August 5, 2002
August 12, 2002
August 19, 2002
August 26, 2002
Whole Body Health
Yes, Jim Traficant was framed by the FBI and the Justice Department and Traficant has the evidence to prove it. Yet the House of Representatives would rather not hear about it. That's why they voted to expel Traficant on July 24.
Unless they tuned
in to C-SPAN to hear the House debate over the vote to expel outspoken
Ohio populist Jim Traficant — featuring a spirited and emotional
presentation by Traficant — the average American has heard
only the charges against Traficant and none of his defense.
The vote, 420-1 for expulsion, proves only that the House preferred to try to bury the burgeoning controversy surrounding the Traficant case. "He's out and that's it. We're done with Traficant," is the attitude.
However, emerging evidence suggests Traficant was right all along and the government was out to "get" him.
From the beginning it was an "open secret" that an important reason Traficant was targeted was because he openly and repeatedly challenged the power of the Israeli lobby over congress. In particular, his courageous and successful rescue of falsely-accused "Nazi war criminal" John Demjanjuk from the hangman brought savage retribution from the media.
With a steady drumbeat, from the beginning the media hyped terms such as "bribery" and "kickbacks" and "racketeering" and "tax evasion"—essentially echoing the Justice Department's indictment of the congressman—but never once provided any of Traficant's quite substantive defenses against the charges.
Due to time limitations, of course, Traficant was only able to address — in the most brief words — the allegations that were made against him. To a viewer unfamiliar with the names of the players and the details in the case, his words were undoubtedly out of context.
But despite claims by the Justice Department and by members of the House Ethics Committee who postured for the television cameras and proclaimed their devotion to the Constitution while working to push Traficant out of Congress, the 6,000-page transcript of Traficant's trial does contain solid testimony refuting most — if not all — of the charges against Traficant.
In addition, according to Traficant, the trial judge, Lesley Wells, repeatedly prevented him from introducing numerous witnesses and testimony that would have buttressed Traficant's defense. There is good reason to believe that may be no coincidence.
The judge's husband is with a law firm that has represented the interests of a multi-millionaire businessman who cut a plea bargain with the government in return for giving what Traficant said was false testimony against him.
Mark Colucci, one of Traficant's attorneys, says that the judge's connection to the government witness was "of such magnitude to a fair trial that it guarantees a reversal [of Traficant's conviction] and a new trial."
Whether the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals will grant Traficant a new trial remains to be seen. But the revelation regarding Wells's secret link to the prosecution comes as no surprise to those who watched the media-promoted Justice Department campaign against Traficant as it unfolded. The Traficant case has only gotten more interesting since he was actually convicted. And the story continues to develop.
For example, as a result of watching recent televised testimony by Traficant and several defense witnesses Traficant called before the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct — commonly referred to as the ethics committee — at least one of the jurors who voted to convict Traficant says that not only does he believe that Traficant is innocent but he also believes Traficant was correct in charging that he (Traficant) was the victim of a Justice Department vendetta.
"I know it's after the fact," Leo Glaser told The Cleveland Plain Dealer on July 20, "but now I believe that there's no doubt that the government was out to get him, and if they want you, they'll find enough evidence to make you believe that the Earth is flat."
Glaser's views turned after he watched and heard a Virginia business executive, Richard Detore, tell the House ethics committee that Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Morford had urged Detore to lie and say that he overheard Traficant seeking favors from another businessman, John J. Cafaro, in exchange for political influence on Cafaro's behalf.
Detore likewise denied that he personally had tried to bribe Traficant. According to Detore, because he told the Justice Department that he would not lie about Traficant, he, too, was indicted.
In fact, all of the government's key witnesses against Traficant were either under indictment or had entered into plea bargains with the government at the time they gave testimony against Traficant.
Unfortunately, Detore's compelling version of events, described to the House committee, was not heard by Glaser and the jury during Traficant's trial. Wells had rejected motions by Traficant relating to Detore's possible testimony in regard to this matter.
Glaser now says that if he had heard Detore testify in court to the same things he said before the House panel he would have voted to acquit Traficant.
"It would have given me reasonable doubt," said Glaser.
Glaser's one vote could have derailed the long-term Justice Department campaign to railroad Traficant into federal prison.
Despite hearing Detore's testimony, members of the House ethics committee voted to recommend to the full House that they vote to expel Traficant from Congress.
Then — as evidenced by the lop-sided vote against Traficant — the members of the full House refused to listen to Traficant's charges. It was much easier to throw him out of office than take on the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
Traficant is appealing his conviction, but is still likely to be sentenced to jail on July 30. In the meantime, the now ex-congressman is still running for re-election (as an independent) and says he will continue to do so, even from a jail cell.
The Traficant story is far from over.
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Top officials in the Bush administration and Congress are calling for changing law and tradition by turning American soldiers into a domestic police force.
The chief of Homeland security and leading Democratic senators are calling for radical and unprecedented revision in laws that prevent the U.S. military from functioning as a national police force. If they prevail, soldiers could patrol the streets and arrest citizens, some thing foreign to the philosophy of our institutions, existing law and Americans' concept of liberty.
Tom
Ridge, head of Homeland Security and Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.)
and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) have called for reconsidering the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, which prevents soldiers from roaming the
streets and arresting people.
Biden said on a TV talkie July 21 that the act "has to be amended" and soon.
"It's not very realistic" that soldiers would "not be able to exercise the same power a police officer would in dealing with that situation," Biden said, referring to the "war on terrorism."
Biden is a member of the Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
"I don't fear looking at the law to see whether our military can be more helpful, in a very supportive and assisting role, even than they have been up to now - providing equipment, providing training," said Levin.
Air Force Gen. Ralph Eberhardt, President Bush's choice to head the new Northern Command, told The New York Times he supports increased domestic powers for the military to defend against terrorist attacks.
The Times said Eberhardt's opinion is shared by other senior military officials and represents a "shift in thinking" at the Pentagon, which historically has resisted involvement in domestic law enforcement.
The White House has ordered lawyers at the departments of Defense and Justice to analyze federal laws that restrict the military's role in the law enforcement on U.S. shores, the Times reported.
For the past decade, elite military forces have been frightening Americans in cities and towns with "urban warfare training."
Black helicopters have flown at roof-top levels at night, releasing black-garbed troopers with fully automatic weapons, sometimes loaded with live rounds.
These troops, the government said, were preparing to engage an unspecified enemy in cities in an unspecified "Third World" country.
Critics note that Ridge's plan would radically alter the role of U.S. Armed Forces.
Some critics note that it is odd that the Bush administration, while being opposed to stationing the army at our borders to guard against illegal immigration and terrorists, wants to give police powers to the army to be used against American citizens.
"The purpose of the U.S. military is to effectively and efficiently deliver violence," said one Washington policymaker. "Unlike police, who are trained to de-escalate situations, soldiers learn to escalate hostilities.
"Turning soldiers into policemen is promoted by the same
people who want to put women on the front lines," he said.
"It completely changes the purpose of the military and I'm
surprised that the military brass is being this receptive to the
idea."
