Saturday, February 11, 2006

[911InsideJobbers] Bush saying he saw first plane hit tower

http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/audio/BushSawPlane.mp3


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Media Matters - Milbank, Matthews falsely suggested that only Democrats and "poor Republicans like Bob Barr" question the legality of NSA program

Media Matters - Milbank, Matthews falsely suggested that only Democrats and "poor Republicans like Bob Barr" question the legality of NSA program

Re: [911InsideJobbers] Another 9/11 WTC Planted Witness

I'd say bldg. 7 vicinity of Vesey St. lookong south.

Rosalee Grable <webfairy@thewebfairy.com> wrote:
Google Video sure is cool!!

This one shows window washers going about their normal duties on a
building in front of the trade centers.
Somebody better than me at geography will have to tell which building
this is.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-926819146692237326


Bill Giltner wrote:
> He says his name is Eric Lerner (Learner?).
> I could not find a matching pic or other info with google.

> See video here:
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4266798521868931180&q=wtc
> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4266798521868931180&q=wtc>


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The Real News Project - Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

The Real News Project - Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown


Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

(Full Text Version)Release Date: Feb. 6, 2006REALNEWS EXCLUSIVECopyright © 2006, Russ Baker/Real News Project, All Rights Reserved
By Russ Baker
Russ Baker is the founder of the Real News Project and author of this article, is a longtime, award-winning investigative journalist and essayist. His work has appeared in many of the world’s finest news outlets. The Real News Project is a new organization dedicated to producing groundbreaking investigative reporting on the big stories of our time.
Jim Watson/Getty Images
FEMA Director Michael Brown explains Katrina situation to President George W. Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
Days after Louisiana’s governor declared a state of emergency and the National Hurricane Center warned the White House that Hurricane Katrina could top the New Orleans levee system, the only FEMA official actually in New Orleans itself— Marty J. Bahamonde —was not even supposed to be there. He had been sent in advance of the storm and had been ordered to leave as it bore down, but could not because of the clogged roads. Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, was known to have made it to Baton Rouge but seemed out of reach. On Wednesday, Aug. 31, with tens of thousands trapped in the Superdome and looting out of control in the parts of the city still above water, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown directly: ''I know you know, the situation is past critical…Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water.''' The response, when it came several hours later, was from a Brown aide, and did not address the warnings, but noted Brown’s desire to appear on a television program that evening. It included this key caveat: ''It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner.'' A week later, Brown would be replaced as on-site manager of the disaster. Blamed for his role in one of the largest domestic debacles in American history, Brown was still thinking of his own comfort: "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep," he told AP. In the midst of America’s worst natural (and manmade) disaster, it became clear that Brown was indeed lost in Margaritaville. What has grown all too apparent in the months since Katrina is that much of the Bush-appointed federal leadership is every bit as inept and unqualified as Brown. Each new crisis seems to expose still more cronyism and patronage at the very top of the country’s leading agencies. The Medicare administrator Thomas Scully came from a job with the hospital association, stayed just long enough to pass the controversial and messy if business-friendly Medicare drug benefit, then left to become a drug industry lobbyist. Other stories are emerging at departments ranging from the Small Business Administration to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. And the head of the White House Office of Federal Procurement Policy had no prior experience in government contracting; he has since been arrested in connection with the sprawling corruption investigation surrounding lobbyist Jack Abramoff. From Harriet Miers (a Supreme Court nominee with no judicial experience) to Julie Myers (a virtual government neophyte named to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency), Bush has set aside principles of sound governance to reward loyal operatives and shore up personal and party alliances. Sometimes, his tactics are transparent. Miers was a longtime legal adviser and trouble-shooter to Bush; and Myers, the niece of the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had at the time of her nomination recently married the chief of staff of her boss-to-be, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. We still do not know the true extent to which the government has been filled with Michael Browns. This is in part because of the media. At one time, major news organizations had a reporter assigned to each large federal bureaucracy, making it harder to sail these appointments through and then hide the incompetence and malfeasance. Now only a disaster can shine the spotlight. But Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud and effective agency, into a national laughingstock? On any level, it makes absolutely no sense that Michael Brown should have been holding any major government post. Prior to joining FEMA, his professional pinnacle had been to serve as an inspector of Arabian Horse judges; his highest governmental job had been an assistant to a city manager in a small Oklahoma city decades ago. "Brownie" had done no known political work for George W. Bush. He was not an industry figure. He was not even among the many longtime allies of the Bush family. The only answer the public has ever gotten in the aftermath of Katrina as to why Michael Brown headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a peculiar and highly dissatisfying one: Joe Allbaugh wanted him there. Allbaugh is the brash and powerful but little-known Bush confidant who preceded Brown as FEMA director. When Allbaugh came to Washington, he brought Brown with him and rapidly promoted him until Brown was positioned to take over the agency. But why Michael Brown? Why, out of all the people Allbaugh had met over three decades as a GOP operative, did he place such confidence in a failed lawyer whose last job was a troubled tenure with an obscure association of show horse owners?When pressed, the taciturn Allbaugh tersely replied that Brown was a lifelong friend in whom he had confidence. To this moment, that has remained the official, indeed only, explanation of how and why Michael Brown was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina struck. But a Real News Project investigation, encompassing scores of interviews and hundreds of documents, has uncovered another reality. It begins with this astonishing fact: nearly all of Joe Allbaugh's friends and acquaintances say they had never heard of Michael Brown, never met him, never even seen the two men in each other's presence. To them, Michael Brown is a complete stranger. Allbaugh's explanation of why he chose Brown as his heir apparent at FEMA baffles one and all.The truth, RealNews has learned, is that the relationship between the two is a decades-long hidden partnership designed to advance both men's business and personal interests. By all appearances, that relationship encompassed Allbaugh's decision to ask Bush to let him run FEMA, and then his decision to turn the place over to Brown so he could profit from their ties.Indeed, as soon as Allbaugh left the agency, he began cashing in. Today, both Allbaugh and Brown are consultants, making money off their connections at FEMA and in the administration—tattered and tarnished though their legacies may be. And now FEMA is staffed by others put into position by the two men and run by David Paulison, best known for having advised Americans to stock up on duct tape as protection against future terrorist attacks.Is this really just about incompetence as a byproduct of a deeply ideological presidency? Or has a debilitating "culture of corruption" become deeply embedded in agencies like FEMA on which we literally rely for our lives? And just how far into the Bush White House does this dismaying story reach? MEANWHILE, DOWN AT THE PADDOCK
Jocelyn Augustino / FEMA Photo Library In a more perfect world, the media, the Congress and engaged citizens would have wanted to know a bit more—indeed a lot more—about Joe Allbaugh and Michael Brown before confirming them in important managerial positions. Even a hard look at Brown’s last job before FEMA would have set off the appropriate alarms.Brown's decade as Commissioner of Judges and Stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA) represents the longest employment he ever had, and, arguably his most prestigious and greatest accomplishment. That Brown nevertheless knew it was a singularly inappropriate qualification for the leadership of FEMA is evident from FEMA's official Brown biography, posted on its website, which did not mention this job at all. Brown, it turns out, had good reason to be modest about this portion of his career.When the new post into which Michael Brown stepped at IAHA was created, the organization's members were told that their leadership had sought out a person with several key characteristics: competency, experience, and total independence from the cronyism of the horse world. In fact, what IAHA members got was the virtual opposite. In retrospect, it looks to some like the fix was in. Brown's job was to address concerns about the integrity of the horse judging process. But the main thing—almost the only notable thing—Brown did in his years with the IAHA was to pursue a politically-motivated investigation of the sport’s most successful trainer, a man who had angered powerful people with connections at the top of the Republican Party. Karl Hart, a Florida lawyer and longtime IAHA member who headed the group's legal review committee, describes Brown's efforts in this regard as an “obsessive vendetta.”The trainer, David Boggs, was accused of cosmetically altering the appearance of a show horse, a serious violation of competition rules. Brown ordered Boggs banned from the show circuit for five years, a Draconian punishment tantamount to putting the trainer out of business. Boggs’s competitors were delighted.David Boggs (who did not respond to interview requests) was, by most accounts, a talented and dedicated trainer whose successes on the circuit were well deserved. But according to Hart and others, he was envied and even hated by several extremely rich Arabian Horse owners—owners who happened to also be very large Republican donors, including the late Bob Magness, a founder of the TCI cable giant; David Murdock, the Dole food company billionaire; and the late Alec Courtelis, a Florida developer. Courtelis had been one of George H.W. Bush’s major fundraisers, and the elder Bush was a frequent guest at Courtelis’s horse farm during his presidency. At an April 1990 fundraising dinner in Florida, Bush introduced Courtelis with the words “Here’s a man who breeds race horses for the same reason he works so hard for the party: only one place will do for Alec—first place.” To this day, Hart (along with other longtime IAHA elders) says he’s not sure whether or not Boggs was guilty. (IAHA's top administrators declined requests for interviews about Brown.) Since the horse in question is today the preeminent sire of the breed, Hart thinks genetics may have been more of a factor in its near-perfect profile than the putative illegal cosmetic surgery. In any case, Boggs filed a battery of lawsuits against both the association and Brown, the financial toll of which contributed to the association’s near-bankruptcy and eventual merger with another group.There is no evidence that the big donors knew in advance about plans to hire Brown; Courtelis and Magness are deceased, and Murdock did not respond to an interview request. Yet, Brown's performance clearly pleased influential sectors of the IAHA, as is apparent from the special treatment he was accorded. While other staffers had to report to work each day, Brown, on a full salary, was allowed to work from his sprawling, mountain-air home in Lyons—more than an hour’s drive north of IAHA’s headquarters in Denver. His lifestyle was so pleasant and relaxed that some in Lyons assumed him to be semi-retired. James Van Dyke, chef-owner at Lyons’ Gateway CafĂ©, says Brown had leisurely lunches at the restaurant almost daily. “He seemed to have a lot of time on his hands,” says Van Dyke. Brown’s single-minded pursuit of Boggs contrasted sharply with a pronounced reluctance to pursue another case that seemed to have considerable merit—one involving Murdock’s trainer, who was accused of filing false papers for a show horse. Ironically, it would be Murdock himself, in his zeal to help Brown’s cause, who would eventually sink him. One day, he mentioned to Hart that, at Michael Brown’s request, he’d written him a $50,000 personal check, ostensibly for a legal-defense fund to deal with Boggs's suits. Hart was staggered to hear this, since the association was already paying Brown’s legal bills. Hart took Brown aside at an IAHA board meeting and told him what he knew. Brown panicked. “He grabbed me, literally, and pushed me into a closet,” says Hart. “He said, ‘Is there any way you and I can work this out?’” There wasn’t, and Brown was terminated immediately. But only a few months later, in February, 2001, he resurfaced— as general counsel and later deputy director and chief operating officer of the vast bureaucracy at FEMA (his positions before he took over the agency altogether.)While most folks who knew Brown over the years were startled to see a person of such modest accomplishments in a high Washington post, the IAHA brass was not. As Hart recalls, “Brown had been saying for six months or more that, if Bush was elected, he was going to have a high position in Washington because he was very close to someone who was very active in Bush’s campaign.”
HOW MIKE MET JOE
Alex Plummer / FEMA Photo Library Why exactly would this apparent incompetent be tapped for one of the most sensitive jobs in post-9/11 Washington? The key to that mystery lies in the career of Joseph Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s adjutant since 1994, who first met Brown back in the 1980s when both were young men starting out professionally in Oklahoma. Typical of those baffled by the revelation of Allbaugh and Brown’s mutually beneficial business and personal relationship is Mike Williams, one of Allbaugh’s closest friends and a boating buddy. Williams, who stays in regular touch with Allbaugh, says he doesn’t know Brown at all. As to Brown’s appointment at FEMA, “I’m surprised by that.” Williams says Allbaugh never had an entourage he could have brought along to Washington: “He didn’t really have any people. He was pretty much a one-man show. (Neither Allbaugh nor Brown consented to an interview.)Contrary to early, widely-disseminated news accounts, Allbaugh, 53, and Brown, 51, were not college roommates — nor did they even attend the same university. The two men's public lives and career paths up until FEMA look like parallel lines on a chart — distinct and unconnected. Yet there was a connection, one that only showed up through extensive records searches. The Real News Project has uncovered documents showing that, in the early 80s, as Brown was finding his professional footing and Allbaugh was already rising in the Oklahoma Republican apparatus, Allbaugh moved into an Oklahoma City house next door to the brother of Michael Brown's wife, Tamara. Bill Oxley, Michael Brown and Tamara Oxley Brown had all grown up together in the small Oklahoma Panhandle town of Guymon. (Bill Oxley’s telephone number is unlisted; he did not respond to a note left at his house requesting an interview)The first verifiable direct link between Allbaugh and Michael Brown is in an obscure company called Campground Development Corporation, which Brown and his brother-in-law, Bill Oxley, formed in 1985. For two years, records show, Campground Development employed Joe Allbaugh as a state capitol lobbyist. Prior to that, Allbaugh himself had started an oil-and-gas partnership called Great American Resources, and brought in Bill Oxley's wife as a partner. The secretary and treasurer of that firm was Allbaugh’s then-wife, Gypsy Hogan, who says she had no idea what the business was about and wasn’t comfortable with large amounts of unexplained cash flowing in – or Allbaugh’s request that she sign a series of blank checks. When she began to demand answers, she says, Allbaugh angrily warned her to mind her own business. Hogan also remembers that, shortly before she asked him for a divorce, Allbaugh claimed to be in the C.I.A.As Allbaugh was pursuing his private ventures, he was also moving up in the G.O.P. firmament. He’d started in college as a driver for U.S. Senator Henry Bellmon (Republican of Oklahoma and longtime friend of George H.W. Bush), then became Bellmon’s field representative before becoming an operative for the national Republican Party. In 1976, he held a top post in the statewide Ford for President campaign. By 1980, Allbaugh was traveling widely, working on campaigns throughout the country; in 1984 he rose to be deputy regional coordinator for the Reagan-Bush reelection campaign, responsible for 11 Western States. That year, by his own account, he met George W. Bush, who was in Oklahoma City on behalf of his father’s campaign.As Allbaugh was helping elect Republicans, he was also helping himself along the way. Among his investors in Great American were several big GOP donors, including Mabel McPhaill, a wealthy widow from Visalia, California. According to her grandson, Russell Gates, who accompanied her to several fundraising events, “All she did was give money.”But not just to the GOP. Records obtained by The Real News Project show that in 1984, while running the regional Reagan-Bush reelection campaign, Allbaugh personally borrowed $24,000 from McPhaill. He never repaid the bulk of the debt. When McPhaill died in 1996 at age 92, her $3 million inheritance had shrunk to a net worth of $50,000 — with much of her fortune, according to Gates, being enticed into GOP causes and dubious investments like Allbaugh’s. It is doubtful whether, prior to his meeting George W. Bush, Allbaugh’s business ventures ever made money for