August 7, 2006
Whole Body Health
August 14, 2006
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August 28, 2006
The Israeli aggression against Lebanon is a monstrous war crime in which the Zionist state has been aided and abetted by the U.S. government. The vicious Israeli assault on Lebanon has been accompanied by a host of lies that have been dutifully parroted by the Bush administration and the Zionist-controlled mass media.
After two weeks of fighting, at least 422 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Lebanon and thousands more have been injured, while in Israel, 18 Israeli civilians are reportedly killed. Certainly, many more Lebanese dead will be found beneath the rubble of the many flattened residential buildings of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. Up to 750,000 Lebanese have been driven from their homes and have become refugees. Israel's ethnic cleansing of south Lebanon is now a fact.
The controlled media lies about the Israeli aggression in Lebanon are similar to its propaganda about the terror attacks of 9-11. In both cases the gross deception foisted upon the public caused widespread misunderstanding of the facts and the identity of the guilty party.
A poll conducted by USA Today and Gallup found that 53 percent of the U.S. population blamed Hezbollah for the outbreak of hostilities between Israel and the popular Shi'ite resistance group based in south Lebanon. Hezbollah, which was formed in 1982 as a local resistance movement to challenge the Israeli occupation, is increasingly popular today throughout the Arab and Muslim world because of its ability to confront Israel.
The Gallup poll reveals how successfully the media has deceived the American public about the current crisis in Lebanon. The poll found that 39 percent of respondents blamed Iran, while 29 percent blamed Syria. Lebanon, the beleaguered and devastated victim, was blamed by 27 percent while Israel, the party most clearly responsible for the criminal destruction of Lebanon, was only blamed by 15 percent of those polled. These results reveal the degree of Zionist mind control over American perceptions of the Middle East.
The poll, which was conducted as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice departed for the region, found that 67% of the population does not think the Bush administration has a clear and well thought out policy in the Middle East, although it is obviously supporting the Zionist agenda.
ISRAELIS CAPTURED
In the controlled press, Hezbollah, branded as a "terrorist" group by the United States and Israel, is blamed for having sparked the crisis by having "kidnapped" two Israeli soldiers from Israeli territory on July 12. Iran and Syria are usually blamed for being the powers behind Hezbollah.
The initial news reports, however, indicate that the two Israeli soldiers were not kidnapped at all. They were reported to have been capturedinside Lebanonafter having crossed the border and entered the Lebanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab.
The capture of the Israeli soldiers inside Lebanon was reported by a number of leading international press services, including the German news agency (DPA), AP, AFP from France, and UPI Arabia.
"The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," the DPA reported from Beirut on July 12.
"Implementing our promise to release the Arab prisoners in Israeli jails, our strugglers have captured at 9:05 a.m. two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon," the Hezbollah statement said.
The BBC, usually quite precise, translated the Hezbollah statement as having said "captured two Israeli soldiers at the border with occupied Palestine."
Lebanese police said the two Israeli soldiers had been captured as they "infiltrated" into the Lebanese town of Aitaa al-Chaab, which lies near the fortified border with Israel.
Early in the day, Joseph Panossian of the Associated Press reported that Hezbollah "captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction from Israel, which sent ground forces into its neighbor to look for them."
"The two Israeli soldiers were captured in Lebanese territory, in the area of Aitaa al-Chaab, near to the border with Israel, where an Israeli unit had penetrated," the Agence France Presse reported from Aitaa al-Chaab and Beirut.
On July 13, the DPA reported that Israel vehemently denied reports by Lebanese police that the two soldiers had been captured inside the Lebanese border. Israel said the soldiers had been on patrol on the Israeli side of the border fence.
Hezbollah Chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said he would only return the captured soldiers through "indirect negotiations and an exchange of prisoners."
"This is the only available way to release" Lebanese
prisoners held in Israel,
he said. "The Israelis always first say they do not wish
to negotiate but eventually they accept."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denounced what he called "kidnappings" as an "act of war" by one sovereign country against another. Olmert said, "Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions," and warned of a "very, very, very painful" response.
The Israeli response has been both disproportionate and illegal in its use of U.S. supplied precision-guided weapons, cluster bombs and phosphorus weapons to target civilians and civilian infrastructure.