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The House shut Jim Traficant out but it can't shut him up.
Ousted Rep. Jim Traficant (D.-Ohio) will address the founding convention of the America first Party in Orlando, Fla., Aug. 8-11. "We look forward to Mr. Traficant's address at our convention," said Dan Charles, interim chairman of the party. "He has stood by America and the American worker and we will stand by him."
Traficant is running for his former seat as an independent this November. He is appealing the criminal convictions that led to his expulsion.
"When James Traficant declared that he loved his country but hated the government, he spoke for millions of his countrymen," Charles said.
Of Traficant's ouster, Charles said the House members "reek of shame and cowardice." It demonstrates that democrats and Republicans are "enemies of justice and freedom." America needs "a clean sweep in government," Charles said.
The America First Party will be hosting its first national convention, Aug. 8-11 at the Renaissance Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Fla.
Call 1-866-SOS-USA1 for more information.
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Americans would be shocked to know how extensive are the efforts by cultural communists to promote sexual activity and homosexual conduct among children. Here is a summary of these efforts.
Few Americans are aware of how widespread the effort is by educators to promote sexual activity among children.
"The research shows us that in some minority cases of young - even some quite young - people can have a positive sexual experience with an adult," said Judith Levine, author of Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. "America's drive to protect children from sex is protecting them from nothing. Instead, often it is harming them.
If she were expressing an isolated opinion, Miss Levine could be shrugged off as just another sick cultural communist. But she has too much company for comfort. Her book was published by the University of Minnesota Press, which thought so highly of it that it is in a second printing. Her allies include:
* The institute for the Advanced Study of Human sexuality in San Francisco published a report, "Sexual Rights of children," that there is no "inherent harm in sexual expression in childhood."
* "The category ‘child' is a rhetorical device for inflaming what really is an irrational set of attitudes" against sex with children, Gilbert Herdt told the Dutch pedophilia journal Paidika. Herdt, a professor at San Francisco State University, is author of Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet.
* Paidika also interviewed John Money, professor emeritus of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, who favorably described "genuinely, totally mutual" sex between boys and men. In an introduction to a Dutch professor's book, Boys and Their Contacts With Men: A Study of Sexually Expressed Friendships, Money wrote that opponents of pedophilia are motivated by "self-imposed, moralistic ignorance."
* Boy who have sex with men "are never considered willing partners even if they are hustlers," complained Harris Mirken, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, in the Journal of Homosexuality. He wrote that "children are the last bastion of the old sexual morality."
Sex between any adult and any child is also known as "statutory rape" in every state.
The American Psychological Association Journal said "value-neutral" language such as "adult-child sex" should be used to describe child molestation if it was a "willing encounter." This has been used as defense evidence in child molestation cases in at least three states.
Sick sex educators are working to condition the public mind to accept this depravity and eliminate statutory rape laws, all of which make it criminal for an adult to have sexual relations with a child. The actual ages, 16 to 18 years, that define a child varies among the states.
Only an informed society can stop this evil.
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The Swedish diplomat who headed the UN weapons inspections in Iraq from 1991-97 recently confirmed Iraq clams that the United States had "manipulated" the weapons inspections in order to spy on foment conflict by provoking Baghdad.
As the American public is subjected to an increasingly aggressive media campaign about the "threat" that Saddam Hussein poses, European diplomats involved with Iraq are challenging the veracity of claims made by those who support military action.
Rolf Ekeus, the respected Swedish diplomat who directed the United Nations weapons inspections commission in Iraq from 1991-97, known as UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission), recently confirmed Iraqi claims that the United states had staffed UNSCOM with spies and manipulated the inspections to provoke Baghdad. Ekeus also said he doubts the United States has any "hard evidence" that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, telling the BBC on July that practically everything was found and destroyed."
Hans von Sponeck, UN humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000, recently returned from two weeks in Iraq. If Iraq were to allow the inspectors back in, the U.S. case for war would be exposed as fiction, von Sponeck says.
"The U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA know perfectly well that today's Iraq poses no threat to anyone in the region, let alone in the United States. To argue otherwise is dishonest," von Sponeck said. "One does not need to be a specialist in weapons of mass destruction to conclude that these sites had been rendered harmless and have remained in this condition. Evidence of al-Qaeda-Iraq collaboration does not exist...why then, one must ask, does the Bush administration want to include Iraq in its fight against terrorism?"
The most obvious reason for a U.S.-British-led war against Iraq is to obtain control of Iraq's immense proven and probable oil reserves, estimated to exceed 300 billion barrels(bbl) if all unexplored acreage were drilled. This would make Iraq the number one holder of oil reserves in the world.
Iraq's proven reserves of 112-bil bbl and probable reserves of 214-bil bbl currently place it second after Saudi Arabia. Iraq hopes to be a major gas exporter but negotiations with neighboring Turkey on building a gas pipeline have not reached a conclusion. Oil exploration and development in Iraq has been halted since 1990.
"An entire region is being destabilized to suit American preferences for political change in Iraq," von Sponeck said.
In an interview on Swedish radio, Ekeus openly accused the United States of manipulating the UN inspections teams for their own political ends. Ekeus said the United states had tried to find information about the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's presient.
"They pressed the inspection leadership to carry out inspections which were controversial from the Iraqis' view, and thereby created a blockage that could be used as a justification for a direct military action," Ekeus said.
Ekeus told the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet that after he left his UN position the U.S. had placed two of its own agents in the group of inspectors.
The revelations made by Ekeus strengthen Iraq's argument against allowing UN inspectors back into the country. Since the U.S. administration has stated it intention to replace the Iraqi regime, officials in Baghdad argue that the return of inspectors will certainly lead to intelligence gathering and deliberate provocation to give legitimacy to a U.S.-led attack.
"Neo-conservative" Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is behind the push for war with Iraq. On July 14 he stated in Istanbul: "President bush has make it clear how dangerous the current Iraqi regime is to the United States and that it represents a danger we cannot live with indefinitely."
When AFP asked Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Lapan for evidence that Iraq posed a serious threat or possessed weapons of mass destruction, Lapan was unable to provide any. Asked about the lack of evidence given the fact that the United States controls the skies over most of Iraq and is able to monitor activity on the ground by satellite, Lapan said, "Iraq in particular has been able to move underground.
ANNAN'S BILDERBERG CONNECTION
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the new chief weapons inspector, another Swedish diplomat, Hans Blix, have tried unsuccessfully to negociate a return of the inspectors with Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister. Annan appointed Blix in January 2000 to head UNMOVIC, the new inspections regime for Iraq.
Iraqi officials have been frustrated by the Security Council's decision not to allow Blix to discuss with Baghdad the key remaining disarmament tasks before inspectors return to the country. Sabri says that Blix is under U.S. presure not to agree to any compromise with Baghdad.
Inspections based on a U.S. agenda, Sabri said, are simply impractical. "They proved a complete failure. The inspectors were procrastination, prolonging the sanctions and providing a pretext for action against Iraq."