anyone, himself included. Archives in Fort Worth, Texas, contain a file from 1990 detailing bankruptcy proceedings in which Allbaugh and his second wife, Diane, unloaded nearly $300,000 of debt, ranging from a $65,000 home loan to a $400 balance on a Foley’s Department Store charge card – while their gross income was over $80,000 annually. Allbaugh neglected to disclose the bankruptcy and related lawsuits during the Senate hearing to confirm his appointment as FEMA director, in 2001. On a sworn disclosure form, when asked whether he had ever been a party to any administrative proceeding or civil litigation, he simply wrote “no.” That’s a potentially problematical answer, and of heightened relevance since Cheney aide Scooter Libby’s indictment on charges of lying to a grand jury and to investigators. Says G. Jack Chin, an expert on testimony and Co-Director of Arizona University’s Law, Criminal Justice and Security Program: “People don’t forget going bankrupt, so I’d think a strong case could be made for perjury.”That Allbaugh would not want his insolvency made public is unsurprising. As George W. Bush’s campaign manager, he would preside over a record-breaking fundraising spree engorged on promises to credit issuers that new laws would make it more difficult for ordinary citizens to declare bankruptcy. He also might have faced scrutiny over some of his business associates: Grant Forth, another limited partner in Great American Resources, would later be convicted in a Nevada federal court of mail and wire fraud and serve time in federal prison. In Oklahoma, Allbaugh was perhaps best known for his fearlessness in pursuing deals that raised grave conflict-of-interest questions. In 1987, he was again working for Henry Bellmon, now governor of Oklahoma, as a top aide who interacted with highway officials. In December of that year, court records show, Allbaugh took a $30,000 bank loan guaranteed by a large road contractor who was engaged in a steady stream of disputes with the state over shoddy work practices. Allbaugh never repaid the loan and in 1990 the court ordered that his wages be garnished. Neal McCaleb, the man who ran Oklahoma’s Transportation Department at the time, would later be appointed by President George W. Bush as U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. (Shortly thereafter, Allbaugh’s wife would be accused by a McCaleb subordinate of improperly lobbying McCaleb, a Chickasaw Indian, on behalf of client tribes seeking beneficial gaming decisions.) From there, the stakes got higher. In 1988, Allbaugh left government to take a job with Stephens Inc., an investment-banking firm run by an old Bellmon friend. When Allbaugh arrived, Jack Stephens was busy currying favor with Vice President George H.W. Bush, then likely to be elected president. He gave $100,000, the legal maximum, to Bush’s campaign and helped bail out the vice-president’s son, George W. Bush: it was Stephens who helped arrange for a Saudi oil magnate to buy an ownership stake in Harken Energy, W.’s oil company, which was struggling to stay afloat.Allbaugh’s ability to hop back and forth between the letting and the getting of contracts was clear to all—including Allbaugh himself. When a reporter from the Daily Oklahoman observed to Allbaugh that he had gone from serving as Bellmon’s Oklahoma Turnpike Authority liaison to working for Stephens Inc., which was hoping to do business with the Authority, Allbaugh replied, “Golly, what a coincidence.” In September 1990, Allbaugh left Stephens for reasons unknown. His resume suggests that he was then unemployed until February, 1991, when he reappeared back on the other side of the customer-service counter, this time as deputy secretary of transportation under Democratic governor David Walters. (A grand jury later issued eight felony indictments against Walters, who pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge of violating state campaign-contribution laws.)Allbaugh’s arm's-length friend Brown, meanwhile, was racking up his own record of dubious public service throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. In his much remarked-upon first job, as assistant to the city manager of Edmond, Oklahoma, he was closely allied with the town’s mayor, Carl Reherman, who had been Brown’s political-science professor in college. His immediate boss from those days, city manager Bill Dashner, characterized Brown as a "mole" for Reherman, providing him with information regarding controversial development projects over which the two quarreled. In an interview, Reherman denied that, and noted that the council voted unanimously on most matters. Perhaps the biggest bone of contention over the years was a public-works project that became so expensive the city defaulted on its payments to the Army Corps of Engineers—the same highly politicized outfit with which FEMA is joined at the hip. Brown did not mention this experience during his confirmation hearings. (Brown would later be exposed, during the Katrina debacle, for having tried to exaggerate his credentials for FEMA by falsely telling the Senate that he was an “assistant city manager,” responsible for police, fire, and emergency services. As negligible as this position sounded, in truth, he’d been even less, a mere assistant to a city manager—“more like an intern,” the town’s P.R. liaison told Time.)Whether he began as gopher or go-getter, Brown moved quickly after his arrival in Edmond into a series of posts of increasing influence, including election to a short stint on the city council and a job with the state legislature, where he helped draft legislation creating the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA), a little-known public-power entity that he would later chair. The attraction of this unpaid position was explained by Brown, who noted to others that it allowed him to interact with major bond-underwriting firms, all clamoring for the group’s lucrative business. When Brown was forced to relinquish his seat on the utility board because he had moved from Edmond, he found his way back by persuading the town of Goltry, Oklahoma, population 800 and one stop light, to join the energy consortium and make him its representative.In a questionnaire he supplied to the Senate during his confirmation process, Brown wrote: “Michael D. Brown Hydroelectric Generation and Dam Project Named in my honor by the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority Kay County, Oklahoma, 1988.” That minor tribute (dubbed by one wag “Dam Michael Brown”) would amount to his sole pre-Katrina familiarity with the subject of flood control. But according to the longtime OMPA general manager, Roland H. Dawson, the facility itself is actually called Kaw Dam, while the only tribute to Brown is a plaque from the board he chaired. After passing the Oklahoma bar in 1982, Brown moved to the oil boomtown of Enid, where he was hired by the law firm of Stephen Jones, a flamboyant attorney who went on to defend Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. There, according to his other sister-in-law, Brown bobbled a wrongful-death suit for a woman whose husband’s car was hit by a train when crossing signals failed to work. When the firm busted up, literally, after a fistfight that left Jones sporting a shiner on the front page of the local paper, the partners divvied up the staff. Thirty-four staffers found immediate work. Brown was one of two staffers no one wanted. “When I saw Brown up there at FEMA, I had a premonition of bad things to come,” recalls Jones. In the ensuing years, Brown would be sued for skipping out of shared law offices without paying his share of the rent—a piece of civil litigation he (like Allbaugh) neglected to include on forms submitted as part of his Senate confirmation proceedings to become deputy director of FEMA. This despite the obligation that federal nominees disclose such litigation. He would also be believed by his sister-in-law to have aided her brother, Bill Oxley, in changing their father’s will in a way that left the Browns and Oxleys living well while she and her husband were reduced to virtual paupers. During those years, if Brown's resume is to be believed, he was also doing legal work on behalf of the Oklahoma Republican Party.All of this was, of course, mere cold French fries compared to what would come. For Michael Brown, the good times would not begin to roll until early 2001, with a call from Joe Allbaugh. For Allbaugh himself, the good times began in early 1994, with a call from George W. Bush. BUSH’S ENFORCERThe official story is that Bush’s gubernatorial campaign lacked a strong hand at the tiller, and that Henry Bellmon’s people recommended Joe Allbaugh as just the man to steer the campaign to victory. “He said he’d been involved in campaigns in 37 states by the time he got to Bush,” says Dave McNeeley, a former political columnist for the Austin American-Statesman. Whether that was literally true seemed less important than the ties Allbaugh claimed to Bush’s father, who in 1992 appointed him to something called the Arkansas-Oklahoma Arkansas River board. George W.’s father had an eye for problems that might sneak up on his kids—and for identifying people who could help make the problems go away. (The elder Bush's office did not reply to a request for an interview.)In newspaper articles, Allbaugh explained his role in the Bush gubernatorial campaign as making sure the trains ran on time, and mediating the strong personalities of Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. To Bush’s Brain and Bush’s Mouth was added Bush’s Muscle. At 6-foot-3 and 275 pounds, Allbaugh was an intimidating presence. Some would later liken him to the blockish Sergeant Schultz on the classic TV show Hogan’s Heroes, who used to utter, “I see nuuussing,” while surrounded by mischief.“It was clear he wanted to use his size to project a strong or menacing sense of himself,” says Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News. Indeed, Allbaugh’s propensity to turn bright red when enraged led Bush to give Allbaugh the nickname “Pinky.” But if anyone other than W. dared to call him by that name, Allbaugh would whirl around and growl, “I will pinch your head off,” and make pinching motions with his fingers. His loyalty to Bush, a man who prizes that quality above all others in his subordinates, was unquestioned. “There isn’t anything more important than protecting him and the first lady,” Allbaugh once told the Washington Post from the governor’s office. “I'm the heavy, in the literal sense of the word.”Ironically, the other heavy was a small, refined woman by the name of Harriet Miers, hired, as was Allbaugh, by the tough Dallas lawyer Jim Francis, then Bush’s campaign chairman and a longtime friend of Bush’s father. As general counsel, Miers was in charge of fending off legal problems that threatened Bush with adverse publicity.In 1999, Allbaugh left the governor’s office to take over the daily management of Bush’s presidential campaign. He headed up a staff of 180, controlled spending, and spoke with Bush several times a day. One potential problem facing the campaign was the rumor that Bush’s father had pulled strings to get his candidate son out of Vietnam service and into a safe Texas Air National Guard unit in 1968. There were even reports that Bush went AWOL long before his compulsory flying days were up.The key players in keeping the lid on the National Guard story were Allbaugh and Miers. In 2004, a year before Bush nominated Miers for the Supreme Court, Allbaugh told The New York Times, “She’s the kind of person you want in your corner when all the chips are being played.” Assigned to “investigate” Bush’s Guard service, Miers gave the governor a clean bill of health.As part of his job, Allbaugh communicated directly with Adjutant General Daniel James III, the head of the Texas National Guard (later appointed by President George W. Bush to run the federal Air National Guard). What remains unclear is whether he ordered James to dispose of any old Bush military files that might prove embarrassing, an order former Lieutenant Colonel Bill Burkett, head of a Guard efficiency task force, claims to have heard Allbaugh issue in a conversation on James’s speakerphone. Whatever was or was not done, the unexplained gaps in Bush’s National Guard service never became a central topic in the 2000 election. With his “iron triangle” of Rove on strategy, Hughes on P.R., and Allbaugh as the enforcer (plus an assist from the U.S. Supreme Court), Bush triumphed. Meanwhile, the unsinkable Michael Brown rebounded once again, this time from his firing at IAHA. Just as the politics-tinged Horse Association job in Colorado appeared when Brown faced career and financial problems in Enid, Oklahoma (and the Stephens job fell into Allbaugh’s lap when his financial difficulties mounted), Brown would be fortuitously safety-netted again, this time with a near-instantaneous hiring by an anti-union electrical contractors’ association that later won warm praise from President Bush. Another constant in Brown’s bumpy career has been timely assists from his self-described “longtime friend and family attorney,” Andrew Lester. A prep-school contemporary of George W.’s brother Marvin, Lester pops up at crucial points in Brown’s life like a fairy godmother. When Brown lost an early legal job, Lester brought him in for a brief stint as his law partner. When horse-association problems engulfed Brown, Lester rushed to his defense. And on September 27, 2005, at a House select committee hearing investigating the Katrina blunders, there was the pin-striped Lester conspicuously whispering legal advice in Brown’s ear. Lester, who represented the Oklahoma Republican Party in a 2002 reapportionment battle, worked for a Bush-family-connected oil services firm when he was younger, has been a close friend of Justice Clarence Thomas and regional director for the secretive Federalist Society (new Chief Justice John Roberts denied being a member until his name turned up on a list); he was also short-listed for a federal judgeship under George W. Bush. To this day, Lester insists his support is merely a factor of friendship, and maintains that Brown was eminently qualified for FEMA.
CHOOSING FEMA
As Bush’s Texas team headed for Washington, it was clear that Joe Allbaugh had neither the experience nor the sophistication to serve as the White House chief of staff, the position he coveted. That job went to Andy Card, who had served in the senior Bush’s administration. CNN quoted a “source close to the transition team” who predicted that Allbaugh would become one of two deputy chiefs of staff. Instead, he landed at FEMA.But why there? Theories abound. Some speculate that Allbaugh wanted to stay in the White House but that Rove wanted the brusque enforcer out of his way. Some of Allbaugh’s friends say he had grown tired of being at Bush’s beck and call and wanted to “do his own thing.”If it was a fiefdom he was after, FEMA would do nicely. Allbaugh had enjoyed being the governor’s interface with emergency agencies during minor crises in Texas. At FEMA, he would have more than 8,000 employees and a $4 billion budget to play with. The selection was made, and Allbaugh, having failed to reveal his bankruptcy, his lawsuits, and the general messiness of his life up to that point, was confirmed by the Senate with minimal scrutiny. From its inception under Jimmy Carter, FEMA had traditionally been patronage territory. George H.W. Bush appointed Wallace Stickney, a former next door neighbor of Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu, who had headed New Hampshire's Department of Transportation and been an EPA engineer. Stickney presided over FEMA’s inept handling of Hurricanes Hugo and Andrew during the first and last years of the elder Bush’s term, events that many political observers believe contributed to Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.Clinton introduced reforms at FEMA and appointed his former head of disaster management in Arkansas, James Lee Witt, as director (which was elevated to a cabinet-level position.) Witt communicated confidence in his agency, its role, and its personnel, and FEMA morale soared. Republican Senator Ted Stevens sought to keep Witt on indefinitely, drafting legislation to make the FEMA directorship a longer-term, fixed position. Even George W. Bush praised Witt, leading many to hope that Bush might keep him on. But the candy store was simply too big to leave to a holdover from the hated Clinton administration.When Allbaugh took over, Witt introduced him around the offices. He went out of his way to praise the staff of the 8th-floor, which contained the front office, congressional affairs, and other key sections. “Apparently, that was the kiss of death,” says a former official who worked on that floor. “From then on, we were not to be trusted.” The new boss made it clear from the day he arrived that he had little regard for many of his underlings. “Joe Allbaugh didn’t trust many people,” says Trey Reid, a former senior FEMA official. “He was very insular, and had a tight circle.” The first person Allbaugh brought into that circle was Michael Brown, who, as general counsel, presided over a legal staff of 30. Allbaugh insisted there was no one better suited than Brown. “I hired him solely on his ability as a strong ethics attorney,” Allbaugh said in an official FEMA press release at the time. “He is very experienced, knowledgeable, and professional and will be a great asset to the agency and to myself.” With emphasis (as would soon be clear) on “myself.” The front office was Allbaugh’s bunker. Abandoning a tradition of using civil-service professionals for certain vital posts, he quickly staffed up with loyalists. These included Deputy Director Patrick Rhode, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Douglas, and Acting Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler, all political operatives with no professional experience in emergency disaster management.Holdovers from Witt’s tenure, meanwhile, mistrusted Allbaugh in turn, and in some cases even withheld information he’d requested. “In one meeting, Joe made it clear he would have fired everyone if he had his way,” recalls Reid. “If the elevator doors opened [with Allbaugh inside], employees wouldn’t get on. They were afraid of him.” One senior staffer who did get on an elevator with the hulking Allbaugh made the mistake of complimenting his boss on his fine performance on Meet the Press that weekend. “Why would you care?” Allbaugh snapped.Allbaugh soon embarked on a Nixonian purge. Acting upon his orders, a reluctant inspector general launched a series of internal investigations, looking at everything undertaken by the Witt administration, including Witt’s own travel expenses. Nothing of note was found, and on several occasions the I.G. proclaimed his job done, only to be told to keep looking. Allbaugh launched his longest investigation into a