The obvious falseness of the Israeli military claim that it does not target civilians was plain to see from the front page of The New York Times on July 22.
The lead story reported that the Bush administration was rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel while the large color photograph next to the article showed some of the coffins of 86 civilians who had been killed in Tyre.
Reports on National Public Radio described how Israeli planes and helicopters had targeted civilian vehicles fleeing from their homes and villages in south Lebanon. One family's car was struck just feet from the hospital in Tyre. In another case 23 of the 27 civilians in one truck were killed by an Israeli missile. An Israeli helicopter machine gunned a civilian vehicle killing all 9 civilians.
As Israel is wont to do, a number of Red Cross ambulances were targeted. "Israeli missiles had clearly pierced the very center of the red cross on the roof of each ambulance," Robert Fisk of The Independent (UK) wrote on July 26.
Meanwhile, U.S. war planes arrived at Israeli airbases carrying weaponry and military equipment. The American planes came from Gulf States including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to the Al Manar newspaper. The newspaper reported that five U.S. planes had landed in three Israeli airbases, bringing more weapons and "vacuum bombs of many sizes."
"We are aiding and abetting war crimes," Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said about the U.S. weapon shipments to Israel. "This has been planned for quite some time," Boyle added.
On the same day that U.S. war planes delivered weapons to Israel, Israeli bombs struck a reportedly well-known and clearly marked United Nations observer post in Lebanon, killing 4 UN monitors from China, Austria, Finland and Canada.
Despite six hours of urgent calls from top UN officials in New York and its officers on the ground to the Israeli mission the base continued to come under fire and received a total of 21 strikes from the air, 12 of them artillery rounds.
UN General Secretary Kofi Annan called the Israeli attack on
the Khiam
base "deliberate."
China strongly condemned the Israeli air strike and summoned Israel's ambassador in Beijing to demand an apology.
Asked about the attack on the UN base, Boyle said, "They do it all the time; it's a power thing."
Israeli officials are demanding an apology from Annan for his comments.
Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister, rejected claims that the Israeli military had intentionally targeted the UN peacekeepers. "We want it to be clear it was not a deliberate attack because Israel would never target a UN force. It is not part of our policies; it is not part of our values," Livni said.
Livni's statement is a bald-faced lie. Israel does target UN bases. On April 18, 1996, during the Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" aggression against Lebanon, then Prime Minister Shimon Peres, now the vice premier, ordered the precision guided artillery shelling of the UN base at Qana (Cana) in which hundreds of Lebanese had sought shelter. Some 102 Lebanese civilians were killed in this previous deliberate attack on a UN base.
Christopher Bollyn is the American Free Press Midwest Bureau Chief. He has written extensively on a wide variety of subjects including the controversy surrounding computerized voting systems, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the many unanswered questions surrounding 9-11.
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traveled to the Middle East in an effort to breathe life back into the Middle East "peace process," a process many consider dead because the United states enforces and supports only the UN resolutions it considers to be in Israel's interest. The united States has made use of its veto right in the UN more than 100 times in favor of Israel.
With President Bush leading the way forward with endless pro-Zionist wars and unilateral actions, the establishment media follows, with hardly a mention of more than 1,000 UN resolutions Israel has ignored for decades.
Israel had been, and continues to be, in direct violation of UN Resolution 242 since Nov. 22, 1967, 15 years prior to the creation of Hezbollah and 20 years prior to the creation of Hamas. These groups were instigated as a result of the illegal Israeli occupation of Arab land. Yet Israel hypocritically claims it has to attack Lebanon because of these groups.
Secretary Rice mentioned in her briefing about her trip that UN Resolution 425 along with resolution 1559 and 1680 represent an "international consensus that guides our diplomatic efforts to help Lebanon's young democracy make progress."
Looking at Res. 425 reveals one of the basic problems in U.S. Middle East diplomacy, which is lopsided in favor of Israel:
"UN Security Council Resolution 425, March 19, 1978:
"Calls for strict respect for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized boundaries.;
"Calls upon Israel immediately to cease its military action against Lebanese territorial integrity and withdraw forthwith it forces from all Lebanese territory.