Annan's intimate relationship with the global elite has not been reported in the mainstream press. The control of Annan's globalist masters, however, is clearly evidenced by those he appoints to strategic positions.
Annan is married to the well-connected Swede Nane Lagergren, a niece of the missing diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. The UN and Annan exploit the accepted myth of "Swedish neutrality" and rely on elite Swedish diplomats to oversee the "globalist agenda" in the world's hotspots, such as Iraq and the Balkans. The Wallenberg family, which dominates Sweden's industry and economy, is a Bilderberg stalwart.
The Security Council decided that Annan should also appoint "suitably qualified experts: to serve as a College of Commissioners for UNMOVIC. The commissioners "review the implementation of security council resolution 1284 and other relevant resolutions." Annan duly nominated John Stern Wold, who served as special adviser to the president and secretary of state for Caspian Basin energy Diplomacy from 1999-2000. Wolf currently serves as assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Nonproliferation.
Under the terms of UN resolutions, sanctions on Iraq cannot be lifted until the commission certifies that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons have been destroyed - along with missiles to deliver them.
Ewen Buchanan, a spokesman for Blix, told AFP that under resolution
1284 Iraq must accept inspections again if it wants to see an
end to the crippling sanctions. "It is not our job to harass,
provoke or humiliate, but the inspections must be credible,"
Buchanan said.
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Reports that - just before Sept.11 - U.S. intelligence officials met with a top Pakistani spook accused of helping finance the 9-11 terrorist attacks add fuel to the fire of speculation that U.S. government officials know more about the terror attack than they are admitting. And they want no investigation.
On the fourth floor of the U.S. Capitol, security is so tight that representatives and senators from the joint-intelligence committee who are investigating the Sept.11 attacks must check their cell phones and pagers at the door.
Behind those sound-proof walls, shocking evidence about foreknowledge of the terrorist attacks is being kept secret.
One reason for such furtive activity may have to do with why both the White House and CNN altered the transcript of May 16, 2002 White House press conference by National security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
The machinations had their genesis later in the day that Thursday, after The New York Post hit the streets with its huge "Bush Knew" banner, adding "Prez Was Warned of Possible Hijacking Before Terror Attacks" as a subheading. Other papers began to reveal the contents of a presidential FBI briefing from Aug. 6-36 days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The top-secret briefing said that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were going to "bring the fight to America," reported The Toronto Star, for past U.S. attacks upon its training camps in Afghanistan.
So the wheels of presidential damage control started turning, even as The New York Times was putting finishing touches on an explosive May 19 story for the next day, reporting that Bush had also been briefed before Sept.11.
The Times reported: "A 1999 report for the National Intelligence Council, which oversees government intelligence analysis, saying ‘Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA or the White House.'"
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) Said he was "gravely concerned about the information provided us just yesterday that the president received a warning in August about the threat of hijackers," adding "Why did it take eight months for us to receive this information."
Then House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo) called for a congressional investigation into "what the president and what the White House knew about the event leading up to 9-11."
But like the gang that couldn't shoot straight, Gephardt has also been convinced not to make waves - grieving families of victims who re depending on him to fight for truth notwithstanding.
American Free Press has learned that the secretary of state and two other State Department officials, the CIA director, three senators, and a congressman actually met with the intelligence chief from Pakistan who, it has been alleged, wired $100,000 to fund the operations of suspected terrorist hijacker leader Mohammed Atta just prior to the attacks.
In fact, Pakistan's intelligence service - the ISI - has had a long-standing and intimate relationship with the CIA, going back a generation. That the high-ranking ISI official linked to the events of 9-11 was huddling with American officials just prior to the 9-11 attacks is a devastating detail indeed - and not something that the U.S. government wants to be cranked into the discussion of possible U.S. foreknowledge of events surrounding the terrorist tragedy.
In a June 20, 2002 report, titled Political Deception: The Missing Link Behind 9-11 by the Center for Research on Globalization, Michel Chossudovshy, University of Ottawa professor of economics, brings these and other critical revelations to the fore.
A couple of words were deleted from the CNN transcript of Rice's May 16 remarks, when compared to the transcript from the Federal News service which included the words "ISI chief."
"After checking the transcript for Dr. Rice, you are correct that the words "ISI chief" are missing from the transcript," said a CNN spokesman in Atlanta. CNN provided a copy of the transcript.
However, in the White House version, the word "inaudible" was found in parentheses. The White House transcript reads:
Q: Dr. Rice? Dr. Rice?
RICE: Yes?
Q: Are you aware of the reports at the time that _____ _____ was
in Washington on Sept.11; and on Sept.10, $100,000 was wired from
Pakistan to these groups in this area? And why was he here? Was
he meeting with you or anybody in the administration?
Ms. RICE: I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not
meeting with me.
The Washington Post reported May 16, 2002, that "officials familiar with the White House's strategy during damage control said senior aides were anxious to dispel the notion of a cover up and said they wanted to avoid appearing defensive, either in front of cameras or behind the scenes."
FINANCIAL BENEFACTOR
According to the Times of India, Mohammed Atta's financial bagman, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, had been fired as head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Security Agency (ISI) as "U.S. authorities [FBI] soughed his removal aftr confirming that $100,000 had been wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan through Ahmad Sheikh at the instance [sic] of General Mahmoud.
The paper reported that "Senior U.S. government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief."
But ABD's Brian Ross had reported on Sept. 30, 2001: "As to Wept.11, federal authorities have tod ABC News they've now tracked more than $100,000 from banks in Pakistan to two banks in Florida to accounts held by suspected hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta. As well this morning Time magazine is reporting that some of that money came in the days just before the attack and can be traced directly to people connected to Osama bin Laden."
If the dots are not connected, the public will never understand why extreme secrecy, closed, sound-proof hearings, and one year's delayed investigations are do crucial to the ongoing - and as yet unchallenged - cover-up within the Joint-Intelligence Committee.
But that is exactly why both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have resisted congressional hearings - finally agreeing to lessen the number of members with access to the truth.
Three days after the attacks, The New York Times reported that important members of the Bush administration met with Ahmad: CIA Director George Tenet, secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Under-Secretary of State Marc Grossman, and Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The report confirms that other members of the Senate and House Intelligence committees were present.
The Times also revealed that the co-chairmen of the Joint-Intelligence committee, Bob Graham (D-Fla.), and Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), met for breakfast with the ISI chief on Sept.11 while the attacks were actually in progress.
The Times of India reported that "The CIA worked
in tandem with Pakistan to create the ‘monster' that is today
Afghanistan's Taliban."
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If Bush is not following Clinton down the treacherous road of supplying china with weapons technology, why has he failed to order the Justice department ot find out the truth about Clinton giving away the nuclear store?
The Bush administration, like the Clinton administration before it, is so driven by free trade and other globalist aims that it is being blindsided by the Chinese on nuclear defense.
In order to obtain Chinese approval of plans to install a limited nuclear defense shield to protect America from nuclear missiles that could be launched by a so-called "rogue state," the White House is ignoring China's buildup of a nuclear force capable of striking at the United States.
