August 2, 2004
August 9, 2004
August 16, 2004
August 23, 2004
August 30, 2004
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident free after
18 years in prison, is ready to defy the severe restrictions imposed
upon him by the Israeli military
and tell the western media everything he knows about the Middle
East's largest secret arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
However, because the hidden stockpiles belong to Israel, no American
news outlet is interested in discussing this, except American
Free Press.
"I have sacrificed my freedom and risked my life in order to expose the danger of nuclear weapons, which threaten this whole region," Vanunu said in an exclusive interview with American Free Press on July 28.
Vanunu spent 18 years in an Israeli prison - 11 and a half of them in solitary confinement - for providing evidence of Israel's nuclear arsenal to a British newspaper in 1986. "I acted on behalf of all citizens and all of humanity," said Vanunu.
In October 1986, Vanunu, a nuclear technician who had worked at the Dimona Nuclear Power Plant in the Negev Desert for 10 years, traveled to London and gave photographic evidence to The Sunday Times that Israel was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Two months earlier he had converted to Christianity while traveling in Australia.
After having learned about the secret production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at Dimona, in 1985 Vanunu believed it was his responsibility to inform the citizens of the world that an arsenal of nuclear weapons was being created in Israel.
Vanunu provided evidence and described how Israel had built an arsenal of over 200 nuclear bombs and neutron bombs. Before The Times's story was even published, however, Vanunu had been lured to Rome and kidnapped by Israeli secret service agents. A secret trial followed, and Vanunu was locked in a tiny, windowless cell for more than a decade.
When Vanunu was released from an Israeli prison on April 21, the Israeli military authorities imposed severe restrictions on his freedom. He is banned from leaving the country, confined to an assigned residence and denied the right to be in contact with journalists or foreigners.
The human rights organization Amnesty International (AI) protested the restrictions imposed on Vanunu saying on April 19: "Vanunu must not be subject to arbitrary restrictions and violations of his fundamental rights on the basis of pretexts or suspicions about what he may do in the future."
The restrictions on Vanunu's movement, speech and association violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel has ratified and is obliged to uphold, according to AI.
While Israeli officials contend the restrictions are to prevent Vanunu from divulging information about Israel's nuclear arsenal, AI sees it differently:
"Israel's determination to curtail Vanunu's freedom and contact with the outside world seem to be intended to prevent him from revealing details of his abduction by Israeli secret service agents 18 years ago in Rome in what was clearly an unlawful act," AI said.
According to Jonathan Cook of The Guardian in Britain, Vanunu's brother, Meir, who lives with him at St. George's, says there is another motive for the restrictions and confinement of Israel's most famous dissident: Vanunu's release brings attention to Israel's nuclear arsenal at precisely the moment when the justification for attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq - his possession of weapons of mass destruction - is shown to have been hollow.
"If Vanunu were free to talk, he might remind the world that the greatest threat to Middle East peace comes not from Baghdad but from Tel Aviv," Cook wrote. "That is a message neither America nor Britain wants to hear right now."
The same controlled U.S. media networks that sent embedded reporters into combat in Iraq and published false reports about that nation's alleged weapons of mass destruction, are seemingly afraid to go to St. George's Cathedral in East Jerusalem and interview Vanunu, Israel's most famous dissident and peace activist, for fear of crossing a line drawn by the Israeli military.
American Free Press, however, and the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Hayat have interviewed Vanunu recently from St. George's, where he has sought asylum in the Anglican church compound a short distance from the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem.
BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Comments made by Vanunu during an interview with Al Hayat's weekly magazine Al Wassat, published on July 25, made headlines around the world but were completely ignored in the United States, where they could have caused immense political damage to Israel. As The Jerusalem Post's article headline read, "Vanunu: Israel behind JFK assassination."
Russia's Pravda article of July 27 began: "Israel may be implicated in the biggest crime of the past century, which took place in Dallas in 1963."
Iran's Tehran Times, writing from Jerusalem, said: "In a startling accusation, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has alleged that Jerusalem was behind the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was exerting pressure on the then Israeli head of state to shed light on the Dimona nuclear plant."
Similar articles appeared in newspapers around the world, but in the United States this explosive news was only reported by wire services and in Jewish newspapers.
Vanunu's comments that there are "near-certain indications" that Israel was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy support the thesis of Michael Collins Piper, presented in his book Final Judgment, that Israeli agents played a key role in the murder.
AFP asked Vanunu to explain his comments about Israeli involvement in the murder of President Kennedy.
"My view is that Kennedy was assassinated because of his strong opposition to [Israeli prime minister] Ben Gurion," Vanunu said.
At the time, Ben Gurion was working to create a nuclear arsenal for Israel.
The group that was involved with Ben Gurion in developing and protecting Israel's nuclear arsenal "was behind the assassination of Kennedy," Vanunu said.
As Piper documents in Final Judgment, Kennedy's resistance to Israel becoming a nuclear-armed state led to increasing hostility between the two leaders until Ben Gurion resigned in June 1963. Kennedy had realized that the Israelis were producing illegal nuclear weapons from the nuclear reactor given to Israel in 1959 under the "Atoms for Peace" program.
In the Al Wassat interview, Vanunu said: "Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, including a neutron bomb and hydrogen bombs, which are tenfold in their effect. If an atomic bomb can kill 100,000 people then the hydrogen bomb can kill a million.
"We do not know which irresponsible Israeli prime minister will take office and decide to use nuclear weapons in the struggle against neighboring Arab countries," The Jerusalem Post reported Vanunu having said. "What has already been exposed about the weapons Israel is holding [is that they] can destroy the region and kill millions."
A `SECOND CHERNOBYL'
Vanunu also warned of the environmental dangers of nuclear leaks at Israel's antiquated nuclear facility at Dimona. An earthquake or nuclear accident at Dimona could result in the "leaking of nuclear radiation, threatening millions of people in neighboring countries," Vanunu said.
Jordan, in particular, was mentioned as being in danger of nuclear contamination. "Dimona's chimneys do not operate unless the winds blow in the direction of Jordan," Vanunu said.
A Jordanian government spokesman, Asma Khader, responded promptly to Vanunu's claim, saying, "The kingdom is free of radiation."
Vanunu also criticized the recent visit to Israel of Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"I am very disappointed by Mr. El Baradei because I expected him to go and inspect the Dimona reactor," Vanunu said. "The job of Mr. Baradei is to go and see if what I said . . . if it's true."
Vanunu stressed to AFP his strong desire to speak with the media despite the restrictions, and provide them with information and his views on the need for peace - and a nuclear-free Middle East.
Asked if the U.S. media was interested in meeting him, Vanunu said "not one" American or British newspaper or television network had visited him at St. George's since his release from prison.
"Why are they in silence?" Vanunu asked AFP about the U.S. media. "Why is the press not coming to see me? The media should bring my case to the people and the politicians. This case must be heard."
Linda Rothstein, editor of the Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, however, showed little interest in Vanunu's story, saying that Vanunu has his supporters and that the Bulletin is not an advocacy group.
Likewise, Kay Seok of Human Rights Watch said that there was nothing they could do. "Nobody at HRW is working on Israel right now," she said.
WANTS OUT OF ISRAEL
Vanunu desperately wants to leave Israel, where he is viewed as a traitor, and seek political asylum in the United States. Nick and Mary Eoloff of St. Paul, Minnesota, have formally adopted Vanunu and are ready to provide him sanctuary.
Mrs. Eoloff told AFP that Vanunu's life is in danger in Israel.
"I want to go abroad and start my life as a free man," Vanunu said after Israel's high court upheld the military's restrictions on his movement and freedom. "If Israel is a democracy, it should allow me to do it."
Asked if he had been tortured during his 18 years in prison, Vanunu said, "Of course."
He said he had been subjected to "mental and psychological torture" that was "cruel and barbaric."
Because he had converted to Christianity he had received worse treatment than Jewish prisoners, he said. Vanunu said he had been treated like a Palestinian and that his captors had tried to "destroy" him.
