullagh, political reporter for Wired, has described how within hours of the blast FBI agents began showing up at internet service providers demanding that they place "Carnivore system" traces to track e-mail traffic on their systems. In some cases the FBI offered to underwrite the costs of installing "Carnivore". McCullagh quotes one Microsoft engineer as saying that Microsoft "officials have been receiving calls from the San Francisco FBI office since mid-Tuesday morning and are cooperating with their expedited request for information about a few specific accounts. Most of the account names start with the word 'Allah' and contain messages in Arabic."

Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms of the Counter-Terrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process. The explosions were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy", adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned. What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive for a national ID card system.

The aftermath of the attacks did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and in control was Laura, who happened to waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing Barksdale airbase in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.

Some presidential contenders make haste to present themselves to the press.. John McCain curdled the air with threats against America's foes, as did John Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and who stuck the knife firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet as having told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending attack by bin-Laden. Orrin Hatch told CNN, "This looks like the signature of Osama bin-Laden. We're going to find out who did this and we're going after the bastards. Yes, this is the same Hatch who was a senior Republican on the senate intelligence committee when the CIA was arming bin-Laden and the Afghan rebels. In 1998 Hatch told MSNBC that he would support the fundamentalist Afghan rebels again even if he knew that it would create another bin Laden. "It was worth it", Hatch said.

Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation fell as usual upon the TV anchors, all of whom seem to have resolved early on to lower the emotional temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a declaration of War against Terror. One of the more ironic sights was Dan Rather talking about retaliation against bin Laden. It was of course Rather, wrapped in a turban, who voyaged to the Hindu Kush in the early 1980s to send back paeans to the Mujahiddeen (trained and supplied by the CIA in its largest ever operation), which ushered onto the world stage such well trained cadres as those now deployed against America.

The eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least for those who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with the anguished cry of the reporter, "Oh the humanity, the humanity". Radio and TV reporters these days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of vivid language or dramatic emotive power.

The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks. It was possible to watch the cream of the nation's political analysts and commentating classes, hour after hour, without ever hearing the word "Israel", unless in the context of a salutary teacher in how to deal with Muslims. One could watch hour after hour without hearing any intimation that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to bin-Laden.

In fact September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary of the Camp David accords, which signalled the US buy-out of Egypt as any countervailing force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have been the motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come. The attackers probably bet on that too, as a way of making the US's support for Israeli intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process.

"Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all of the mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was more informative, even though the possibility of a deep plunge in the world economy was barely dealt with. Yet before the attacks the situation was extremely precarious, with the possibility of catastrophic deflation as the 1990s bubble bursts, and the stresses of world over-capacity and lack of purchasing power take an ever-greater toll.

Worst hit, and therefore most likely precipitate of a wider crash, is the insurance industry, whose predicament is now desperate, with an exposure that is, in the words of a spokesman for Swiss Re, the world's second largest reinsurer, "completely inestimable" . Likely outfall in the short-term: hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.

Reproduced From: Counterpunch

Anti-Attack Feds Push Carnivore

[See website for embedded links.]

<http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0%2C1283%2C46747%2C00.html?tw=wn20010912 >

By Declan McCullagh Sep. 12, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Federal police are reportedly increasing Internet surveillance after Tuesday's deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Just hours after three airplanes smashed into the buildings in what some U.S. legislators have dubbed a second Pearl Harbor, FBI agents began to visit Web-based, e-mail firms and network providers, according to engineers at those companies who spoke on condition of anonymity. An administrator at one major network service provider said that FBI agents showed up at his workplace on Tuesday "with a couple of Carnivores, requesting permission to place them in our core, along with offers to actually pay for circuits and costs." The person declined to say for publication what the provider's response was, "but a lot of people" at other firms were quietly going along with the FBI's request. "I know that they are getting a lot of 'OKs' because they made it a point to mention that they would only be covering our core for a few days, while their 'main boxes were being set up at the Tier 1 carriers'scary," the engineer said.

The FBI's controversial Carnivore spy system, which has been renamed DCS1000, is a specially configured Windows computer designed to sit on an Internet provider's network and monitor electronic communications. To retrieve the stored data, an agent stops by to pick up a removable hard drive with the information that the Carnivore system was configured to record. Microsoft's Hotmail service has also been the target of increased federal attention, according to an engineer who works there. "Hotmail officials have been receiving calls from the San Francisco FBI office since mid-(Tuesday) morning and are cooperating with their expedited requests for information about a few specific accounts," the person said. "Most of the account names start with the word 'Allah' and contain messages in Arabic." By Tuesday evening, nearly 12 hours after the twin attacks that crippled Manhattan and left Washington deserted by mid-afternoon, it was unclear who was responsible. The Washington Post, citing anonymous government sources, reported that former Saudi businessman Osama bin Laden appears to be the prime suspect. In February, U.S. officials claimed that bin Laden had turned to data-hiding steganography software to conceal communications with his operatives by means of public websites. In Washington, use of data-scrambling encryption software is also frequently mentioned in conjunction with terrorists. "Uncrackable encryption is allowing terrorists Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaida and others to communicate about their criminal intentions without fear of outside intrusion," then-FBI Director Louis Freeh told a Senate panel last year. "They're thwarting the efforts of law enforcement to detect, prevent and investigate illegal activities." Those comments, and the prospect of congressional reaction to Tuesday's terrorist attacks, have prompted some civil libertarians to fret about possible domestic regulation of encryption products. A few years ago, one House committee approved a bill that would have banned any encryption product without a back door entrance for the federal government. By Tuesday afternoon, at least one NBC affiliate had interviewed defense expert Jim Dunnigan, who warned that "PGP and Internet encryption" would be blamed for the attacks.

"Those of us who value our liberty, even in the face of danger, will need to be vigilant in the days to come," says Thomas Leavitt, an online activist who co-founded Webcom. Other civil libertarians say it's a mistake to believe that the U.S. government will overreact to Tuesday's disasters. Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said he believes that the better approach is to argue that the U.S. must not allow a terrorist attack on our form of open government to succeed. It's too early to tell whether he's right or not, but by late Tuesday, operators of anonymous remailers were already so worried about being conduits for terrorist communications, or being blamed for the communications, rightly or wrongly, that they pulled the plug. Operator Len Sassaman said in a post to a remailer-operators list: "I don't want to get caught in the middle of this. I'm sorry. I'm currently unemployed and don't have the resources to defend myself. At this point in time, a free-speech argument will not gain much sympathy with the Feds, judges and general public." Remailers forward messages but remove the originating information, so that the resulting e-mail is anonymized. They customarily don't keep logs, so if the system works as designed, it should be nearly impossible for anyone to find who sent the message.

The Unasked Question of 9-11: What Was the Motive?

by Gary North

When the attack on the Trade Towers first reached the media, I was videotaping an event that could not easily be re-scheduled. I had to remain on the job for the rest of the day. So, I did not spend the day in front of a TV screen. Maybe I missed something.

After work, I viewed perhaps two hours of replays on the now unforgettable date of 9-11. Not once did I hear any commentator ask the obvious question: What was the motive? They chattered on for hours, but never once did I hear anyone raise the question of motive.

The amount of actual news regarding how these terrorist acts had been accomplished took about five minutes to convey. This lack of information never changed throughout the day. The nation sat, transfixed in front of TV screens, watching those buildings come down, over and over. CNN had the images of these buildings in some sort of loop, or whatever technicians call sequential digital replays. The invisible talking heads talked over the images.

By evening, we knew no more than we knew after the first hour: four planes had been hijacked, three had hit the terrorists' targets, and one had crashed in a vertical trajectory in western Pennsylvania.

Everyone interviewed on-camera officially agreed: we don't know for sure who did this. Everyone seemed to agree unofficially: a private terrorist group, probably masterminded my Osama bin Laden, is the most likely candidate. I'm ready to go along with this. But no one raised the question: What was his motive? They identified him as the number-one suspect, but somehow he had no motive worth discussing on-screen.

I heard this assessment repeatedly: "This is the warfare of the 21st century." I can hardly disagree. It worked so well in the 20th century, as far as murderous terrorists of civilians were concerned, that it is unlikely to be abandoned soon. There is nothing new here. We can easily substitute the words "King David Hotel" for "Twin Towers," but nobody mentioned this.

I heard the word "cowards" used repeatedly. I don't remember that anyone ever used this word regarding the kamikazes of World War II. A warrior who gives his life for his cause during wartime, knowing that he will surely die, is not generally dismissed as a coward, even by his victims. What the 9-11 critics were saying was that the terrorists did this to civilians. I agree with this assessment. The terrorists were indeed cowards by Western standards, although they overcame their fear of death. It's one thing to die deliberately for your cause as a warrior; it's another deliberately to take specific civilians with you.

The War on Civilians

But I don't see that there was anything new here, either. Substitute the word "Dresden" for "New York City." The Allies – mostly the United States – firebombed a defenseless German city, day after day, in 1945, a city with no military significance in 1945. At least 25,000 civilians died in the resulting firestorms, with 350,000 left homeless in winter. Our fighting men did this from air in streams of hundreds of bombers, when there were no German fighter aircraft to defend the city.

By 1945, this was an old, old story. When General Sheridan adopted a terrorist campaign against civilians in the Shenandoah Valley in October, 1864, after Atlanta had fallen, and the Confederacy was clearly beaten, he made terrorism part of official American military strategy. Sheridan's cavalry conducted a hit-and-run arson campaign against women and children. It worked so well from the Union Army's point of view that Sherman immediately put it into mass production in his march to the sea. That strategy was adopted by European generals as the wave of the future, which it became.

We live in a monstrous era. What the West came to regard as unacceptable militarily during the Thirty Years War, 1618-48, in a murderous religious civil war in the German principalities, Western nations have adopted as national policy during wartime. They even adopt it in peacetime.

Military strategists of both the Soviet Union and the United States by the mid-1960's had adopted MAD: mutual assured destruction. Each side targeted its nuclear weapons against the other's urban civilian populations. Each side used the other's civilians as hostages in a strategy that prevailed for at least three decades. Neither side admitted to its own public that this is what the strategists had self-consciously done. A few men spoke out against this in the late 1970's and the 1980's, including a couple of retired American generals, but the generals did not speak out publicly against MAD when they were in uniform. MAD ended – if it has actually ended – only when the Soviet Union collapsed.

This country has been waging a terrorist campaign against Iraq's civilians for over a decade. Estimates range from 750,000 to 1,500,000 civilians dead because of our continuing trade sanctions, half of them children. We refuse to lift these trade sanctions until Saddam Hussein resigns. But he remains in power only because President Bush refused to pursue a military objective – warriors vs. warriors – by conquering Iraq in 1991. He deliberately let Saddam's army get away. Now we starve Iraqi children for a strictly political objective: to get him to resign. The public neither knows nor cares. Motive? Here is a motive. It's called revenge – not for the sake of the secular Baath party, but on behalf of Islam.

The 9-11 terrorists wore civilian clothing. This made them cowards by Western military standards. A warrior is supposed to wear a uniform; otherwise, he is a spy. Western military codes of justice allow the execution of spies whenever caught. I agree entirely; a spy is not a warrior. He should be treated differently from a man in uniform. But in a world in which warriors target civilians as a matter of conventional military strategy, their general officers should not be surprised when a few civilians decide to get even.

We All Know the Motive

Why did a group of civilians do this, assuming that they really were civilians? I offer three reasons that most Americans understand, or at least are capable of understanding. I heard no commentator mention any of them.

It goes without saying that everyone assumes that Muslims did this. Why does everyone assume this?

First, American Christians and American business interests generally support the State of Israel. Every Muslim regards this state as an illegal invader into Muslim territory. No Muslim nation regards the State of Israel favorably. No Muslim nation has the military power to take out Israel in a direct confrontation.

When Iraq started to build nuclear power plant that might possibly have been used to build a nuclear weapon, the Israeli Air Force bombed it – and all the civilians working there – into oblivion, without warning and without a declaration of war in 1982. President Clinton did the same thing in 1998 to a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that had no military significance.

Second, the United States supports the State of Israel. Muslims universally believe – as do most Americans – that without the American government's money, weapons, and official support, Israel would not be able to defend itself indefinitely. They see this money as coming mainly from New York City. The Twin Towers were the most visible symbol of this private capital. The Pentagon was the most visible symbol of our military power. The terrorists struck a blow based on symbols universally recognized by the Islamic world.

Third – and this is less widely understood – Islam regards all of its men as warriors, with or without uniforms. The West's ancient distinction, which had its origin in the Christian middle ages, between uniformed warriors and civilians is not part of the Islamic worldview.

What United States foreign policy has done since 1948 is to create an implacable enemy of about 500,000,000 men or soon-to-be men, an enemy that cannot lawfully be targeted, according to the West's official canons of justice.

Furthermore, civilians are supposed to be given trials. They are not supposed to be hunted down and killed by our military, and surely not by agents in civilian clothing, i.e., spies. But what about civilians who do not see themselves a civilians or act like civilians? What do you do with them? Do we bomb them indiscriminately, as the State of Israel does to Palestinian neighborhoods, after a terrorist attack on its own civilians?

Maybe some American spy will assassinate bin Laden. That event will create an international martyr for 500,000,000 men, plus their wives and will-be wives. Bin Laden knows this. He is probably willing to become a martyr, just as the terrorists in those four planes were willing. This is why, from his point of view, the attack was an enormous success. Whether or not he masterminded it, his religious peers will see him as a martyr if he is killed and as a genius strategist if he isn't. He will get imitators.

Reprisals

When Dr. Arthur Robinson, a biochemist, and I wrote our book-long tract favoring a national civil defense shelter system, Fighting Chance (1986), we had in mind biological weapons as well as nuclear. This nation's civilian population has never been considered worth protecting. To do so would be opposed to MAD.

When researching the topic of civil defense at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, Robinson met the long-time director of the civil defense research program, Conrad Chester. Robinson used this library extensively. (The U.S. government ordered this library destroyed after Chester retired.)

After his retirement, Chester stayed in contact with Robinson. Chester once wrote a paper for a group that Robinson is associated with, Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. It went into detail about how a small terrorist group could use home-brew anthrax to kill at least 90% of the population of New York City, or any major city, 24 hours after they released it into the atmosphere, i.e., 12 hours after they had fled the country. Robinson persuaded him not to go into the details, merely use his authority to persuade the audience. Chester complied – wisely, I think. (Chester later died of natural causes.)