headdress that used to hang on James Lee Witt’s wall, a token of appreciation from a Native American tribe in recognition of his efforts following the Oklahoma City bombing. Someone said it might contain feathers from the protected bald eagle—a federal offense—but the probe, which even involved the F.B.I., fizzled when they turned out to be dyed chicken feathers.With little understanding of or experience with large-scale disasters and little patience with federal bureaucracies, Allbaugh was happy to go along with the administration’s view of FEMA as a bloated entitlement program in need of drastic cutbacks. “His position was that the states ought to take a bigger role,” says Reid.Flood mitigation, a high priority under Witt, received short shrift under Allbaugh. The chief of mitigation, Anthony Lowe, was replaced with a veteran of the insurance industry. Steve Kanstoroom, an independent fraud-detection and pattern-recognition expert with 22 years’ experience, found that FEMA was allowing insurance adjusters to use software that set artificially low settlement amounts for flood victims, and that the claims-assessment process was deeply compromised by involvement from insurance-industry figures. At FEMA, as throughout the administration, the foxes had taken over the henhouse and were partying up. Out the door, one by one, went the experienced disaster-relief managers, and in came the political opportunists and the industry lobbyists. “Many of their skilled management team has left,” says Kanstoroom. “You’ve got a train running down the tracks with nobody driving it.”In retrospect, Allbaugh’s most damaging accomplishment at FEMA was pre-positioning Michael Brown as his successor. Allbaugh included him in all key deliberations, even naming him Chief Operating Officer, and Brown’s influence was apparent to all. Within six months of Brown’s arrival as general counsel of FEMA, Allbaugh was ready to promote him. First, though, he had to oust his current acting deputy director, John Magaw—a former director of the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, whom Clinton had placed in charge of coordinating domestic-terrorism efforts for FEMA. “One day, Mr. Allbaugh came in and said, ‘I know you’ve got these other things to do. I’m going to ask Mr. Brown to be deputy,” recalls Magaw, who promptly returned to the domestic-terror position assigned him by Clinton. The timing was remarkable. Just a week prior to September 11, 2001, Allbaugh removed one of the most experienced men in government and replaced him with one of the least experienced.In December, with the country focused on terrorism and on preventing any more attacks, Magaw left FEMA altogether, at the White House’s request, to help start the Transportation Security Administration. But before Brown could take over permanently as deputy director, he had to face the Senate. In June 2002, he presented a rĂ©sumĂ© that was riddled with exaggerations about his experience and serious omissions about his financial and legal problems. One question on the disclosure form asks, “Do you know why you were chosen for this nomination by the President?” In a meandering written response, he wrote, in part: “I hope the President has nominated me for the position of Deputy Director based on my commitment to the agency and my ability to work closely with the Director.” Brown was confirmed in a cakewalk.Yet structural change at the agency was imminent. In the aftermath of 9/11, with the public clamoring for coordinated anti-terror responses, it was evident that FEMA could not remain independent. Bush, having initially opposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, eventually caved to Congressional demands, and Joe Allbaugh began to look for his exit strategy. The moment Homeland Security swallowed FEMA, Allbaugh departed for the private sector, leaving Brown in charge.Initially, FEMA staffers greeted Allbaugh’s hand-picked successor with a sigh of relief. Brown was as outgoing as Allbaugh was introverted, as charming as Allbaugh was gruff. On first meeting, people came away feeling like they’d known him for a long time. “I was pretty impressed with him,” says Trey Reid. “He was articulate, bright, a quick study. I didn’t have to spend much time going over things with him.” On the personality front, Brown was a vast improvement.In terms of disaster-management, there were two eventualities FEMA lifers always worried about: a really big California earthquake, and levee breaks in New Orleans. But worrying and fixing were two different things. Brown, on the advice of aides, asked for more money for levees and catastrophic planning, but neither Congress nor the White House would bite.If Allbaugh had been disinclined to press Bush for strong remedial action, Brown lacked even the option. He didn’t really have a relationship with the president, his diminutive nickname notwithstanding, and the Department of Homeland Security was focused almost exclusively on terrorism. “I don’t think any of the budget requests we submitted went through,” says Reid. “Everything went for terrorism.” With the defections of several senior managers and the firing of others, compounded by the denial or reduction of budget requests, FEMA’s staff was left paper thin. “At this point, there’s only one person in the building who knows how to do certain things,” says Reid. “If that person gets sick or dies, you’re shit out of luck.” Despite all the cuts, however, there was always money for political purposes. Ever mindful of avoiding his father’s mistakes—among them the disastrous handling of Hurricane Andrew in 1992—Bush was not about to lose to John Kerry over disaster relief. Under Brown, the response to a series of hurricanes that battered Florida during the 2004 presidential campaign was as choreographed as Bush’s landing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln the previous year. Agency staffers were everywhere, in FEMA T-shirts, and Brown was especially visible. An investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel later found that FEMA had handed out tens of millions of dollars following Hurricane Frances to residents and businesses in the Miami-Dade county area, where no deaths and only mild damage occurred, while providing much less assistance to areas that were harder hit but less politically crucial.By August 2005, Brown was already rumored to be preparing his own exit into the private sector. And just as Allbaugh had a reliable understudy in Brown, Brown readied his own, elevating Patrick Rhode, a former Bush campaign advance man who had become his chief of staff, to deputy director. While Rhode lacked experience in emergency management, his public-relations and media skills had been sharpened as a former television news anchor and reporter. Perhaps they’d been sharpened a bit much: It was Rhode who, several days into the Katrina disaster, would call FEMA’s performance “one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country’s history.CASHING INIf being ostensibly “anti-government” while playing a leading role in government is tricky, it all pays off on the back end. Nobody knows that better than Allbaugh, whom Newsweek recently described as having “the hide of a rhino” when it comes to criticism of conflicts of interest. Once he left FEMA, he moved quickly to make up for years of privation in the public sector, forming the Allbaugh Company with his wife, Diane, an attorney. Diane Allbaugh had begun laying the groundwork from the moment they arrived in Washington, D.C., repeating a pattern she’d established in Texas. In the summer of 1996, just a year after moving to the Lone Star State, Diane had signed on as a lobbyist with a number of large corporate clients, mostly energy firms, with pressing business before the state, while her husband held a highly visible position as the governor’s top aide. When the newspapers reported the story, Governor Bush’s office hastened to announce new rules, and Diane declared an end to her lobbying career. However, she was soon ensconced in a ‘non-lobbying’ position with a law firm representing some of the same companies. Now, in Washington, she jumped into the K Street fray, becoming “of counsel” to Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which Fortune magazine described at the time as the country’s most powerful lobbying firm.The shop’s founder, Haley Barbour, who would figure prominently in the Allbaughs’ improving financial prospects, was the very definition of a self-dealer. After founding the firm, he stayed involved with it while playing a key role in the privatization of government services as chairman of the Republican National Committee during Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” revolution, then served as chairman of Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign advisory committee. He left the company in 2003 to mount a successful run for governor of Mississippi—where he ended up on television talking about how his citizens were suffering from Katrina. No one thought to point out how the Allbaugh-Brown-Barbour model of disaster management had set the stage for the calamity. A cynic (or a realist) might formulate that model like this: Why spend resources to prevent disasters, when there’s so much money to be made cleaning up after them? Consider the trajectory of Shaw Group, a Baton Rouge engineering and construction firm, and one of Allbaugh’s biggest clients. On August 15, 2005, with hurricane season getting under way, Joe and Diane’s firm, Allbaugh Co., registered as a lobbyist for Shaw, which began advertising for workers to man its rebuilding projects before Katrina even struck. After the levees broke, Shaw, which had not been a FEMA contractor during the Clinton years, received two separate $100 million federal clean-up contracts and saw its stock price shoot up 50 percent in a few weeks. (After Brown departed FEMA, the agency announced that it would re-bid some contracts that were given on a non-competitive basis, including Shaw’s.)Nevertheless, when the D.C. newspaper The Hill asked about the remarkable good fortune of Allbaugh’s clients, his spokesperson, Patti Giglio, replied, “The first thing he says when he sits down with a client is, ‘Don’t hire me if you’re looking for a government contract.’Maybe that’s why AshBritt Inc., didn’t hire Allbaugh. Instead, the Florida-based environmental services firm hired Barbour Griffith—and was selected by the Army Corps of Engineers to help lead the Katrina clean-up effort. The contract, worth $568 million, was signed before the hurricane hit. Interestingly, back in 2002, when an ice storm hit Allbaugh’s native Kay County, Oklahoma, Allbaugh arranged a conference call with county officials, who ended up choosing the Florida-based AshBritt over other firms with much lower competing bids. (AshBritt has been much in the news in recent weeks, with a plethora of pointed local articles raising questions about the company's operations, its candor, and its spectacular growth during the Bush years — all through its lucrative contracts to subcontract to other firms that do most of the actual clean-up work.) AshBritt’s president, Randal R. Perkins, said in an interview that he did not recall the 2002 conference call, and noted that his firm doesn’t deal directly with FEMA. “FEMA doesn’t contract directly, they just pay the bills,” he said. As for Allbaugh, Perkins said, “I know him, but I wouldn’t say that we are friends.” Allbaugh’s web of self-interest ranges from disasters to energy to real estate. And the self-serving links involve not just him, his wife, Brown, and Barbour but also the vice president and the president. Haley Barbour advised the Bush-Cheney campaign on strategy in 2000 while Joe Allbaugh was campaign manager. During the transition, Allbaugh vetted Cheney’s qualifications to be vice president. After the election, Allbaugh served on Cheney’s secretive energy task force while his wife was “of counsel” at the Barbour firm and being paid as a “consultant” by Reliant Energy, Entergy, and Texas Utilities Co. Diane Allbaugh says she did no lobbying. But Barbour, on behalf of an electricity-producing client, successfully pushed Cheney’s task force to recommend that the new administration renege on a campaign promise to limit carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Bush, citing the task-force findings, complied. The Allbaughs and Cheneys are literally so at home with each other that, on first arriving in Washington in 2001, the Allbaughs bought Cheney’s townhouse in McLean, Virginia, for $690,000. During the house tour, Cheney must have pointed out the revolving doors. One of Allbaugh’s biggest clients is Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, whose Kellogg, Brown and Root subsidiary got at least $61 million worth of Katrina business.When Allbaugh left FEMA he did not, however, restrict himself to the domestic disaster business. Instead, he cast a wider net into the entire Homeland Security/Defense sector, thereby stressing his implied connections in the Department of Homeland Security, which had absorbed FEMA, and in the Pentagon and White House. His departure from government, in March, 2003, took place precisely as the invasion of Iraq unfolded. Allbaugh formed, with Barbour Griffith and numerous ex-officials of the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations, a company called New Bridge Strategies. It moved to secure contracts in Iraq the moment hostilities commenced. He also formed Blackwell-Fairbanks, a joint venture with Andrew Lundquist, with whom he had served on vice president Cheney’s secretive energy task force. (The name of the company is based on the hometowns of the two principals.) Clients in 2004 included the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin; on required forms, Blackwell-Fairbanks would later report that it had lobbied both the offices of the president and of the vice president. Filings for Joe and Diane Allbaugh’s The Allbaugh Company show among its clients Oshkosh Truck, the leading supplier of vehicles to the Pentagon. Now-Governor Barbour, who in early September dismissed criticism of the federal Katrina response as “all cooked up by the news media and a few enemies of George Bush,” declined a RealNews interview request. history.MURKY WATERSWe may expect revelations in coming months and years about the process through which FEMA awarded contracts. But it is likely that even the most cursory examination will uncover high-level decisions that carried little obvious public benefit. One such example might be the agency’s abrupt 2003 decision to award an exclusive contract for water supplies in emergencies. Prior to the Allbaugh-Brown reign, FEMA had handed out water contracts to a variety of companies. One of the recipients, not surprisingly, was Nestle Waters North America, easily the continent’s biggest producer, with 15 brands of bottled water and 23 bottling facilities in the U.S. and Canada. Then, without explanation, FEMA went sole-source, picking a little-known, family-run firm called Lipsey Mountain Water. The company, based in Norcross, Georgia, had just 15 full-time employees, no production capacity and no distribution network. Instead, it was aggressively soliciting other companies to supply its needs. “The father and son came in and said, ‘We want you to sell us water,’” recalls Kim Jeffery, president and C.E.O. of Nestle Waters North America. “I said, ‘Why would I do that? I have a contract with FEMA.’ He said, ‘Because we have the contract now.’” Lipsey trumpeted a sophisticated computer system that would supposedly ensure speedy water deliveries and justify its exclusive five-year contract. But the system did not work so well during the recent crisis, according to some in the industry. Joe Doss, president of the trade group for water suppliers, says his members were besieged with reports of delays in water deliveries after the hurricane, and that within one 24-hour period they voluntarily trucked in 1.5 million bottles. (And again, when Hurricane Wilma swept through Florida in late October, distribution sites turned people away without water days after the event.) Lipsey Mountain Water may be new to the world of federal water contracts, but its principals are not new to politics. The Lipseys are part of a politically connected family that gives regularly to both political parties and owns one of the country’s largest gun wholesalers. The gun lobby is still the nation's most powerful, as acknowledged by Dick Cheney, who addressed the National Rifle Association’s 2004 annual meeting and noted from the podium: “I’m…delighted to see my good friend, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh. Joe is here this evening. It’s always good to have a firearm if you get into real trouble—but the next best thing is Joe Allbaugh.” In November, the Pentagon confirmed that its inspector general was investigating Lipsey in response to complaints received by Congress from truck drivers, trucking brokers and ice producers who did much of the actual work under Lipsey's contract and say Lipsey has not paid their bills or even answered their phone calls. (Company president Joe Lipsey III did not respond to a list of questions he had requested from RealNews.)Only through the painstaking unraveling of connections like these are we likely to grasp the truth about the secretive conflicts of interest that waste billions of public dollars and undermine the country’s readiness to respond to natural and man-made disasters.. Such inquiries are not welcome, of course. Instead, we are all supposed to play Sgt. Schultz, and "see nuuussing." The Administration's motto might easily be "Nothing to see here, folks, move along quickly, please."Indeed, when a National Public Radio interviewer posed questions about the handling of the storm to Vice Admiral Thad Allen, whom President Bush had assigned to take over the Katrina response from Michael Brown, Allen said that there was no point in dwelling on the past. “I would say that the longer the discourse continues about what might or might not have happened and the political issues surrounding that—I think at some point it starts to devalue the work of a whole lot of FEMA workers out there that are working very, very hard for the American public.’Yet no one devalued the work of the rank and file of FEMA workers more than the Joe Allbaugh, Michael Brown, and their boss. And the discourse the administration wished to avoid was, and is, urgently needed.Today, FEMA's front line troops struggle with the legacy of Katrina, overwhelming challenges and devastated morale. Meanwhile, Joe Allbaugh travels the world, soliciting business, and even the disgraced Brown has announced his move into the consulting business. President Bush has thus far not had to explain anything – and the White House has declined to turn over to Congress key documents about Hurricane Katrina or to make senior officials available for sworn testimony.