"Decides, in the light of the request of the government of Lebanon, to establish immediately under its authority a UN interim force for southern Lebanon for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security and assisting the government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area, the force to be composed of personnel drawn from members of the UN."
Miss Rice mentions this resolution, yet no one in the administration is providing the actual background needed to understand the timing of events in the region and what came first, Hezbollah was formed four years after Resolution 425.
However, it was Hezbollah, not the UN resolution, that is credited with finally getting Israel to leave Lebanon in 2000.
"UN security Council Resolution 242, November 22, 1967:
"Affirms that the fulfillment of charter principles requires the establishment of just and lasting peace in the Middle east which should include the application of both the following principles:
"Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
"Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and that their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;
"Affirms further the necessity:
"For guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area;
"For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem;
"For guaranteeing the territorial inviolability and political independence of every state in the area, through measures including the establishment of demilitarized zones.
"Requests the secretary general to designate a special representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the states concerned in order to promote agreement and assist efforts to achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement in accordance with the provisions and principles in the resolution;
"Requests the secretary general to report to the Security Council in the progress of the efforts of the special representative as soon as possible."
However, 39 years later Israel is still occupying territory illegally; killing and terrifying civilians, destroying infrastructure and keeping the vast majority of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in terror and despair.
The U.S. government is letting Israel defy UN resolutions. At best it is picking out UN resolutions it likes and ignoring those it considers not to be in Israel's interest.
The Bush administration is ignoring the history and true sequence of events in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine and now Lebanon. Israeli violence and aggression is net with shrugs and claims that Hamas or Hezbollah started the fight when in fact it started in 1967, long before either of those two groups even came into existence.
With this arrogant ignorance, and the utter folly of unilateral
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on pretexts of bogus intelligence
and cherry picking of said intelligence, the world's opinion of
the United States is plunging ever further downward.
John Tiffany is the copy editor and a writer
for American Free Press. He has been active in the freedom movement
for 30 years. He presently resides with his wife in the mountains
of West Virginia near Harpers Ferry. Tiffany is also the assistant
editor of The Barnes Review. For a sample copy of a recent issue,
send $4 to TBR, P.O. Box 1587, Washington, D.C. 20003. Include
your written request for a sample issue and mention you saw the
ad on age 6 of AFP issue #32.
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With the U.S. Army spending $266 million every day - a whopping $8 billion a month - to fight a guerrilla war in Iraq, it is now having to "rob Peter to pay Paul" to the point where it is facing a shortfall of $530 million to pay salaries, purchase supplies and fund vital services and repairs. In other words, the Army is broke
The situation has become so critical that Fort Sam Houston in Texas has received cut-off notices of it electrical services from local public utilities because it has not paid its bills. The companies have decided, however, that since it involves national defense they will not pull the plug.
As of today, a total of 119 Army facilities in the United States and overseas have received orders to lay of civilian employees, to forego new contract, to take away cell phones and not to use military vehicles.
Even Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the Army's most important bases, has not been immune from the cuts. Officials there have been told to reduce the amount it costs to run the military post from $1 million a day to $191,000 a day - an incredible drop of some 80%.
At Fort Belvoir in Virginia, there is a budget shortfall of $2.7 million, resulting in the closure of an education center and the deferral of repairs to highways that had been washed out by recent heavy rains.
"We're at war," a spokesman for the Army's Installation Management Agency explained. "That's the first, middle and last of it." He further said that spiraling oil and gas prices and unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates have also aggravated the situation.
The situation was even worse before Congress approved a supplemental spending bill in June, which provided $722 million for the Army. Before that money was received, the Army's shortfall had been fast approaching $13 billion.
The half billion dollars that the Army is in the hole is a lot of money. However, to put things in perspective, the sum would only fund two days of operations in Iraq - a good indication of just how much the war is costing America. This figure does not include the cost of the injured and the loss of life to Americans as a result of the war.
"The bottom line is that the U.S. Army is flat broke and
no one knows what to do about it." a civilian management
official at a Virginia Army base told AFP.
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Kansas City, Mo. - Peter McCandless, a KCXL 1140 AM radio talk show host and tax activist from Kansas City, is on a mission to wake up Americans by helping bring film-maker Aaron Fusso's highly anticipated film, America: Freedom to Fascism, to theaters in several major U.S. cities.