Robinson tells me that any skilled Ph.D in biology could do what Chester described, using used equipment that costs $25,000. New, it would cost $250,000. All he would need in addition to the equipment is a year's time and a pair of M.A.-level graduate students in biology.

The group that coordinated the 9-11 attacks was not like the band of amateurs who, also according to Chester, came within a few feet of the correct placement of their explosives-laden van in 1993 of bringing down one of the twin towers, with everyone inside killed. The 9-11 group was well-funded and well-organized.

Note: whoever engineered the 9-11 attack will not have much trouble raising funds for the next one. There are some very rich private citizens among the 500,000,000 who have a deep grudge against the United States.

We are not dealing with Keystone Cops-vintage idiots this time, the way we were in 1993's bomb-laden van. The 9-11 strategy was not adopted to frighten the United States into submission. It was used to recruit a dedicated army of Islamic terrorists for the next stage. It was used to convince recruits that revenge against the Great Satan is possible – and maybe more than revenge. Maybe even victory over the West, an Islamic goal since 622. We are dealing with a motive that stretches back almost fourteen centuries.

Americans are forgive-and-forget people. Their philosophy is "let bygones be bygones." They cannot conceive of a motive that goes on for 1,400 years. They forget – if they ever knew – that it took Spain from 732 (the battle of Tours in what is now southern France) until 1492 to remove the Moors from their territory.

The day that 50% to 90% of the population of a city dies of a biological attack, and some Islamic terrorist group announces a hit list of sixteen more cities located in the G-8 nations, the West will have a moment of truth. If one of these cities is then successfully attacked, we will learn about the effects on the division of labor when rich urban targets meet cheap weapons of mass destruction.

The events of 9-11 revealed that there is no defense from terrorists who are willing to die. How many attacks would it take to bring down the West's economy on a discount basis? Five? Three?

Conclusion

Phil Sheridan sowed the wind in 1864. This nation has now reaped the first stage of a whirlwind. I hope and pray – literally – that it will not advance to stage two. But, as I write this from the Shenandoah Valley, I am not confident that my prayer will be answered.

September 13 , 2001

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Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com

9/13/2001 webmaster@davidicke.org

source: http://www.davidicke.com/icke/articles3/worldtradecenter.html

ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND THE WTC DISASTER IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE FORCE BEHIND THE U.S. ATROCITIES JUST ASK: WHO BENEFITS?

"Nothing would be what it is, Because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise -what it is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" - Alice in Wonderland. By David Icke

The force that seeks to control this world and introduce its global fascist state, the network I call the Illuminati, is nothing if not predictable.

The unbelievable horror perpetrated on the cities of New York and Washington is a problem-reaction-solution sting on the collective mind of all humanity and I have been expecting an event of this magnitude for some years. I thought it could be a war or a nuclear "terrorist" device, but something fantastic was always going to happen during the years of the Bush presidency when, as I wrote on inauguration day, the agenda would be pressed forward with a gathering pace.

Fast as the world was being moved towards global centralised fascism, it was still not fast enough to match the timescale demanded by the Illuminati agenda. And the opposition to their globalisation plans and their assaults on freedom, was gathering by the day. It was clear that something of enormous magnitude was being orchestrated that would so devastate the collective human mind with fear, horror, and insecurity, that "solutions" could be offered that would advance the agenda in a colossal leap almost overnight. This is what we saw in America on the ritually-significant eleventh day of the ninth month - 911 is the number for emergencies in the United States. Ritual and esoteric codes are at the heart of everything the Illuminati undertakes.

And, mind-numbing as these atrocities are, this is the start, not the end, of the next cycle of the Illuminati agenda for the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical imprisonment of humankind. More and more death and destruction will unfold as the "Free World" unites as an (in affect) world army and world government to use the threat of "terrorism" (their own) to justify a war against the people and countries they choose to take the rap for what the very forces WITHIN the "free world" are themselves responsible for. Even war with the Islamic peoples is not the end, but the means to an end - a conflict with the remaining forces of communism, which they also control. Remember that the Illuminati operate through every country and within "terrorist" organisations and those agencies which "oppose" such terrorism. Only by having agents within all "sides" can they be sure of controlling the game and knowing the outcome before it starts. The Illuminati have operatives within the Islamic world, just as they have them in the so-called "free world", as we shall see in the months to come. Saddam Hussein is every bit as much a knowing Illuminati pawn as Father George and Boy George Bush in America, for example (seeAnd The Truth Shall Set You Free).

The predictability of the ritualistic, emotionless, reptilian mind can be seen in the news management that has followed this U.S. disaster. Look at what always happens in these circumstances and you will see that the blueprint is the same in almost every case. Before the event happens the fall-guy or "patsy" is already set up to take the blame, thus steering the public mind away from dangerous speculation and onto a pre-ordained target. After the Kennedy assassination it was Lee Harvey Oswald; after Oklahoma it was Timothy McVeigh; now it is Osama Bin Laden.

Bin Laden, deeply misguided as he may be, is no more responsible for what happened this week than I am. His name was introduced with the most obvious co-ordination immediately after the disaster unfolded in the same way that the background to Lee Harvey Oswald was being circulated BEFORE President Kennedy was even dead.

The idea that this guy from the mountains of Afghanistan with far more mouth than substance could be the "Mr. Big" of this enormous operation is utterly insulting to anyone of even basic intelligence (see the article by journalist Robert Fisk, who has met him). We are not talking a parcel bomb here, nor even some mind-controlled fanatic driving a car bomb into a restaurant in Jerusalem. Four commercial airliners had to be simultaneously hi-jacked in American air space via American airports and flown into highly specific targets within 45 minutes of each other. How was this possible? Because it was an inside job, that's how, orchestrated by forces WITHIN the United States and planned by the highest levels of U.S. "Intelligence" in co- ordination with other strands of the Illuminati spider's web worldwide.

With an army now of mind-controlled assets at their disposal, it is possible to get them to do anything they require once the mind is programmed and the trigger given to activate them. Those responsible for hi-jacking those planes and flying them into buildings will, in their conscious mind, have believed in the "cause" they were programmed to believe in. But in truth they were not hi-jacking and flying those planes, their programming was. Mind control is now so sophisticated that such programming is almost child's play.

This terror was not a failure of U.S. Intelligence for God's sake. They were not supposed to uncover the plot and getting weapons onto planes is so much easier if you have support from those who control the system. I have heard that this is another "Pearl Harbor" and yes it is. You can read in ..And The Truth Shall Set You Free and other books and studies how the American government knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, but they did nothing about it. Why? Because they wanted it to happen for a specific reason - to justify the U.S. entry into the Second World War, which President Roosevelt (a blood relative of the Bushes) had said, just to get elected, that America would not be involved in. Problem-reaction-solution - and it's the same with the terrible events of this week. (Press here for an explanation of Problem-Reaction-Solution (PRS) if you are new to this technique).

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the "pin it on bin Laden" campaign was launched as per pre-arranged plan. The Republican Senator and Illuminati stooge, Orrin Hatch, for example, told CNN that he had high-level information from the FBI that bin Laden was behind the unprecedented attacks. "I do have some information," Hatch said in reference to his FBI briefing. "They've come to the conclusion that this looks like it may be the signature of Osama bin Laden, that he may be the one behind this." It's OK, don't go on, Orrin, we get the message and you have done your job.

Then we had the story of the hire car found so conveniently at Boston airport, where two planes were hijacked, which containedyeswait for ita copy of the Koran and an instruction video for how to fly commercial jets!!! Am I in fairyland or what? I am surprised they did not claim to have discovered a letter from bin Laden in the car wishing the occupants the best of luck with their task. Maybe they plan to "find" that tomorrow, eh? It's unbelievable nonsense, of course it is, but most will believe it. And you will see more and more manufactured "evidence" of the "bin Laden connection" systematically revealed in the days and weeks ahead.

So, the question: Who benefits? Well, the Illuminati want a world government and army, a world currency and centralised global financial dictatorship and control. They want micro-chipped people and a society based on constant surveillance of all kinds at all times. And they want a frightened, docile, subservient, people who give their power away to the "authorities" who can save them from what they have been manipulated to fear.

Funnily enough the question "who benefits from these horrific events in America?" can be answered very simply: Anyone who wants to introduce the above. The disaster of 9-11, means that:

The Illuminati now have the excuse to retaliate against anyone their propaganda machine can manipulate the population to believe was to blame. Attacks against Islamic targets have the potential to be the trigger for massive conflict and upheaval across the world and especially in the Middle and Near East. The opportunities to then widen the conflict to involve Russia and China are endless. A third world war is part of the agenda and this can open the way for that as the dominoes fall.

The "free world united with America" rhetoric from Blair and other "world leaders" is code for coming together as a world army and police force to fight a "war against terrorism". Already the Bilderberg-controlled NATO (the world army in waiting) has pledged such support and the collective consciousness is being manipulated so comprehensively at this time that most people will support American and NATO terrorist attacks on unsubstantiated targets in the name of fighting terrorism. The stunning contradiction in this policy will be lost on the majority blinded by the blatant and intense mind manipulation that has followed the outrages in those U.S. cities.

As conflict escalates as a result of such calculated "retaliation" the pressure for centralisation of military power and the willingness to concede that power by the populations of America and elsewhere will gather until the world army is in place, a world army with the power to attack and take over any country that their propaganda machine can demonise.

The collective mind of humanity, and particularly that of America, is understandably now in a deeply traumatised state. They have been subjected to collective trauma-based mind control and, as any mind controller or researcher can tell you, a traumatised mind is a suggestible mind. So in the wake of the trauma comes the programming to manipulate the population to see events in the desired fashion.

One of the biggest potential obstacles to the "New World Order", the centrally-controlled fascist global state, is the psyche of most American people. When faced with the prospect of giving up their right of self-determination to global military, political, and financial control, most would be vehemently opposed once they realised what was happening. Their collective sense of security, confidence, and pride in their nation and system has been built on the foundations of immense military and financial strength. It is a collective version of the John Wayne mentality - "don't mess with us - this is America." From that has come their collective confidence in themselves as a nation. Now that very sense of who they are, and their belief that they have the power to stand alone, is in danger of being devastated.

It is absolutely no co-incidence that the targets of those hi-jacked planes were the very symbols of America's sense of itself and its own security - the Pentagon, symbol of their military might, and the World Trade Centre, twin pillars of their financial might. This is not primarily an attack on America, it is an attack on America's image and imagination of itself. Break their spirit and their sense of being "American"; break America's confidence in itself; put it in fear and fundamental insecurity; and you have overcome the most significant opposition to America allowing itself to be absorbed into the Illuminati's global and centrally-dictated society. The American psyche will now be bombarded with more and more shocks to its security and sense of self, as with Oklahoma and the school shootings in the past. But from now on everything will be increased dramatically. It is vital that Americans refuse to submit to this and realise that those who are condemning the terrorism in their midst are those who are responsible for it.

When I first travelled America in 1996, I was staggered at what a controlled society the "Land of the Free" really was (though still not as bad as Canada). Now in the wake of this tragedy, the United States, and other countries, are set to become a fortress of invasive surveillance and, what's more, because of what has happened, the American people will not utter a significant word of protest at the rapid expansion of this Big Brother society. Problem-reaction- solution. Watch for micro-chipping of people to be suggested to "stop the terrorists".

An economic disaster has long been predicted by those who have exposed and studied the Illuminati agenda. To overcome resistance to single currencies and central control of global finance, they need a world economic crash that will destroy the present system and kid the people into accepting centralised global control as the only way to overcome the crash. Problem-reaction-solution. This is another reason why these attacks struck in the very heart of America's economic system - and why in the days before the carnage the talk of a global economic recession was plastered across the world media. Now they have a blank sheet of paper with the chance to justify such a collapse and you will see global economic bodies brought in to "co- ordinate a response to the economic crisis". Indeed the G7 (Illuminati) grouping of nations has already begun this process.

These are just a few of the "benefits" to the agenda from the death and destruction in New York and Washington that was, I repeat, co- ordinated by forces within U.S. borders. Those responsible are possessed by non-human entities and have no regard for human life any more than most humans have regard for the death and suffering of cattle. The reptilian mind has an undeveloped emotional level and therefore there is no emotional consequence for them no matter to what depths of horror and depravity they may sink. You only had to watch the emotionless, going-through-the-motions, reading the script, responses of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, in the face of such immense suffering to see an example of this. It was in the class of the Queen of England after the murder of Princess Diana. At least Reagan was a professional actor. Bush and Blair wouldn't get in a school play.

Did George W. Bush know that these devastating disasters were going to happen that day? What do you think?? Did Tony Blair? What do you think?? But even they are only pawns in a game controlled by far greater powers and they are as expendable as anyone once they have served their purpose. Personally I would not be surprised in the least if Bush was sacrificed eventually to advance the "global terrorism" scenario, and perhaps someone very close to Blair also. And, of course, if Bush does go, the new President would be the serial killer, Dick Cheney (see The Biggest Secret). The stakes are going to be stacked very high indeed from this point because the final push to global fascism has begun.

The world will never be the same again, that's true, but within every danger there is opportunity. And for those of us, the vast majority, who seek peace not conflict, freedom-for-all, not dictatorship-by-the- few, now have to look ourselves in the mirror and ask what we are going to do to stop these lunatics from taking over their asylum.

Complaining is not good enough any more. Running is no longer an option because soon there will be nowhere to run. It is time to lift the arse (that's "ass" or "Bush" to Americans) from the chair and let's stop sitting down and taking this shit. People can bombard the radio phone-ins with another version of reality and when they cut you off get back again and again; tell everyone you know where they can get information to give them another fix on what is really happening; send this and other articles on these subjects to everyone you know through e-mail, fax, or post; organise PEACEFUL protests against the fascist state whenever freedoms are threatened; get people together at meetings to discuss and assimilate information the media will not tell you; LOSE FEAR AND BE IRREVERENT IN THE FACE OF THIS ARROGANT DICTATORSHIP. IT CAN ONLY SURVIVE IF WE ARE FRIGHTENED OF IT AND INTIMIDATED BY IT.

There is so much we can do if only we first decide that we want to dedicate our lives to this with an unbreakable determination that will not concede to any level of intimidation or consequences.

The Dragon is nothing like as powerful as they want us to believe it is.

Come on, what are we waiting for? - LET'S GO.