Re: [911InsideJobbers] Another 9/11 WTC Planted Witness

Google Video sure is cool!!

This one shows window washers going about their normal duties on a
building in front of the trade centers.
Somebody better than me at geography will have to tell which building
this is.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-926819146692237326

Bill Giltner wrote:
> He says his name is Eric Lerner (Learner?).
> I could not find a matching pic or other info with google.
>
> See video here:
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4266798521868931180&q=wtc
> <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4266798521868931180&q=wtc>
>
>
>
>
> SPONSORED LINKS
> Government procurement
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+procurement&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=S_3-2zVK9QQjTwxHvO91yw>
> Government leasing
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+leasing&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=ZAuP_XFQBkNiVw-hPWWJ-Q>
> Government grants for women
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+grants+for+women&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=R7KVvqXEVqN0Ct9WGPhKwg>
>
> Government lease
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+lease&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=FM8lkJddvatAkQNo00D_Cw>
> Government contract
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+contract&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=fTrsbvxC-m39UjtOdMcT-Q>
> Government money
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Government+money&w1=Government+procurement&w2=Government+leasing&w3=Government+grants+for+women&w4=Government+lease&w5=Government+contract&w6=Government+money&c=6&s=154&.sig=HB73LsQrRnXy-2WkBh3LyA>
>
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Media Matters - Wash. Post falsely depicted spy program critics as "some Democrats"

Media Matters - Wash. Post falsely depicted spy program critics as "some Democrats"

[911InsideJobbers] All Planehuggers Smell Alike

Every gang that takes for granted the physical existance of cartoon
planes that melt into walls is working toward some or another form of
"World Government".
Alex Jones says a lot of good stuff, but he's just as smarmy a
planehugger as the rest, ignoring physical evidence and crime scene video.

"Ivashov made clear his conviction that the entire war is a manufactured
ruse and that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by the new world elite,
who he calls 'the Atlantists', designed to light the touch paper for a
global government and the elimination of sovereign borders."

Yep. And he and Alex Jones ignore that this was brought about by an epic
scale media hoax.

norgesen wrote:
>
> *Russian General's Comments Need to be Taken With Healthy Dose of
> Skepticism*
>
> *Paul Joseph Watson | January 25 2006*
> <http://www.prisonplanet.com/index.html>
>
> General Leonid Ivashov, Russia's armed forces Chief of Staff when 9/11
> occurred, recently went public with astounding comments concerning the
> destruction of the World Trade Center and the war on terrorism.
>
> Ivashov made clear his conviction that the entire war is a
> manufactured ruse and that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by the
> new world elite, who he calls 'the Atlantists', designed to light the
> touch paper for a global government and the elimination of sovereign
> borders.
>
> On the face of it this is another highly credible whistleblower and
> one who would be in a position to know exactly what he's talking about.
>
> Ivashov goes in depth about the modern face of terrorism and its
> symbiosis with how the media report it. This is key because an act
> only becomes terrorism if it's defined as that by the media. If we can
> define killing innocent people in the pursuit of a political agenda as
> terrorism then what do you call slaughtering innocent people in their
> own homes in recent US government orchestrated bombing raids in
> Pakistan and Iraq?
>
> Ivashov elaborates on the fact that the secret service and
> intelligence elements of any major power always control the high
> echelons of any extremist movement.
>
> From Operation Gladio, to the Neo-Nazis in Germany, to the London
> bombing mastermind Aswat being an MI6 asset, to Israel's creation of
> Hamas. This pattern has been consistently proven.
>
> However, Ivashov's solutions to the problem of worldwide engineered
> chaos are ambiguous and their wording should raise alarm bells for
> those who understand the long term agenda of the Illuminati.
>
> As his solution to global dictatorship, Ivashov encourages the
> creation of a pseudo-world government, run under UN auspices.
>
> In essence he is offering a Hobson's choice, a left-wing world
> government to counter the advance of the right-wing world government.
> The end result is the same, a world government which is unelected and
> not representative of the people of any sovereign nation.
>
> Then the General states his desire to, "associate (under the United
> Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the
> philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century."
>
> That reads like secular humanism and it wouldn't be out of place in
> Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. So without the luxury of the general
> going into any further depth on this, at face value what he is
> proposing appears to be something quite distasteful.
>
> Ivashov then outlines his wish to, "organize the interaction of all
> religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of
> humanity's development, security and mutual support."
>
> Again, this is too ambiguous not to rule out the possibility that he's
> advocating a global religion as the savior of mankind, which again is
> another mechanism whereby power could be centralized under a world
> government that is completely unelected and not representative of the
> people.
>
> Does he just mean religious figureheads getting together and talking?
> We know that when powerful people have get togethers, they set policy.
> They don't waste each other's time by partaking in talking shops.
>
> In the absence of further clarification, a certain healthy dose of
> skepticism needs to be afforded to the General's comments. If
> Ivashov's solutions are just a mirror image of the problems he
> clarifies, then with how much credibility should he be bestowed?
>
> ** <http://prisonplanet.tv/subscribe.html>
>

Re: [911InsideJobbers] [Fwd: Aliens in LA.]

When does the media know when to stop embellishing news paper stories when they do it on a daily basis? Did they drop it when reporting 9/11?
 
Two cases of embellishment I've seen recently in UK newspapers.
 
A story of a Dingo having attacked a child accompanied by a picture of a Dingo sitting down with an all too obvious lower jaw cut/pasted  showing a wide snarl [could have been a yawn]. Apart from "the look" anyone who knows about dogs know their facual expressions when they ARE aggressive and know that no wild dog would be sitting down in a resting position and aggressive at the same time.
 
Then a picture showing one starling [a UK bird almost extinct] in the foreground with a huge "flock" of software bold mottling in the "sky" on a backdrop of faint mottling. Of course you can't see a bird shape amongst any of that bold mottled "flock". And the story that goes along with it is the complaint of the amount of mess these "flocks" of starlings do. 
 
We have the start of a new series of "24" tomorrow. Kiefer Sutherland did a voice over on one of these "93" docudramas and because of his patriotism and part of the hero in the 24 series it was natural that his commentary was going to receive some authority.  He has also an article in the Sunday Telegraph supplement. A quote of his "I think the world can tell the difference between 24 and Abu Ghraib prison".
 
I wonder if Jack Bauer will come up against the Counter -Terrorism Evaluation Group.   
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 11, 2006 12:47 AM
Subject: [911InsideJobbers] [Fwd: Aliens in LA.]



-------- Original Message --------
Subject:       Aliens in LA.
Date:       Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:36:25 +1100
From:       Gerard Holmgren <holmgren@iinet.net.au>



[[On the news they illustrated the story with a clip from the movie
Independence Day.
They show the building being attacked by Aliens.]]

That brings up two things. One is the prospect of the simulated alien
invasion getting closer. The other is the continual process of merging
fantasy and reality until they are indistinguishable.

This was one of the things I noted about Angelina Jolie. She is being set up
as a "save the world hero" in real life, parallel to the way she's portrayed
as such in her movies.

There's the tomb raider series, where she's saving the world from the
illuminati. Then there was another movie called "Captain Sky...
(something.)"  - I don't remember exactly the title, I think it was a kind
of spaceship battle type thing against the evil empire.

In real life, she's the first celebrity on the scene of any "natural "
disaster, adopting another orphan. She's big in the anti-poverty celebrity
show.

If I remember rightly ,the theme song from Captain - whatever-it-was was
"Save the world" which I think is what they also used for one of those big
anti-poverty celebrity shows.

So the covert presentation of Hollywood fantasy as reality is gradually
being morphed in an overt merging of the two. Perhaps the prevalence of
reality TV - a lot of which is actually staged - is also with the intention
of blurring this boundary.

We've had the underground thing of snuff movies for quite a while. Perhaps
this will now evolve openly into "reality" movies, and the Jolie type
parallels could be the pre-cursors to the first fully fledged openly
promoted-as-such "reality movies".

Showing as "news", aliens attacking the same building that terrorists were
allegedly planning to attack in the "real" world could be another chipping
away at the boundary between the real world and the fictional world.

On the alternative media front, the planehuggers are certainly pushing a
prototype of the concept that reality is whatever you imagine - a concept
which Bush is alleged to have openly stated to one of his advisors, and the
whole concept of "truth" is being morphed into something which can imagined
or adapted to fit one's desires.

We are going one step further than Orwell. Heading towards an age where the
idea that there is no difference between truth and imagination or between
reality and fantasy becoming openly promoted aa a valid philosophical
concept.

Ironically, once this becomes promoted more openly and aggressively, people
may actually argue this concept itself as the "truth" - which is a self
contradiction - thus removing all meaning to any language. Truth is whatever
you imagine it to be and that's an indisputable truth.