Robert Kagen, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on China, warned in The Washington Post that "a game is being played here, where we're trying to calm Chinese sensitivities to the missile shield by indicating a certain acquiescence in their modernization of nuclear forces program. We're sending little subtle signals that the reason they don't have to fear a missile defense is our acceptance of their effort to overwhelm it, which strikes me as a form of strategic insanity on our part..."
This willingness to be blind-sided is not without its critics. But it appears that the most vocal criticisms are emerging not from the conservatives in the Republican Party, but from liberal elements of both parties.
Liberal Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) says he plans to discuss with the White House the issue of acquiescence to the Red Chinese build up.
"I would not like to see them become any more powerful in the nuclear line," Specter said. "I think we ought to formulate our policy in many different ways to try to avoid that."
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) is taking a similar stance.
"We ought to try to continue to put pressure on the Chinese and others not to have offensive weapons buildups," Dorgan said. "Our entire approach ought to be to reduce the nuclear threat, not increase it.
In dealing with China, however, the administrations of Bush No. 1 followed by Clinton and now bush No. 2 ignore the rapidly emerging Chinese monolith as a superpower, replacing the Soviet strength to defeat the West.
Since President Clinton gave the Chinese access to America's nuclear development laboratories and allowed U.S. companies to sell nuclear secrets to the communists in return for campaign funds, China has been making massive strides in modernizing its nuclear capabilities.
Before Clinton took office in 1993, the Chinese did not have the technology to strike America with nuclear weapons.
After Clinton treasonously granted the Chinese access to America's nuclear and missile secrets, however, the communist state developed missiles that could hit U.S. cities with accuracy. Israel also provided china with much U.S. technology.
Now the Bush administration is ignoring this threat, which
is genuine and menacing, to build a mostly "feel good' shield
to protect America from countries that probably would never dare
to attack the United states anyway, without the risk of being
obliterated by America's nuclear forces.
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If you want to slap Congress in the face and show your disdain for "politics as usual," you'll definitely want to help get Jim Traficant back in Congress.
Down—but definitely not out—Jim Traficant is on the ballot for the November election as an independent, challenging the candidates of both major parties.
Polls in his home base in eastern Ohio show that Traficant leads his closest competitor by a two-to-one margin.
Traficant has a special message to AFP readers: "The readers of American Free Press should know about those polls that show that I can get elected and that I have a lot of support out here. I think I can be—and I want to be—the first American ever elected to Congress from a prison cell."
The ex-congressman believes that his re-election—even while sitting in a federal prison—would send a message loud and strong that citizens are fed up with government misdeeds and all-around disdain for the hard-working productive people of middle America.
"People fear the government and no one should fear the government," said Traficant. "And when you start fearing your government, you end up hating your government. America is building a hell of a problem and it has got to be changed."
A lot of people have asked how they can help Traficant. Traficant tells AFP's readers bluntly and directly: "I need some campaign money. I'm ahead 2-1 in the polls, but the local press and the national media are desperate. They're just beating me down."
The media is repeatedly suggesting that if Traficant is sent to a federal prison outside his home state he will not be eligible to seek office from Ohio. This is not necessarily the case.
Traficant told AFP that "I think they are working to try to keep me off the ballot, but I don't think they can. The Constitution says that you must be an inhabitant of the state. The town that I returned to, when I left Washington, is in Ohio. That's where I'm an inhabitant."
Traficant's attorneys intend to raise all legal questions pertinent to the matter if Traficant is permanently placed in a prison outside Ohio.
In the meantime, however, even Traficant's Republican opponent, Anne Benjamin admitted to The Cleveland Plain Dealer that she understands from Ohio state election officials that Traficant is eligible to run from an out-of-state prison.
About the role the FBI and the Justice Department played in his prosecution, Traficant commented succinctly: "They pressured people to lie like you can't believe. There's no physical evidence. Not one bit of corroboration. Not one fingerprint. Nothing."
On April 15, May 6, Aug. 5, and Aug. 12 AFP reported specifics regarding Traficant's case, demonstrating how the federal assault upon the congressman was a classic frame-up of the worst sort.
Traficant summarized the fashion in which Judge Lesley Wells handled his case.
I wasn't allowed to bring any evidence. The judge didn't allow me to bring nine witnesses before the jury. But she made them testify before her, with the jury out of the room.
The judge didn't allow me to introduce 10 tapes that provided evidence of my innocence. She kept those tapes away from the jury. She tied my hands behind my back. But to tell you the truth, I damned near beat her and the prosecutors without that evidence.
They had to get rid of me. One witness, Richard Detore described how the federal prosecutors brought up Janet Reno to him and pointed out how Traficant had criticized her.
I'm the only one that went after Janet Reno. The Republicans wanted free trade with China and the Democrats didn't want Clinton to get hurt. So I was the only one going after Reno and she went after me like a ton of bricks.
Traficant elaborated on some of the controversial stands that he took while serving in Congress:
Why are they so afraid to death of me? I'm the only one that's talking about trade, talking about giving away the country, about China and about China slipping in money to the U.S. government and the politicians are getting away with it. Our borders are wide open and then they talk about terrorists and narcotics coming across.
"My issues," Traficant said, "are not popular with the government but they are with the people."
Traficant is particularly proud of his work in reforming the tax laws, especially those governing the IRS and its relationship with the taxpayers:
I'm the one that passed the law that says a citizen can sue the IRS for $1 million if they abuse you. That's one of my laws. Secondly, I changed the law regarding burden of proof in a civil tax case. You used to be considered guilty and had to prove yourself innocent. The third thing is that under one of my IRS reforms, the IRS can no longer seize your property without a court order.
However, Traficant has a lot more in mind: "When I get back into Congress—and I can do it with the help of people around the country—I'm going to introduce a bill to eliminate the IRS and create a 15 percent national retail sales tax, exempt everybody at the poverty level. Everybody else would pay the sales tax.
"The fact is," says Traficant, "There's no freedom in America. That's a joke. You are born into a limited partnership with the Internal Revenue Service. I want that to be quoted."
In reference to his sales tax proposal, he points out:
Harvard has done a study saying that, with a sales tax, prices won't even increase because the tax code is what's putting all the costs on American products in the first place.
Ninety percent of all retail sales taxes are collected by nine percent of retailers. My proposal would even exempt yard sales up to $10,000 for individuals.
I want to put a five percent tariff on the imported goods from any country that has a lower standard of living than the United States or any country which keeps our products out. China, for example, has a 17 cents an hour labor wage. Japan doesn't let our products in. I want that 5 percent and then we can take away FICA.
This way American companies will move back to America. You can't blame American companies for leaving with the oppressive tax code that we've got.
Traficant also intends to continue working for reform of the federal law enforcement system that has put him in federal prison and which has been responsible for travesties such as Waco and Ruby Ridge:
As for the FBI and the Justice Department, I'm going to put in legislation to have an independent agency, appointed by the president for 10 years and approved by the Senate. Their job will be nothing but to investigate the serious cases like Waco, Ruby Ridge—cases like that. Right now the Justice Department has its own Office of Professional Responsibility, but that's nothing more than "damage control" for the Justice Department.