Remember:

NO FEAR!! David Icke

Thanks, www.davidicke.org webmaster Laurence Savage

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Welcome to the New and Improved Police State:

Commentary on the WTC Attacks

David McGowan www.davesweb.cnchost.com September 12, 2001

"We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so- called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already been planned to come true." 'Conspiracy theorist' Mae Brussell, 1974

I have a friend with whom I frequently disagree on matters of politics. He thinks that I am a crazed conspiracy theorist and I think that he is a reactionary fascist. There was one thing that we agreed on though. A few weeks ago, I told him that our fearless leaders seemed to be veering dangerously close to unleashing 'tactical' nuclear weapons upon the world.

Although he seriously doubted that that was in fact the case, he readily agreed that such an action would be reckless and unconscionable. He stated that he couldn't envision any scenario under which such a strike would be justified and that we should avoid at all costs crossing that threshold. Opening that door, he believed, could only serve to escalate tensions and make this a much more dangerous world in which to live.

He was one of several people who called me yesterday to discuss the alleged terrorist attacks on America. During the course of that call, he stated flatly that when the perpetrators were identified, they and their backers should be nuked. When I reminded him of our conversation of just a few weeks before, he said that things have changed now. I asked him if he had considered whether that wasn't perhaps precisely the point of the attacks. Unfazed, he reiterated his belief that I am a crazed conspiracy theorist.

Excuse my cynicism, but have we Americans completely lost our ability to think? Are we now so thoroughly brain-dead that we are completely reliant on our media resources, with their endless supply of 'experts,' to make sense of events in the world? Are we really that stupid or do our leaders just think that we are?

The actions taken on the morning of September 11 were crimes – horrendous crimes against humanity, to be sure, but in the final analysis not so very different from any other crimes. The first step in solving any crime is to look at who had a motive and who had the means and opportunity to commit the crime.

As for motive, we are to believe that a band of Islamic terrorists are the most likely suspects. But is that the case? Was it a state- sponsored terrorist group that had the most to gain by launching such an assault, or was it our own political, corporate and military leaders? While the people of the Palestinian territories may well be dancing in the streets today in celebration of the blow struck against the United States, they certainly won't emerge as the winners in this national tragedy. When the bombs begin to rain down upon them, as they certainly will, the loss of life, property and hope will be far more profound for them than it will be for the people of New York. Their short-term 'victory' will be a hollow one indeed.

This is certainly not to suggest that there are no governments, groups, or organizations around the world, or within these borders, that have legitimate grudges against the United States government. The numbers of such entities are legion. Two hundred years of imperialistic covert and overt military ventures have created a lot of enemies of the American ship of state and a tremendous amount of residual bitterness. Yet none of these groups stood to gain by launching such an attack.

The United States, on the other hand, has much to gain in the aftermath of this chapter of American history. I am not talking here, of course, about the people of this country, who will pay a steep price for the carnage of September 11. Big Brother has assured us that we will be protected from future acts of this sort, and we will welcome with open arms the repressive, overtly fascistic 'reforms' that will be enacted.

The people, of this country and of the world, are always the ones to pick up the tab for acts of gross governmental malfeasance. The people of some hapless country (or countries) that is identified as the culprit will pay with their lives and the lives of their children. The people of America and much of the Western world will pay with the wholesale stripping away of their remaining human, civil and privacy rights.

Such a scenario only serves to benefit those who sit at the top of the food chain. Our elected leaders - who are elected only in the sense that every couple of years we are given a choice between two interchangeable candidates - will revel in the free reign they will be given to ram through legislation so appallingly reactionary that it would have been unthinkable just days ago. Military spending and the militarization of the country will escalate to a fever pitch. Welcome to the new and improved police state – the largest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced the world has ever seen. With the much-lauded U.S. economy tanking and unemployment figures hitting their highest levels in years, this will come in very handy for the 'powers that be.'

The ugly truth is that all 'anti-terrorist' measures are designed not to protect the American people from attack or to protect our 'freedoms,' but to protect wealth and power - specifically the unprecedented levels of wealth currently held by corporate America - and to restrict those very freedoms that threaten their hold on that wealth.

This American tragedy, in other words, plays directly into the hands of the corporate and military elite of this nation, who have for years been propagandizing for a more belligerent and imperialistic foreign policy and for more repressive legislation here on the home front. Having been presented with a pretext to enact such measures, it is our leaders - elected or otherwise - who stand to gain the most from yesterday's bloodshed.

As for the question of who had the means and opportunity to commit these crimes, the official story holds that they were the work of a well-organized foreign terrorist organization. Officials have acknowledged that the operation was an exceptionally well-planned and well-coordinated series of attacks that required months of planning and a large network of co-conspirators to pull off.

So well-organized was the operation that government spokesmen and television talking heads (which are really the same thing) have been at a loss to explain some of the day's events. Many questions have been left unanswered and some haven't been asked at all. Some of the answers that have been offered have strained credibility far past the breaking point.

One question that has gone unanswered is how a plane was able to penetrate so deeply into the Pentagon's airspace – after two other planes had already plowed into the World Trade Center towers, no less. Despite the ridiculous current claims, the airspace surrounding the Pentagon is perhaps the most tightly controlled, militarily secure airspace in the world. This would be all the more true in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale 'terrorist' attack on New York City. Claims have been made that even if the approach of the aircraft had sounded an alarm, it would not have been targeted due to the fact that it was a commercial aircraft with many innocent lives on-board. Nonsense. Anyone who thinks that U.S. military/intelligence personnel would hesitate to target a commercial airliner is living in a media- induced fantasy world, particularly in light of the fact that two such aircraft had already been used in suicide attacks.

The question then of how this plane was able to 'elude' the Pentagon's formidable defenses is one that should receive close scrutiny from America's 'free' and 'independent' press. There is virtually no chance that that will happen. Another question that begs for an answer is how teams of presumably armed hijackers were able to breach the security measures of no less than three major airports and successfully hijack four separate flights.

Contrary to the claims now being made, security precautions currently in place in U.S. airports are anything but "lax." That fact was being implicitly acknowledged by this morning as reports began to come in claiming that the hijackers had improvised weapons from razor blades and other items carried in their shaving kits. These reports were actually carried by the network news broadcasters with a straight face.

This scenario would be laughable were this story not such a tragic one. According to the latest official stories, three to five terrorists boarded each of the hijacked aircraft. All of these terrorists, of course, were such religious fanatics that they had agreed to give their lives for the cause they believed in, and none of them presumably had second thoughts about that decision once the operation was underway.

Does anyone really believe that a few guys wielding toothbrush handles embedded with razor blades could quickly and efficiently gain control of a commercial airliner? I would think that such a group would have their hands full trying to hold-up a liquor store. How could, as has been reported, such a 'terrorist cell' possibly simultaneously overpower the flight crews and corral all of the flights' passengers into the rear of the planes?

I don't consider myself to be a particularly brave or heroic sort of guy, but I would not hesitate for a second to take on a couple of guys wielding toothbrushes, particularly if my life, or the life of my family, was on the line and if I knew that I had some sixty people (the average number of passengers on the flights) behind me who would back me up. Maybe that's just me, but somehow I think most Americans would rise to the occasion.

Nevertheless, these terrorist teams reportedly succeeded where so many other better armed terrorists have failed. The majority of hijacking attempts, as officials have acknowledged, end in failure. There hasn't been one to succeed in this country for a decade. And yet these teams succeeded, and on a spectacular scale, in four-out-of- four attempts and with only the most primitive of 'weapons.' To what are we to attribute that fact? Don't look to the media for answers.

Perhaps the most obvious question raised by the attacks, and one that officials have feebly attempted to answer, is how the planning for such an operation could have escaped the attention of the country's intelligence services. Whenever such an event occurs, the intelligence agencies rather predictably hang their heads, slump their shoulders and sheepishly grin as they explain their powerlessness to predict such things.

We did the best we could, they explain, but our resources are limited, our adversaries formidable, and our sources not infallible. Give me a break. The CIA - along with the FBI, ONI, DIA, NSC, NSA, DEA, and virtually every other three-letter acronym you could think of - constitutes the largest and most insidious intelligence network the world has ever seen. Its agents have fully infiltrated every foreign government on the planet, as well as every 'terrorist' group and every domestic resistance movement that has ever posed even a remote threat to the goals of the architects of the American ship of state. It is simply inconceivable that such an ambitious attack could have been planned, coordinated and launched without the knowledge of numerous elements of the national security state.

That is the inescapable reality that no amount of media and government spin can erase, though politicians and their media puppets will work overtime to do exactly that. One need only to turn their television off and their brain on though to see how preposterous are the claims that these attacks took the intelligence community by surprise.

Perhaps the most disturbing question raised by the attacks is what exactly caused the twin towers of the WTC to collapse? The impact of the planes affected only the upper floors of the towers; their foundations were unaffected. The UK's Guardian acknowledged that the initial impact of the aircraft would result in less stress on the building than is normally caused by high winds. The buildings were specifically designed to handle such horizontal movement.

The Guardian and its expert consultants conclude that the collapse of the buildings was the result of secondary explosions, attributed to the delayed release of the large supply of jet fuel carried by the aircraft. How though could the ignition of the jet fuel have occurred as a delayed, secondary explosion? As the endlessly played videotapes of the attack graphically illustrate, the initial impact resulted in enormous fireballs and the immediate engulfing of a portion of the buildings in flames.

It is inconceivable that the aircraft's fuel tanks would not have burst upon impact and their contents immediately have been ignited. Indeed, if that wasn't in fact the case, then how are we to explain the initial explosions and fireballs that were witnessed by the world? What exactly was it that created the spectacular initial blasts if it wasn't the jet fuel?

But if that was the case, what was it then that created the secondary explosions that appear to have occurred? These secondary blasts were acknowledged early in the day by an NBC newsman. The correspondent stated on the air that he had just talked with the fire department's public safety commissioner who verified that large secondary explosions precipitated the collapse of the towers.

A radio broadcaster on WLS in Chicago (according to a correspondent), whose wife is a CBS journalist who was on the scene at the towers, said on the air that his wife had witnessed an enormous fireball emanating from beneath one of the towers immediately before it came crashing down. What are we to make of these types of scattered reports, none of which received any follow-up coverage amidst the non- stop blizzard of media attention?

To be sure, the collapse of the towers, captured on tape for all the world to see, had the decided appearance of controlled implosions, facilitated by the precise placement of technologically advanced explosives. The world has never before witnessed such complete and utter destruction of a targeted building by an act of war or a 'terrorist' assault.

We have seen the United States target many a building for destruction. In the most recent military venture, we saw an embassy building and a television studio, among many others, take direct and multiple hits from state-of-the-art bombs and guided missiles. The buildings were devastated, to be sure, but the damage didn't come close to matching the pile of rubble that the twin towers were reduced to.

We saw a highrise Israeli apartment building take a direct hit from an Iraqi Scud missile during the Gulf war. Actually, most of us probably didn't see that, unless you happened to be tuned in to CNN for the brief few moments when the footage was aired. As it turns out, that Scud missile was actually safely intercepted by a trusty Patriot missile, or so it was claimed – just as if the footage had never aired.

The point though is that the building was hit and did suffer extensive damage, and undoubtedly at the cost of many lives. But again, the building - though sheared nearly in half - was in considerably better shape than the World Trade Center. It occurs to me then that perhaps America has invested entirely too much time and money in pursuit of creating ever more powerful and efficient weapons systems.

Who would have ever thought that the best weapon with which to reduce an entire tower to rubble was the plane itself. It doesn't even have to be a military plane – any old commercial aircraft will do. Someone obviously should have followed up on the early work done in this area by the Japanese during World War II.

In the final analysis, we must ask ourselves the following questions: Who had the means to get highly trained commando teams onto four aircraft flying out of three separate airports? Who had the ability to violate the Pentagon's airspace unmolested? What weapons were really used to commandeer those aircraft and who had the means to get them on the planes? Who had the ability to plan and execute such an ambitious, multi-pronged attack without the interference of the U.S. intelligence services? Who had the means to staff each of the four teams with at least one well-trained, and suicidal, pilot? Who had the means and opportunity to plant secondary explosive charges, if in fact these were used? Finally, perhaps the most important question to be asked is: who stands to gain the most in the bleak aftermath? It is certainly not the American people, or any resistance movement within these borders. It's definitely not the still-to-be identified target(s) of the nation's wrath (which will likely include Iraq). That would seem to sort of limit the choices.

It is quite possible, indeed quite likely, that members of some 'extremist' group served as the foot soldiers of these attacks. But it is just as likely that they were used as pawns in the global chess game that serves as our collective reality. It is also likely that these 'terrorists' were motivated by legitimately perceived grievances with the U.S. government.

Those motivations weren't likely shared with their puppeteers, however, who cynically manipulated those belief systems to serve their own ends. Most of the participants probably did not know that they were embarking on suicide missions. Quite likely only the pilots knew that, and they may very well have received a little more 'training' than your average pilot.

All of this is, by necessity, just speculation at this point. The true facts of the case will emerge over time in bits and pieces, mixed in with a healthy dose of disinformation. It matters little though in which direction those facts point. The official story has already been written.

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Jim Marrs jmarrs@ntws.net 9/13/2001

WHO'S TRULY BEHIND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA?

Many people have compared the horrendous terrorist attack on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. It is an apt comparison, though not for the reasons most people think.

For true students of history, it is now nearly beyond dispute that certain high-ranking officials in Washington, D. C. knew in advance of the Japanese intention to attack the U.S. fleet in Hawaii, yet did nothing to prevent it.

President Roosevelt, who at the time was blatantly violating the Neutrality Act, has been quoted as saying, "A Japanese attack on us would certainly fulfill two of the most important requirements of our policy [to engage America in the war despite his pledge to keep us out of war.]"

Must the citizens of the United States wait another 50 years to learn that the 9-11 terrorist attack was allowed to take place just like Pearl Harbor?

Could such an appalling scenario possibly be true?

Consider the comment of Kenneth Katzman, a terrorist expert with the

Congressional Research Service, who told the Washington Post, "How nothing could have been picked up [by U.S. intelligence agencies regarding the coming attack] is beyond me."

Simple countermeasures against such an attack now seem apparent. For example, if the airlines would assigned just one armed plainclothes security man to each flight, this tragedy may have been averted since apparently the hijackers were armed only with knives or other type blades. So, how were they able to overpower a plane load of people and, more importantly, gain access to the cockpits? Who taught them to fly jumbo jets?

As in the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the key to understanding the event lies not in who actually committed the violence but rather who was able to strip away the normal security protection.

Government and airline officials knew immediately that planes had been hijacked, yet no interceptors appeared in the air until after the attacks were completed. Who stripped away the normal security protection of America on 9-11?