In the past, elites have emasculated language in order to remove any
vocabulary which can be used to express a dissenting view. This would remove
any vocab which could express any view at all. Language simply becomes a
background noise which goes beyond reinforcing certain ideas. Its actually
to prevent anyone having ideas at all, so they just follow whatever they're
told to follow without even having any concept of the question of what it
actually whether of they agree with it- because nothing means anything
anymore. There is only action and reaction.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rosalee Grable [mailto:webfairy@thewebfairy.com]
Sent: Saturday, 11 February 2006 7:53 AM
To: Gerard Holmgren
Cc: 'Nico Haupt'; naserian@earthlink.net; 'brad'
Subject: Re: hopeful anecdotes

On the news they illustrated the story with a clip from the movie
Independence Day.
They show the building being attacked by Aliens.
Bushie didn't even get the name of the building right.
On the good side, after this a lot of people are going to catch on that
they are making stuff up as they go along.
Most folks are happy as long as their lines aren't cut.
Film school dropouts join PR firms and write themselves into the script.
http://thewebfairy.com/911/bingham



Gerard Holmgren wrote:
>
> I was waiting in a shop yesterday, there was a TV on, and Bush came on
> about the plot to shoe bomb LA. I had a bit of smirk and giggle, and
> then caught the eye of a middle aged woman across the room who was
> doing the same.
>
> I said "I don't believe a word of it".
>
> She said. "Neither do I . They're just making it up as they go along."
>




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[september_eleven_vreeland] Digest Number 1288

There are 10 messages in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

1. Fw: It's ALL TRUE! Islam Provoked to Fight too Soon (Like Japan)
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
2. A Dying Breed: Feeble Minded Fools and Dim-Witted Debunkers
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
3. Re-Packaging The 9/11 Fairytale
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
4. Bush Slips Social Security Privatization into 2007 US Budget !!!!
From: ranger116@webtv.net
5. Evidence Suggests Muslim Riots Are Staged Psyop
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
6. Russian General's Comments Need to be Taken With Healthy Dose of Skepticism
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
7. The Post 9/11 Saturation Of Our Culture In Torture
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
8. Donation of Bayer papers to U.S. Holocaust Museum
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
9. Police Found Suspected Bombs In WTC On 9/11
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
10. Bush Plays Terror Card With Bogus LA Attack Plot
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>

________________________________________________________________________
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:11:09 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Fw: It's ALL TRUE! Islam Provoked to Fight too Soon (Like Japan)

----- Original Message -----
From: Lloyd Miller
To: a-albionic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 9:48 AM
Subject: [prj] It's ALL TRUE! Islam Provoked to Fight too Soon (Like Japan)

Most analysts see the 3 points-of-view of my previous posts to be
mutually incompatible or contradictory, but they aren't.

Sure, Zionists are probably behind the cartoon scandal with the
intent to both show the primitive nature of Islam (incompatible with
any version of the New World Order) and provoke Islamicists to
violence to justify the Clash of Civilizations (World War IV).

Sure, Islamicists are taking the opportunity to promote Jihad,
traveling to Muslim countries to fan the flames of Jihad.

Sure, the reaction to the cartoons show Islam IS NOT and NEVER HAS
BEEN a religion of peace. It is and always has been a religion
explicitly dedicated to conquest. Other relgions have been so
misused, but military conquest is not essential to their
nature. . . further, other religions have moderated, moving away
from "State Religion" status. . . no so Islam.

Clearly, Islam is being provoked to fight now while the West can
still win. Islam is taking the bait and will be no more within a
decade or so. Some "moderate" "sanitized" version of Islam, of
course, will survive.

Lloyd Miller, Research Director, A-albionic Research

[This message contained attachments]

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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:55:24 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: A Dying Breed: Feeble Minded Fools and Dim-Witted Debunkers

A Dying Breed: Feeble Minded Fools and Dim-Witted Debunkers
It's easier to believe what the government says, buy a six pack and fall asleep in front of American Idol

Paul Joseph Watson | January 7 2006

We recently received an e mail which compared us with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, and called us outright liars for stating that the federal government was involved in gun confiscation in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

In response to that misguided individual, we took this opportunity to open out an analysis of the nature of denial and why people still cling in fear to the establishment dictated version of reality.

The e mail was originally sent to the Stop the Lie website and reads as follows.

I see that your motto is "Stop the Lie." You post an article that implies the Federal government was responsible for gun confiscations in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster. However, it was the New Orleans Superintendent and the Deputy Chief of Police who gave that order. It was carried out by New Orleans police, those that didn't abandon the city, and the National Guard, from Oklahoma, not Federal troops. It was a Federal judge who issued a temporary injunction to stop the gun confiscations.

But who brought this urban legend to you? Weren't Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson the "investigative journalists" who claimed that a 4-star general was sacked for upsetting Bush's plans for staging a nuclear attack on the US in order to declare war on Iran? This is in addition to their claims that both the Oklahoma City bombing and 911 were US government operations. Didn't they also claim that the Reagan assassination attempt was also a Bush family endeavor? And aren't they also claiming that vaccines are being contaminated with mercury by the government?

I think you guys would make Joseph Goebbels proud. Maybe it time you look at yourselves and determine if your cause is so critical that is justifies lying. Perhaps it is time for you to Stop the Lies.

If this individual had bothered to read Alex Jones' article on the New Orleans gun confiscation he would have read the following.

"The federal government has been chomping at the bit for decades to disarm the American people, and now an amalgamation of state and local police led by the BATF are having their deepest desire fulfilled in New Orleans."

The BATF Federal Stormtroopers led the gun confiscation and made arrests. The BATF made the very first gun confiscations and arrests of those accused of shooting at rescue helicopter and army volunteers, though the rationale for doing so was later brought into question when the LA Times reported that innocent people were shot at.

New Orleans was declared a federal city two weeks after the hurricane hit. Quoting from the GovExec website,

"Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina unleashed her wrath, causing immense devastation and killing an as-yet-uncounted number of people, New Orleans has become, for all intents and purposes, a federal city.

A metropolis that once bustled with busy residents and tourists who partied on Bourbon Street is now occupied by U.S. military forces and a dozen federal agencies working side by side, street by street, with state and local authorities. It seems that every agency wants a piece of this action."

New Orleans was a giant benchmark for how all natural disasters will be dealt with in future.

FEMA and the federal government deliberately sabotaged relief efforts in order to deepen the crisis, including blocking water and fuel supplies.

FEMA cut communication lines in one parish, causing Sheriff Harry Lee to reconnect the lines and place armed guards around them to thwart FEMA.

The federal government deliberately hampered relief and recovery efforts in order to provide the justification for Americans to accept gun confiscation and foreign troops on US soil.

Our debunker friend is completely wrong to suggest that federal forces were not involved in New Orleans gun confiscation.

Furthermore, does it even matter whether it is regular police or federal agents taking your guns? Isn't the fact that they're taking your guns period something to be concerned about?

We have to remember that such sentiments are held by a dwindling minority, a dying breed who are still ruled by fear. Out of a thousand e mails we will only receive one that calls us liars. Contrast that to five years ago and it's obvious that the era of manifest enlightenment is truly upon us.

The author claims Mercury in vaccines is a conspiracy theory.

He evidently doesn't know how to do a Google search.

The CDC itself admits it puts Mercury in vaccines. Here's a television news report telling us how great it is. Is this a conspiracy theory?

If we report that the sun came up this morning then it becomes a conspiracy theory. The unparalleled ineptness of the debunkers is quite pathetic to behold and their maladroit arguments wouldn't stand up in a debate with a three-year-old child.

Many of these feeble minded individuals cite Snopes.com as if it was some kind of bible. When Snopes says something is an urban legend they are above reproach and have the monopoly on truth.

The fact is that Snopes.com is run by two individuals who are attempting to cover every topic under the sun and verify the merits of each in turn.

Consequently, there are holes in their 'explanations' that you could fly a 747 through.

Well, Snopes.com says it's an urban legend so they must be right!

Bill Clinton also said "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

Just because somebody says it does not make it so.

A great deal of this mentality stems from laziness. It's much easier to swallow the government's version of events, buy a six pack and fall asleep in front of American Idol. Taking time to actually question something, use your own discernment and come to a conclusion takes time and energy, which is better spent in their estimation watching 24 or Threat Matrix.

Joe Six Pack also highlights the Bush connection to John W. Hinckley Jnr., Reagan's would be assassin, as being another one of our fantasies.

Is it a fantasy that the Associated Press reported on March 31st 1981 that the Hinckley family were scheduled to have dinner with the Bush family?

Is this another urban legend?

On the subject of 9/11, anyone who still believes that the attack was perpetrated by nineteen 'fundamental jihadists hell bent on destroying America' who, the night before the grandest terror attack of all time, were getting shitfaced drunk in a tit bar, at the behest of a dying man spending his time equally between being on a kidney dialysis machine and in a cave, would have been sorely disappointed recently when Santa Claus didn't drop down their chimney and leave bundles of gifts.

Anyone who still believes the 'official' fairytale of 9/11, a yarn that we are told vaporized the bodies of two thirds of the victims yet produced photo ID's within hours at two of the different crash sites identifying the hijackers, would do well to remove their baby teeth from under the pillow.

The lies promulgated about 9/11 are so legion that the deceivers are starting to trip over their own twisted tongues. Larry Silverstein claims his "pull it" comment meant to evacuate firefighters from WTC Building 7 and yet Popular Mechanics' own 9/11 debunking special stated that there were no firefighters in the building whatsoever.

The tooth fairy doesn't exist. It's time to grow up and face reality. We have a government criminally hell bent on destroying America, a government that openly and brazenly lied a country into a war that cost the lives of thousands of US soldiers and countless hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, 'liberated' out of their very existence.

Judging from recent history alone, we should automatically disbelieve anything government tells us and let them do the work to prove otherwise. Their track record on telling the truth would put a used car salesman to shame.

The catalyst of the blossoming rise of the alternative media was the fact that the mainstream media deliberately engaged in spin and deception by regurgitating state mantra as gospel. This became abundantly clear and people started to search for sources of information that at least tried to tell the truth.

This has bolstered our credibility and the catcalls of the cynics who bleat and scream about the Internet being poisoned by tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists fall on deaf ears. Their time has passed and the baying crowds that once lapped up their incessant drivel have all but dispersed.

[This message contained attachments]

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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:28:22 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re-Packaging The 9/11 Fairytale

Re-Packaging The 9/11 Fairytale
Hollywood gears up in 2006 to bolster the crumbling official state approved paradigm

Paul Joseph Watson | January 13 2006

The official 9/11 story has about as much basis in fact as Humpty Dumpty.

And just like Humpty Dumpty, all the king's horses and all the king's men certainly can't put the official story of 9/11 back together again. It's a yarn that has already been decimated by the alternative media time and time again.

It's a fairytale that a 5 year-old could decipher. Based on paper passports floating out of exploding planes surviving intact when a third of the bodies were totally vaporized and the buildings were turned into dust.

Based on the fairytale that jet fuel is hot enough to take down steel buildings.

Based on the fairytale that fire damage can cause steel buildings, including ones not hit by planes, to collapse for the first and only time in history, while any other building, if its not owned by Mr. Silverstein, miraculously survives with just a few scapes.

The fallacy of the orthodox fairytale is why the establishment, through its avenues of propaganda, needs to constantly re-apply band aids to keep people from seeing the awful truth.

So whereas as the alternative media can shatter an illusion instantly and permanently in the mind of the individual, the establishment has to keep re-applying the propaganda to keep the sheep in line and prevent doubt from creeping in.

Which is clearly why we are about to see a rash of 9/11 movies which reinforce the official version of events.

Consider the very first made for TV movie about 9/11, called DC 9/11. A film which portrays president Bush on Air Force one on 9/11, exclaiming his frustration in not being able to have a fist fight with Osama bin Laden.

Now contrast that to the actual demeanour of Bush on the day of 9/11, doe eyed, unsure, taking the decision to read an upside down book about a pet goat for half an hour after he's told about the biggest attack on America since Pearl Harbor.

It's pro-war, pro-government pro official version of 9/11 down to a tee.

And who wrote and produced the film? Lionel Chetwynd, a big establishment neo-con and government apologist, perhaps the most politically connected producer in the world today.

Chetwynd privately met with George Bush, Karl Rove and a bunch of top Republicans to have them vet the script before he shot the film.

This is the same Lionel Chetwynd who jabbed his finger at Alex Jones and barked "we're going to get you," in the bathroom before a taping of TNN's Conspiracy Zone show that they both featured on as guests.

So the very first movie about 9/11 is made by a high level Bush administration stooge. And the film wholeheartedly backs up lock step the official version of events.

The movie that's getting the most attention in the press at the moment is called 'Flight 93' - no prizes for guessing what it's about. It is due to be released in the spring and is directed by Paul Greengrass. Click here to see the trailer.

There's no evidence to suggest the director is anywhere near as odious as Linonel Chetwynd but still the consequence of the movie remains the same.

It reinforces the "let's roll" myth of Flight 93 and pushes aside the fact that experienced pilots on the ground saw that the plane was shot down with their own eyes.

It ignores the fact that we have an 8 mile wide debris field for a plane that we are led to believe was fully intact in the seconds before it hit the ground.

We've had contact with credible individuals who have personally talked with the pilots who shot the plane down.

Flight 93 is replete with its cast of hijackers, again sidestepping the difficult fact that several of these hijackers later turned up alive and that they could barely even get puddle jumping cessnas off the ground, never mind execute moves that crack fighter pilots couldn't pull off, as was the case at the Pentagon.

One of the major human flaws that these social engineers play on is laziness. If somebody entertains the notion of an alternative truth behind 9/11, then they start to ask questions about other things, which means making a conscious effort to inform yourself, a lot of people just don't want to make the effort.

Easier therefore to swallow the version of events as spoon fed to you by the government and the media, and in this case Hollywood, so that will again only reinforce that mindset.

Just look at the basic science of watching television or movies itself.