"I am a symbol of the will of freedom," he said. "You cannot break the human spirit."
Asked about his supporters in the United States, Vanunu said: "I need their support to get me out. Americans should raise their voices with their congressmen and ask them in a loud voice to visit me and bring attention to my case.
"My country is not Israel," Vanunu said. "I want to be free and to leave Israel."
"Israel does not respect my basic human rights,"
Vanunu said. "I am denied the freedom of movement and freedom
of speech - like all Palestinians. I want peace and freedom from
all nuclear weapons in the Middle East."
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Latinos, at least one million of whom cast illegal ballots as non-citizens in 2000, say their vote will decide the presidential election in November.
A meeting of 1,000 Hispanic political activists in Washington "carried a common message," reported the Hispanic Link Weekly Report: "We're going to make a difference in November."
It quoted New Mexico Gov. Bill richardson (D), a Hispanic, saying that the most gratifying words he could hear after the election would be, "El president fue elegido por el voto hispano" ("The president was elected by the Hispanic vote.")
Richardson is a former Democratic congressman and was secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton. He was on Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) "Short list" as a running mate and has been mentioned as a future president.
When Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, addressed the annual conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, he embraced their goals.
In his first 100 days as president, Kerry said, he would propose legislation allowing illegal immigrants to "earn legalization," he called for a "community of the Americas," saying "We must look at our neighbors as partners, not second-class citizens."
President bush did not address the conference. Bush is also being denounced for, unlike Kerry, declining to address the annual meeting of the NAACP.
The conference predicted that 1 million more Latinos would
vote this year. In 2000, a university study concluded that more
than 1 million Latino non-citizens had cast illegal ballots in
2000.
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Time and again if you listen carefully to those ubiquitous pundits that pop up on the "all news" television stations you will hear them say that the people don't care who number two on the presidential ticket is and they prefer to vote for the man at the top of the ticket.
However, there are other voices who point out that the candidate for vice president must be ready, willing and able to assume the office of president and be fully prepared to handle al aspects of the job, especially being able to deal with foreign policy in these volatile post 9-11 times.
Some readers may recall that when Vice President Harry S Truman suddenly found himself president upon the death of FDR in 1945, he was completely uniformed of what had been going on in the White House - out in the cold, so to speak. However, time marched on, and HST went on to win the election in 1948.
When a reporter asked President George W. Bush what qualifies
Vice President Richard Cheney to remain on the ticket, Bush replied
that Cheney was qualified to be president.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts has selected Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina as his running mate. Edwards, a youthful 51, brings some life and enthusiasm to the ticket in contrast to the dour Ivy League persona of Kerry.
Though Edwards is today a man of means, his wealth can't come near that of Kerry, who is married to the heiress of the Heinz foods fortune.
Edwards was born in south Carolina but spent his formative years in North Carolina, where his father worked in a textile mill. His mother worked for the U.S. Postal service.
Edwards was the first in his family to graduate from college.
He holds a B.S. degree in textile technology from North Carolina
State University and a law degree from the University of North
Carolina. John
Edwards
He is now in his sixth year in the Senate, where he sits on the
intelligence, judiciary, small business, education and health
committees.
The crown jewel in Edwards' affiliations is that he is a new member of the Bilderberg group, attending this year's bilderberg meeting in Stresa, Italy. He was an instant success at the meeting. According to Richard Holbrooke, UN ambassador under President Clinton, "When Edwards finished speaking there spontaneous applause from the floor, something I had never heard in 10 years."
Edwards got a much needed boost in his political credibility. When first elected to the Senate he was only a casual observer of the international scene. But since joining the intelligence committee he has traveled to Israel, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, England and Belgium.
Jim Johnson, a Washington attorney who chaired the Kerry vice-president search committee, told The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer that , "Our view was that John Edwards was way above the line in having sufficient experience, and that he had shown good judgement. One of the things we had learned, obviously, from Iraq, with the pivotal role Dick Cheney had played, is that good judgement is not necessarily related to the length of your resume."
Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, has been on to advise Edwards. "I met with John in the spring of ‘01, before 9-11, and at that point he wanted to focus and concentrate on terrorism. He really bore down on that issue and the bio-terrorism issue."
Berger is the subject of an FBI investigation for absconding with classified documents from the National Archives.
Again, Holbrooke says of Edwards: "He is the fastest study I've ever met in American politics - and I came to Washington when Kennedy was president - with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. He absorbs information faster, assimilates it, repackages it in a better, politically attuned way...and presents it in a compelling way."
During the campaign Edwards has staked out for himself the role of the populist champion of the little man, the underdog, the widow harassed by unscrupulous business types.
He often mentioned "two Americas," on of the rich and privileged and the other, the hardworking common man. He has since backed off that language, which was interpreted by some to be divisive rhetoric, inviting class warfare.
His plans for the economy include a program for long-term fiscal discipline and leveling the playing field for American businesses, calling for "fairer" trade agreements.
He believes in America's right to self-defense and is for national security without sacrificing freedom. He supports airport, seaport and border security and favors keeping known terrorists from entering the country. He is a proponent of creating new laws to fight cyber-terrorism.
A negative is his support of the unconstitutional U.S. attack on Iraq.
He is against the voucher system for private schools, "racial profiling," the legalization of same-sex marriage and a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. He supports abortion and favors adoption rights for homosexual couples.
Edward's stands are pretty much standard liberal Democratic fare, and he is quite compatible with Kerry. His contribution is that he says it with a smile, and people happen to like happy faces.
Can the man pull Kerry through?
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Growing numbers of urban and suburban Americans, fed up with the lazy, consumer-driven, materialistic society, are shunning gas stations, supermarkets and noisome modern living to get off the grid, become self-sufficient and live better in the city.
Long known to farmers and other country folk, this simple approach to life, known today as "urban homesteading" is becoming increasingly popular on the Internet, where creative minds have selected methods from the past - forgotten to many in today's fast-paced life, driven by shopping malls, ubiquitous fueling stations and convenience stores - and adopted them to life in the city and suburbs.
In this day, many of us - even most rural people - have become complacent with the comforts of contemporary living. All any of us need do today is drive a mile down the road to the local gas station and mini-mart to fill up the tank, grab some lunch, purchase groceries and even do some banking. And with the advent of new chains of massive super shopping centers like Wal-Mart, Americans can do all of that, plus have work done on their car, get a haircut and catch a movie.
But these luxuries come at a cost to all of us. Whether it is by invading and occupying foreign countries to secure cheap natural resources or by coercing billions of dollars out of hardworking citizens in the form of taxes, we all suffer as government takes more to feed our habits.
For over a year, American Free Press has been regularly publishing its "People's Power" Column, looking at ways in which the average American can get off of the grid by taking responsibility for his own energy needs.
By learning about and utilizing natural ways to live their lives, urban and suburban homeowners, who are on city sewer and water lines, have been able to almost totally get away from using services provided by cities or large corporations.
With just a little bit of knowledge and a moderate amount of hard work, urban homesteaders are fabricating rain Barrels to supply their water needs, constructing simple composting toilets to avoid sewer systems, making solar ovens to cook food in, integrating used cooking oil or biodiesel to heat their homes and power their vehicles and even making natural air conditioners to cool their houses.
From such web sites as pathtofreedom.com, a wealth of information is now on the Internet, which provides insights and warnings about people's trials and successes getting off the grid.
There is information on an ingenious system to develop a raised-bed garden and cold frame to supply year-round all the fruits and vegetables your family may need.
Just about everything can be found these days on the Internet - even details on how to make your own natural paint and ink or how to use ordinary hand-held tools to dig well up to 100 feet in depth.
And it's not just American city dwellers flocking to the lifestyle. Homesteaders around the world are popping up on the Internet, providing their own insights and tips that they have learned the hard way.
Be advised that laws and regulations are different in every municipality. So, those interested in urban homesteading should check with the local government to find out about ordinances before building outbuildings or purchasing chickens or ducks.