At least in this most recent case, the government cannot blame the attack on a lone deranged individual, some Lee Harvey McVeigh. They must deal with a full-blown conspiracy, even though authorities were quick to point the finger at Osama bin-Laden. Any investigation of bin-Laden must look beyond the man, to the backers and financiers behind him.

The trail of the terrorists will most probably become murky, with plenty of accusations for all concerned. But one thing appears quite clear, the tragic events of 9-11 play right into the hands of persons with an agenda aimed at eroding American liberties and sovereignty.

After decades of bloated and misused defense budgets, there are now calls for doubling our defense allocation. In a time of rising recognition that the CIA is an agency never sought by the public and one which has brought so much condemnation on this nation, there are now cries for doubling its size and budget. If the chief security officer for a large company fails to protect one of its most prized assets, is he more likely to be fired or have his pay doubled?

Watch for more anti-terrorist legislation to further shred the U.S. Constitution.

As we all scramble to deal with the effects of terrorism, are we in danger of losing our few remaining individual liberties? The media blithely reported that each of the cell phone calls made by doomed passengers on the hijacked airliners was recorded by the government. Doesn't this mean that all cell phone calls are, or can be, recorded? Whatever happened to telephone privacy? Where is the indignant outcry over such Big Brotherism.

But the biggest threat comes from the inner elite of the globalist societies. Within hours of the attack, the television and radio airwaves were full of ranking Council on Foreign Relations members, such as Henry Kissinger, Wesley Clark, Alexander Haig and Strobe Talbot. Talbot, President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, told Time magazine in 1992, "In the next century [today], nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority."

No matter who was speaking, their "party line" was the same: terrible tragedy, find and punish those responsible, stop terrorism. But, of course, since terrorists move between national boundaries, we must joined with other "freedom loving" nations and work with the United Nations and NATO to combat this new menace. This is a thinly- disguised effort to have a mourning and emotional American public stampeded into their New World Order.

Also, consider that we are distracted from a faltering economy [the current crisis may require more federal financial controls], a plummeting public opinion of George W. Bush and surging energy prices.

Would leaders allow a public disaster to happen with an eye toward advancing their agendas? It's happened before. in Nero's burning Rome, Germany's gutted Reichstag, at Pearl Harbor and gain at the Gulf of Tonkin.

While we should grieve for our losses, we must keep our heads. When the emotions of the moment run hot, we must remain cool and thoughtful so that we can find who is truly behind this attack on America.

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Exchange With John Judge On WTC Disaster 9-13-1

Steamshovel editor Kenn Thomas sent a note of concern to conspiracy writer John Judge after the Pentagon plane crash, and got this response:

"I am ok thanks, I felt the Pentagon blast shake my windows and decided to take a small trip to the Maryland suburbs until the situation calmed down. It was heading fast to martial law early on here, and they were clamping the exits. So, I packed a bag and went to see friends beyond the play zone. Nasty stuff.

The non-response (ground to air missiles -ed) as the Dulles plane flew over the White House and turned to go into the Pentagon is inexplicable that late in the scenario unless this was in inside job. I am sure there is a false sponsor ready to be handed to us.

Now the global corporate/military state will divide the world into "freedom loving free market people" and "terrorists" (meaning anyone who stands up to the neoliberal takeover) and act in unison against them with impunity. The Congressional consensus will be used to bolster Pentagon budgets, create excessive security measures, limit civil liberties, unleash open CIA skulduggery, and attack progressive movements here and abroad.

Retaliation militarily is the most likely and the worst possible response to this, it will escalate it into a permanent war. Rumsfeld told the troops today to be ready to make many more sacrifices for a while. The fraudulent and failed missile defense will get funded I am sure.

But no one is asking the most basic question. If this is foreign in origin (which I think it really is not), then WHY is it happening? It is not happening in Canada, for instance (another large, relatively wealthy country of "freedom-loving" people) who also have an international presence and policy. The rationale for "terrorism" only exists when there is long term injustice and oppression to a weakened people, and without that these activities would be isolated without sanction or support anywhere.

The old saying is "If you treat people right, you can leave your door open". No amount of military retaliation and advanced security measures can do anything helpful because they discourage the self examination necessary to begin to act with justice to the world around us, to end corporate globalism and aggression, and to stop making 75% of our "aid" to others in the form of weapons, not to mention training and arming the likes of bin Laden to turn them around on us.

If we stop creating enemies then we don't have to be a fortress state of frightened people. At some point, the chickens come home to roost.

Sometimes, we bring them."

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

Why the Bush administration wants war

Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board
14 September 2001

In the midst of the hysterical war mongering of the US government and a state-controlled media that knows no shame, it is more than ever necessary to retain not only one’s composure, but also one’s ability to think, analyze, and reason. It is surely appropriate to mourn the terrible loss of life on September 11. But sympathy for the victims, their families and friends should not blind anyone to the fact that powerful sections of the US ruling elite view this tragedy as a welcome opportunity to implement a militaristic agenda that has been in the works for more than a decade.

Modern wars require a pretext, a casus belli that can be packaged to the public as a sufficient justification for the resort to arms. Every major war in which the United States has been involved since its emergence as an imperialist world power—from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to the Balkan War of 1999—has required a catalytic event that inflamed public opinion.

But whatever the nature of such trigger events, they never proved, in the light of sober historical analysis, to be the real cause of the wars that followed. Rather, the actual decision to go to war—while facilitated by the change in public opinion produced by the casus belli—flowed in each instance from more essential considerations rooted in the strategic political and economic interests of the ruling elite.

“War,” said von Clausewitz in his oft-quoted aphorism, “is the continuation of politics by other means.” This means, in essence, that war is a means by which governments seek to secure political ends they could not achieve peacefully. There is no reason to believe that this profound truth does not apply to the events that are now unfolding in the aftermath of Tuesday’s hijackings and bombings.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have been seized on as an opportunity to implement a far-reaching political agenda for which the most right-wing elements in the ruling elite have been clamoring for years. Within a day of the attack, before any light had been shed on the source of the assault or the dimensions of the plot, the government and the media had launched a coordinated campaign to declare that America was at war and the American people had to accept all the consequences of wartime existence.

The policies that are now being advanced—an open-ended expansion of US military action abroad and a crackdown on dissent at home—have long been in preparation. The US ruling elite has been hampered in implementing such policies by the lack of any significant support within the American population and resistance from its imperialist rivals in Europe and Asia.

Now the Bush administration has decided to exploit the public mood of shock and revulsion over the events of September 11 to advance the global economic and strategic aims of American imperialism. He has the full support of a debased media and a Democratic Party that is more than happy to end any pretense of opposition to the Republican right.

On Thursday Bush all but admitted as much, declaring that the atrocity carried out two days before had provided “an opportunity to wage war against terrorism.” He went on to say that the conduct of this war would be the focus of his entire administration. Such a declaration of unabashed militarism would have been unthinkable prior to September 11. But the assault on the World Trade Center had, in the parlance of imperialist real politik, created new facts.

Without having begun to seriously investigate, let alone explain, the very strange circumstances surrounding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration and the media have declared that all-out war is the only possible response to these events. This is before the government has even established the political identity of the terrorists, or answered troubling questions about how such an elaborate plot—apparently involving dozens of conspirators operating within the United States—could have gone completely undetected by the FBI, CIA and associated intelligence agencies.

Nor have the Federal Aviation Administration, the Air Force or the FBI explained the failure to issue an alert or attempt to intercept the hijacked airliners as they swerved off course and made for the nerve centers of the US financial and military establishment.

For all the claims of sorrow and sympathy, there could not have been a more timely or fortuitous event for the Bush administration than the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. When George W. Bush awoke on September 11, he presided over an administration in deep crisis. Having come to power on the basis of fraud and the suppression of votes, his government was seen by millions both in the US and around the world as illegitimate.

The very narrow social base of support his administration had in the beginning was rapidly eroding in the face of a deepening economic slump in the US and around the world. Unable to advance any solution to the growth of unemployment and catastrophic losses on the stock market, facing criticism over the evaporation of the budget surplus and the reversal of its pledge not to spend Social Security funds, the administration was showing signs of internal dissension and disarray.

Some three weeks before, on August 20, the New York Times carried a front-page article expressing the fears within ruling circles that world capitalism was descending into a global recession of massive proportions. “The world economy,” the Times wrote, “which grew at a raging pace just last year, has slowed to a crawl as the United States, Europe, Japan and some major developing countries undergo a rare simultaneous slump.”

The Times continued: “The latest economic statistics from around the globe show that many regional economic powers—Italy and Germany, Mexico and Brazil, Japan and Singapore—have become economically stagnant, defying expectations that growth in other countries would help compensate for the slowdown in the United States.... [M]any experts say the world is experiencing economic whiplash, with growth rates retreating more quickly and in more of the leading economies than at any time since the oil shock of 1973. And this time there is no single factor to account for the widespread weakness, persuading some economists that recovery may be slow in coming.

“‘We have gone from boom to bust faster than any time since the oil shock,’ said Stephen S. Roach, the chief economist of Morgan Stanley, a New York investment bank. ‘When you screech to a halt like that, it feels like getting thrown through the windshield.’”

The Times derisively described the response of the Bush administration to the unfolding crisis: “The Bush administration still puts a relatively bright gloss on the picture.” It reported with unconcealed skepticism the White House projection of a sharp upturn in the US economy later this year or in early 2002.

On the same day the Times reported that Ford Motor Co. was preparing to announce more layoffs and quoted CEO Jacques Nasser as saying, “We don’t see any factor that’s going to restore the robustness of the economy” in the next 12 to 18 months.

The Wall Street Journal provided an equally gloomy assessment, writing: “Almost a year after the slump in high tech and manufacturing began, many of the other pillars that have been supporting the economy are starting to weaken. Businesses that started slashing spending on equipment and software late last year are now doing the same on office and industrial real estate...

“Automobile sales, which were surprisingly healthy most of this year thanks to generous incentives and low interest rates, have started to slide.... Since April, most industry groups tracked by the Labor Department have been reducing payrolls.... Construction shaved 61,000 jobs between March and July, the clearest example of the spillover from high tech and manufacturing.”

The mood of gloom within business circles turned to near panic last Friday when the Labor Department’s jobless report for August showed a sharp rise in the unemployment rate, from 4.5 percent to 4.9 percent in a single month. Nearly one million jobs were wiped out in August, as job cuts hit every sector of the economy. Faced with the prospect of a collapse in consumer spending, investors rushed to dump their stock holdings. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 230 points, ending the day well below the 10,000 mark.

The economic crisis compounded a host of foreign policy dilemmas confronting the Bush administration. Washington’s policy in Iraq was in a shambles, with sanctions crumbling and the US facing open opposition from France, Germany, Russia and China to its plans for maintaining sanctions and intensifying its vendetta against Saddam Hussein. On this and other major issues the US was finding itself unable to get resolutions through the United Nations Security Council and other international bodies. On a whole host of issues—missile defense, global warming, an international criminal court—the US was in open conflict with most of its nominal allies.

The growth of social protest and anti-capitalist sentiment was expressed in the wave of “anti-globalization” demonstrations, which revealed the extreme isolation of the governments of all the major powers and rising popular discontent over their right-wing policies, seen to be embodied above all in the Bush administration.

But in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attack the Bush administration, aided by a cynical and sophisticated media campaign, has been working to whip up a patriotic war fever that will enable it to overcome, at least temporarily, its immediate problems, while creating the conditions for profound and lasting changes on both the foreign and domestic front.

In the name of national unity, the Democratic Party has given Bush a blank check to wage war, increase military spending and curtail civil liberties. As one commentator aptly put it, “We will be operating as if we have a national unity party. That means alternative voices will be suppressed.”

The Washington Post spoke for the liberal establishment in a September 14 editorial calling for the curtailment of democratic and civil rights. Entitled “New Rules,” the editorial declared: “[I]f replying to that attack is truly to become an organizing principle of US policy, as we believe it should—if the United States is to undertake the difficult and sustained campaign against those who threaten it—then neither politics nor diplomacy can return to where they were.... This is most of all true as Congress and others discuss the possible need to sacrifice privacy, freedom of movement or other liberties to the needs of domestic security.”

Tens of billions of dollars will be pumped into the economy in the form of military and security spending, and to rebuild the devastated sections of New York City. The viability of what remains of the social safety net—Medicare and Social Security—will not be allowed to stand in the way of pursuing the twilight struggle of good versus evil proclaimed by the White House and Congress.

Every restriction on the exercise of US military might and the counterrevolutionary activities of the CIA will be lifted. For years the most reactionary sections of the ruling elite, in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the publications of right-wing think tanks, have been agitating for an end to the “Vietnam syndrome” and calling for the unbridled use of military force to secure the interests of US imperialism. Now they see the opportunity to realize their agenda.

Already leading spokesmen of both parties are demanding the rescinding of the presidential order banning the use of assassinations as a tool of foreign policy. The Democrats have agreed to vote for a resolution giving the White House virtually unlimited authority to go to war against any nation that it claims is aiding or encouraging terrorists. There is little doubt that one of the first targets for a massive bombing campaign, combined with a ground invasion, will be Iraq. But other countries are certain to follow.

As one military officer said on Wednesday, “The constraints have been lifted.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the contemplated military action will “not be restricted to a single entity, state or non-state entity.” Georgia Democrat Zell Miller was more blunt in expressing the bloodlust that prevails in government circles: “Bomb the hell out of them. If there’s collateral damage, so be it.”

Senator John McCain said the US should “not rule out any force short of nuclear weapons.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in a piece entitled “World War III,” refused to make such a caveat, writing that while the September 11 attack “may have been the first major battle of World War III, it may be the last one that involves only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.”

The American people, at a moment of enormous grief and anxiety, are being told they must accept the prospect of having their sons and daughters sent to distant parts to kill and be killed, to fight an enemy or enemies yet to be named, and at the same time acquiesce to the gutting of their democratic rights.

What they are not being told is that the American corporate and financial elite, in the name of a holy war against terrorism, intends to rain death and destruction on countless thousands of people in order to realize global aims it has long harbored. Can there be any doubt that this crusade for “peace” and “stability” will become the occasion for the US to tighten its grip over the oil and natural gas resources of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian? Behind the pious and patriotic declarations of politicians and media commentators stand the long-cherished designs of American imperialism to dominate new parts of the world and establish global hegemony.

The DC Horror Show

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Suddenly, after the attack, all of our wealth and all of our freedoms are up for grabs, and not only by foreign terrorists, but by our own government and its uncritical cheerleaders. Is there a limit to how much liberty can be compromised in the name of security? How much spending Congress should authorize? How much money and credit the Federal Reserve should create? How much business can be regulated?