Decades old psychological studies confirm that when you're watching television the higher brain regions (like the midbrain and the neo-cortex) are shut down, and most activity shifts to the lower brain regions. These lower brain regions cannot distinguish reality from fabricated images (a task performed by the neo-cortex), so they react to television content as though it were real.

And if you've ever tried to communicate with someone while their eyes are transfixed on a TV you know how difficult it is, that's the lower brain in action.

The inability to differentiate fact from fiction is only going to add another layer of believeability on top of these 9/11 movies, and leave people wth the impression as they're walking away from the theatre that they've actually seen a documentary and not a fictional movie which is based on a totally fabricated version of events.

9/11 related movies are going to be huge and there are several already in the can and set to hit the big screen in 2006. As the watchdogs of coercive manipulation and cultural steam valves of state worshipping propaganda, we the alternative media need to step up our efforts to ensure that the 9/11 truth movement remains fresh, catalystic and fertile.

-----------------------------

Related: Hollywood, Iraq and 9/11: Reinforcing the Party Line

[This message contained attachments]

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Message: 4
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:21:13 -0500
From: ranger116@webtv.net
Subject: Bush Slips Social Security Privatization into 2007 US Budget !!!!

Bush Slips Social Security Privatization into 2007 US Budget !!!!

Subject: Sleight of Hand... Shrub attempts again to pull a fast one on
Congress and the American People

Here's one uncovered by Allan Sloan at Newsweek... after Shrub's
proposed turning of the Social Security safety net into a Wall Street
crapshoot (which went over like a lead balloon, and for good reasons),
Shrub snuck it into his 2400+ page budget proposal anyhow...
squandering an apparently 'spare' 715 BILLION dollars on a miserable and
unwanted program when we're already trillions of dollars in hock to
Communist China... and apparently hoping that nobody would notice until
it was a 'done deal" (just as so often happens with huge omnibus bills
sent to Congress).
[quote]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11235990/site/newsweek/
Sleight of Hand
Bush buried detailed Social Security privatization proposals in his
budget. Can the surprise move jump-start bipartisan reform?
By Allan Sloan
Updated: 12:09 p.m. ET Feb. 8, 2006

Feb. 8, 2006 - If you read enough numbers, you never know what you'll
find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys
of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and
never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no
fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan
in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010
and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues
to pay for them over the first seven years.
If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You're not alone.
Bush didn't pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the
Union Message last week.
First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying
that "Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social
Security," even though, as I said, he'd never submitted specific
legislation.
Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years
down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress "to
join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby-boom
retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid," adding that the
commission would be bipartisan "and offer bipartisan solutions."
But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to
deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own
privatization proposals into his proposed budget.
"The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social
Security modernization," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an
interview Tuesday, but "the president still cares deeply about this."
Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to
include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly
about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security
privatization had been written into the budget without any advance
fanfare.
Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget
update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30,
so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I
sure didn't see this coming—and I wonder how many people outside of
the White House did.
Nevertheless, it's here. Unlike Bush's generalized privatization talk
of last year, we're now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the
budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in
fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion
for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144
billion.
In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to
divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into
what Bush called "voluntary private accounts." The maximum contribution
to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year
through 2016.
It's not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social
Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set
up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.
Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are
calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing.
Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security
benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people
would be tied to inflation.
Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation,
so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid
people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would
be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people
would.
This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea
from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security's
political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned
benefit.
Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that
Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are
plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a
substitute for part of the basic benefit.
Bush's 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but
they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report,
which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere.
What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows
through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get
credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a
great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social
Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story.
Sloan is NEWSWEEK's Wall Street editor. His e-mail is sloan@panix.com.
[end quote]
Gordon Peterson                
http://personal.terabites.com/ 1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year
of Local Area Networking! Support free and fair US elections!
http://stickers.defend-democracy.org 12/19/98: Partisan Republicans
scornfully ignore the voters they "represent". 12/09/00: the date the
Republican Party took down democracy in America.
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

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Message: 5
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:48:20 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Evidence Suggests Muslim Riots Are Staged Psyop

New Evidence Suggests Muslim Riots Are Staged Psyop

As news breaks of four more demonstrators being shot dead in Kabul, fresh evidence has surfaced lending credibility to the assertion that the Muslim riots are a staged psyop or at the very least based on false pretenses.

Yesterday leading Russian MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky said that the riots were a manufactured psychological operation on the part of the US in an attempt to enlist hardened EU support for a military strike against Iran.

As first highlighted by this website and others, more evidence has come to light that confirms fake and misleading caricatures were bundled in with the more tame cartoons that were printed in Danish newspapers. Muslims were misled into believing that all the images were printed in newspapers when they were not.

World Net Daily reports,

"One of three especially inflammatory but undocumented Muhammad images distributed by a Danish imam as an example of an "anti-Muslim environment" in the European country turns out to be a poorly reproduced copy of an Associated Press photo taken at a French pig-squealing contest."

"The weblog NeanderNews pointed out the image used by Imam Ahmad Abu Laban was a faxed copy of AP's Aug. 15 photo of Jacques Barrot competing at the annual French Pig-Squealing Championships in Trie-sur-Baise."

Another two images which were erroneously added to the caricatures that were actually carried by the newspapers depict Muhammad as a pedophile demon and a dog raping a praying Muslim.

Were the misleading images intended to add fuel to the fire? Many have pointed out that depictions of Muhammad appear universally throughout the world. A stone sculpture in the US depicting Muhammad has been in place since the 1930's. An Australian newspaper piece lists depictions of Muhammad, both flattering and insulting that appear regularly in the West and beyond.

"From Ottoman religious icons to market stalls in Iran, from the US Supreme Court building to the South Park cartoon, Mohammed has been frequently portrayed in flattering and unflattering lights."

Many painters, including William Blake, Gustave Dore, Auguste Rodin and Salvador Dali, have depicted Mohammed in illustrations of Dante's Inferno, where the Muslim prophet ends up in hell with his entrails hanging out."

Why the outrage now? And why were more degrading images that were not even printed thrown into the mix?

The US government is no stranger to using falsely attributed paraphernalia to fan the flames of racial tension. During the Vietnam era civil rights struggle, the FBI mass mailed coloring books that were attributed to the Black Panthers. The books portrayed white people as pigs and encouraged blacks to violently attack and kill them. Primarily mailed to white neighborhoods, the books had the effect of turning middle class sentiment against the black rights movement and leading to support of enhanced authoritarian crackdown.

The feasibility of demonstrators in Gaza having immediate access to a plethora of pristine Danish flags as soon as the furore began has also been put under scrutiny.

A CNN International news anchor reported that the United Nations had foreknowledge that protests in Beirut were going to erupt on Sunday.

"ANTHONY MILLS, CNN INTERNATIONAL: My understanding is, as well, that UN sources were reporting this morning that this was going to be a chaotic day, if you will... Or, certainly they were reporting --they were suggesting -- their workers shouldn't go to work today."

So, indications in advance, I think, probably that something was going to happen here, that some form or sort of violent protest might erupt."

As we reported on Monday, images of Muslims with signs that read "freedom go to hell" and "Europe, take some lessons from from 9/11" are playing right into the hands of the Globalists by enabling them to hold up examples of how the Muslims are dangerous barbarians who wish to take away our liberties and need to be dealt with.

Violent Muslim demonstrators should be aware that they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction by allowing the media to portray them as freedom hating, brutal and out of control. This ensures increased support for future wars that primarily target Muslim and Persian majority countries.