By adopting the ingenuity of urban homesteaders, Americans can stop paying for their energy needs and start enjoying the fruit of their labor - and, more importantly, start living their lives without costing a fortune.
Homesteading Information
Web Sites
www.homesteadingtoday.com
www.homesteadgarden.com
www.frugalvillage.com
www.pathtofreedom.com
Urban Homesteading Magazines & Newspapers
Acres
USA
Mother
Earth News
Countryside
Magazine
Backwoods
Magazine
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Contrary to the findings of the commission tasked with investigation 9-11, published reports from news outlets around throughout the world show that the United States had many and early warnings of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"The Americans knew of plans to use commercial aircraft in unconventional ways, possibly as flying bombs," a senior British foreign officer told the Times of London. The source said Britain's M16 intelligence agency had warned the United States in 1999.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on CNN receiving "specific" threats that Al Qaeda planned attacks on U.S. interests in the spring of 2001. The Independent of London said the warnings came from M16.
German intelligence warned the CIA on June 6, 2001, that Middle Eastern terrorists were "Planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture," reported the German newspaper, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung.
The British cabinet's Joint Intelligence Committee warned Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 16, 2001, that Al Qaeda was in the final stages of preparing a terrorist attack aimed at American targets. The Times of London said the warning was "based on intelligence gleaned not just from [British intelligence] but also from U.S. agencies, including the CIA and the National security Agency."
A reporter for the Arabic satellite TV network MBC, who had met with Osama bin Laden, On June 21, 2001, predicted "a severe blow" against the United States.
Jordanian intelligence, in the summer of 2001, intercepted Al Qaeda communications indicating that a terrorist attack was being planned and would involve aircraft, according to John Cooley, author of the book, Unholy Wars: America, Afghanistan, and International Terrorism.
"German police have confirmed an Iranian man phoned U.Sl police from the deportation cell to warn of the planned attack on the World Trade Center" during the week of Sept. 9, reported Internet news site, Online.ie on Sept. 14, 2001. No other news agencies independently reported this, however.
Moroccan intelligence warned Washington in August 2001 of "large-scale operations in New York in the summer and autumn of 2001." The International Herald Tribune reported, citing a French magazine and a Moroccan newspaper.
Russian intelligence warned the CIA on Aug. 24, 2001, that
25 terrorist pilots were specifically training to crash airliners
into planned targets, the Russian news agency lzveztia reported.
Twelve days before the terrorist attacks, Egyptian President Hosmi Mubarak warned the United States that "something would happen," Associated Press reported.
On Sept. 10, one day before the attacks, U.S. intelligence intercepted conversations from Al Qaeda that were specific. USA Today reported: "Two U.S. intelligence officials, paraphrasing highly classified intercepts, say they include such remarks as, ‘Good things are coming,' Watch the news,' and , ‘Tomorrow will be a great day for us.'"
On Sept. 11, 2001, Israelis received warnings predicting the attacks two hours in advance, the Hosni Mubarak Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported.
Micha Macover, head of Odigo in Israel, told Ha'aretz the attack would happen.
These are but a few of the advance warnings that American officials received prior to the attack.
On July 22, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States released its findings in a 570-page report. The 911 commission has been widely criticized as a transparent attempt to cover up who was behind the attacks.
In the study, panel members cited a "failure of imagination"
as what kept U.S. officials from understanding the threat from
terrorism prior to the attacks on New York and Washington.
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In 1906 Upton Sinclair's famous book, The Jungle, awoke the nation to dangerous, unsanitary conditions in the meat-processing industry in America, but today the national news media is ignoring danger signs that contaminated cattle are being slaughtered in industrial slaughterhouses and are finding their way into the food chain.
| Technician Carolyn Johnson uses monoclonal antibodies to confirm E. coli presence in cattle fecal samples in this undated photograph. In just one of many publicized meat recallls in the last several years. ConAgra Beef Co. recalled 19 million pounds of contaminated beef nationwide in 2002. The Centers for Disese Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture say that tens of thousands of people get seriously ill - and thosands die - from tainted meat products. Watchdog groups are calling for increased scrutiny of industrial slaughterhouses. |
And just as disturbing is that
our politicians are being bought by big interests in the beef
and meat packing industries. As a consequence, Congress has not
legislated to protect the public by demanding that agribusiness
change many of its practices to eradicate the potential for so-called
mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE) and other
harmful diseases associated with infected cattle.
Since 1990, the meat industry has donated millions of dollars to the election campaigns of presidents and congressmen.
Federal Election Commission records obtained by American Free Press indicate that President Bush has received $3,303,911 from agribusiness, including the meat industry, in the 2004 reporting cycle.
Big beef has always been a special friend of the Bush family.
In the last election cycle, Bush received nearly $1 million from
livestock and meatpacking interests and his Democratic opponent,
John Kerry, got $286,834.
Bush, a former governor of Texas, the nation's leading cattle-producing
state, has discouraged any legislative motives that could impact
the meat-packing business.
But he is not alone, and neither are the Republicans, in accepting massive contributions from the agribusiness sector to shape legislation favorable, not to the public or family farms, but to big beef producers. A classic example of how big interests succeed in Congress was the defeat last year of a bill that would have banned the sale of meat from "downer" cows - cattle too sick or injured to walk.
According to Howard Lyman, a 65-year-old former rancher and now an advocate for a safe meat supply in America, the beef industry "understands we have the best laws money can buy. It's much easier to buy a politician than to comply with regulators."
While mad cow disease gets the most attention in the news media, American beef eaters are actually in far greater danger from other contaminations. A 1996 USDA study revealed that 7.5 percent of ground beef samples were contaminated with salmonella and more than half contained other infectious agents. E. Coli, for example, infects an estimated 73,000 people a year in America.
According to The Harvard Political Review, "the United States' current system leads to about 900 hospitalizations and 14 deaths a day from Campylobacter, E. Coli and Salmonella, with children facing the greatest health risks from meat-borne pathogens."
The problem lies with the Department of Agriculture, which critics say has done a poor job of testing cattle for mad cow disease. That is confirmed by the department's latest audit. Records show that the USDA failed to test hundreds of cattle that showed symptoms of nervous system diseases in 2002 and 2003. Those were animals t higher risk of BSE and other diseases.
Another internal USDA audit shows that last December, the first infected cow hound in the United States was standing and walking the day it was slaughtered at a central Washington state processing plant. That confirms the claims of slaughterhouse workers that USDA officials lied about the cow being a "downer," too injured to stand.
Whether the diseased cow could, or could not stand, is significant because the USDA's mad cow screening programs stress only the testing of animals too ill or hurt to stand. Yet, the USDA said the infected cow's discovery was proof that its testing program on "downers" was effective.
On Dec. 30 the agency, in its first major beef-safety rule after finding the disease, finally banned "downer" cattle from going to slaughter.
Bep Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) Wrote Agriculture Secretary Ann
Veneman that the discovery of the infected cow last December was
more like a "fortuitous event" than a USDA success story.
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Regardless of the outcome of next
November's presidential election, the federal government will
initiate a military draft in 2005, unless there is a dramatic
slackening of the need for U.S. troops for the ongoing war in
Iraq and for "peacekeeping" duties around the world.
Last June, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to increase the size of the Army by 20,000 persons, and a month earlier the House voted to add 30,000 soldiers and 9,000 Marines by 2007.
If current trends continue, several military experts have told American Free Press, voluntary enlistments will not even dent the number of troops America will need for its global over-commitments.
What is going to happen in late August at the Republican National Convention in New York City many will see as a precursor of what will take place when the nation starts drafting young men, and perhaps even women, for the military.
It is expected that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators will converge upon New York to protest the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq, a situation that may become similar to what happened in Chicago in 1968, when the Vietnam War and the selection of Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the presidency at the Democratic convention there sparked massive protests that turned violent.
There are already signs that there will be massive demonstrations against the Bush administration's war in Iraq at the New York convention, and with the possibility of terrorist acts a major consideration, federal, state and local police officials are clearly concerned that the massive demonstrations they expect may turn very ugly.