Apparently not. But why not? A government unconstrained by law, tradition, or public opinion is nothing short of despotic. Not everything can be justified in the name of punishment, prevention, and safety: not conscription, not the elimination of privacy, not killing innocents, and not the use of nuclear weapons that necessarily violate the tenets of just war. Yet one US Senator, no less, has called for the death of innocents on grounds that terrorists don’t distinguish between military and civilian targets. In other words, we are being told to fight terrorism by becoming terrorists ourselves.

Robert Higgs, author of Crisis and Leviathan, has shown how government grows the most during times such as these. In a usual wartime situation, the government massively expands and then falls back only partially after it is over. This creates a ratchet effect that guarantees a relentless march of the state. Every new spending program creates a precedent said to apply in peace time. How often have we heard calls for a "Marshall Plan" to solve this or that social issue?

The present circumstances are even worse than wartime, where at least there is a starting point and an ending point (though Clinton’s wars have clouded even this). A war against terrorism, already begun in the 1980s and so far spectacularly unsuccessful, promises to be perpetual because of the endless number of conceivable threats. We’ll never know if we are winning or losing the war since something as monstrously huge as the recent attack could happen anytime.

It is proposed that we be on permanent war alert, which means that we must permanently trade our liberty for a promised (but undelivered) security. Bush’s requested $20 billion, make that $40 billion and rising, for antiterrorist measures is just the beginning.

The US already spends nearly $10 billion and employs nearly 1000 people to work on counterterrorism exclusively, and it has gained us nothing. Are we really supposed to believe that quadrupling this budget will somehow work to prevent future attacks? The money so far has done nothing but saddle the American people with more armed federal agents and invasions of privacy. It’s a sad commentary that many Americans, for now, say they are willing to shell out more in taxes and give up commercial freedoms. It is even sadder to note that the purchased security won’t actually be delivered.

So far we haven’t even been spared the commentator who pops his head up to observe, after a disaster, that at least the government-directed rebuilding effort will be good for the economy. One might think that the sheer scale of the losses would be too immense for that classic Keynesian fallacy. But no: writing in Slate Timothy Noah informs us that "we live in a very wealthy nation that responds to horrible disasters by spending large sums of money." This spending will, he predicts, "provide a meaningful Keynesian stimulus to a national economy."

Must we recount Frederic Bastiat’s parable of the broken window? The story goes that a boy throws a rock through a store window, and everyone is justly sad. Suddenly, Timothy Noah’s 19^th-century equivalent shows up to say, hey, this is actually great! Now the glazer will be paid to fix it, and he in turn will buy a suit, and the process will multiply until everyone is actually made better off. What this forgets is the alternative uses of the resources that are spent in rebuilding: the unseen costs of property destruction.

And speaking of unseen costs, what about the alternative uses that might have been made of the $40 billion (for now) to be spent on counterterrorism that will go to hiring more government employees to boss everyone around? This kind of spending multiplies the damage already done by the terrorists, destroying more wealth and channeling more resources from social needs into political ones.

There have been many other equally absurd actions, all of which amount to compromising our personal and commercial liberty. The first impulse of the government in all times of crisis is control and coercion. So it was no surprise that all planes, private and commercial, were forcibly grounded, including those carrying overnight packages. But this action has already bankrupted Midway Airlines, and others will follow in the United States and Britain. If it gets worse, so will the pressure to subsidize them.

New regulations are being imposed that will dramatically increase the costs associated with air travel, some of them (like the elimination of curbside check-ins) making no sense whatsoever. The presumption is that the airline industry itself has no incentive in preventing hijacking. Well, perhaps if airline crews had not been barred (decades ago) from carrying weapons, this never would have happened. Perhaps if the airlines weren’t so busy obeying preposterous government demands (like asking every passenger if our bags have been with us the whole time) and otherwise doing things the federal way, they could have designed some serious anti-hijacking measures that didn’t also attack the paying customers. Leave it to the government to prohibit owners of airlines from defending their own property (and customers) when it is most necessary.

The coercion generated by the crisis first showed up in the harassment of gasoline retailers, who, trying to conserve resources in the face of a wildly gyrating spot-market price for gas, raised prices. To threaten them and investigate them gives us a clue into what government will do with its new powers: not go after difficult-to-find criminals, but the easy-to-find innocents who are just trying to make do.

Then there’s monetary policy, the means by which the government taxes when the legislative process seems too cumbersome. Thus the Federal Reserve injected $38 billion one day, another $70 billion the next, and established a $50 billion swap line with other central banks the next. Now that’s power. Not all of this new money will make its way into the economy; at least, that should be the hope. To destroy the purchasing power of the dollar in response to the destruction of the US financial district is a heck of "response" to terrorism.

As for the draft, someone please explain how conscripting America’s young men and women into the military – forcibly taking them away from their jobs and schools – is going to prevent more attacks like we saw September 11. It’s a power grab, of course. The government is using this occasion to do what it could only have dreamed of doing last week.

Civil liberties are already being curtailed. The government’s invasive "carnivore" software was already being shopped around the nation’s leading Internet Service Providers, to permit the feds to spy on all email. Until now, the ISPs had resisted. But in the aftermath of the new Bush "antiterrorism" act just passed by the Senate, they will not be allowed to say no.

As regards the mainstream print media, they are their usual selves: the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are both whooping it up for bombing anything and everything, on the theory that yet another display of rampant imperialism will deter future attacks and not actually have the reverse effect. By pursuing this course, we are made less secure, of course.

What, then, should the government do in this time of crisis? Less, not more. It was the US foreign policy of unyielding empire that incited these attacks in the first place. It’s hard to say when the turning point was. It might have been 1990, when the US gave tacit approval to Iraq to invade Kuwait and then bombed Iraq back into the stone age for doing so. It might have been the war on Serbia, or the bombs in Sudan, or the destruction of the Chinese embassy, or any number of other foreign adventures.

Most likely, the turning point was May 12, 1996, when Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the UN, explained to Lesley Stahl of CBS that 500,000 dead Iraqi children, killed by US sanctions, was morally justified to get Saddam. "We think the price is worth it," were her exact words, words that were mostly unreported here but which rang out throughout the Arab world. She was then made Secretary of State. That was five years ago. We continue to bomb Iraq, often on a daily basis, and the sanctions are still on. We should not do unto others what we do not want them to do unto us.

There’s never a good time to give up liberty. But when everyone else is calling for despotism to fight despotism, it’s the best time to stand up and say: We will not be moved. We need more, not less, liberty.

September 15, 2001

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

http://www.konformist.com/911/jayebeldo.htm

9-11: An Intuitive Perspective Jaye C. Beldo

Netnous@aol.com

I had just come out of meditation on the morning of September 11th when I received a phone call from my boss. "Get over here...you're never going to see anything like this." I threw some pants on and dashed across the hall and into his apartment. The first image I saw on the t.v. was the jetliner smashing into the World Trade Center and exploding. I fought the tendency to focus on the physicality of the event and managed to read the aura surrounding the building as it was impacted. As the flames billowed, a huge rift appeared above the structure and all this dark energy started pouring in. The aura around New York was torn wide open. Sensitized by the meditation, my clairsentient (clear seeing) abilities were quite heightened, enabling me to perceive these things. I made sure not to identify with what I saw as I do when meditating, but rather detached and focused on my heart chakra instead. While the horror unfolded before me I could feel something trying to cord my third chakra (solar plexus) and drain energy from me. It took everything I had not to get psychically sucked into the vortex created by the burning towers. It was nearly impossible not to gaze. I found myself becoming hypnotized by the horror unfolding before me.

I broke away and returned to my televisionless apartment and prepared for the work day. I vowed not to look at any mainstream media venues if I could help it. I had used this sanity preserving, avoidance technique on prior occasions such as when the Space Shuttle exploded in 1986. Avoiding the media has been one of the best strategies to help maintain a sense of a heart centered self, not to mention the fact that it enables me to thwart mind control most effectively.

I managed to get through the day quite well, until later that afternoon, when we went to one of our Jewish customer's house. I'm most fond of this customer primarily because of her warmth, humor and cynical wit. When she opened the door, I read her aura to see how she was handling the tragedy. It looked very similar to the aura surrounding the World Trade Center but on a microcosmic scale. Her aura was crazy (crazy literally means: full of cracks) and all sorts of dark energy spiraled around. She looked absolutely frayed, no doubt having watched the disaster over and over again, all day long on t.v. "You heard it hear first." She told us. "Bin Laden did it." Again I detached as best I could, feeling my stomach start to tighten up and outwardly went along with what she was saying. However, I knew that whatever she heard on t.v. could not be trusted in anyway. She had many cords in her third chakra. (for those of you who do not know what cords are, they are psychic cords or strings which attach to the etheric body. Cording is very manipulative. As an example, if someone wants to have sex with you but cannot tell you outright, they will cord your second chakra which is below the navel, in hopes that you will get the message and initiate something that will gratify the passive person doing the cording. A most helpful book which will clarify things like cords, auras and chakras is The Psychic Healing Book by Amy Wallace.)

On the night of 9-11, I went to bed early and could feel how the trauma was being pulsed through the atmosphere. I made sure to surround myself with bright colors and fell into a deep sleep. The next day, I woke up energized and high spirited, refusing to buy into the collective mind set that pervaded. I somehow managed to pierce through the pervading vibration of trauma, fear, hate and anger. All morning long at work I felt calm and relaxed. However, on the front page of the newspaper my boss pulled out of his bag at lunch, was the image of the plane hitting the tower. I looked at it, forgetting about the meditation technique of detaching and not identifying with what one sees. I felt nearly all of my positive energy drain out of me. My solar plexus tightened up and I began to feel nauseous. "God damned Muslims." My boss cursed. He had taken the bait like the legions of people who are not aware of how our psyches can be manipulated through the etheric body via the media. I simply went along with it, while knowing otherwise, chiming in with sarcastic comments like "Nuke em' all." I could see the dark swirls in his aura as well. I then realized that I had to be very careful about entertaining such thoughts since they were coming in through the torn aura of America and into my very own head. These negative memes were attempting to colonize my mind. Since then, I've been trying hard not to entertain violent, cynical thoughts but it has not been very easy at all. I just keep reminding myself to detach from the negativity swirling around. Please let me emphasize: detachment is not indifference.

I have received many phone calls from my intuitive counseling clients asking me how they should deal with the trauma of 9- 11. "Turn off your t.v.s and don't read the newspapers." I have been telling them. Some called back and told me that was the best thing they could have done as it restored some resemblance of peace and sanity into their lives. I suggest the same to you as well.

Meditation has been most difficult since the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Through the chakras located in the arches of our feet we can gain much information about what is happening to the earth. Through the feet chakras, I've been sensing the 9-11 trauma being impulsed through throughout the globe to further manipulate us on a massive scale. Most U.S. citizens are probably not aware of these kind of manipulations, especially those who do not have some kind of regular spiritual practice like yoga and meditation. It is this kind of awareness that the powers that be don't want us to have. I'm convinced that the more we fixate on the plethora of horrible images provided to us, the more psychically shut down we will become. As I got into a deeper meditative state, I paid close attention to the trauma coming up through my legs and into my first chakra, the chakra of life force, survival and past lives. I detached, breathed bright red into my groin area and relaxed. I could feel fear diminshing as I did this.

There is much sleight of hand involved in the propaganda that is proliferating itself through the military controlled media at the moment. I suggest paying attention to how your physical body, especially the solar plexus, responds to the images and the various forms of disinformation being fed us and begin to rely on this intuitive information instead of what is coming through the t.v.

Last night as I tried to fall asleep, my guardian angels came in and offered to do some healing on my crown chakra (the chakra of wisdom). Grateful for these very wise beings's help (wise enough to have learned how to excarnate once and for all from the earth plane), they seemed to be giving me some needed protection from the dark forces at large. This made it easier to see the entities taking the opportunity of entering in through America's torn aura and the aura of individuals as well, possessing people, no doubt fueling the growing hatred towards the perpetrators of the crime whoever they may be. While I was receiving this healing, negative entities tried their best to possess me. I felt bleedthrough from parallel universes of an overtly Nazified variety, universes taking advantage of the torn, collective aura of the United States. Many negative thoughts over took me even though I was aware of the etheric manipulations at hand. I successfully detached from these entities with the help of my positive guides and slept peacefully.

I only offer this intuitive perspective of 9-11 as an alternative to the highly manipulative, Corporate media blitzkrieg technique of radically impacting the collective psyche with such 'unforgettable' images of the disaster. From a karmic point of view, what happened on 9-11 is nothing new compared to previous disasters in the past such as found in Atlantis, India during the time of the Mahabharata War, or Nazi Germany. The only difference now is how we choose to respond. We can react to what has happened and fall into the mind control traps deliberately set up for us (supporting full scale war for example or whatever else George W. decides to do) or we can respond from a place of spiritual evolvement where we can see opportunities to further understand the abuses of power both within and beyond ourselves.

There is another recently published book I recommend: Catastrophobia by Barbara Hand Clowe. I once attended a talk given by this astrologer cum Pleiadian diplomat, on how the disaster of Atlantis is still alive in our cellular bodies. As she elaborated on this, I could feel the collective trauma of the sinking of Atlantis in the audience. Ever since Barbara's insightful talk, I have been most attentive to how this trauma and others like have been manipulated by the powers that be, especially through the Hollywood apparatus. Now we have before us, an excellent opportunity to study, from an etheric/spiritual perspective, how the 9-11 trauma is being used to mind, if not body and soul control the masses. We only need to overcome our personal fears and misgivings of using such perceptive abilities that I believe we all have, in order to do so.