Traficant has an explanation for the unusually close relationship between federal judges and the FBI and the Justice Department:
"Remember, these judges are afraid of the FBI and the IRS. The reason is this: Although Congress can impeach federal judges, it is not Congress that investigates these federal judges before they are appointed. It is the FBI and the IRS that does it. And it's the FBI and the IRS that brings all of these cases to the federal judges and they do what the FBI and the IRS want them to do. So they're all against me."
As for Judge Wells, "The judge's husband is an attorney for Squires, Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland. That firm handled business for the firm of John Cafaro who was a key government witness against me. Judge Wells shouldn't have even been the judge in my case. That's a Hell of a story in itself."
Although the judge refused to allow Traficant to remain free on bail and refused to grant him a new trial, Traficant is appealing his conviction before the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Whatever the result of the appeal, Traficant remains committed
to winning re-election. With the support of the people who believe
in him—and there are many—he may do it.
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Former Ohio representative Jim Traficant, ever defiant, accuses the judge of railroading him and the prosecution of knowingly using perjury to convict him.
In sentencing Jim Traficant to jail, federal judge Lesley Wells expressed disgust that Traficant had criticized the government. That seemed to be her primary concern.
"You sneered at the entire calling of public service with your remarks," said Wells. "Using the national and local media, you mocked government institutions. You attacked all federal judges as tools of the Justice department."
Calling Traficant a demagogue, the judge compared him with Adolf Hitler when she dredged up the infamous technique of "the big lie," long attributed to Hitler. Wells told Traficant: ‘The truth is rarely in you. Your drumbeat is the drumbeat of a big lie, an old tactic...If you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it."
Wells denounced another favorite media bugaboo - so-called "conspiracy theories."
Even while standing before the judge that held his fate in her hands, Traficant wouldn't bend. "You did not give me a fair trial," he said, interrupting the judge. "You even had an unfair jury before me and you know it." Traficant wouldn't shut up:
I charge the prosecution with subordination of perjury. I'm being called the crook here. You pressured Americans and the los of public trust in government is not because of Jim Traficant, it is because of you. You're just like those attorneys who were willing to let John Demjanjuk die in Israel and I can't stand looking at you.
This trial is a microcosms of what's happening in America. People distrust the courts. I'll be damned if the government has become so strong that they'll scare the American people to death. I'm not ashamed of a damned thing.
One spectator seemed quite satisfied with Traficant's sentence. This was one of the former jurors who voted to convict Traficant: Mrs. Jere Zimmerman of cleveland who - according to the anti-Traficant Cleveland Business Journal - nodded her head in agreement with the judge as she attacked Traficant.
According to an AFP source who has inside knowledge of the Traficant affair, Mrs Zimmerman was "the big catalyst" inside the jury against Traficant and who by sheer force of personality - was probably the one person who swayed the jury against Traficant.
AFP sources say Mrs. Zimmerman is Jewish, which is significant because many Jews in the Cleveland area were fiercely hostile to Traficant.
The reason for the hostility had to do with the fact that Traficant
voted against U.S. foreign aid giveaways, which are weighted heavily
in favor of Israel, and because of Traficant's outspoken defense
of an elderly Cleveland autoworker, Ukraine-born John Demjanjuk,
whom Jewish organizations falsely claimed was a former Nazi concentration
camp guard.
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Evidence that could debunk the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center is being kept secret by the Department of Justice on a flimsy pretext.
The Department of Justice has ordered secrecy measures to keep the contents of a "lost tape" of firefighters' voices at the World Trade Center from being made public. The 78-minute audiotape evidently debunks the accepted explanation that intense jet fuel fires melted the towers' steel beams and caused the collapses.
The New York Times recently revealed the existence of the tape of radio transmissions between firefighters of the New York Fire Department (NYFD), which proves that "at least two men" had reached the 78th floor Sky Lobby of the South Tower. The firefighters had reported about the fires and casualties they encountered and had begun evacuating the survivors.
The article said that firefighters "reached the crash zone on the 78th floor, where they went to the aid of grievously injured people trapped in a sprawl of destruction."
While the article raises as many questions as it answers, it points to a reason for the secrecy: "Once they got there," the article says, "they had a coherent plan for putting out the fires they could see and helping victims who survived."
The report names two of the firefighters who were at the crash site: Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer, who was organizing the evacuation of injured people, and Fire Marshal Ronald P. Bucca. Both were among the 343 firefighters who perished.
The voices of the firefighters "showed no panic, no sense that events were racing beyond their control," the Times wrote. "At that point, the building would be standing for just a few more minutes, as the fire was weakening the structure on the floors above him. Even so, Chief Palmer could see only two pockets of fire, and called for a pair of engine companies to fight them."
The fact that veteran firefighters had "a coherent plan for putting out" the "two pockets of fire" indicates they judged the blazes to be manageable. These reports from the scene of the crash provide crucial evidence debunking the government's claim that a raging steel-melting inferno led to the tower's collapse.
As the FEMA "Building Performance Assessment" report says, "Temperatures may have been as high as 900-1,100 degrees Celsius (1,700-2,000 Fahrenheit) in some areas."
"If FEMA's temperature estimates are correct, the interiors of the towers were furnaces capable of casting aluminum and glazing pottery," Eric Hufschmid, author of the book Time for Painful Questions writes. Yet the voices on the tape prove that several firefighters were able to work "without fear" for an extended period at the point of the crash, and that the fires they encountered there were neither intense nor large.
The South Tower disintegrated in less than an hour after being hit by a plane, which impacted between its 78th and 84th floors. "Fire has never caused a steel building to collapse," Hufschmid writes. "So how did a 56-minute fire bring down a steel building as strong as the South Tower?"
Hufschmid's forthcoming book presents compelling evidence that explosives caused the towers to collapse.
Pointing to the Meridian Plaza fire in Philadelphia in 1991, Hufschmid writes, "The Meridian Plaza fire was extreme, but it did not cause the building to collapse. The fire in the South Tower seems insignificant by comparison to both the Meridian Plaza fire and the fire in the North Tower. How could the tiny fire in the South Tower cause the entire structure to shatter into dust after 56 minutes while much more extreme fires did not cause the Meridian Plaza building to even crack into two pieces?"
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PA), the bi-state authority and owner of the World Trade Center, retrieved the "lost tape." A spokesman for the authority, Greg Trevor, told AFP that the tape was found in PA police offices at 5 WTC, "two or three weeks" after 9-11. The PA police monitored radio transmissions from the WTC.
Because of an unexplained delay in producing the tape, it was believed "for months" that firefighters had gone no higher than about the 50th floor in each tower. The delay, Trevor said, was due to the time required to transfer the voice data to "encrypted CDs."
In January or February, the PA offered a copy of the tape to NYFD officials, who reportedly declined the offer because they did not want to sign the confidentiality agreement as demanded by the PA. The Independent of Britain added that the PA "held back from sharing it with police and only relinquished it on condition that a confidentiality agreement was signed."