When the federal government initiates a draft to meet its military manpower needs, which it no longer can do under an all-volunteer system, something the Pentagon clearly knows, there will be an outpouring of public sentiment against it.
Drafting means that a government program to conscript young men, and probably women, taking into account the inefficient and unworkable unisex military, is likely to cause a flap that will dwarf the Vietnam War protests, by example, and may equal the Civil War-era draft riots in New York in ferocity. Those riots required military force to control.
Already campus protesters are warming up to fight the coming draft.
As an example, a recent article in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas, President Bush's home state, compared the draft to slavery, because "someone else owns your body and mind."
Actually, the Pentagon has already instituted a sort of draft, called "stop-loss orders."
It has blocked the retirement of 40,000 soldiers, many from the National Guard and reserves, both of which have been drawn down to dangerous levels by extended deployments, which has wrecked the recruitment process to procure the needed manpower.
The Pentagon currently has in place a recruitment program to find 11,000 volunteers to reactivate 2,000 local draft boards around the nation, which should make it obvious that there is a draft looming just down the road.
Neither President Bush nor the Democratic nominee, Sen. John
Kerry, is likely to bring the matter up until after the presidential
election. That would, they realize, be a political "no-brainer."
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America's controlled press has failed to inform the public that, in spite of years of UN inspections and numerous international treaties, tons of banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) — used and unused — remain in Iraq. Indeed, both chemical and radio active WMD have been — and continue to be used against U.S. and coalition soldiers.
The media silence surrounding these banned WMDs, and the horrendous consequences of their use, is due to the simple fact that they are being used by the U.S.-led coalition. They are the new "silver bullet" in the U.S. arsenal. They are depleted uranium weapons.
Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during Gulf War I against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DUW were fired during the first gulf war. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war.
While the use of DU weapons and their effect on human health and the environment are subjects of extreme importance, the Pentagon is noticeably reluctant to discuss these weapons. Despite numerous calls to specific individuals identified as being the appointed spokesmen on the subject, not one would answer their phone during normal business hours for the purpose of this article.
Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the "clean up" of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles erroneously hit by U.S. projectiles during the 1991 gulf war. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.
Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have "totally disregarded the consequences" of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.
The first gulf war had the largest "friendly fire" disasters in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. "The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire," he told AFP.
DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government great sums to safely dispose of it.
This is why DU is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan. The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been exported and spread in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.
THE REAL "DIRTY BOMBS"
"A flying rod of solid uranium 18 inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter" is what becomes of a DU tank round after it is fired, Rokke said. Because uranium-238 is pyrophoric, meaning it burns on contact with air, DU rounds are burning as they fly.
When the DU penetrator hits an object it breaks up and causes secondary explosions, Rokke said. "It's way beyond a dirty bomb," Rokke said, referring to the terror weapon that uses conventional explosives to spread radioactive material.
Some of the uranium used with DU weapons vaporizes into extremely small particles, which are dispersed into the atmosphere, where they remain until they fall to the ground with the rain. As a gas, the chemically toxic and radioactive uranium can easily enter the body through the skin or the lungs and be carried around the world until it falls to earth with the rain.
AFP asked Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore lab, if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb. "That's exactly what they are," Falk said. "They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way."
According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact.
"The larger the bang" the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the "micron size" or smaller, he said.
While the Pentagon officially denies the dangers of DU weapons, since at least 1943 the military has been aware of the extreme toxicity of uranium dispersed as a gas. A declassified memo written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during World War II and sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, provides the evidence:
"As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles or aerial bombs," the 1943 memo reads. "In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty."
The use of radioactive materials "as a terrain contaminant" to "deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiation" is also discussed in the Groves memo of 1943.
"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time," Leonard Dietz, a retired nuclear physicist with 33 years experience, told The New York Daily News. "In the long run … veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."
Inhaled particles of radioactive uranium oxide dust will either lodge in the lungs or travel through the body, depending on their size. The smallest particles can be carried through cell walls and "affect the master code — the expression of the DNA," Falk told AFP.
Inhaled, it "affects the body in so many ways and there are so many different symptoms that they want to give it different names," Falk said about the wide variety of ailments afflicting gulf war veterans.
Today, more than one out of every three veterans from the first gulf war are permanently disabled. Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs said that of the 592,561 discharged veterans from the 1991 war in Iraq, 179,310 are receiving disability compensation, and another 24,763 cases are pending.
The "epigenetic damage" done by DU has resulted in many grossly deformed children born in areas such as southern Iraq, where tons of DU have contaminated the environment and local population. An untold number of American babies have also been born with severe birth defects as a result of DU contamination.
The New York Daily News conducted a study on nine recently returned soldiers from the New York National Guard. Four of the nine were found to have "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded DU shells.
Laboratory tests revealed two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the nine soldiers. The four soldiers are the first confirmed cases of inhaled DU from the current Iraq war.
"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the soldiers and performed the testing. "Other American soldiers, who were in combat, must have more DU exposure," Duracovic said. Duracovic is a colonel in the Army reserves and served in the 1991 gulf war.
The test results showing that four of nine New York guardsmen test positive for DU "suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians," Daily News reported.
"A large number of American soldiers in Iraq may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust," Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium, said, "And the health impact is worrisome for the future."
HOTTER THAN HELL
"I'm hotter than hell," Rokke told AFP. The Department of Energy tested Rokke in 1994 and found that he was excreting more than 5,000 times the permissible level of depleted uranium. Rokke, however, was not informed of the results until 1996.
As director of the Depleted Uranium Project in 1994-95, Rokke said his task was three-fold: determine how to provide medical care for DU victims, how to clean it up and how to educate and train personnel using DU weapons.
Today, Rokke says that DU cannot be cleaned up and there is no medical care. "Once you're zapped—you're zapped," Rokke said. Among the health problems Rokke is suffering, as a result of DU contamination, is brittle teeth. He said that he just paid out $400 for an operation for teeth that have broken off. "The uranium replaces the calcium in your teeth and bones," Rokke said.
"You fight for medical care every day of your life," he said.
"There are over 30,000 casualties from this Iraq war," Rokke said.
The three tasks set out for the Depleted Uranium Project have all failed, Rokke said. He wants to know why medical care is not being provided for all the victims of DU and why the environment is not being cleaned up.
"They have to be held accountable," Rokke said, naming
President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. They chose to use DU weapons
and "totally disregarded the consequences."
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American citizens planning a summer vacation with Mexico City on their itineraries may be unaware they will be visiting one of the kidnaping capitals of the world.
Mexico and its capital, now rank alongside Colombia as a kidnapper's paradise with many kidnapings not even reported because people do not trust the police.
Mexico's president , Vicente Fox
has paid little public attention to the problem, fearing it could
damage tourism and seriously impact investment from foreign companies,
especially those that are American-owned. For companies now based
in Mexico, the cost of insurance policies for executives and visiting
business associates has rocketed.
In response to questions from international media outlets, the Mexican attorney general's office recently provided kidnaping statistics that condlicted with those kept by security companies combating the problem throughout Latin America. The Mexican figures claimed there had been a drop in kidnapings from 568 in 2001 to 531 in 2003.
Those estimates are not believed by Mexican journalists who accuse the government of hiding the facts and ignoring the reality that many Kidnapings are not reported because of a widely held conviction that policemen in Mexico City are corrupt and involved with kidnapers.
Kroll Associates, the global security giant based in New York, has provided what is regarded by some as a reflection of the problem. According to Kroll, there were 4,000 kidnapings in Colombia in 2003 and 3,000 in Mexico, where the problem in increasing.
In the past, kidnapers targeted the wealthy in Mexico, but in 2003 they changed tactics, seizing members of upper-middle-class families and demanding smaller ransoms, in the region of $100,000. In some cases, victims were killed after ransoms were paid, and in others their body parts were sent to their families after the ransom had been paid.