Jaye C. Beldo contributes to the Konformist, Steamshovel Press, Disinfo.Com, ViewZone and other venues on and off line. He can be reached at Netnous@Aol.Com

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9-11: An Intuitive Perspective Part III

by Jaye C. Beldo Netnous@aol.com

Recently I was sent a review copy of Barbara Hand Clow's 'Catastrophobia: The Truth Behind Earth Changes in the Coming Age of Light' (published by Bear and Company). The timing could not have been better considering the recent 9-11 disaster and the impact that it has had on our psyches. Barbara posits that a global catastrophe nearly 11,500 years ago (namely a neighboring Super Nova called Vela which exploded) wreaked profound havoc with the planet and that this trauma , amongst others occurring since then, are still alive in the cellular memory of many people. As an intuitive myself, I must admit that as I read Clow's work, I could feel the very trauma she talked about starting to surface within, stuff I thought I had cleared out long ago through various transformational means. It seemed to be the bsolute core trauma buried beneath all others. Instead of panicking and opting to distract myself via consumerism or t.v., I did some re-birthing instead, a form of breath work that assists in putting oneself into an altered state conducive for retrieving and safely processing such memories that the merely rational mind cannot. The session was most painful, not because of the memories of the disaster itself which I saw most vividly, but rather that there is little to no support in our society to give voice to these kind of things that are so deeply embedded in us. In fact, we are discouraged from doing so in multivaried ways. Articulating the trauma would initiate the beginnings of freeing ourselves from the elite controllers who depend on keeping memories of these disturbances unconscious in order to perpetuate a kind of undefinable, unlocatable fear lingering just beneath the surface of things. This is done in many ways, mostly through relentless promulgation of disinformation via the news and movies that can only be cut through using our intuitive facilities, namely our auras and chakras, components of the subtle body I mentioned in Parts I and II of this article. Barbara backs up her views with some very thorough and impressive research, citing the works of D.S. Allan and J. B. Delair, authors of 'Cataclysm! Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.' Charles Hapgood, Hertha Von Dechend and Giorgio de Santillana, authors of 'Hamlet's Mill' which posits that many of the world's mythologies the 26,000 year long precession of the equinox . (Currently we are precessing from Pisces into Aquarius). She calls many of these authors 'new paradigm writers' who have to endure the virulent, ongoing criticism of the orthodoxy. She also cites Immanuel Velikovsky, who wrote 'Worlds in Collision' and suffered such hostility from the establishment that he, like so many others such as Tesla, never really recovered from it, although he did write a most appropriate book called, 'Mankind in Amnesia' in 1982. Various one dimensional conspiracy writers afraid of shifting the paradigm to something more positive have been criticizing me lately for my 'irrational' takes on 9-11 where I dare to say that we can counter the negativity and fear blasted at us by using our intuitions. Such criticism can be partly blamed on how knowledge of the subtle body was initially transmitted to the west in the first place.

It is unfortunate that much of the information on chakras and auras was first imported to America via the Theosophists in the latter part of the 19th century. Characters such as Madame Blavatsky with her dubious and checkered past (Masonic chess board?) have only served to taint the paranormal, discrediting what is in fact a viable means of inquiry. (also check out a book called: 'Madame Blavatsky's Baboon' and 'The Occult Establishment' by James Webb not to mention 'Arktos' by Jocelyn Godwin on how Nazis used Theosophical views to justify their delusions of Aryan supremacy). Fortunately however, we can dissociate ourselves from the New Age con artists of yore who have given alternative spirituality a bad name. There are many credible people now who are beginning to see the enormous potential we have in freeing ourselves from covert control by using our intuitive intelligence. Barbara Brennan, who I mentioned previously, author of the highly recommended 'Light Emerging' used to be a NASA scientist until she heard a calling to write her books. Against the advice of people around her, she sold her house to finance the publishing of her books. She also wisely abandoned her career at NASA and possibly avoided nefarious cabals within the agency (see the book Nasa, Nazis and JFK edited by Kenn Thomas). Barbara has enjoyed much success because of the effectiveness of the knowledge she provides her readers, free of quasi-mystical taint. Having followed many of the exercises she offers in her books, I must say that I myself have experienced many beneficial results of which I'm currently incorporating into my own methods of subverting the controllers at large, at least within the sphere of my personal life for the moment. One book I forgot to mention in Part II, that shows direct scientific parallels/analogies to auric fields and chakras is 'Wheels of Light: A Study of the Chakras' by Rosalyn L. Bruyere. I recommend this book for those of you that are naturally skeptical of the paranormal. (the word skeptic comes from a Greek word meaning: 'one who examines carefully' and doesn't just mean someone who merely disbelieves something). After she effectively describes the human auric field and its role in maintaining physical, mental and emotional health, she then includes information on the electromagnetic spectrum which she invites the reader to compare so as to see the similarities at hand between science and intuitive perception.

It is interesting to note that visible light occupies a very small segment between infrared and ultra-violet light. Those who think that what we can physically see is all there is are quite mistaken by their perceptions for we have the means to perceive the effects of these surrounding frequencies if we train ourselves to do so. She also makes sure to give a scientific analogy to the human aura as well via additional diagrams of electromagnetic fields which show remarkable, dynamic similarities to those of the subtle bodies. Knowledge of these parallels are most helpful for a number of reasons. Primarily such comparisons offers us an opportunity to bridge the gap between empirical science and intuition. More importantly, conspiratorially speaking, we can use these parallels to further grasp how electromagnetic mind control effects us and how we can counter these influences, primarily through intuitive awareness. There are others as well who have abandoned moribund, orthodox science to embrace intuition and its potentials to initiate a positive change in our world. Most noteworthy is the writer Fred Alan Wolf, a theoretical physicist and American Book award winning writer. In his work 'The Spiritual Universe: One Physicist's Vision of Spirit, Soul, Matter and Self' (published by Moment Point Press), he defends the notion of the multi-dimensionality of soul and spirit against the ravages of materialist science which reduces soul to the mere physical body. Like Rosalyn Bruyere, he provides many parallels between science and spirituality, mostly through the medium of Quantum Physics. There are many wonderful illustrations in this work which show the parallels (and intersections) between science and spirit. Lastly I want to mention the work of Itzhak Bentov, author of 'Stalking the Wild Pendulum' and 'A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness'. Itzhak was a mechanical engineer who 'combined a brilliant mind for mechanisms and structures with a lifelong interest in meditation to describe quantum physics and the advanced states of higher awareness in ways easily grasped by readers.' He is another author who has successfully shown the parallels between science and spirituality. His quirky drawings in both books are most enjoyable. His writing is most accessible to the layperson. Sadly, perhaps ironically, he perished in the DC-10 crash in Chicago in the late seventies which, incidentally is described in a harrowing piece called, 'Exposing the Nazi International' in 'Secret and Suppressed', published by Feral House. No doubt there is some conspiracy hidden in this one. Itzhak was a most advanced soul and no doubt his writings threatened the establishment at large. I most recommend his works, especially 'A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness' for it will inspire you in most unimaginable ways (especially if you meditate after reading his work!). I only mention these authors and their books for those of you who are fed up with the gloom and doom paradigm perpetually pouring out of the t.v. and have some extra time on hand to do some more constructive research and inquiry into intuitive healing and its potentials. Recently Disinfo.Com posted my: How to Fuck (with) The Skull and Bones Society. Please check it out for I describe how I use one of my imaginal/intuitive psychniques to subvert the occult order. So far I've been getting positive, intelligent responses to the piece which I'm most thankful for. Go to:

Stay tuned for an upcoming article: Mind Control in Black and White.

Jaye C. Beldo is a writer and intuitive counselor. He can be reached at: Netnous@aol.com

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Michael Moore mikemail@cloud9.net

9/13/01

Across America Tonight ...

Dear Friends,

I am on the road tonight, the only way to get out of L.A. and back home to our daughter and our friends in New York City. Oddly enough, I have never driven across this vast country. My wife and I have now stopped in Flagstaff for a few hours sleep before moving on.

The sorrow and anger builds across America. Talk radio tonight was filled with calls for carpet-bombing every Arab country. Many want revenge, blood. But a surprising number of people have called for us to not add to the killing of more innocent humans. The rest stops and the convenience stores along the way were filled with quiet, solemn people, many of whom, like us, can get home no other way than by this four-day trip.

Our daughter is fine, mostly frightened by my desire to fly home to her rather than drive. Once again, I was outvoted 2 to 1. This is nothing new.

We have learned of more people we know who have lost their lives. Bill Weems, who worked as a line producer for us this year, was on the flight from Boston that crashed into the World Trade Center. He was such a sweet and decent soul. Such senseless madness.

The children of New York who are orphaned tonight ... what do we say or do? I will do my part -- anything, something -- as soon as I get to New York. But it will never be enough.

The firefighters of New York: they are on every other block, every day, and they are your best neighbors. Sitting out on the sidewalks in front of the fire stations, a good word and a kind smile to all who pass ... now, 350+ of them gone, having risked their lives to save the victims of a carnage they soon became part of.

A good friend from Flint is a clerical worker at the Pentagon. I have heard no word about her condition. I have tried contacting her family to no avail. Her son, Malcolm, worked on our show. I cannot find him. I keep getting tears in my eyes. Once she gave me a tour of the Pentagon, took me everywhere, and got such a kick out of taking me around this building I used to march on. Will our mutual friends who know Barbara, and know how she is, please write me? Please.

The man who occupies the White House cried today. Good. Keep crying, Mr. Bush. The more you cry, the less you will go to that dark side in all humans where anger rages to a point where we want to blindly kill. Your dad's and Reagan's old cronies -- Eagleberger, Baker, Schultz -- are all calling for you to bomb first and ask questions later. You must NOT do this. If only because you do not want to stoop to these mass murderers' level. Yes, find out who did it. Yes, see that they NEVER do it again.

But GET A GRIP, man. "Declare war?" War against whom? One guy in the desert whom we can never seem to find? Are our leaders telling us that the most powerful country on earth cannot dispose of one sick evil f---wad of a guy? Because if that is what you are telling us, then we are truly screwed. If you are unable to take out this lone ZZ Top wannabe, what on earth would you do for us if we were attacked by a nation of millions? For chrissakes, call the Israelis and have them do that thing they do when they want to get their man! We pay them enough billions each year, I am SURE they would be happy to accommodate your request.

But I beg you, Mr. Bush, stay with the tears. Go today to comfort the wounded of New York. Tell the mayor, a guy most of us have not liked, that he is doing an incredible job, keeping the spirits of everyone up as high as they can be at this moment. Being there for a city I believe he loves, his own cancer still with him, he goes beyond the call of duty.

But do not declare war and massacre more innocents. After bin Laden's previous act of terror, our last elected president went and bombed what he said was "bin Laden's camp" in Afghanistan -- but instead just killed civilians. Then he bombed a factory in the Sudan, saying it was "making chemical weapons." It turned out to be making aspirin. Innocent people murdered by our Air Force.

Back in May, you gave the Taliban in Afghanistan $48 million dollars of our tax money. No free nation on earth would give them a cent, but you gave them a gift of $48 million because they said they had "banned all drugs."

Because your drug war was more important than the actual war the Taliban had inflicted on its own people, you helped to fund the regime who had given refuge to the very man you now say is responsible for killing my friend on that plane and for killing the friends of families of thousands and thousands of people. How dare you talk about more killing now! Shame! Shame! Shame! Explain your actions in support of the Taliban! Tell us why your father and his partner Mr. Reagan trained Mr. bin Laden in how to be a terrorist!

Am I angry? You bet I am. I am an American citizen, and my leaders have taken my money to fund mass murder. And now my friends have paid the price with their lives.

Keep crying, Mr. Bush. Keep running to Omaha or wherever it is you go while others die, just as you ran during Vietnam while claiming to be "on duty" in the Air National Guard. Nine boys from my high school died in that miserable war. And now you are asking for "unity" so you can start another one? Do not insult me or my country like this!

Yes, I, too, will be in church at noon today, on this national day of mourning. I will pray for you, and us, and the children of New York, and the children of this sad and ugly world ...

Yours,

Michael Moore mmlfint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com

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Michael Moore mikemail@cloud9.net

Somewhere in the Land of Enchantment

9/15/01

Dear Friends,

Our second day on the road back to New York City...

I am awakened by the sounds of the "Star Spangled Banner" coming from the lobby of the hotel where we have spent the night in Flagstaff. The memorial service has begun at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, and it is on the TV in the lobby. I go down to check it out.

A group of older black women are standing there watching it, tears in their eyes. I am reminded by a sign we saw on the way into town on a Hopi Indian store: "America Land of the Free Home of the Brave." You probably can't find two groups more denied the American Dream than these two and yet they grieve like everyone else over the attack in New York.

Passing through the Indian reservations of Arizona and New Mexico you are struck by the abject poverty of these places, and reminded of the 500 years of state-sponsored terrorism against these people, a virtual genocide. How many millions were killed by the American settlers and soldiers? I can't remember now. But the living results are brutally evident in the shacks and trailers along old Route 66.

My wife and I make our way into town and find a Catholic church, San Francisco de Asis, where a service is being held to honor the dead. The church itself is remarkable for its matriarchal images, with a large mural of Mary and her mother and her family above the altar, and then a statue of her in place of the usual crucified Jesus.

We stand, as there is no room to sit. Minutes go by and the service does not begin. The priest comes and takes a seat in the 7th row pew as if he were just another mourner. After a long while, someone gets up from her pew and reads from the bible -- but the reading is not the one about vengeance and bloodshed. Rather, it's about beating our swords into plowshares. Oops, off message!

We leave the church and both of us are filled with an overwhelming despair. We still have not heard from friends in Manhattan or from our friend Barbara who works at the Pentagon. We pass by a store -- "Guns and Groceries," the sign proclaims. On the way out of town, the cell phone rings. It is Barbara and her husband Sam calling from outside the Pentagon. She tells me she is OK and that there is a large airplane wheel sticking out of the side of the building where she works as a clerical. The morning of the crash she was late for work because she was taking Sam to the airport. I start to cry again. She says thanks and "Don't worry I'm OK," and I hear Sam cracking in the background "That's debatable" and they both laugh.

I pull off the road in Winslow, Arizona, and tell Kathleen I want to get a picture of her on a corner. She doesn't know why and, knowing her intense dislike of The Eagles, I tell her it's a song by Jackson Browne (which is technically true; he co-wrote it). She obliges, but when she reads this I'll be in big trouble.

I continue to be amazed at the large number of people -- both on the radio and those we run into -- who are completely opposed to some half-cocked military response to what has happened. No matter what the media tells you or shows you, I am convinced there is a majority of Americans who, though they want justice and want to be protected from further attacks, do not want George W. Bush to start sounding like Dr. Strangelove.

Speaking of Strangelove, this past week began with one of the most powerful pieces on "60 Minutes" in a long time. They laid it all out: How the United States -- and specifically Henry Kissinger -- plotted to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Chile in the early 1970s. The plot succeeded, President Allende was assassinated, and thousands of other Chileans were brutally tortured and murdered. Today, many within the new government of Chile would like to put Kissinger on trial for these acts of terrorism. Do you think the United States will give him up?

Well, that story was forgotten, 48 hours later, as quickly as it had been forgotten 30 years ago.

A few of you have written me to say, Please, Mike, don't talk about this stuff, at least not right now. We need to bury the dead.