The seemingly artificial origins of the protests betray the true agenda behind the very real chaos that we now see engulfing the Middle East and Europe.

~~~

Muslim Riots Aid Neo-Con Global Agenda
"Clash of Civilizations" Advanced by Naive and Controlled Groups

The riots that are currently sweeping across Europe and the Middle East in response to caricatures of Mohammed that were originally printed in Danish newspapers are staged managed and are helping the Neo-Cons advance the "clash of civilizations" that they need to impose world order and imperial hegemony.

Images of Muslims with signs that read "freedom go to hell" and "Europe, take some lessons from from 9/11" are playing right into the hands of the Globalists by enabling them to hold up examples of how the Muslims are dangerous barbarians who wish to take away our liberties and need to be dealt with.

The elite is encouraging and fostering the spread of Islamofascism throughout Europe by allowing mass immigration in increasing levels year after year. It is in their interests to create a balkanized melting pot so they can use divide and conquer tactics to enslave all races under a centralized new world order.

The elite want us to be at each others throats while they dominate over the downtrodden and befuddled warring tribes. Race is the ultimate touchstone hot button issue and the Globalists have enacted policies of rampant uncontrolled immigration in order to force hostile cultures to intermingle. The outcome is always tribal warfare, as we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo.

The right of newspapers to publish these caricatures is unwavering and freedom of speech takes precedence over everything else. Violent Muslim demonstrators should be aware that they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction by allowing the media to portray them as freedom hating, brutal and out of control. This ensures increased support for future wars that primarily target Muslim and Persian majority countries.

During collection of material that is posted on this website, we regularly scan political cartoon and artwork archives such as Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index. This is an archive for cartoons that appear in US newspapers nationwide on a daily basis. On numerous occasions over the past five years we have seen cartoons and caricatures that depict Mohammed. Why the sudden outrage now?

As Kurt Nimmo points out, the three most offensive cartoons that caused the outrage were not even printed in the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper but were added in and handed out by Danish imams who "circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries," according to the London Telegraph.

It also appears highly suspicious that Muslims in Gaza City and other places had gained access to a plentiful supply of Danish flags to burn in front of the waiting world media as soon as the controversy broke out.

We have tirelessly documented previous cases where Muslim clerics and leaders were proven to be acting on behalf of Western intelligence agencies. Early indications strongly suggest that the original riots that led to worldwide demonstrations were staged managed.

Last November's French riots were used to advance a similar agenda that we see unraveling today.

The melting pot of multiculturalism does not work, it has never worked and it was never intended to work. The Algerians in France do not want to be part of the Western fabric because they fundamentally hate it to its very core. This is not helped by promotion of decadent and hedonistic lifestyles pumped out from every cultural and media orifice.

A sizeable proportion of the secular humanist Westerners who like to think of themselves as part of the establishment, when in reality they are unwitting tools of the true elite, have bought into the cuddly utopian philosophy that the West is a global village which welcomes all comers and has the enlightened innate ability to homogenize millions of different people of all different colors and creeds into one giant melting pot.

The reality couldn't be further from the truth and images of flaming buses, schools, nurseries, terror and panic betrayed that fact in France last November.

Establishment controlled Mexican groups such as Aztlan and Mecha advocate killing all whites and blacks and driving them out of the southern states by means of brutal ethnic cleansing. Flags and placards carried at marches depict white people having their heads cut off, as seen in the picture below.

Those that protest such groups are then attacked by the establishment media and labeled as racists, despite the fact that the Plan of San Diego, a rallying cry for the Hispanic Klan groups, advocates total eradication of any race but Hispanics.

Mecha's own slogan reads, "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing."

Again, this racial warfare only benefits a smug elite who are content to sit back and watch all the chaos unfold, leaving a terrified middle class to beg for a choking police state to be instituted as the only solution to the problem, a problem manufactured by elite control of so-called minority groups in the first place.

Violent Muslim demonstrators need to take a step back and consider what is important in the long term. The ability of western media to exercise freedom of speech and print cartoons, or unwittingly greasing the skids for a giant engineered backlash against the Muslim world that will see all Muslim nations subjugated and dominated under a tyrannical world government, along with every other race, color and creed.

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Message: 6
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:31:26 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Russian General's Comments Need to be Taken With Healthy Dose of Skepticism

Russian General's Comments Need to be Taken With Healthy Dose of Skepticism

Paul Joseph Watson | January 25 2006

General Leonid Ivashov, Russia's armed forces Chief of Staff when 9/11 occurred, recently went public with astounding comments concerning the destruction of the World Trade Center and the war on terrorism.

Ivashov made clear his conviction that the entire war is a manufactured ruse and that 9/11 was an inside job carried out by the new world elite, who he calls 'the Atlantists', designed to light the touch paper for a global government and the elimination of sovereign borders.

On the face of it this is another highly credible whistleblower and one who would be in a position to know exactly what he's talking about.

Ivashov goes in depth about the modern face of terrorism and its symbiosis with how the media report it. This is key because an act only becomes terrorism if it's defined as that by the media. If we can define killing innocent people in the pursuit of a political agenda as terrorism then what do you call slaughtering innocent people in their own homes in recent US government orchestrated bombing raids in Pakistan and Iraq?

Ivashov elaborates on the fact that the secret service and intelligence elements of any major power always control the high echelons of any extremist movement.

From Operation Gladio, to the Neo-Nazis in Germany, to the London bombing mastermind Aswat being an MI6 asset, to Israel's creation of Hamas. This pattern has been consistently proven.

However, Ivashov's solutions to the problem of worldwide engineered chaos are ambiguous and their wording should raise alarm bells for those who understand the long term agenda of the Illuminati.

As his solution to global dictatorship, Ivashov encourages the creation of a pseudo-world government, run under UN auspices.

In essence he is offering a Hobson's choice, a left-wing world government to counter the advance of the right-wing world government. The end result is the same, a world government which is unelected and not representative of the people of any sovereign nation.

Then the General states his desire to, "associate (under the United Nations) the scientific elites in the design and promotion of the philosophical concepts of the Human Being of the 21st Century."

That reads like secular humanism and it wouldn't be out of place in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. So without the luxury of the general going into any further depth on this, at face value what he is proposing appears to be something quite distasteful.

Ivashov then outlines his wish to, "organize the interaction of all religious denominations in the world, on behalf of the stability of humanity's development, security and mutual support."

Again, this is too ambiguous not to rule out the possibility that he's advocating a global religion as the savior of mankind, which again is another mechanism whereby power could be centralized under a world government that is completely unelected and not representative of the people.

Does he just mean religious figureheads getting together and talking? We know that when powerful people have get togethers, they set policy. They don't waste each other's time by partaking in talking shops.

In the absence of further clarification, a certain healthy dose of skepticism needs to be afforded to the General's comments. If Ivashov's solutions are just a mirror image of the problems he clarifies, then with how much credibility should he be bestowed?

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Message: 7
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 07:46:34 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Post 9/11 Saturation Of Our Culture In Torture

The Post 9/11 Saturation Of Our Culture In Torture
Torture Doublethink At All Time High

So much torture, bloodshed, deceit. You cannot make your young people practice torture twenty-four hours a day and not expect to pay a price for it.
Jean Paul-Sartre

Hundreds of stories and reports are now emerging everyday concerning renditioning, secret prisons, camps on foreign soil and fresh detainee abuse. Such reports are continually framed by endless "debates" in the media of when is the right time to use torture and who do we use it on? Add all this to the TV dramas that depict torture as necessary and the government hanging sword that is the "terrorist threat", and it is clear to see that our culture has become saturated in torture.

The fact that we are even having to face the question of whether torture is a consideration of any modern civilized State is mind-blowing in itself. Even the most heinous of bloodthirsty empires throughout history have dismissed the use of and even outlawed torture.

According to an AP poll released today, most Americans and a majority of people in Britain, France and South Korea say torturing terrorism suspects is justified at least in rare instances. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government. Unbelievable.

The attitude of "if it saves lives any measures of interrogation should be permissible" is fundamentally flawed. Under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear, whether it is true or false, if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Torture never produces reliable results, it only creates false leads and implicates the wrong people. Furthermore, and this perhaps the most critical and bone chillingly dangerous point, torture is the MOST degrading, demoralizing, hideous thing one human being can do to another. Almost two-thirds in the United States support such interrogations in the U.S. by their own government. Unbelievable.

There is a coordinated, outlined agenda underway at the hands of the globalist crazy Neo-Cons to redefine the meaning of torture for a "post 9/11 world" and make it commonplace within our culture. Torture has always existed since the dawn of time, yet no authority throughout the history of the planet has ever openly admitted to its practice - until now. Not even the Nazis had the gall to go as far as the Neo-Cons have.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Torture has said that

"Now we have for the first time both an academic and a political debate saying 'We are living under new conditions. Sept. 11 has changed the rules of the game and that's why we have to rethink the absolute prohibition on torture.'"

The Orwellian Newspeak emanating from the globalist Neocons is literally redefining and undermining the entire ethical beliefs system of the Western world. Washington says the Geneva Convention does not apply to foreign captives in its "war on terrorism" because they are "enemy combatants". Human rights activists say the US is still bound by the 1984 U.N. "Convention against Torture," to which it is a signatory. Yet the Neocons say they are not torturing, preferring to refer to a practice of "torture lite" or "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques". And so round and round the false debate goes on whilst the agenda sinks into the cultural mindset.

Amid the furor of the rendition issue, the weekend saw the release of the "CIA Guide to torture" which revealed several techniques employed by officials.

The most severe of such Enhanced Interrogation techniques is known as "water boarding", whereby a prisoner is bound to a board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet, ABC said. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him, inducing a feeling of drowning.

"The cellophane is a modern addition to a technique that had its origins in the Spanish Inquisition," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch, adding that the State Department itself defines the technique as torture.

Not only is this another admission of torture, it contains another admission that the CIA under globalist control is torturing people TO DEATH as it was revealed that more detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq have died because "inexperienced officers miscalculated the time detainees could endure under the treatment."

According to Human Rights First, the U.S. Government has acknowledged 28 confirmed or suspected homicides of detainees in U.S. custody. Only one of these homicides occurred at Abu Ghraib. The Government admits 108 People Have Died in U.S. Custody. 63 of the 108 detainee deaths occurred at locations other than Abu Ghraib. Many stories of torture, leading to death have also emerged from Guantanamo Bay.

Think about that for a minute, the government is openly killing people. TORTURING PEOPLE TO DEATH.

The LA Times reported that no leaders of Al-Qaeda were found at Guantanamo Bay. Most of them were shoemakers, farmers who had never even heard of America and people who were given guns by the Taliban and shoved onto the front lines.

The official army report on Abu Ghraib said that between seventy five and ninety percent of prisoners were totally innocent and just hadn't had their papers in order. The Former General there, Janis Karpinski, confirmed this in a recent interview on the Alex Jones show:

"That's correct and I believe that it remains so today because they are still doing these raids, these round ups where they will go out and target an individual, and whoever happens to be around that individual, they bring them all in. And then there is no avenue to release them, once they are tagged as security detainees, they fall into this relatively new and unsupervised category."

Karpinski also revealed that the torture has continued, long after the scandal broke.

Human Rights First has also voiced deep concern over the amount of other secret detention centres all over the world in which torture is very much operational and continuing full speed ahead.

And as if this wasn't enough, the renditioning issue, which we have been reporting on for around two years now, has broken into the mainstream and is much larger operation than at first thought.

Over 300 flights operated by US intelligence agency CIA that we know of have landed at European airports, whilst revelations of camps in eastern Europe have come to light.

Specially designated torture planes transport nameless victims of the faux 'war on terror' between different third world dictatorships for their security services to work the cattle prod magic on poor bewildered goat herders and shoemakers.

Meanwhile, the real Al-Qaeda or Al-CIAda miraculously escape from maximum security prisons.

Condoleeza Rice has indicated that these camps are not even secret, and that they operate with the full cooperation of elements of the respective Sovereign Governments in the different countries they are located. Once again this is all out in the open. Rice does not deny rendition flights are taking place, she simply denies they are secret. Furthermore Rice is adamant that the detainees are not being moved to be tortured. This is in some bizarre and twisted way true because the Administration is redefining the meaning of torture.

When Donald Rumsfeld was asked about the force feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay recently, a brutal practice that involves inserting tubes as wide as fingers directly through stomachs and nostrils without any anesthetic as prisoners convulse and vomit blood, Rummy replied, "I'm not a doctor."

Rumsfeld didn't deny that this torture was taking place, he simply claimed ignorance of the exact nature of the procedure. The Administration is twisting and contorting what torture actually is, just as they did with preemptive war and preventive war, just as they do with everything. If something does not fit the agenda, the attitude is not to alter the agenda to work around it, but rather to alter the real meaning of something to fit it into the agenda.

Condoleeza Rice this week asked the world to "trust her" on the issue of torture. This is a woman who said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction capable of producing a "mushroom cloud" over an American city. A woman who said Saddam Hussein sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped train some in chemical weapons development.

By not denying anything Rice is as good as admitting it.

"The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear that it believes, with no apologies, that the ends justify the means. Lying is simply a means to an end. What Condi Rice is telling Europeans is "pay no attention to our lies; just accept that we are liars for a good and proper cause." Says Paul Craig Roberts, former US Secretary of the Treasury and Wall St. Journal editor.

When directly questioned by MPs on the CIA flights this week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he has accepted US assurances and the practice of transporting terror suspects for questioning in foreign countries is a long-standing U-S policy. If Tony Blair knows this to be the case, and he knew British airports were being used for stop offs, then why is the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw writing to Condoleeza Rice demanding to know what is going on with these flights? These two actions do not add up. The reality may be that Tony Blair's authority has been overruled by his elite higher ups whilst Straw is acting under pressure as he is directly under the spotlight of all European Foreign Offices with Britain currently chairing the EU presidency. Blatent covert activity is influencing the actions of politicians at the highest levels.

So we should trust the Administration over the renditioning then. OK, what about the admitted botch job involving the innocent German citizen Khaled al-Masri who was grabbed whilst on vacation in Europe, shipped away on the rendition plane and shoved into a cell in Afghanistan and tortured for five months?

Or what about Mamdouh Habib, an innocent Australian citizen, a former cafe owner who was grabbed and moved between Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay until his release at the beginning of 2005? Habib told the BBC he was "brain-washed, beaten and given electric shocks." "I just repeated what they wanted me to say," he admitted.

There are countless other stories of torture from Guantanamo Bay, where the military intend to build court and execution chambers, once they are done torturing detainees.

Our culture is now saturated with the torture agenda, it is everywhere and it is dangerously sinking into reality. Scott McClellan tells us that the Bush administration is unequivocally against torture under any circumstances and yet it is Bush and his handler Dick Cheney, the Vice President for torture, publicly blocking the legislation that would outlaw torture.

Former CIA chiefs, military Commanders and Generals and Government officials have asserted that the government is now in the hands of torturing psychopaths.

In the meantime, the most popular talk show host in America calls Gitmo a holiday home and says that the Abu Ghraib prison guards were "just blowing off some steam" when they raped children and beat detainees to death. The BBC's Flagship radio news program also backs torture by the CIA and MSNBC like to debate torturing children.

24, Threat Matrix, and the British drama Spooks, which is a drama about the British MI5, feature plots in which the use of torture is advocated as a morally just measure.

When the evidence for the Iraq war was revealed as LIES, the back up was to claim the removal of Saddam alone was worthy justification. This was because he was a brutal torturer and that is unacceptable. Yet we now have the same group who told us torture is bad, telling us it is OK when they do it. In what way can torture be unacceptable in one instance and acceptable in another?

Torture is torture, it involves inflicting severe pain and distress, and in some cases killing people. No rational thinking person could ever think that is acceptable, especially when in use by a group that claims its aim is to spread freedom throughout the world.

The Doublethink that people are engaging in here is vast and out of hand. All over the US and Europe people are advocating torture. Almost two-thirds in the United States support the use of torture on a suspect by their own government IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

There is a deliberate agenda at hand to reflect an image of America to the world as a corrupt, evil, deceiving, hypocritical and brutal power. The Bush administration is being played like a fiddle and as each horror story scandal emerges, America sinks further into the waiting jaws of its 'savior' - the dark stalker of global government.

We can only attempt to fight against this agenda by exposing the deceit, lies and downright incredulity of those who are pushing it. The enslavement of the minds of the American and European people and the attempt to make them think in the same way these crazies do is hideous and we will continue to expose their agenda until we defeat it or are wiped out in the effort of defeating it.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
Mohandas Gandhi

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Message: 8
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 07:58:30 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Donation of Bayer papers to U.S. Holocaust Museum

The Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, January 04, 2006

Rosenberg gives Bayer papers to U.S. Holocaust Museum

A 13-year effort by a Pittsburgh man, and a committee that worked with him, to show Bayer AG's culpability in the Holocaust produced a collection of minutes, notes, transcripts, videotapes and photos that scholars everywhere may now study. Bayer AG is a German corporation whose American operations are based in Pittsburgh.

David Rosenberg of Pittsburgh, who chaired the Committee for Appropriate Acknowledgment, recently donated those records - enough to fill 11 boxes - to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) AG in Washington, D.C.

Rosenberg signed the deed of gift agreement on Dec. 16, which formally donates the collection to the museum and grants it permission to make the papers available for study. "They're available now (for study)," said USHMM Archivist Rebecca Erbelding. "It's a pretty quick turn-around."

Rosenberg, an archivist at the Archives Service Center of the University of Pittsburgh, said he had been looking into Bayer's role for years on his own with support from his friends. The committee itself began work in 1998 as a response to contributions the Bayer Foundation made to local Jewish organizations, including the Holocaust Center of the United Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center's capital campaign.

Between 1990 and 2003, working in Pittsburgh, Rosenberg, and later the six-member committee, researched and documented Bayer AG's corporate culpability during the Holocaust and pushed for its acknowledgment and atonement.

Bayer was part of I.G. Farben during the Holocaust. Farben used slave labor from Auschwitz to build a factory there that was intended to produce artificial rubber. Farben also had a hand in production of Zyklon B, the gas used to systematically murder Jews and other peoples in the gas chambers. Farben also used forced labor at its Leverkuesen plant near Cologne, Rosenberg said. Today, Leverkusen is the corporate headquarters for Bayer, AG.

Rosenberg's effort produced resolutions by the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association in 1990 and 1991 recommending that references to Bayer's role in the Holocaust be included if and when Bayer made donatons to the Jewish community.

Bayer USA President and CEO Helge Wehmeier made a dramatic, but personal, apology to Elie Wiesel on Dec. 13, 1995, before the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor lectured at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland. To date, though, Bayer has never issued a corporate apology, despite a trip Rosenberg made to Germany in April 1999 to speak at a Bayer stockholders meeting in Cologne.

"They stuck to their guns [saying], 'we're not the same company,'" Rosenberg said. "This is the game they played - the shell and pea game." Bayer, like other German companies from that era did pay into a settlement fund for survivors of forced or slave labor.

With the committee disbanded, Erbelding said, the collection can do more good at the Holocaust Museum than in Pittsburgh. "At least here the papers will continue to be part of the discussion and an active scholarly debate," Erbelding said. In addition to Rosenberg, the members of the committee were Sandra M. Fox, Dr. Edward S. Friedman, Meir Israelowitz, James Kramer, Ivan Frank, Wendy Goldman and the late Steven Sapolsky. While it was in existence, the committee received support from several congregation mens' clubs, the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association, Tree of Life Congregation, the Ohio-Allegheny Valley Region of B'nai B'rith and the Three Rivers Community Foundation.

Rosenberg's gift is an unusual one. The Holocaust Museum's archives typically receive collections of authentic Holocaust era material and scholarly notes as gifts. "As far as I know this is the first collection from a nonauthor of a committee's work to address this issue," Erbelding said.

While Bayer never officially acknowledged any culpability in the Holocaust, Rosenberg said the committee had an impact. "I think we succeeded in bringing this issue to public attention in Pittsburgh and linking up with German groups and other like-minded people," he said, "but, they (Bayer) could have gone farther and could still go farther."

(By Lee Chottiner, Executive Editor, lchottiner@pittchron.com.)

please also read:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Jew, Christian team up to stress German firms' culpability for war horrors

Reuters: Wartime slave workers seek cash from German firms

Materials About Bayer´s Nazi-past

Coalition against BAYER-dangers (Germany)
www.CBGnetwork.org

http://www.cbgnetwork.org/1289.html

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Message: 9
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 07:41:27 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Police Found Suspected Bombs In WTC On 9/11

Police Found Suspected Bombs In WTC On 9/11
Reports surfaced of truck parked in building

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet | December 5 2005

The report you will see was filed by an MSNBC news anchor Rick Sanchez on the morning of September 11th 2001. It can be downloaded here.

The details contained therein seem to have slipped under the radar amidst the huge body of evidence proving controlled demolition brought down both the twin towers and Building 7.

Sanchez states,

"Police have found what they believe to be a suspicious device and they fear that it may lead to another explosion."

"I spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris, and they told me they have reason to believe that one of the explosion at the besides the ones made with the planes, may have been caused by a van that was parked on the building that may have had an explosive device in it."

It would make sense that police would find at least some of the bombs that tore down the only steel buildings to collapse from fire damage in history at speeds that defied physics. There would have been so many devices involved in the demolition that stumbling across some was inevitable.

This report mirrors those that emerged in the hours following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, where bomb squads removed numerous unexploded secondary devices from the Alfred P. Murrah building.

The twin towers were wired to the brim with highly powerful explosives, some of which exploded before the collapse of the buildings and some during.

This is why people like construction worker Philip Morelli, working in the fourth sub-basement of the north tower, were thrown around like rag dolls in an earthquake.

With the sheer volume of evidence and basic straightforward common sense proving controlled demolition, the possibility still remains that the federal government, backed by FEMA, will come forward and announce that another Al-Qaeda cell placed the explosives days before the attack.

This of course is ridiculous, it takes highly trained explosives experts weeks and sometimes months to correctly rig buildings many times smaller than the twin towers, and with varying degrees of success. The towers imploded perfectly and fell down right in their own footsteps, as did Building 7 which wasn't hit by a plane. Any building not owned by Larry Silverstein, despite having closer proximity to the towers, strangely stood its ground.

Larry Silverstein admitted that Building 7 was "pulled," an industry term for demolition, in a September 2002 PBS documentary, but has failed to respond to a firestorm of subsequent questions.

Others argue that the powers that be will simply continue to ignore the evidence now being certified by such credible individuals as Professor Steven Jones and former chief economist for the US Department of Labor under George W. Bush, Morgan Reynolds.

To change such a major element of the official version of events would throw into question all the other pieces of the puzzle and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down.

Nevertheless, the report that police did find explosives in the World Trade Center before the collapse of the towers is another giant smoking gun to add to all the rest proving that the collapse of the buildings and 9/11 was an inside job.

----------------------------------------

Related: Alex Jones at Ground Zero: The Use Of Explosives In the 9/11 Attack
In this 22 minute clip Alex reports from ground zero and talks to eyewitnesses who were there on the day who reported bombs.

Related: Bombs in the World Trade Center

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Message: 10
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 08:47:29 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Bush Plays Terror Card With Bogus LA Attack Plot

Bush Plays Terror Card With Bogus LA Attack Plot
Bootlicking news networks follow suit with dramatic images of Library Tower being destroyed

In an orchestrated set-up, George W. Bush announced that a plan to fly a plane into the LA Library Tower was thwarted in 2002 and within minutes news networks were showing footage of the same building being destroyed in the movie Independence Day.

Bush stated that the attack was prevented only with the help of NSA surveillance of communications, an attempt to shut up critics of the spying scandal in a move about as sophisticated as a 300lb Pittsburgh Steelers fan after a heavy drinking session.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, immediately went public with comments of his absolute bewilderment concerning the alleged plot.

"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I don't expect a call from the president - but somebody."

Within minutes of the President's speech, news networks were showing images from the movie Independence Day (pictured), where the Library Tower is destroyed as part of the alien invasion.

We have to understand that the Mayor being completely oblivious to the supposed terror plot most likely means that it was completely invented by Karl Rove and his fellow scriptwriters. That meant that a target had to be chosen and they chose the Library Tower knowing full well that news networks would show images of it being destroyed from the movie Independence Day.

In the mind of the passive viewer this information enters the brain as if it is real, and they suspend disbelief to embrace the notion that the building was destroyed by terrorists. This residue remains in the viewer's psyche and the validity of the government's response to the 'attack,' in this instance passing the soon to expire Patriot Act and justifying spying on Americans, is unquestionable.

This isn't another tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, the suggestibility of television is a scientific fact that has been accepted for decades.

This represents an organized campaign of mind control and fearmongering. They have played the terror card so many times that the fingerprints of deception can be lifted and verified almost immediately.

These are the same people that brought you fake fat bin Laden 'confession' tapes found in a shack in Jalalabad and could psychically predict tapes tying Osama to Saddam airing on Al Jazeera days before they surfaced.

Furthermore, as Kurt Nimmo points out, one of the supposed ringleaders of the operation, Riduan Isamuddin, was "operations chief" of Jemaah Islamiyah, which was a creation of Indonesian intelligence and is widely acknowledged to wholly controlled by the CIA.

If the government has really thwarted an attack on LA you can bet your bottom dollar that they would have waved it in front of the anti-war crowd's face before invading Iraq in March 2003.

This is as obvious a political points scoring move as you're ever going to see. It has been deliberately and synthetically concocted to stifle heated criticism of the NSA spying.

This, despite the fact that the spying debate still circles around foreign phone calls, when the real issue is the admitted fact that the Pentagon and other government agencies have been caught and continue to spy on peaceful anti-war and activist groups entirely made up of American citizens.