For many Mexicans the problem has been exacerbated by suspicion of police collusion and the fact that at a federal and local level little has been done to stamp out kidnaping. Over 250,000 Mexico City residents made their feeling known on June 28 when they took to the streets of the capital demanding immediate action from their government. The protest followed the execution of two brothers after their family paid a ransom.
There have been some successes by the country's anti-kidnaping unit, an organization modeled on the FBI, the Policia Federal Preventiva. Earlier this year, the unit tracked down and arrested one of the country's most notorious kidnapers known as the "Colonel." He had been known to cut of ears and fingers of kidnap victims and mail them to their families. But his arrest did little to change the belief of most Mexicans that policemen, in order to supplement their meager salaries, took kickbacks from smugglers, kidnapers and organized crime syndicates.
Fox and his leftward leaning government have said they are
going to get tough and may impose the death penalty for kidnaping.
Many observers think that move will not eradicate a problem that
has been left to fester and is not the worst in all Latin America,
including Argentina, with 2,000 kidnapings last year.
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The prime minister of Britain has accused some journalist of almost wanting a disaster to happen in Iraq. Robert Fisk, who has spent the past five weeks reporting from the deteriorating and devastated country, says the disaster has already happened, over and over again.
The was is a fraud. I'm not talking about the weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. Nor the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, Which didn't exist. Nor all the other lies upon which we went to war. I'm talking about the new lies.
For just as, before the war, our governments warned us of threats that did not exist; now they hide from us the threats that do exist. Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad, but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against U.S. troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.
| Above, an Iraqi boy holds a picture of his slain father, Karim Abed Ali. Captain Rogilio Maynulet is accused of shooting Abed Ali in the head during the height of Sadr's standoff with the U.S. military in Najaf. Incidents such as this have created even more animosity toward the U.S., while American brass calls the siege of Najaf a success. |
The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial." Not only did the U.S. military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reach the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to merely condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own courts. No wonder he initially looked "disorientated" - CNN's helpful description - because, of course, he was meant to look that way. We had made sure of that. Which is why Saddam asked Judge Juhi; "Are you a lawyer? Is this a trial?" And swiftly, as he realized that this really was an initial court hearing - not a preliminary to his own hanging - he quickly adopted an attitude of belligerence.
But don't think we're going to learn much more about Saddam's future court appearances. Salem Chalabi, the brother of convicted fraudster Ahmad and the man entrusted by the Americans with the tribunal, told the Iraqi press two weeks ago that all media would be excluded from future court hearings. And I can see why. Because if Saddam does a Milosevic, he'll want to talk about the real intelligence and military connections of his regime - which were primarily with the United States.
Living in Iraq these past few weeks is a weird as well as dangerous experience. I drive down to Najaf. Highway 8 is one of the worst in Iraq. Westerners are murdered there. It is littered with burnt-out police vehicles and American trucks. Every police post for 70 miles has been abandoned. Yet a few hours later, I am sitting in my room in Baghdad watching Tony Blair, grinning in the House of Commons as if he is the hero of a school debating competition.
Indeed, watching any western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't President Bush realize this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Famadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "prime minister," is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalist," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exist now.
When suicide bombers ram their cars into hundreds of recruits outside police stations, how on Earth can anyone hold an election next January? Even the national conference to appoint those who will arrange elections has been twice postponed. And looking back through my notebooks over the past five weeks, I find that not a single Iraqi, not a single American soldier I have spoken to, not a single mercenary - be he American, British or South African - believes that there will be elections in January. All said that Iraq is deteriorating by the day. And most asked why we journalists weren't saying so.
But in Baghdad, I turn on my television and watch Bush telling his Republican supporters that Iraq is improving, that Iraqis support the "coalition," that they support their new U.S. manufactured government, that the "war on terror" is being won, that Americans are safer. Then I go to an Internet site and watch two hooded men hacking of the head of an American in Riyadlh, and more hooded men tearing at the vertebrae of another American in Iraq with a knife. Each day, the papers here list another construction company pulling out of the country. And I go down to visit the friendly, tragically sad staff of the Baghdad mortuary, and there, each day, are dozens of those Iraqis we supposedly came to liberate, screaming and weeping and cursing as they carry their loved ones on their shoulders in cheap coffins.
I keep re-reading Blair's statement: ‘I remain convinced it was right to go to war. It was the most difficult decision of my life." And I cannot understand it. It may be a terrible decision to go to war. Even Chamberlain thought that; but he didn't find it a difficult decision - because, after the Nazi invasion of Poland, it seemed the right thing to do. And driving the streets of Baghdad now, watching the terrified American patrols, hearing het another thunderous explosion shaking my windows and doors after dawn, I realize what all this means. Going to war in Iraq, invading Iraq last year, was the most difficult decision Blair had to take because he thought - correctly - that it might be the wrong decision. I will always remember his remark to British troops in Basra, that the sacrifice of British soldiers was not Hollywood but "real flesh and blood." Yes, it was real flesh and blood that was shed - but for weapons of mass destruction that weren't real at all.
"Deadly force is authorized," it says on checkpoints all over Baghdad. Authorized by whom? There is no accountability. Repeatedly, on the great highways out of the city U.S. soldiers shriek at motorists and open fire at the least suspicion. "We had some Navy Seals down at our checkpoint the other day," a 1st Cavalry sergeant says to me. "They asked if we were having any trouble. I said, yes, they've been shooting at us from a house over there. One of them asked: ‘That house?' We said yews. So they have these three SUVs and a lot of weapons made of titanium, and they drive off toward the house. And later they came back and say "We've taken care of that." And we didn't get shot at any more."
What does this mean? The Americans are now bragging about their siege of Najaf. Lt. Col. Garry Bishop of the 37th Armored Division's 1st Battalion believes it was an "ideal" battle (even though he failed to kill or capture Maqtada al Sadr whose "Behdi army" was fighting the U.S. forces). It was "ideal," Bishop explained, because the Americans avoid damaging the holy shines of the imams Ali and Hussein. What are Iraqis to make of this? What if a Muslim army occupied Kent and bombarded Canterbury, killing hundreds of thousands of people and then bragged that they hadn't damaged Canterbury Cathedral? Would we be grateful?
What, indeed are we to make of a war that is turned into a fantasy by those who started it? As foreign workers pour out of Iraq for fear of their lives, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell tells a press conference that hostage taking is having an "effect" on reconstruction. Effect! Oil pipeline explosions are now as regular as power outages. In parts of Baghdad now, they have only four hours of electricity a day; the streets swarm with foreign mercenaries, guns poking from windows, shouting abusively at Iraqis who don't clear the way for them. This is the "safer" Iraq, which Br. Blair was boasting of the other day. What would does the British government exist in?
Take the Saddam trial. The entire Arab press – including
the Baghdad papers - prints the judge's name. Indeed, the same
judge has given interviews about his charges of murder against
Muqtada Sadr. He has posed for newspaper pictures. But when I
mentioned his name in The Independent, I was solemnly censured
by the British government's spokesman. Salem Chalabi threatened
to prosecute me. So let me get this right. We illegally invade
Iraq. We kill up to 11,000 Iraqis. And Mr. Chalabi, appointed
by the Americans, says I'm guilty of "incitement to murder."
That just about says it all.
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A growing number of U.S. military personnel who are serving, or have served, in Iraq or Afghanistan has become sick and disabled from a variety of symptoms commonly known as Gulf War Syndrome. Depleted uranium (DU) weapons have been blamed for many of the symptoms.
"Gulf war vets are coming
down with these symptoms at twice the rate of vets from previous
conflicts," said Barbara A. Goodno from the Department of
Defense's Deployment Health Support Directorate.
A recent discovery by American Free Press that nearly half the soldiers in one returned unit have malignant growths has provided the scientific community with "critical evidence," experts say, to help understand exactly how DU affects humans.
One of the first published researchers of Gulf War Syndrome, Dr. András Korényi-Both, told AFP that 27 percent to 28 percent of Gulf War veterans have suffered chronic health problems, more than five times the rate of Viet Nam vets and four times the rate of Korean War vets.