I agree. And I apologize to any who have taken offense. No one wants to talk about politics right now -- except our installed leaders in Washington. Trust me, they are talking politics night and day, and those discussions involve sending our kids off to fight some invisible enemy and to indiscriminately bomb Afghans or whoever they think will make us Americans feel good.

I feel I have a responsibility as one of those Americans who doesn't feel good right now to speak out and say what needs to be said: That we, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants. I know it's a hard thing to hear right now, but if I and others don't say it, I fear we will soon be in a war that will do NOTHING to protect us from the next terrorist attack.

I have received more emails this week than ever before -- about a thousand every four hours. Ninety percent of them are from people who also refuse to be drawn into some form of senseless bloodletting, and who agree that we need to find the right way to bring those to justice who committed these acts.

I have been touched by many of your comments and am so sorry I cannot respond to them while I am on the road. But I am sharing your feelings with those I meet (and, I have to say again, it is a Godsend to have an invention like the Internet where I can travel across the country like this and be connected to so many thousands of other Americans …and to so many foreigners who grieve for us and fear for what our leaders may do).

We pass over the Continental Divide and Rush Limbaugh babbles on about whom we must bomb. He signs off, and I am sure he is on his way down to the nearest recruiting station to sign up -- for surely he would not expect your son or daughter to risk their lives for freedom while he just sits back and enjoys his new half-billion dollar contract.

Coming into Albuquerque, Kathleen is leafing through the Frommer's travel guide for a place to spend the night. She finds what seems like a nice spot near the White Sands national park, but then reads this passage: "Occasionally the road to the hotel is closed for nearby missile tests." Yes, welcome to New Mexico, the "Land of Enchantment," just one big testing ground brought to you by the originators of every single weapon of mass destruction known to man. We opt for the downtown Hyatt.

The hotel is like a ghost town. "Every convention cancelled," the lady at the counter tells us. I ask the bellman how many people are actually here tonight.

"9.9 percent occupancy," he tells me. Hmmm. Why not just say 10%?

I guess that would be asking for too much optimism on a night like this...

I will write again when we get to our next stop, Oklahoma City.

Yours,

Michael Moore mmflint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com

PS. Three days ago, I learned from someone at ABC News that ABC had videotape -- an angle of the second plane crashing into the tower -- that showed an F-16 fighter jet trailing the plane at a distance.

I have not shared this with you as I had not personally witnessed that tape myself and did not want to contribute to all the unsubstantiated rumors. It just came across on the TV that the government admitted they did dispatch fighter jets when they knew the planes were off course.

From this point, I will pass on any censored information to those of you in the mainstream media who are being blocked from reporting.

Is it becoming more clear now that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania was shot down to prevent it from attacking its destination?

The truth is harrowing, unbearable -- but it must be told to us. A free people cannot make an informed decision if they are kept in the dark. Let's hear ALL the truth NOW.

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Michael Moore

An OK City

9/16/01

Dear Friends,

Pulling out of Albuquerque on Saturday, on our way back to New York City, we pass by the exit that invites us to visit the "National Atomic Museum," but figuring we probably couldn't get a New York Times there, we decline the offer and head out across New Mexico.

The amazing thing is that you can even still get a Wall Street Journal -- anywhere and everywhere. As I write this late Sunday night, the captains of Capitalism are declaring that the stock exchange will re-open on Monday, even if they don't have running water and phones, just to show its enemies that NOTHING can stop the forward accumulation of wealth.

The vast majority of the dead are those who labored to bring them that wealth, and it dishonors them and their families to so callously crank up the greed machine within days of this tragedy. Their bodies - - thousands of them -- are still buried under the rubble down the street, but, hey, why wait to give them a proper burial -- let's get busy making some money! I can only hope that the stench from the rotting corpses of their former employees will haunt them for the rest of the day and remain in their consciences for the days to come...

The Wall Street Journal has not missed a day of publication, even though much of their operation has been moved to New Jersey. Perhaps this explains why they lifted a portion from my first letter to you last Wednesday and reprinted it out of context. As this is a publication whose editorial department has no moral compass, I shouldn't be surprised that they would appropriate my words and twist them to fit their own conclusions. I thought I'd write them a letter about this, and then I went, Ah, jeez, do I have to explain satire to these people? I gotta drive through Texas!

We entered what I thought was Texas, but we were never sure because there was no "Welcome to Texas" sign on the road. All states greet you with some oversized pride billboard when you cross their state line. Not Texas. Is the implication that you don't need to know you are in Texas because, as long as you are in the United States, you're essentially always in Texas? Kathleen said let's just get across this state as quick as we can.

We stopped for gas in Groom, Texas, a skanky little hole of a place where someone's typo must have caused the letter "r" to be hit instead of the intended "l." A newspaper article near the cashier proclaimed that Groom's mayor has been the big winner in the Texas state lottery -- twice. I wasn't sure if the posting of this news was to warn us not to bother buying a lottery ticket here 'cause the fix is already in or to simply remind us just how lucky we should feel to be in Groom. I bought my wife two souvenirs from the store: a t-shirt that read, "I'm Smarter Than Him. I Can Count to 10," and a "Foxy Lady" car decal. These did not make up for the "The Eagles" reference in my last letter.

It seems like every sign and flashing marquee along the road has some sort of message regarding the massacre in New York: "GOD BLESS AMERICA UNLEADED. $2.09 GAL." and "REMEMBER WORLD TRADE CENTER PORK CHOP BREAKFAST $5.99." But then a Southern Baptist preacher comes on the radio and says the following: "Perhaps America has some repenting to do. We propped up the Shah of Iran when maybe we shouldn't have. We have used the poor of the world to make our goods so we can make a profit when maybe we shouldn't..."

These were stunning words to hear, but it coincided with much of what we have been picking up along the road; namely, that many, many Americans are not in support of gong off half-cocked and bombing innocent people, no matter how much we all want those responsible to be brought to justice. I continue to be hopeful...

Sunday morning in Oklahoma City. The clerk at the hotel notices the California license plate on our rental car and asks about where we are going. I tell him New York City, and he tells me that this has been an especially hard week for Oklahoma City. He puts his hand out to me and says he went to three funerals himself after the Oklahoma City bombing, one of which he sang at. "It was the father of my best friend." Tears are pushed back.

We go four blocks down the street to the memorial. The streets around it had been blocked off all week for fear that someone may want to bomb it again. The barriers are down now, and the place is full of people stopping to pray and reflect. A large granite slab says "9:03" and I am struck by the fact that this is the same exact minute that the second plane slammed into the World Trade Center.

Kids are writing messages to the people of New York with chalk on the sidewalk. Nearby, a man tells me he hopes that our leaders pay heed to the words inscribed on the memorial about violence never again being used. Another lady points out that the business of vengeance is the Lord's, not ours. Again, I am hopeful, but the sadness of this site is too overwhelming, and we leave and don't say much for the next hour or so on the road.

I wonder if New York will honor those lost by turning the former blocks of the WTC into its own quiet, peaceful memorial site. Or, as the pundits insist, will they rebuild it immediately to show our enemies that the business of America shall continue uninterrupted? At that moment we enter the "Will Rogers Turnpike," and I think I know what he would say about all this, let alone what he would say about this state naming a toll road after him.

After passing by the birthplace of French's Mustard somewhere in Missouri, we eventually make it to the city that houses the National Bowling Hall of Fame, and spend the night...

Yours,

Michael Moore mmflint@aol.com www.michaelmoore.com

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9/14/2001 Acharya S

acharya_s3@yahoo.com

"Attack on America" - Questions and Comments

First of all, let's not jump to conclusions, but consider several factors that raise questions, so that we may scientifically investigate this nightmare, rather than simply believing one way or another. Suffice it to say that there is reason to investigate such an enormous catastrophe. Some of the issues in this "Attack on America" are as follows:

1. The disintegration of the buildings, which had to be one of the most astonishing and mindboggling sights of all time. The official explanation is that the intense heat from the plane-fuel fire destabilized the steel frames, which buckled under the weight of the destroyed upper floors. At least one independent engineer, David Rostcheck, thinks this scenario is implausible, raising a number of issues and concluding that the destruction resembled a planned demolition. Indeed, it did, as did that of the third building (WTC #7), which, presumably, also disintegrated because of the heat. The WTC architect is said to be "puzzled" over the buildings' reaction (appalled and horrified is probably more like it).

2. The hijackers were Arabs and, ostensibly, devout Muslims; yet, at least a couple of them were known to have been getting drunk in Florida bars days before the crime, an act that is against Islamic law and a capital offense in Saudi Arabia.

3. One of the hijackers, Mohammed Atta, was a suspect in a 1986 terrorist attack - yet apparently no intelligence agency was keeping tabs on him, even though he was using his own name. During the WTC bombing in 1993, the FBI had a mole or moles in at least one of the top positions within the "terrorist cell" for a year or so. It is possible that there were up to 50 plotters in this current crime (so reports the LA Times) for over a year, yet not a peep was heard by American intelligence? Just what do gov't intelligence and terrorist squads do?

4. The "prime suspect" Osama bin Laden was a CIA-trained operative, as were the Afghan mujahadeen (now the Taliban) - when did he become a "rogue" and just what were the Soviets and CIA fighting over in Afghanistan? Could it be the lucrative opium trade, and is this why the likes of Richard Armitage are now being invoked? Or is there some other profitable natural resource or strategic positioning in Afghanistan?

5. What happened to the truck bomb found on the Geo. Washington Bridge outside of Manhattan? Who was driving the truck, and why aren't we hearing anything about it now?

6. How did the gov't know that the White House and Air Force One were also targets?

7. Did the passengers of United 93 deliberately bring down the plane, or was it shot down?

Just some things to consider, among other disturbing thoughts.

Acharya S http://www.truthbeknown.com

Links:

Engineer:

http://www.topica.com/lists/superconsciousness/read/message.html? mid=901353522&sort=d&start=1163

Architect: http://www.jpradio.com/Archive/2001/09/11/asx/010911swi.asx

LA Times & 50 Terrorists:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091301terror.story

bin Laden/CIA: http://www.public-i.org/excerpts_01_091301.htm http://msnbc.com/news/190144.asp?cp1=1

Americans cannot ignore what their government does abroad

by Seumas Milne

Thursday September 13, 2001 The Guardian (UK)

Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don't get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force - just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.

But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of "civilisation", with its overtones of Samuel Huntington's poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.

As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush's father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel's 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.

If, as yesterday's Wall Street Journal insisted, the east coast carnage was the fruit of the Clinton administration's Munich-like appeasement of the Palestinians, the mind boggles as to what US Republicans imagine to be a Churchillian response.

It is this record of unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world's population, for whom there is little democracy in the current distribution of global wealth and power. If it turns out that Tuesday's attacks were the work of Osama bin Laden's supporters, the sense that the Americans are once again reaping a dragons' teeth harvest they themselves sowed will be overwhelming.

It was the Americans, after all, who poured resources into the 1980s war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, at a time when girls could go to school and women to work. Bin Laden and his mojahedin were armed and trained by the CIA and MI6, as Afghanistan was turned into a wasteland and its communist leader Najibullah left hanging from a Kabul lamp post with his genitals stuffed in his mouth.

But by then Bin Laden had turned against his American sponsors, while US-sponsored Pakistani intelligence had spawned the grotesque Taliban now protecting him. To punish its wayward Afghan offspring, the US subsequently forced through a sanctions regime which has helped push 4m to the brink of starvation, according to the latest UN figures, while Afghan refugees fan out across the world.

All this must doubtless seem remote to Americans desperately searching the debris of what is expected to be the largest-ever massacre on US soil - as must the killings of yet more Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday, or even the 2m estimated to have died in Congo's wars since the overthrow of the US-backed Mobutu regime. "What could some political thing have to do with blowing up office buildings during working hours?" one bewildered New Yorker asked yesterday.

Already, the Bush administration is assembling an international coalition for an Israeli-style war against terrorism, as if such counter-productive acts of outrage had an existence separate from the social conditions out of which they arise. But for every "terror network" that is rooted out, another will emerge - until the injustices and inequalities that produce them are addressed.

One step nearer a Middle East bloodbath

http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/

By John Keegan Wednesday 12 Sep 2001

'KILL one, frighten a thousand" is the terrorist watchword. Yesterday, a terrorist organisation, or group of organisations, killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

The atrocity will frighten not merely individuals, but whole populations and the states that rule them. It was a dark event in the history of human liberty. The most likely outcome is the imposition of measures to restrict freedom of movement and residence. Such measures will be ineffective in preventing a repetition of the disasters, but will be made all the same.

The introduction of identity cards, compulsorily to be carried at all times, is a probable response, even in countries where "police papers" are regarded as repugnant. Registration of residence is another, and notification of change of dwelling. Officially or spontaneously, surveillance networks will emerge, in order to enforce residence controls at the local level. There will be a huge increase in the amount of personal information entered into government computer databases, and a consonant increase in the numbers of personnel employed in internal population control.

Such measures will, in a comparatively short space of time, transform the atmosphere of social life in all countries with reason to fear this new style of terrorist attack. There will be a return to the mood of the Second World War, remembered popularly as a time of neighbourly closeness. It was also a time of snooping, informing, poison-pen letter writing and, of course, intense xenophobia.

It should not be forgotten that, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the immigrant Japanese population of the American West Coast, several hundred thousand in number, were deported from their homes and locked up in remote detention camps. The United States will not start locking up Muslims tomorrow - it has yet to be established that the perpetrators were Muslim - but, if an Islamic organisation is identified as responsible, life for Muslims inside the country will become socially difficult quite quickly and may be legally circumscribed soon after.

The advancing tide of human rights litigation will be thrown into reverse. Aliens protesting at refusal of admission or at detention once admitted or at expulsion will find that new laws, hastily enacted, have abolished the rights on which they and their lawyers expected to take their stand. The withdrawal of human rights provisions will be widely welcomed by the established population, which regards such laws as unfairly favouring incomers, social misfits and the undeserving.

The reaction may be sharpest among the young, who, traditionally more open in their dealings with strangers and foreigners than the middle-aged, also come into contact with them more closely and freely. Friendly campus life for Middle Easterners may soon be a thing of the past. An event of this dimension can arouse latent nationalist passions and hatreds very easily and, if it suddenly becomes fashionable to display a violent patriotism, as it may, the next generation or two may be entirely different from the casual, obsessively tolerant teenagers of the 1990s.