~~~

Twenty-Three Intel Experts Say LA Terror Plot a Sham

Following yesterday's highly suspiciously timed announcement that the US government had foiled a 2002 terror plot against the Los Angeles Library Tower, intelligence experts and White House reporters have uniformly debunked the story.

As we reported yesterday, in an orchestrated set-up, George W. Bush announced that a plan to fly a plane into the LA Library Tower was thwarted in 2002 and within minutes news networks were showing footage of the same building being destroyed in the movie Independence Day.

After the mayor of LA, Antonio Villaraigosa, immediately went public with comments of his absolute bewilderment concerning the alleged plot, no fewer than twenty three intelligence experts told Capitol Hill Blue that President Bush was "cheapening and politicizing their work" by creating a "fantasy world" of discredited terror alerts and using them for political points scoring.

Both current and former NSA and FBI officials vented their fury with George Bush, one telling Capitol Hill Blue that he was "full of shit."

The LA attack plot arose from the same discredited informant who said that Washington and New York financial institutions were being targeted, which led the White House to raise the terror alert right as the 2004 election campaign was beginning.

In June 2004 John Pistole, the FBI's counterterrorism director, said he was "not sure what [the CIA] was referring to," after a CIA counterterrorism official who testified under the alias "Ted Davis" said that the US had prevented aviation attacks against the east and west coast.

Even former Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge, before he was replaced by Michael Chertoff, stated that the White House would raise the terror alert with zeal based on the flimsiest evidence.

White House press reporters questioned the timing of the bogus attack claim Thursday evening in light of the NSA spying hearings, after Bush claimed NSA surveillance was key in preventing the alleged attack.

"But is it just a coincidence? You had February 6th circled on the calendar for the hearings, the NSA hearings. Is it just a pure coincidence that this comes out today?" asked one journalist.

McClellan was clearly ruffled and all he could do was repeat the same line about how the President likes to share information with the American people, a claim that would be funny if it were not so disturbingly tragic in light of today's report highlighting White House knowledge of levee breaks in New Orleans hours after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore.

"Scott, I wanted to just ask a follow-up about the LA plot. Is there something missing from this story, a practical application, a few facts? Because if you want to commandeer a plane and fly it into a tower, if you used shoe bombs, wouldn't you blow off the cockpit? Or is there something missing from this story?" asked another.

File this with the dozens of fake terror alerts, staged 'Al-Qaeda' arrests and hoax bin Laden tapes as another brazen attempt to frighten the American people into jettisoning their own liberty for the sake of a mythical security offered by an illegitimate occupational government.

~~~

Sycophantic Lamestream Media Marches to the Newspeak Drumbeat

In George Orwell's 1984, the purpose of Newspeak, according to a website devoted to its study, was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

Media Matters carried two items today that provide examples of Newspeak not in the fictional world of 1984, but in the modern day news cycle of 2006.

During ABC News anchor Elizabeth Vargas' introduction of George Stephanopoulos's preview of the 2006 State of the Union address, ABC carried text beneath an onscreen picture (see above) of Bush labeled, "America's Agenda."

The boot-licking lapdogs' attempt to unify Americans behind Bush's mandate before his grandiose yet reality avoiding speech flies in the face of recent polls showing Bush's approval rating in the low 40's and a January 29 ABC News/Washington Post poll showing a majority of the American people disapproving of his performance on nearly every major issue.

In addition, White House spin strategists have embarked on a clear campaign to offset anger over revelations of the NSA illegally spying on American citizens by calling the action a 'terrorist surveillance program' - after all, who's against listening to Osama bin Laden's phone calls right? Let's just not mention the fact that only nine so-called terrorists, out of the thousands detained without trial, including American citizens, have even been charged and none of them charged with terrorist offences. Don't talk about the fact that 70-90% of those taken to internment camps in Iraq were terrorist suspects for the crime of not showing their papers at checkpoints.

By changing the terms of address from 'domestic spying' to 'terrorist surveillance' - the meaning is altered. This is classic Newspeak.

Imagine my shock when it came to light that Fox News had prostrated itself in front of the government and adopted lockstep the 'terrorist surveillance program' rhetoric on its news broadcasts.

On January 24th's Fox and Friends - a mish-mash of celebrity mindlessness with lavish breakfast helpings of government worship interspersed, the issue was referred to as the 'terrorist surveillance program' as it was on the following day's O'Reilly Factor.

E.D. Hill and Steven Doocy of Fox and Friends agreed that 'terrorist surveillance program' "sounded better" and resolved to use it in all future discussions of the issue. There is no truth to the rumor that during the same segment the co-hosts concurred that 'President' wasn't an adoring enough term for George W. Bush and that he should in future be referred to as 'Supreme Leader In All His Infinite Wisdom and Love.'

Watch the clip.

The origin of the 'terrorist surveillance program' term was tracked down to Internet blowhards Newsmax, who never came across an 'Iraqi WMD Moved To Syria, Let's Bomb 'Em' story they didn't like.

The White House included it ten times in a January 22nd press release and the sycophantic lackeys of the lamestream media have marched to the drumbeat ever since.

~~~

Getting the kids used to the cashless society
Mastercard introduces credit cards for children

Mastercard is to introduce credit cards directly aimed at children, encouraging them to go into debt and consume products without the use of cash.

Supporters regard the cards, which are issued by Bluecorner, as the natural step in an increasingly cashless society. They argue that the prepayment cards will familiarise children with plastic without spending too much. Says the London Times.

The cards are designed to get children used to the fact that cash is obsolete and their money, and the amount they are allowed to spend is controlled by someone else who also profits from their spending.

The cards, which have different designs based on popular teenagers' magazines and radio stations, have charges of £9.95 fee to open the account and 85p for each withdrawal from an ATM cash dispenser. There are penalty fees of £4.99 for cancelling an account or ordering a replacement card.

Phil Davies, the director of business development at MasterCard Europe, defended the cards saying: "Parents can control the amount of money their son or daughter spends on the card by limiting the amount of money placed on the card."

So in effect it is exactly the same as an adult credit card, except the controlling of the amount of money in adult life is carried out by the globalist bankers who profit from the cashless society.

A cashless society would mean total control over everyone as people would be forced to pay for everything electronically. Every purchase would be traceable and the ability to buy or sell could be halted immediately at any given moment.

We have previously seen how the concept is being seized upon and marketed to young people as cool. Cashless Coke vending machines for example integrated with wireless technology are all very cool, but not so cool when your credit is halted and you can't pop in a quarter for a can of your favourite soft drink to quench your thirst after a hard day's slaving.

Implantable microchips are very cool, you can use them to get into nightclubs and pay for drinks, and according to some they are the new body art.

But they are admittedly a device of control. You can only spend as much as the controlling authority wishes.

School children are being encouraged to thumbscan for their lunches, and amusement park goers are being biometrically scanned upon entry for payment and identification purposes.

We are constantly being told that the future is cashless, there are cashless lanes at the supermarket that move quicker and more efficiently, and with technology such as RFID we will receive a superior service at the price of being tracked, traced and having our personal data recorded at all times.

Of course the cashless society would mean a massive boost in control and wealth for the globalist taxers and the banking corporations. With even more charges and levies on everything we spend and the ability to lend out more than even more than they already do, the banking elite would profit on an unprecedented level. Taxes would also be easier to collect electronically.

The world has been expecting a global currency for over half a century now, and it is finally arriving, but not in the way it was expected. Economies are being "harmonized", in other words, taxes in all countries are being raised.

NewsMax last year exposed the OECD's scheme to penalize countries that offer (comparatively) low taxes. Nations that cut taxes and thereby boost their economies are supposedly unfair to Europe's socialist welfare states.

The argument is not that the welfare states should position themselves so as to be more competitive by also lowering their own tax rates. Rather it is the low-tax countries that are viewed as "unfair." Thus, everyone shares the misery, and the globalists profit to the max from a cashless society.

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