Korényi-Both said his son had recently returned from Iraq, where he had been part of the initial Gulf War II assault from Kuwait to Baghdad. From his unit of 20 men, eight now have "malignant growths," Korényi-Both said.
Korényi-Both is not an expert on DU but has written extensively about how the fine desert sand blowing around Iraq and the Arabian peninsula provides an ideal vehicle for toxins, increasing the range and effect of atomic, biological and chemical (ABC) agents, such as DU, that attach themselves to the particles.
Korényi-Both described how, during the 1991 Gulf War, he and others had inhaled large quantities of sand dust that could have been laden with ABC agents. The dust "destroyed our immune systems," he said.
FULK'S THEORY
Marion Fulk, a former nuclear chemical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore lab, is investigating how DU affects the human body. Fulk said that eight malignancies out of 20, in 16 months, "is spectacular - and of serious concern."
The high malignancy rate found in this unit appears to have been caused by battlefield exposure to DU weapons.
According to Fulk, when DU, consisting mainly of uranium-238, decays, it transforms into two short-lived and "very hot" isotopes of thorium and protactinium, then undergoes further decay to another uranium isotope, giving off high-energy radiation at each stage of the process.
Scientist Leuren Moret said: "We can expect to see multiple cancers in one person. These multiple unrelated cancers in the same individual have been reported in Yugoslavia and Iraq in families that had no history of any cancer. This is unknown in the previous studies of cancer," she said, "a new phenomenon."
Goodno questioned Korényi-Both's report that eight of 20 recently returned soldiers from one unit had experienced malignant growths. Goodno and Korényi-Both did agree, however, that Iraqi ABC agents had not played a role in the 2003 invasion.
This is significant because three factors have generally been blamed for causing Gulf War Syndrome: Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, the cocktail of vaccinations given to coalition soldiers and DU. The absence of any detectable Iraqi ABC agents during the 2003 invasion of Iraq narrows the potential factors for delayed illness or disability among veterans to prewar vaccinations and DU.
While the number of disabled vets from previous wars is decreasing by about 35,000 per year, since the "war on terror" began in 2001, the total number of disabled vets has grown to some 2.5 million - "more than ever before," Brad Flohr of the Department of Veterans Affairs said. Asked if there are more disabled vets now than after World War II, Flohr said he believed so.
Terry Jemison of the Department of Veterans Affairs told AFP that current statistics indicate that more than half a million veterans of the 14-year-old Gulf War I era are now receiving disability compensation. During this period, some 7,035 soldiers are reported having been wounded in Iraq.
With 518,739 disabled "Gulf War I era veterans" currently receiving disability compensation, according to Jemison, the number of veterans disabled after the war is more than 73 times the number of wounded, in and out of combat, from the entire 14-year conflict with Iraq.
DEPLETED URANIUM WEAPONS
Last December, Dr. Asaf Durakoviae, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police Company of New York and found that four of the men had absorbed or inhaled DU.
Several of the men had traces of another isotope, U-236, which is only produced in a nuclear reactor.
"These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield," Durakovae said.
"Due to the current proliferation of DU weaponry, the battlefields of the future will be unlike any battlefields in history," Durakovae, then chief of Nuclear Medicine for the Veterans Administration, said after Gulf War I, in which he served.
Since 1991, the U.S. military has used DU in munitions as penetrating rods, which destroy enemy tanks and their occupants, and as armor plating on U.S. tanks. When DU penetrating rods strike a hard target some of the radioactive and toxic uranium is vaporized into ultra-fine particles that are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin.
According to a survey of 10,051 Gulf War I veterans, conducted between 1991 and 1995 by Vic Sylvester and the Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm Association, 82 percent of veterans reported having entered captured Iraqi vehicles. "This would suggest that 123,000 soldiers have been directly exposed to DU," Durakovae said.
"Since the effects of contamination by uranium cannot be directed or contained, uranium's chemical and radiological toxicity will create environments that are hostile not only to the health of enemy forces but of one's own forces as well," Durakovae said.
"Because of the chemical and radiological toxicity of DU, the small number of particles trapped in the lungs, kidneys and bone greatly increase the risk of cancer and all other illnesses over time," said Durakovae, an expert of internal contamination of radioisotopes.
According to Durakovae, other symptoms associated with DU poisoning are: emotional and mental deterioration, fatigue, loss of bowel and bladder control, and numerous forms of cancer. Such symptoms are increasingly showing up in Iraq's children and among Gulf War I veterans and their offspring, he said.
"Although I personally served in Operation Desert Shield as unit commander," Durakovae said, "my expertise of internal contamination was never used because we were never informed of the intended use of DU prior to or during the war."
"The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse," Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in his March 25 article on DU weapons, "Silent Genocide."
"DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems
of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters
one's genetic code," Koehler wrote. "The Pentagon's
response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American
media is its moral co-conspirator."
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.Jessica Mathews, a regular at secret Bilderberg meetings in recent years, heads the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her mission is to help implement the program dictated to her at these Bilderberg meetings.
She is paid $280,000 a year with an additional $42,000 in "benefits." The foundation's assets are $232.6 million. Since donations to the Carnegie Endowment are tax-free, American taxpayers subsidize the foundation by making up for the taxes not paid.
But the gravy train for Mathews and many others may be coming to a halt. The Internal Revenue Service announced Aug. 9 that it would scrutinize 2000 foundations and charities.
"We are concerned that some charities and foundations are abusing their tax-exempt status by paying exorbitant compensation to their officers and others," explained IRS Commissioner Mark Everson.
In the foundations league, Mathews is modestly paid and has limited assets.
Susan B. Berresford, president of the Ford Foundation, struggles along on $661,713 a year, plus $169,477 in benefits and expenses of $7,491, for a total of $828,681.
The original Henry Ford intended his foundation to serve America's best interests. For decades now, it has funded a mishmash of groups, some with anti-American views. Through tax-free donations, you are, however reluctantly, subsidizing the foundation.
The Rockefeller Foundation of New York pays its treasurer, Donna Dean, $677,597 plus benefits of $51,045, for a total of $728,642. This generation's family patriarch, David Rockefeller, is a charter member of Bilderberg and founder of its brother group, the Trilateral Commission. Rockefeller has also been involved in a number of organizations that have helped large American companies eliminate jobs domestically and move them overseas.
Other foundation fatcats include Kellogg's William C. Richardson, $530,250 plus $189,585 in benefits; Knight's Hodding Carter III, $430,536 plus $72,641; Kresge's John Marshall, $423,333; Lilly Endowment's Thomas M. Lofton, $822,000 plus $390,132; Lumina Foundation for Education's Peter C. Morrow, $474,203 plus $1,450,943; MacArthur's Jonathon Fanton, $458,803 plus $59,377; Mellon's William Bowen, $489,000 plus $138,045; Sloan's Ralph Gomory, $552,500 plus $61,288; Starr's Florence Davis, $575,000 plus $16,284; Robert Wood Johnson's Steven Schroeder, $536,876 plus $60,182 and Hewlett's Paul Brest, $454,850.
Dorothy S. Ridings, president of the Council on Foundations, survives on $329,446 in compensation and $65,480 in benefits and expenses. Vance T. Peterson, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, limps along on a $300,000 salary.
Some people have the imagination to fund a foundation and get most of the money back. The Bielfeldt Foundation has doled out $25 million to charity over 17 years. But it has paid $21 million to its founder, Gary Bielfeldt, his son and the family money management businesses for investment advice, the Peoria, Ill., Journal Star reports.
Because of their tax-exempt status, these foundations' projects
and lavish salaries are subsidized by American taxpayers who must
make up billions of dollars in lost revenues.
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America's use of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans constitutes a war crime, and those U.S. officials who continue to advocate its deployment should be removed from office and prosecuted.