"That's not correct," Trevor told AFP regarding the allegation that the PA had withheld the tape from the police. The PA had only handled the tape "under the instruction of the U.S. attorney's office," he said.
Spokesman Bernard Gifford said NYPD had not pursued a criminal investigation of 9-11, having "turned it over" to the FBI.
Gifford wouldn't say when this occurred, although Joe Valiquette of the New York office of the FBI told AFP that the federal bureau had run the investigation "from the moment it happened."
On Aug. 2 the relatives of the 16 firefighters whose voices were identified on the tape were allowed to hear their last words in a New York City hotel. The families were first required to sign a statement prepared by lawyers that they would not disclose what was said on the tape.
Despite the fact that the contents of the tape are being kept secret, the Times article says, "Only now, nearly a year after the attacks, are the efforts of Chief Palmer, Mr. Bucca and others becoming public. City fire officials simply delayed listening to a 78-minute tape that is the only known recording of firefighters inside the towers."
While Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said he had not known the tape existed until "very recently," both the Times and CNN err in claiming that the NYFD is the agency behind the extreme secrecy.
"The Fire Department has forbidden anyone to discuss the contents publicly on the ground that the tape might be evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the man accused of plotting with the hijackers," the Times said.
When AFP asked the NYFD why the only conversations between firefighters engaged at the scene of the crash had to be kept secret because of Moussaoui, who was in prison in Minnesota at the time, the spokesman replied, "Take it up with the Department of Justice."
Asked about the numerous reports by eyewitnesses, including
firefighters, of explosions inside the towers before they collapsed,
Mike Logrin, spokesman for the NYFD, said, "We're pretty
sure there weren't bombs in the building."
On Sept. 11 the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) interviewed one
of its New York-based reporters, Steve Evans, who was in the second
tower when it was hit.
"I was at the base of the second tower, the second tower that was hit," Evans said. "There was an explosion—I didn't think it was an explosion—but the base of the building shook. I felt it shake . . . then when we were outside, the second explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions. . . . We can only wonder at the kind of damage—the kind of human damage—which was caused by those explosions—those series of explosions," he said.
Evans is a professional journalist and although his observations of explosions in the second tower should be taken into account, they are not. Numerous eyewitnesses reported also seeing or hearing explosions.
Valiquette of the FBI told AFP that he had not "heard
anything" about reports of explosions in the building and
that he had "never heard any discussion of it" in the
FBI's New York office.
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The growing America First Party had a rousing founding convention.
Orlando, Fla.— At its founding convention Aug. 9-10 in Orlando, Fla., the America First Party came out forcefully in opposition to a planned war on Iraq and called for the impeachment of President Bush if he uses U.S. troops to depose Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein without a declaration from Congress.
The convention was addressed from prison by former Rep. Jim Traficant, who was expelled by the House on trumped up charges and is now being held as a political prisoner in Allenwood, Pa.
The party pledged to support Traficant's independent campaign for re-election.
The America First Party's platform was overwhelmingly passed in its entirety by voting members.
According to attendees, there was no animosity during debate of the specifics.
"This is a 100 percent populist party," said Warren Baldwin, one of the members of the board of directors of the America First Party. "We passed an America-first, pro-faith, pro-Constitution platform that will strike fear in the hearts of the Democrats and Republicans."
The new party also reported rapid growth and already has seven candidates for public office in the field.
At adjournment, the party had 19 state affiliates: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The party expects to be affiliated in all 50 states by next year's convention.
According to party leaders, the prospects for two of America First's seven candidates look extremely promising for this November's elections.
The first is Cameron Bates, running for the City Council in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
Bates, a police officer who has long sought to run for public office, has finally decided to do so in an open challenge to a state law prohibiting police from running.
Bates, who is in a two way race against a Democrat, has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO.
The second is James Edwards, running for the Tennessee State Legislature in District 97 (Bartlett).
Edwards, who at the age of 22 represents the America First Party's future focus, is the only candidate against Tre Hargett, who was the deciding vote in raising Tennessee's sales tax after efforts to introduce an income tax were thwarted only by mass protests last year.
Hargett is the embodiment of "liberal" statist Republican tendencies in Tennessee.
Attending as observers were Sherree Lowe, head of the Florida chapter of JAIL For Judges, a judicial reform group, who is running for lieutenant governor of Florida along with Nancy Grant for governor.
Also present was Linda Kennedy, a radio talk-show host who is affiliated with JAIL For Judges.
Most notable were George Stryker and Sam Cross, leaders of the Pennsylvania Populist Party, the last remnants of the Populist Party, which was sabotaged from within and purposefully destroyed.
Stryker and Cross, along with Ms. Lowe, told AFP that they hoped to see the America First Party grow and become truly revolutionary.
The two said they would recommend that the Pennsylvania Populist Party vote to affiliate with the America First Party.
Stryker, Cross and Baldwin expressed their pleasure that, in contrast to all other news media, American Free Press was covering the convention.
PRINCIPLES & PLATFORM
The convention declared its disdain for the so-called "conservative establishment" by overwhelmingly adopting a resolution initiated by John Hey of Mississippi to oppose any U.S. military action against Iraq. If a surprise attack on Iraq were to take place without a declaration of war by Congress, the party agreed that it would call for President Bush's impeachment.
America First Party national chairman Dan Charles told AFP that he expects his party to take the lead on this issue, citing that many followed the party's lead after it was the first to take the bold step of calling for the impeachment of the federal judges who struck down the pledge of allegiance.
The highlight of the convention came when it was treated to a video address by Traficant, who was to speak in person at the convention were it not for his political imprisonment.
Traficant praised the America First Party for taking a stand when no one else will and urged the party to reach out far beyond its base.
The America First Party, particularly through John Francis, chairman of its Ohio affiliate, is playing an instrumental role in Traficant's re-election campaign.
Polls show Traficant between 50-54 percent in a field of four, making him easily poised to become the first man elected to Congress from prison.
Members of the party's national committee told AFP that they see nothing but greater opportunities and success to come through their support of Traficant.
Most tellingly, the convention finished its business ahead of schedule — a rare feat for any political convention in these trying times.
For any and all information about the America First Party call,
toll-free, 866-SOS-USA1 (767-8721).
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Why did a foreign company - headed by a knight of the British Empire - manage the controversial "clean-up" of the rubble at the World Trade center and the Pentagon?
Although the terror attacks of Sept. 11 were clearly criminal acts of mass murder, no effort was made to preserve the integrity of the crime scenes and the essential evidence was disposed of like garbage.
The editor-in-chief of Fire Engineering magazine, William A. Manning, issued an urgent "call to action" to America's firefighters at the end of 2001, calling for a forensic investigation and demanding that the steel from the site be preserved to allow investigators to determine what caused the collapse.
"Such destruction of evidence," Manning said, "shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history."
"I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall," Manning said. "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation is imperative."
Three months later, the Science Committee of the House of Representatives reported that the WTC investigation was "hampered" by the destruction of crucial evidence. The committee report of March 6 says, "Some of the critical pieces of steel...were gone before the first investigator ever reached the site."