Meanwhile, whatever external military action the United States government decides to take will be warmly endorsed by old and young alike. The difficulty in the immediate aftermath is to identify a target and the possibility is that Washington will strike at almost any suspect - Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, perhaps all three - simply for the satisfaction inherent in retaliation. Another difficulty is that there are, after the internal and foreign wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, not many targets of value left in those countries, which made poor objectives for punishment in any case.

If Israel were, unprompted or nudged by Washington, now to decide to terminate the existence of the Palestinian Authority, destroy its structures and re-occupy the West Bank completely, those measures would be widely supported in America, just after a moment when it seemed that opinion in the United States was tiring of its traditional support for Israel and becoming ready to accept a further withdrawal and an abandonment of the most exposed settlements. One undoubted effect of the World Trade Centre disaster is to heighten the likelihood of war in the Middle East, which may indeed, in a perverse way, have been its planners' immediate desire.

There will, as an afterthought, be an even more immediate result of yesterday. Do not expect to be allowed to take hand baggage of any sort on flights to or within the United States. Expect delays of hours at check-in, invasive body searches, rejection of luggage and the presence in the seat next to you of an armed sky marshal, ready to shoot it out at 30,000 ft with anyone reckless enough of life to attempt a hijacking again.

John Keegan is the internationally famous writer of nonfiction books, including The Second World War, The Face of Battle, and A History of Warfare.

Bush's Press Conference: Into the Abyss

<http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/rozoff/abyss.htm >

by Rick Rozoff 12 September 2001

[Mr. Rozoff is an editor of Emperor's Clothes]

As many of you have, I just watched US President Bush's White House press conference on yesterday's gruesome events in New York City and Washington, D.C. Bush and the United States federal government have officially declared war...only it is not evident against whom. Subsequent reports indicate that Bush will appear before the U.S. Congress to invoke the War Powers Act, passed by the House in the 1970s to limit a president's ability to wage war unilaterally and arbitrarily, but destroyed as an effective mechanism for doing so in April of 1999 when the Clinton Administration, for the first time in US history, was denied authorization to continue a war - against Yugoslavia - in a 213-213 vote in the Congress. Within an hour of that vote a Clinton National Security Council spokesman was on national television shrieking that not only would the bombing not stop, but that it would be intensified. By the US Congress accepting that crude diktat and nevertheless appropriating funding for the continuation of the illegal war, it definitively signalled the end of the US Constitutional role of America's formal representatives to oversee and rein in the chief executive - half a president, half a monarch - in future acts of illegal military actions and aggression abroad. It appears that each successive American administration pushes yet further the boundaries of armed adventurism and catastrophe. As all the news commentators assure us, Bush will receive near-unanimous carte blanche authorization to wage war whenever, wherever and against whomever he finds it expedient to do so. The US Congress, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, avowed war hawks and alleged Progressive Caucus members, will grant him whatever he requests: The funds and support to attack any country or countries, even those not even remotely implicated in yesterday's attacks, and the use of whatever weaponry, conventional and otherwise, he should choose to employ. What in fact Mr. Bush will soon be armed with - by that assemblage of professional politicians on the Hill who yesterday evening broke into a spontaneous chorus of God Bless America, right out of the closing scene of the revanchist Hollywood film, The Deer Hunter - is an unlimited, permanent blank check to wage la guerre eternal - war without end. The White House, with none of the fictitious foreign policy fissures we've heard so much about, and its diehard loyalists on both sides of the Congressional aisle, have been evoking the specter of Osama bin Laden to rally hateful and revengeful public sentiment and to personify the oft-repeated "evil" that threatens the United States and, to quote the president, "all democratic and freedom-loving people" - no other of whom, it should be noted, seems to be on the alleged hit list of Mr. bin Laden. Furthermore, and ominously, Bush threatens not only to attack - recall this is in his words a state of war - the actual perpetrators of yesterday's attacks (whomever they may be), but "their harbors." Not those who allegedly harbor them, but their harbors. To be consistent, which is to say honest, Bush, as his legion of intelligence operatives could readily tell him, would have to identify who has and still is supporting the villain of this dangerous melodrama, Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden worked hand in glove with the US Central Intelligence Agency since the early 1980s in establishing his Maktab al-Khidamar network, which raised money and recruited jehadis - the so-called Afghan Arabs, estimated to be some 10,000 strong - to overthrow the secular Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. He was a joint asset of the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence, which the Afghan Northern Opposition, Russia and India insist still supports and controls him and his current Al-Qaida operation. The latter is supported by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates...all three loyal US and British clients regimes and recipients of Anglo-American military protection and largesse. So if Bush is looking for harbors to bomb, he knows where they are located. He also knows where they are not. And where and who they are not are the likely targets: Iraq, Syria, Libya and Iran. All four are not only not linked to bin Laden in any conceivable manner, but instead are vocal opponents of him and his activities; are in fact potential victims of the same. An audio voice-over somehow got on an American television network yesterday that said: Bin Laden, who has assisted forces in Somalia, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kosovo.... The link has never been broken, of course, and the CIA's Frankenstein monster still serves its purposes.

HRC RESPONSE TO COMMENTS OF JERRY FALWELL AND PAT ROBERTSON

STATEMENT BY ELIZABETH BIRCH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Our country is struggling to cope with the monumental horror of Sept. 11, 2001. We are grieving those lost and consoling those who have lost much. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans were among those killed and among those working to save lives. Like all Americans, we are coming together in the spirit of community to face the unimaginable challenges ahead. Sadly, one of those challenges includes confronting the dark prejudices that continue to haunt our daily existence.

The words of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson yesterday were stunning. They were beyond contempt. They were irresponsible at best, and a deliberate attempt to manipulate the nation's anger at worst. Falwell's subsequent attempt at apology fell woefully short.

The words of these men are similar to the acts of equally contemptible retribution that are being waged against people of Middle Eastern origin or appearance in some areas of our country. This is not a time for scapegoating, it is a time for unity. To blame blindly, based on prejudice and rage, represents an ominous part of our world and we must work to overcome it wherever we find it. It should be soundly condemned by all of us as we struggle to focus our attentions on healing the pain of our nation.

Partial transcript of comments from the Thursday, September 13, 2001 edition of the "700 Club"

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters - the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats - what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact - if, in fact - God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.

JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time - calling upon God.

PAT ROBERTSON: Amen

It ain't Pearl Harbor, its Remember the Maine!

By Kris Millegan 9/15/01

The scripts of ops are filled with feigns and sleights and our current situation is no exception.

Reflecting that the multi-generational cult tends to use recycled "plays" to do their dirty work, it seemed to me that the current "action" is one much more resembling the time line and sequences of the 1898 War with Spain. Pearl Harbor, though makes a more poignant backdrop and helps to confuse issues.

During the lead-up to the Spanish-American War, certain forces for many years had been trying to inflame the nation into a war with Spain. The majority of the population expressed desires for a peaceful settlement of the "Cuban Question." There were years of "yellow journalism" and then an "attack" on the USS Maine, February 15, 1898. War whoops were trumpeted by the press and then "after some "patience" we went to war in late April. Teddy Roosevelt was an Asst. Secretary of the Navy. His boss went home early one day and he sent a pre-arranged message to Dewey and the first action of the war was in the Philippines, not Cuba.

We would fight a bloody two-year war against the Filipinos. Bonesman WH Taft would become Civil-Governor of the Philippines. Opium would soon be declared illegal and the smuggling would begin anew. More about this at www.ctrl.org/boodleboys

Will Bonesman and fellow Brotherhood of Death member George W Bush after feigning to Columbia, which is already within much of "their" control, really be going after Afghanistan with its huge opium production capabilities? Is the sleight of hand so visible on Boy George's face really another war to consolidate the drug trade? Did the taste of poppies and profit during the Mujahedin salad days just wet the "boys" appetite?

Will it be talked about on CNN?

This is serving as a catalyst to awaken humanity at a deep level. The truth about who is controlling this planet, why and what we can do about it, is coming to the forefront

The Author is not known to us as this article came to us by e-mail

In the wake of all that has happened, and is still happening, it can be difficult to not be extremely discouraged, among other things. Consequently, I was inspired to share the following with you. I have received powerful 'other dimensional' confirmation of the benefits we will receive from this painful wake-up call. Here are a few, along with pivotal lessons I've learned on my journey, that I believe are universal lessons that humanity is in the process of learning:

1. Humanity is awakening to EACH OTHER and will no longer walk blindly through life without making eye contact and connecting with their fellow human beings. And we are awakening to ourselves as INDIVIDUALS and will begin to come into our individuality. Our fears of what other people might think of us will no longer control us. And we will look within ourselves for answers. We are all part of the collective soul, yet still individuals. It is imperative that we embrace each others' differences and not attempt to police people back into being 'like everybody else.' Our eons of sleep walking are coming to an end.

2. Gone are the days of burying our heads in the sand and not wanting to deal with what's going on in the world. The world now INCLUDES the United States. We are entering a deep period of soul searching and introspection, among other things, which will ultimately bring us to consistently deeper and deeper levels of happiness, peace and compassion for all.

3. This is serving as a catalyst to awaken humanity at a deep level. The truth about who is controlling this planet, why and what we can do about it, is coming to the forefront (though not through the mainstream media…tv, newspapers, magazines). If you are one who does not know these things, you can simply voice your intention aloud to the universe...that you are ready to be led to the truth...and you will be. Because we live in a free-will zone, our lives cannot be interfered with for our highest good, unless we call it forth. But your mere intention, voiced aloud, will put the universe's wheels in motion and the truth will be revealed to you. The mainstream media is extremely controlled and does not allow for dissemination that goes against what the controllers want you to believe. The internet is an open forum and, consequently, allows the truth (and untruths) to be revealed. When you find your truth, you will know it, though you'll likely experience deep levels of shock, betrayal and disbelief. (We've always heard that the truth is stranger than fiction.)

4. After we have discovered the truth, we will likely experience deep feelings of shock, betrayal, pain, fear and disbelief. We get to honor and have gratitude for these emotions, for they are our teachers. We get to process these emotions and come to a place of compassion, after we have felt the dark emotions that arise…and after we have learned the lesson we wanted to learn. We will come to compassion and gratitude for all, knowing that everything is a reflection of us and that we wanted to learn something from it.

5. We get to realize that everything is connected and that the universe is a mirror of ourselves. We get to realize that the world is constantly reflecting aspects of ourselves, back to us, so that we can heal. When we are open to seeing this and healing, our lives will shift dramatically. The world reflects back to us things that we either do ourselves, or that we judge. We get to heal our patterns and come to compassion for ourselves and others. But we cannot come to true compassion until we FEEL whatever dark emotions come up, and honor them, and learn what we wanted to learn from them. Then they can leave.

6. We will come to realize that in a relationship with two beings, when one's energy shifts, so does the other, automatically. When we are no longer willing to give our power away to those who would wish to control us, they will no longer be ABLE to control us.

7. When faced with unwanted 'negativity' in our lives, we get to realize that when we can ask and answer the following questions for ourselves, we will have learned the lessons we wanted to learn and will no longer need that 'negativity' in our lives. It will then leave.

Below you will find 'The Nine Steps of Compassion' (written by Jelaila Starr www.nibiruancouncil.com This has assisted me PROFOUNDLY. This propels you forward in learning the lessons you set up that you wanted to learn. After all, we came here for soul growth and our lives move forward with dramatic evidence once we begin learning the lessons we wanted to learn. When this happens, we will consistently do more and more of what we came here to do, the stuff that fulfills us (even for pay!!!). Through this process, we are able to release ourselves and others from the emotional and physical 'stuckness' of repeating the same old patterns of behavior that we've been possibly repeating for eons. We are all playing roles for each other, and when we release ourselves and others from having to play particular roles, we awaken at consistently deeper levels, move forward dramatically in our lives, attain more peace, happiness and deeper levels of compassion for all.

1. LESSON: What is the lesson I wanted to learn regarding this person (people) and the conflict we are experiencing? 2. CONTRACT: What is the 'contract' I made with this person who is assisting me in learning this lesson? 3. ROLE: What is the 'role' this person (people) is playing to act out his/her/their part of the contract? 4. ASPECT: What is the aspect of myself this person is reflecting back to me? 5. GIFT: What is the gift this person is giving me by playing their role?

(By this point, you should be feeling gratitude and compassion. If not, it is powerful to go back and start with step #1 again.)

6. ACCEPTANCE: Can I accept the role this person has played, along with their actions, to help me learn this lesson? 7. ALLOWANCE: Can I allow myself to let go of my anger towards this person who played the role to help me learn the lesson? 8. RELEASE: Can I release this person from blame? I AM NOT A VICTIM, THEY ARE NOT A VILLAIN? Releasing someone from blame is different than forgiving them. Forgiving someone is what we do when we feel they have sinned against us, as in being victimized. Release is the key element in the formula. Release is created by our compassion for the other person. 9. KINDNESS: Now that I have released this person, can I be kind to him/her and if so, how can I do it and when will I do it? A nice way to show this is by sending a card and thanking them for what they have taught you. If it is not possible to contact them, you can send a message (or simply send light) to her/his soul/higher self.

Once the formula is complete, it is time to do something with the 'contract'. The contract is energy, so change its form. Example: Envision the contract dissolving into a thousand units of light energy and then send it someone ill, or deposit it into an energy account to manifest a desire like a house. Do this while breathing intensely to release the darkness out through the high heart chakra (located above the heart, in the energy field of the body). After the darkness is gone, visualize light being poured into your body.

I receive constant confirmation of the power of this formula. When I go through the formula concerning a conflict I'm having with someone, it has been miraculous to watch how almost instantaneously their behavior changes, after I've learned the lesson. Just imagine what could happen if we all released the 'dark forces' who are controlling this planet from their role!!! When we learn what we wanted to learn from them, we will not need them anymore.

Here is a quote I like from Deepak Chopra in a piece he wrote that has been circulating the internet over the past few days. "Tribal warfare has been going on for two thousand years and has now been magnified globally. Can tribal warfare be brought to an end? Are patriotism and nationalism even relevant anymore, or is this another form of tribalism?"

(We will all be looking closely at the methods that have been used to control the masses and we will come to deeper levels of clarity and enlightenment.)

Many of you have assisted me in learning these powerful lessons. I am full of gratitude. Thank you.

Remember, it's always darkest before the dawn. The sooner we can shift our energy and the paradigm of control on this planet, the sooner we will break free from being controlled, and the sooner we will come into fully who we are. We will eventually be able to create heaven on earth. But this cannot happen until we know the truth, stop giving our power away by allowing others to control us and stop attempting to police people back in who step out of being controlled. So let's come into our power and create paradise!!!