There is compelling evidence that DU is a weapon of mass destruction, indiscriminately exposing anyone in the vicinity of battlefields to toxic quantities of uranium. Several studies done on British and U.S. soldiers and Iraqi and afghan civilians have shown that they has elevated levels of uranium in their urine. Reports of higher incidences of leukemia, debilitating illnesses and birth defects among children have also been documented by independent watchdog groups and international physicians organizations.
A recent study by Glen Lawrence, of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Long Island University in New York, found that uranium dust "may do permanent damage to the lungs, resulting in chronic respiratory problems. Uranium exposure also affects neurological function. Rats exposed to uranium had impaired nerve cell function, and 1991 Gulf War [1] veterans who were excreting high levels of uranium in their urine showed some impairment in cognitive function. Uranium exposure can have a wide range of health effects that may also include skin rashes, headaches, blurred vision, sensitivity to light and sound, localized numbness and urinary symptoms, such as kidney stones, increased urine volume and blood in the urine. Researchers at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., and others have found that uranium causes mutations in DNA, and uranium exposure can result in increased chromosomal aberrations."
REJECTED CALLS
Citing the effectiveness of DU in penetrating enemy armor and protecting U.S. forces, the U.S. military has rejected calls to ban its use. In fact, some critics have even accused it of working to limit the scope of testing for exposure to DU.
The U.S. government has knowingly violated conventions on war
by subjecting our won troops and foreign civilians and soldiers
to this weapon of mass destruction. The U.S. military should immediately
stop using shells and armor made with DU, and a thorough and independent
probe of DU's environmental impact should be set up. Moreover,
a comprehensive study should be funded to test civilians in Iraq,
Afghanistan and the Balkans to find out the full effects of DU
on them, and medical treatment should be provided as needed in
an effort to right this terrible injustice.
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Turns out, the information on which the latest terrorist scare is based is two to three years old. It was sold to the American public initially as if it were a brand-new discovery. It seems that the Bush administration is unable to level with the American people about anything.
So once again, Dr. Howard Dean's instincts are correct - there is definitely a smell of politics about the latest warning of an attack. Karl Rove, the puppet master, must get a big kick out of manipulating the American public and the corporate media - who, like the lapdogs they are, talk endlessly about whatever talking point Rove and his crew slip under their doors.
Hey, people seem to be paying too much attention to John Kerry, so let's give them something else to think about. Let's use the old stuff found in some terrorist's computer to get folks all excited about an imminent attack.
What a game. This election is going to be test of American gullibility. You would have to be gullible to think a guy who hid out in the Texas National Guard - George bush - and a draft dodger - Dick Cheney - are better able to command in a war than a person who actually fought in a war and earned the Silver Star. The Silver Star is no Cracker Jacks prize.
And the notion that Bush has been successful in the war on terrorism is laughable. This guy presided over the two largest failures of intelligence in American history, and he did nothing except to insist that he had good intelligence. As for his claimed successes in preventing other terrorist acts, that's the same old line of baloney the CIA has been using for years.
"Well, you know about our failures, but we've had all these successes, only they are all classified and we can't tell you anything about them.' Yeah. Sure.
Just as every Palestinian who is shot by the Israelis is a "militant," even if he's only 4 years old, every "terrorist" captured by a foreign country is an Al Qaeda "leader."
Apparently, al Qaeda is all leaders and no followers, but just as apparently, we don't seem able to find its real leaders. We have been looking for a 6-foot-6-inch guy in a country of short people for more than three years and have yet to glimpse him except on the television tapes he releases.
Of course, we'll be hit again by terrorists, but that could be months or years away. They choose the time and place, and, using Patrick Henry's famous lamp of the past to light the future, it will likely be in a place and in a manner we don't expect. The terrorists are not stupid. They know they can cost us millions of dollars just by adding a little "chatter" to the channels we monitor.
But you might as well get used to the occasional terrorist act. Our so-called war on terrorism is caused by our foreign policy, and Bush refuses to admit that, even though everybody from Osama bin Laden to the Middle East experts not on the Israeli payroll has been telling him that for three straight years.
We need to get our troops out of Islam's holy places and we need to fashion a policy that is fair and just in regard to the Palestinians. Until we do that, the war will go on indefinitely. And if the present administration is elected, it will probably get a lot worse, because those people are world-class blunderers. God only knows what other stupid tricks they will pull if they get to stay four more years.
The Bush administration is a collection of ideologues and empty
suits. Even Bush's alleged support for an intelligence director
is misleading. Bush wants a guy with absolutely no power. That's
not what the commission recommends. Without the power to control
the budgets and to direct the resources of the various intelligence
agencies, a new "intelligence czar" would just be another
public-relations gimmick. And public-relations gimmickry is the
sum total of the Bush administration.
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Not all Americans know their taxes fund both the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. In fact, the political parties receive nearly $15 million apiece from the Federal Election Commission to hold their conventions. Checking the little box on your 1040 form to give one dollar to the parties changes nothing, as the convention money comes from the general revenues, whether you check the box or not.
Massachusetts and New York taxpayers face an even bigger burden, as security costs and police overtime pay likely will run another $25 million in state and local taxes for each convention.
Why should taxpayers be expected to pay for private political conventions? There is nothing sacred or noble about political parties, nor do they serve any altruistic purpose. Political parties per se have no basis in the Constitution, yet they hold tremendous power over our lives. Today's modern two-party political process has narrowed voter choices and emasculated political courage. The parties enjoys virtual stranglehold on national politics, thanks to outrageously restrictive ballot access laws and campaign finance rules that reward status-quo incumbency. They also receive millions in federal matching funds.
Potential candidates find they cannot wage effective campaigns without major party fund-raising help, but such help comes with strings attached Once a candidate receives money, he is expected to closely parrot party positions on issues. Once elected, he is expected to put the party ahead of principle when it comes to voting and procedural maters. The result is bland candidates who offer nothing but the same old tired statist ideas.
INFOMERCIALS
Modern political conventions are nothing more than taxpayer-funded infomercials for the major parties. It's been nearly 30 years since a real nominating process took place at a presidential convention, and the party platforms themselves are not debated at all. Since the only purpose of these events is to cast the host party and its nominee in the most favorable light, surely the two campaigns - which have raised tens of millions of dollars already - should foot the bills.
Perhaps the worst thing about party conventions is the rhetoric. Conventions lend themselves to pandering, as few politicians can resist the temptation to tell a national television audience how well they run the country if elected. The problem is that government is not supposed to run the country - we're supposed to be free. Conventions bring out the worst passions in voters, passions based on the fatal conceit that government is the solution to all of our problems.
For those who believe in limited, constitutional government, the Democratic Convention speeches were almost unbearable. One speaker after another extolled their benevolent plans for America, always in the form of the new programs and new spending. Of course not convention would be complete without assurances that even more money will be spent on the failed federal education bureaucracy. The speakers also promised free health care for all, without the slightest explanation of how health care became a "right." All of these promises were made of course, without any mention of exactly what constitutional or moral authority authorizes such grand schemes.
Americans don't need new federal programs, and they certainly
don't need more federal control over their schools. They don't
need a disastrous government-run medical system. What Americans
do need is a federal government that provides national defense,
secures our borders and does very little else. Needles to say,
you won't hear these parties suggesting such a platform anytime
soon.
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Parts of New York City will be in lockdown during the Republican convention, beginning Aug. 30. That has not pleased a majority of Yew Yorkers and the hundreds of protest groups who believe attempts are being made to restrict freedom of speech and assembly.
Recent polls show that 75 percent of New Yorkers believe Republicans will use the convention to exploit the 9-11 tragedy, and there have been reports, denied by the authorities, that a cornerstone for the rebuilding of "Found Zero" will be laid at a ceremony hosted by President George Bush.
For a year, controversy has surrounded the refusal of New York City authorities to grant a permit for a massive rally to be held near Madison Square Garden, the site of the convention, and for the marchers to proceed to Central Park for platform speeches.
Instead, the administration of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) has insisted the rally will be able to pass Madison Square Garden but will then be rerouted to a remote part of the city known as the West Side Highway, where there will be no shade for marchers on a hot day and nowhere to have platform speeches.