The investigation Manning called for never happened and never will, because the essential evidence is now destroyed.
"The FEMA-sponsored building performance assessment currently being conducted of the World Trade Center is just that: an assessment, not an investigation," Prof. Glenn Corbett of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City told the Science Committee in March. Corbett had previously called the FEMA-led investigation "incoordinated" and "superficial."
"You would think we would have the largest fire investigation in world history. You would be wrong," corbett wrote. "We are literally treating the steel removed from the site like garbage, not like crucial fire scene evidence."
WHO'S IN CHARGE
The New York Times was unable to find out who was behind the destruction of evidence.
On Dec. 25, 2001, the Times reported, "Officials in the mayor's office declined to reply to written and oral requests for comment over a three-day period about who decided to recycle the steel and the concern thatthe decision might he handicapping the investigation."
"I must say that the current investigation - some would argue that ‘review' is the more appropriate word - seems to be shrouded in excessive secrecy," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.).
"There are no clear lines of authority," he said. "No one is in charge."
Before the dust had settled on Sept.11, the mayor of New York City, Gudolph Giuliani, and Kenneth Holden, of the city's Dept. of Design and Construction (DDC), contracted 4 major construction management companies to begin the removal of the debris from the World Trade Center. Three of the four major companies involved in the clean-up were foreign owned: AMEC, Bovis Lend Lease, both headquartered in London; and Turner which is a subsidiary of Germany's Hochtief.
Only Tully Construction of Flushing, N.Y., is a truly American-owned company.
Peter Tully, president of the company, was notably, the only person willing to speak openly with AFP about his work at the WTC site.
"I was there every day," Tully said. "The mayor's office and DDC called us on Sept. 11...on the site we had at least three meetings a day with Ken Holden and Mike Burton."
The WTC site was initially divided into four quadrants and Tully Construction was assigned to Quadrant 3.
Tully told AFP that his company had worked on the South Tower, WTC 4 and 5, and the 425,000 square foot underground retail mall.
‘EVERYTHING WAS PULVERIZED'
"Think of the thousands of file cabinets, computers, and telephones in those towers - I never saw one - everything was pulverized," Tully said. "Everything that was above grade - above the 6th and 7th floor - disintegrated...it was like an explosion."
Tully Construction specializes in concrete. AFP asked Tully if he had ever seen concrete pulverized as it was at the WTC.
"No - never," he said.
Tully said that there were hot spots where he observed "literally molten steel." Asked about what could have caused such intense heat, Tully said, "Think about the jet fuel."
BRITISH MANAGEMENT
The London-based firm AMEC, ranked by Engineering News Record magazine as "the world's largest firm," oversaw the actual management of the debris removal at both the Pentagon and the WTC.
"AMEC was the only construction company working at both disaster sites," the company's web site says. "AMEC is managing Hudson River barging operations to transport the rubble from the entire WTC site to a landfill on Staten Island and to steel recycling operations in New Jersey."
AMEC had just finished the renovation at the Pentagon when it was called to manage the removal of debris there and at the World Trade Center.
"AMEC was placed in charge by the City of New York of organizing and engineering the around-the-clock clean up operation in the northwest sector," the web site says, which included the North Tower and 6 WTC (U.S. Customs House). The company also cleaned up the 47-story WTC 7, which mysteriously collapsed late in the afternoon of 9-11.
AMEC co-managed the WTC site with another London-based firm, Bovis Lend Lease, from January 2002. Bovis was a somewhat troubled construction subsidiary of Britain's P&O. Bovis was acquired by Australia's Lend Lease Corp in 1999.
Bovis is headed by Sir Frank Lampl, a Czechoslovakian who emigrated to England at age 42. Lampl, who claims to have been imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau during the Nazi era, is also a British knight.
Mary Costello, spokesperson for Bovis in New York, told AFP that the company had assumed "overall responsibility" for the WTC site on Jan 4.
She didn't want to discuss what buildings Bovis had worked on and said, "You should not be contacting us. You should be speaking to DDC," Costello said.
Calls to DDC public affairs department are neither answered nor returned.
Turner Construction, the third foreign firm, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hochtief AG, headquartered in Essen, Germany.
AMEC & THE PENTAGON
AMEC is an "informal acronym" for Asset Management and Engineering Consultancy, according to the firm's communications director David Paterson.
Paterson told AFP that oil and gas extraction provides 25 percent of the company's revenue. AMEC operates the North Sea oil rigs for Shell and British Petroleum, Paterson said.
AMEC had just completed a project to strengthen and renovate a section of the Pentagon. Wedge 1, when the building was attacked. The damaged area is between Wedges 1 and 2. Marcella Diaz, communication director for the firm's U.S. subsidiary, AMEC Construction Management, told AFP that the company's work n the Pentagon had been completed on the Friday before Sept.11.
Paterson told AFP that AMEC is the "prime contractor for the U.S. Dept of Defense on environmental work."
The firm was paid some $752 million for its 2-year renovation and clean-up at the Pentagon, according to Rachel decker, spokesperson for the Pentagon's renovation entity known as PENREN.
The fact that a British firm had been given the contract to renovate the Pentagon was "not a problem," Decker said.
Asked about who was in charge of the clean-up at the WTC, Paterson said, "The City of New York was the project manager." The director of DDC, Kenneth Holden, was named as the person in charge at the site according to Paterson.
AMEC is in line for further construction work at both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center according to The Daily Mail, a British newspaper.
The company's London-based chief executive, Sir Peter Mason, said about the Pentagon clean-up: "The target is to have it reopened for business by Sept. 11, 2003, as a point of principle"
Mason is a knight of the British Empire.
The former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who gave the management of the WTC site to the two British firms, AMEC and Bovis Lend Lease, received an honorary knighthood in the Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II on feb. 13, 2002.
When Jiuliani was made a knight of the British Empire he joined an exclusive club which includes George bush the elder, Ronald Reagan, Colin Powell, Wesley Clark, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Steven Spielberg.
Bush and Reagan are both Knighted in the Order of the Bath.
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The mainstream media overlooked the obvious in ignoring President Bush's promotion of the Free Trade Area of the Americas on a recent campaign to boost the flagging U.S. economy.
President bush already has the authority he demanded of Congress to sell American sovereignty in trade deals, so he's now subtly campaigning for future congressional approval of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Under the proposed FTAA, every nation in the Western Hemisphere - including Cuba, after Fidel Castro's demise - would become a "free trade zone." Under Bilderberg's plan, the FTAA is to evolve into the "American Union," similar to the European Union.
Now that he has the authority, bush is campaigning to pressure Congress to approve the FTAA after he completes negotiations. During his "economic summit'" at Waco, Tex., Bush told the luminaries that "free trade" is good for the farmer, the worker and manufacturing and would generate new jobs.
Under NAFTA - and the FTAA would be an expansion of that dal - the opposite has happened. Good jobs have gone South, where labor is cheap and such costs as imposed by government and Unions - insurance, wage minimums, safe working conditions, bathroom breaks - are no burden.