McCandless, who was among the speakers at a July 22 forum in Kansas city, put on by the group Midwest Concerned Citizens, told the audience at an IBEW union hall that the film was slated to debut July 28 in AMC theaters in greater Kansas city, New York, Chicago, Tampa and Austin. The Kansas city-area showing is at the AMC Studio 30.
On Aug. 4 the film is also slated to be featured in a number of other cities, said McCandless. America: Freedom to Fascism delves into questions such as "who owns the Federal Reserve System" and explores whether there is a ratified law legitimizing the federal income tax. It also investigates whether Americans will have to carry a national ID card, and it there's a possibility that Americans may someday have radio frequency identification chips under their skin.
American Free Press first reviewed this film in the March 20 issue.
Citing his own experience in the courts in cases involving defendants accused of tax evasion, McCandless is optimistic that films such as this and brave citizens can turn the tide. He spoke of an Illinois tax evasion case some five years ago wherein juror Marcie Brooks exercised the proper role of a juror. Ms. Brooks asked the judge to cite the law under which defendant Whitey Harrel was being tried - not just the facts of the case. The judge refused to cite the law, which led the jury to arrive at a "not guilty" verdict.
McCandless said when Americans stand up and take action, there's a chance to "put the government back in its constitutional box.
The 14-minute trailer to the film can be viewed on line at www.freedomtofascism.com. The film is produced by Cinema Libre Studio. Tickets can be purchased via the Internet at www.movietickets.com.
Those wanting to bring the Russo film to their town can contact
McCandless at (816) 792-1140 or email peter@petermacshow.com.
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People from all walks of life are talking about how our country has drifted far from what our founders envisioned for us. This discontent is heard everywhere. Yet, when our leaders refer to this situation, they usually claim that their party or their group is not as bad as the other one out there.
Numerous independent journalists and a few courageous political leaders have stated that corruption in government is pandemic. But do any of them mention why this is so and what we can do about it.
For some years now I have been asking the question: Has our federal government had a long-term positive impact on anything in which it has been involved? No one has ever identified one thing.
It is frequently suggested that, to get to the core of any problem, just follow the money. Most serious thinkers would agree that this is at the heart of our problems today. How do we fix it? Simply take the money and the gifts out of the equation. Taking the money from only one source will not solve the problem. It must be total and complete.
The following are the most serious contributors causing our leaders to betray the priorities that are in the best interest of the country. In simple terms, this is bribery.
* Multinational corporations are funding both political parties almost equally thereby dictating policies to their advantage at the expense of our own country.
* Lobbyists throw millions and millions around buying special consideration, most of which comes from the multinational corporations.
*Pork and earmarks must be stopped completely. They are nothing but buying the votes of their constituents.
But there is another side to this, too. While we are right to be critical of those who give the money, there also must be a taker for this corruption to continue. In effect, there is no real distinction between the two. The giver is equally as corrupt as the taker.
I am proposing that effective measures be taken to punish those who give and those who take. Failing to address the issue is no longer an option.
Certainly there must be a significant number in and around government who are concerned about this matter. Isn't there someone willing to take the lead in addressing this issue?
Lester B. Searer is a constitutional conservative, patriot
and activist. He publishes a series of pamphlets on the current
state of our union and is willing to provide them to AFP readers
FREE of charge. For more information, please write Mr. Searer
at 4754 E. Prospect Rd., York, PA 17406 or call (717) 252-1249.
He also has a web site at www.lesterbsearer.com.
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President Bush's practice of signing bills into law with "statements" that he will not enforce certain aspects of the legislation - called "signing statement" - is unconstitutional, according to the American Bar Association.
"Such presidential signing statements pose a fundamental threat to the far-reaching vision of our nation's Founders and they clearly violate the Constitution." ABA President Michael Greco told reporters in Washington July 24.
It is common for presidents to issue "signing statements," often praising the legislation and sometimes expressing reservations about certain provisions. But to use such signing statements to say he will not enforce laws passed by Congress is a Bush invention, according to the committee to Impeach Bush and Cheney.
"The recent signing statements, unlike the overwhelming majority of those preceding, have been used to announce an intention of disregard rather than comment on newly enacted laws," Greco said. During his five years in office, Bush has issued more signing statements "that challenge the constitutionality of laws than all his predecessors combined," Greco added.