Just recently, Bloomberg enraged many observers by saying that American's constitutional right to assembly is a "privilege."
"People who avail themselves of the opportunity to express themselves...will not abuse that privilege," Bloomberg said at the John Jay college of Criminal Justice on Aug. 16. "Because if we start to abuse our privileges, then we lose them, and nobody wants that."
The New York city Parks Department declared that Central Park, a regular venue for major concerts and gatherings, was out of bounds to the largest rally, planned by the group "United for Peace and Justice." According to the parks department, a large crowd would damage the grass in the park.
The concern for the grass did not factor into their decision to allow Republicans to have a concert in the park during their convention.
Civil libertarians have been vocal in denouncing the Bloomberg administration, which has received support from the former New York Republican mayor, Rudy Guiliani, a close friend of the Bush White House.
Many protest organizers continue to point to the excessive handling of the anti-war rally in New York on Feb. 15, 2003, when tens of thousands of marchers were unable to participate in a rally because of street closings that kept them from the main thoroughfare where the rally was to be held. In fact, thousands were roughly herded into pens and locked down, resulting in sporadic clashes with police in riot gear.
On Aug. 16, a new controversy emerged after a New York newspaper acquired a leaked Justice Department (DOJ) memo about the role of the federal government in the run-up to the planned New York protests.
The memo had been written by Justice's Office of Legal Counsel - the same department that prepared the memos for the White House offering legal advice on how to circumvent international anti-torture conventions.
According to the New York paper, this latest memo was a response to complaints from an FBI staff member that FBI bulletins created confusion between the right to free speech and the need to combat criminality DOJ's response was that the public interest and the need to maintain order at large rallies outweighed any "chilling" effects caused by bulletins.
But what has most concerned civil rights lawyers is emerging evidence that FBI agents have been interviewing protesters throughout the country about the planned New York rallies.
Lawyers regard the arrival of federal agents on doorsteps and "interrogations" of citizens as an attempt to intimidate and limit free speech. After it was discovered that agents had visited several people in Colorado, the director of the Colorado Civil Liberties Union, Mark Silverstein, reacted angrily, pointing out that the activities of the FBI were unconstitutional.
On the economic front, the projected benefits from having the FNC in New York have been downgraded because many New Yorkers, including Wall Street staff, have decided to leave the city while the convention is being held.
There are also major traffic concerns, with part of the city closed off and subway trains rerouted.
Restaurant owners have warned that it may be difficult to have produce delivered in time, and even Broadway shows have not been booked out.
There was much hype about the money 50,000 Republicans would
spend during the convention, but that assessment failed to take
into account the fact that the city normally attracts 3 million
visitors each month. With all the heightened wory about a terrorist
threat and planned protests, many potential visitors have decided
to stay away, meaning Manhattan's 70,000 hotel rooms will not
be anywhere near filled while Bush and his entourage are in town.
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It has come to light that, for two years, the New York Police department (NYPD) has been engaged in building files and maintaining surveillance of at least 56 activists in a variety of states. In recent weeks, NYPD undercover squads traveled to states where the targets live. Each team has orders to watch and follow its target to New York and maintain close surveillance on that target throughout the Republican convention.
Since 2002, other NYPD undercover officers have been infiltrating protest groups, reporting back their protest plans to the New York Police Commissioner and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire Republican.
According to the NYPD, its ongoing operation has been aimed at demonstrators with a known history of civil disobedience who are likely to use the protests in New York to foment violence.
What gravely concerns civil libertarians in this secretly driven
"Big Brother" era is that files are being kept, and
surveillance directed at ordinary citizens eager to express dissent
as part of a constitutional imperative. All of this has been organized
under the pretext of fighting the global war on terror. Many civil
rights lawyers warn that secret files being kept on bona fide
protesters could later be used at airports to limit an individual's
travel plans, or passed to governmental bodies, sensitive industries
and the media.
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Are George bush and Tony Blair building democracy in the Middle East or are they just erecting police states at home? There is no sign of democracy in Iraq. Bush has installed a puppet government backed up by U.S. military force. America's ham-handed occupation has resulted in large civilian casualties, prison tortures and a breakdown in public order.
Domestic police states, however, are in evidence in the United States and Britain.
During the Cold War, Western liberties were favorably compared to the Soviet national identity card, which increased secret police efficiency.
Today, British Home Secretary David Blunkett says Britons are to be issued national identity cards. This prompted British Information Commissioner Richard Thomas to remark that Britain is "sleepwalking into a surveillance society."
In the United States there are plans for identity cards, complete with retina scans and DNA information.
The biggest threat to freedom, however, is the full-scale assault on what 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone called "the rights of Englishmen" and what modern Americans know as civil liberties.
President Bush and his attorney general, John Ashcroft, have resurrected the "Star Chamber,' made infamous by the Stuart Kings of Britain in the 17th century for arbitrary secret proceedings with no right of appeal.
Today, American Citizens can be arrested and held in secret indefinitely without being charged.
The Bush administration has sacrificed the Bill of Rights to its "war on terror." As Elaine Cassel conclusively demonstrates in her forthcoming book, The war on Civil Liberties, the ‘war on terror" is in truth a war on the First, Forth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth amendment to the Constitution, not to mention the Ninth Amendment.
Cassel shows that Bush and Ashcroft have mobilized patriotism against the Constitution.
The coup, Cassel writes, "came when some staff member dreamed up the acronym ‘USA PATRIOT" (United and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act.' for a law that makes a mockery of constitutional protections. To be against the ‘PATRIOT Act' makes one unpatriotic."
The PATRIOT Act defines terrorism so broadly that any acts of protest or civil disobedience can be construed as "terrorism," a charge for which the U.S. government can hold a person indefinitely. Thus, the PATRIOT Act permits punishment without conviction.
If you think you still live in a free society, consider:
The PATRIOT Act overturns the attorney-client privilege, and attorneys who aggressively defend their clients can be indicted for "aiding and abetting terrorism."
Internet service providers that move to quash government surveillance of their customers can be charged with "obstructing justice."
Parents who object to airport security personnel dragging away a frightened child to be searched can be arrested for "obstructing a federal law enforcement officer."
According to Cassel, regulations have been issued that permit federal prosecutors to override federal judges - a gross breach of the separation of powers and a classic tool of 20-century police states.
Indeed, Cassel herself might be subject to arrest "for aiding and abetting terrorists." Here is what Ashcroft told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
NOT BY CIVIL LIBERTIES
Cased dryly notes that sept. 11 was caused, allegedly, by intelligence failures, not by civil liberties. Yet the U.S. government's response was to attack civil liberties.
All of the police state measures were waiting on the shelf. Sept. 11 was an excuse to grab unconstitutional power - just as the Reichstag fire was for Hitler.
Cassel says the fate of our free society rests with the judiciary. In her chapter, "The War in the Courts," she assesses whether U.S. courts are up to the challenge. Some are, and some are not. Ironically, it is the "conservative" Republican judges who go along with the police state measures. So much for the old saw that we need a Republican president to save us from the "liberal" judges.
At the time Cassel's book went to press, the Supreme Court had yet to rule whether the government can indefinitely hold a person without charging him and bringing him to trial.
After the decisions on accused terrorists Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, Cassel concludes that the court did not consent to being read out of the picture, but did nothing effective to defend civil liberties. Civil libertarian Harvey Silvergate concurs.
Where do matters stand? We are all in abu Ghraib now. If the government declares you "an enemy combatant" or a "material witness," you have no rights. The government can hold you forever, without charges, or until you admit to some offense in order to escape from isolation and from psychological and perhaps physical torture.
I would rather take my chances with terrorist.
In a chapter on grassroots resistance, Cassel notes that more than 250 countries and municipalities in 28 states, plus two entire states, representing 43 million Americans, have passed resolutions criticizing the PATRIOT Act or forbidding local law enforcement from cooperation with the Bush administration's attack on the Bill of Rights.
It is refreshing that there are still 43 million Americans
who recognize tyranny when they see it.
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