For the loss of hundreds of thousands of good jobs in industry, and for the loss of family farms to cheap imports of vegetables and meat of dubious origins, America has received a few jobs of the donkey-work type and in the service industry - and the illegal aliens to full those positions.
The trade deficit, already huge because of NAFTA, will grow even more under the FTAA.
NO SPECIAL LOYALTY
It's all about greed by the kings of international corporations who see the world as their province and all people their subjects. The Rockefeller types have no special loyalty to the United States but, instead, have a "global view."
With the vote for Fast Track in the House so close - by a one-vote margin the first time and by 215-212 on final approval - Bush is afraid the House will reject whatever FTAA deal he negotiates.
As on wag said, "Bush is nervous as a strumpet in church.
This administration, as did that of Bill Clinton, got into its House problem by deciding that a treaty creating NAFTA or the FTAA is not a treaty, which would have to be ratified by a two-thirds Senate vote with no action by the House.
While Bush can count on a solid 60 votes in the Senate, the House could kill and trade deal.
He wold not have received Fast Track authority without politically pistol-whipping several congressmen.
Some may be defeated for re-election because of their vote
for Fast Track. See this week's "Spotlight on Congress, page
8, for more on this.
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A high-profile case of Alzheimer's could bring hope to the millions of elderly suffering from this debilitation disease.
Recent reports that Oscar winning actor and NRA President Charlton Heston has been diagnosed with symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's have catapulted the disorder into the limelight and underscored the fact that there is little modern medicine can do today to turn back the tragic effects of the cognitive disorder.
Alzheimer's is an irreversible brain disorder which causes memory oss and significantly changes a person's behavior and personality marked by a noticeable decline in cognitive abilities.
In normal aging nerve cells in the brain are not lost in large numbers. But, according to doctors, those suffering Alzheimer's see their neurons destroyed by a release of poisons which cause an accumulation of the protein beta-amyloid. The loss of these brain cells eventually shrinks the brain.
Dr. James Balch, a urologist and member of the American Medical Association, believes there is a connection between Alzheimer's and the buildup of high amounts of aluminum and mercury - one of the most toxic metals - in patients' brains.
But there is hope. Recent research indicates scientists may be able to delay the onset of the disease with treatments that involve clearing amyloid deposits from the brain.
They are also looking at other areas, such as how important it is to keep cholesterol levels low in order to avoid plaque deposits which may cause Alzheimer's.
In 1993, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug Cognex and in 1996 approved Aricept, the most commonly used medicine against Alzheimer's. Two years ago, the FDA approved another medication named Exelon.
All three offer hope that patients will be able to carry out normal daily routines. Unfortunately, so far, they have been found to only slow the process and will not stop or reverse Alzheimer's.
Exercise is important to get the oxygen flowing to the brain and to help keep the cells free of plaque. Medical practitioners say even a stroll around the yard or spending time outside will result in improvements. And simple brain exercises such as word games, crossword puzzles, cryptograms, and even math problems can help force people to think.
Scientists estimate that close to four million people suffer
from Alzheimer's disease. Many are in health care institutions.
However, more that half are cared for at home.
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Simple vitamin supplements could go a long way in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's.
High blood levels of the sulfur-containing amino acid homosyxteine is a risk factor for both stroke and cardiovascular disease. Exceeding normal levels (5-15 micromol/L) by as little as 5 micromol/L may increase the risk of coronary artery disease by 60 percent in men and 80 percent in women.
Boston University School of Medicine researchers also provide convincing evidence that high homocysteine levels are an equally potent risk factor for Alzheimer's disease.
Scientists studied 1,092 men and women with an average of 76 who were found free of dementia when examined between 1986 and 1990. After an average eight years of follow-up, 111 participants had developed dementia of which 83 were diagnosed Alzheimer's.
Researchers found that people with a blood plasma homocysteine level above 14 micromol/L had nearly twice the risk of developing Alzheimer's as those with lower levels. They also determined that a 5 micromol/L increase in homocysteine level corresponds to a 40 percent increased risk of Alzheimer's
Joseph Loscalzo, M.D. said it may be possible to significantly reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's by supplementing with folic acid, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12.
B vitamins have, in numerous clinical trials, been found effective
in lowering homocysteine levels.
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For many years, health nuts have been touting the benefits of eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. With the help of modern science, they're now understanding how some foods can be used to help fight of the terrible diseases afflicting mankind.
A sweet, summer berry, the black raspberry, may prove to be a powerful natural weapon in the fight against the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.
In a recent study reported in the journal Nutrition and Cancer, researchers injected lab rats with a cancer-causing agent and then fed them a diet rich in black raspberries. Scientists found that the rats had 80 percent fewer malignant tumors. This was compared with rats that had no berries in their diet.
Black raspberries are high in several constituents believed to have properties that have an antioxidant effect, helping to combat the development of free radicals which can lead to the development of cancer, said Gary Stoner, a professor of public health at Ohio State University and a researcher at the university's Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"We were surprised by how much difference there was between the antioxidant activity of the raspberries versus the other fruits," Stoner said.
In a double-blind study, researchers injected rats with a carcinogen that causes tumors in the colon. And, after two weeks, the animals were placed into four groups and fed diets mixed with varying percentages of freeze-dried black raspberries.
Nine weeks after the final injection of the carcinogen, researchers robed the rats for the development of tiny lesions in the colon which signal the beginnings of cancer. Every rat injected with the carcinogen developed lesions.
However, in rats that were fed a healthy diet of black raspberries, scientists observed that the number of malignant tumors was related to the amount of freeze-dried berries fed to a rat. In other words: the more berries the rats ate, the fewer tumors they had.
Overall, the scientists noted, at the end of the study, the rats that ate the most black raspberries in their diets saw a marked reduction in tumors - by up to 80 percent.
That's a much higher reduction than I thought we'd see," Stoner said.
The tumors were also noticeably smaller in the rats that ate freeze - dried berries. At varying levels, the ones that were fed diets made up of 2.5, 5 and 10 percent blackberries yielded reduction in tumor size of 28, 42 and 75 percent, respectively.
The researchers also measured levels of oxidation in the rats, resulting from free radical damage to cells as well as genetic material.
Berries reduced the level a chemical that signals oxidation by 73, 81 and 83 percent in the 2.5, 5 and 10 percent berry diets, respectively.
"This suggests that berries bind up a good portion of free radicals, preventing them form causing damage in the body," Stoner said.
When compared to other fruits, such as strawberries and blueberries, researchers discovered that black raspberries were far superior in antioxidant effects, showing 11 percent more activity than blueberries and 40 percent more than strawberries.
On reason for raspberries' dietary benefits, say scientists, may be due to their richness in compounds such as anthocyanins, which give berries their almost-black pigment; and high amounts of calcium and vitamins such as A,C,E and folic acid.
All of these substances are known to have chemo-preventive effects, Stoner said.
Fresh black raspberries are undoubtedly the best, note researchers.
However, freeze-dried berries often have as much nutritional content
as fresh berries.
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