"The Moment a president signs a law, he has a constitutional duty faithfully to uphold it, Greco said. "If the president believes the proposed legislation violates the Constitution, or is otherwise infirm, he is bound by the oath of office to resist its passage - by expressing those concerns to Congress and by use of his constitutional power to veto.
But a president "cannot sign a law and refuse to enforce it," Greco said, citing the "presentment clause" in article I of the Constitution, which requires a president to either sign or veto a bill within 10 days (Sundays excluded) or it automatically becomes law.
"This is still more evidence, to top of a mountain of
evidence, that Bush and Cheney are guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,'"
said Col. Donn de Grand Pre, the head of the CIBC. "They
must be removed from office."
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Hippocrates of Cos, "the father of medicine," is reported to have pontificated "Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food." In more recent times, I was told: "You are what you eat." It is quite evident that a great many Americans are not in good shape. Many are beginning to actually resemble the food pyramid.
Dr. David Williams's magazine, Alternatives, reports that in 2004 over 70%; of American men were obese. Even our children are affected. According to The Journal of the American Medical Association almost 20% of kids today are obese. Obesity in adults is associated with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver and kidney diseases, type II diabetes and, ultimately heart trouble. Children are beginning to suffer from these same diseases.
Williams also notes that there has been a 100% increase in juvenile diabetes in the last 25 years and it is now being found in 6-year olds.
The use of medications to treat type II diabetes in children doubled between 2002 and 2005. Furthermore life threatening food allergies among children doubled in the last 10 years and asthma increased about 75%. We appear to be producing more and more patients in need of medical care.
Williams says he expects a dramatic decrease in life expectancy and quality of life for our children. If we are what we eat, could changes in our food supply have caused changes in the state of our health?
According to Dr. Bruce West's Health Alert of December 2005, iodine used to be added to bread 20 years ago because it was considered to be deficient in people's diets. Iodine is present in every organ and tissue of the body, and it is especially important in the thyroid gland.
West claims that from 1900 to 1960 most physicians in the United States used iodine in the form of Lugol's solution for both hyper- and hypo- thyroidism as well as many other diseases.
Presently bromine is added to bread instead of iodine. Bromine has toxic effects on the thyroid gland, which controls metabolism, and hence might well be responsible for some people gaining too much weight.
According to West, "orthoiodosupplementation," the provision of optimal amounts of iodine, is a panacea for considerable number of disease conditions such as: fibrocystic breast disease, polycystic ovary syndrome, brain fog, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and some heart problems.
Over the years, Thomas Jefferson's ideal of America possessed by farming families has been abandoned in favor of the apparent efficiency of giant factory farms. These are generally owned and operated by large corporations whose executives are focused on profitability.
Waldsterben - German for "death of trees" - in European forests has been associated with demineralization. In some cases special rock dusts, added to the soil around trees, has caused them to take on a new lease on life. Some farmers in Germany are reported to spread rock dusts on their fields to maintain fertility. This might be something for our farmers to consider.
Lack of selenium in food supplies in parts of China has been connected with high cancer rates in those areas. In some areas of this country, soils are also deficient in selenium. Vegetables and other farm products coming from these soils produce deficiencies in those who consume them. Again cancer rates are higher in such areas.
Besides depletion of minerals in the soils, many substances, not all of them benign, have been added to our food supply. For example many years ago butter substitutes were introduced. These were produced by hydrogenating vegetable oils. Initially these substitutes came in the form of a block of white fat with a small bead of yellow dye which had to be mixed into the fat to give it the appearance of butter. It was a good enough substitute to fool by grandmother who had been bought up on a farm.
Unfortunately the hydrogenation produces transfats whose molecular structure is substantially different from the naturally occurring saturated fats in butter. Although they are less expensive than butter they cause negative effects and the National Academy of Sciences has indicated that the most desirable amount to ingest is none.
Dr. David Williams claims that our society has short changed the last two generations of children. Repeated studies have shown widespread deficiencies of iron, zinc, B vitamins and protein in children and obese adults. Foods containing highly refined white flour, sugar and high fructose corn syrup are known to deplete vitamins and minerals.
A 2004 study of 3,000 children over 14 years clearly indicated a connection between poor nutrition and antisocial behavior. In comparison with properly nourished children, the poorly fed were found to be more inclined to delinquency at age 11 and to antisocial behavior and violence at 17.
Industrialization of our food supply has made life easier for us. But convenience, shelf life and taste may have been purchased at a higher price than we thought we were paying. We get fewer vitamins and minerals from our food than we used to get, but we are fortunate in this country. We are able to purchase these in the form of supplements to make up for what our foos lack. We will be able to do so as long as we can hold off the imposition of Codex Alimentarius, which prevents dome Europeans from purchasing more than RDA amounts of food supplements without a physician's prescription. Note that our membership in the World Trade Organization requires the imposition of the Codex in this country and some congressmen are attempting to put it into effect.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Let you're servants
in Congress know how you feel about this.
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Littleton, Colorado - an ominous gray cloud hung low overhead as the survivors and relatives of the victims of the worst school shooting in U.S. history gathered on a hill overlooking Columbine High School for the groundbreaking of the long-awaited memorial on June 16.
The sky darkened and lightning struck nearby as former President bill Clinton, sheltered by an umbrella, spoke to commemorate the 13 killed and two dozen injured during the April 20, 1999, shooting rampage of two homicidal students. While Clinton and others spoke of the obvious pain and suffering inflicted by teen-aged murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, no one addressed the most important question: What actually caused the two high school students to turn into cold-blooded killers?
Yet, without addressing the cause of the tragedy, how can we possibly expect to prevent similar tragedies in the future? The Columbine shooting and many other nightmarish killings have now been scientifically linked by experts to a freakish sleep disorder caused by the growing use of anti-depressant medications that affect the level of serotonin in the brain.
Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness and author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare, is an expert consultant in cases like Columbine in which anti-depressant medications are involved.
Tracy says the Columbine killers' brains were awash in setotonin, the chemical which causes violence and aggression and triggers a sleep-walking disorder in which a person literally acts out their worst nightmare.
Shortly before the Columbine shooting, Harris had been rejected by Marine Corps recruiters because he was under a doctor's care and had been prescribed an anti-depressant medication, Harris was taking Luvox, an anti-depressant commonly used to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Luvox is in a class of drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI). Other SSRIs include Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. An estimated 10 million Americans take anti-depressant medications.
Mark Taylor, the first student shot at Columbine, brought a lawsuit against Solvay, the international pharmaceutical company that produces Luvox. Taylor's 2001 lawsuit said Luvox had caused Harris to become manic, psychotic and homicidal/suicidal and had brought about "emotional blunting," or a lack of inhibition. Taylor's lawsuit also faulted Solvay for failing to warn of the "risks and dangers" associated with the drug.
In early 1998, according to Taylor's lawsuit, Harris had taken Zoloft for two months, but soon became "obsessional." Harris became obsessed with homicidal and suicidal thoughts "within weeks" after he began taking Zoloft, according to Dr. Tracy. Due to his obsession with killing, Harris was switched to Luvox, which was in his system at the time of the shooting, according to his autopsy. The change from Zoloft to Luvox is like switching from Pepsi to Coke, Dr. Tracy said.
Taylor told American Free Press, how, two years after the Columbine, as a 17-year-old recovering victim, he had been taken alone, without counsel, into a room with lawyers representing Solvay and threatened with court costs and counter suits. The fear of financial ruin led Taylor and others to withdraw the lawsuit. The legal setback, however, has not stopped Taylor from working to increase public awareness about the dangers of SSRI medications.
I didn't realize what an epidemic it was until I went with Dr. Tracy and heard all the testimony," Taylor said. Mark's mother, Donna, told AFP that she had seen "tarantulas on the ceiling" and "snakes coming out of my mouth," hallucinations she had suffered while taking Paxil. "Racing thoughts" had prevented her from sleeping and she had not recognized her closest family members when they entered her home.
A Mayo Clinic study, said to be the first systematic demonstration of the relationship between anti-depressants and a sleep disorder known as RBD was presented at a June 19 sleep disorder conference in Salt Lake City. The Mayo study demonstrated that a link exists between the use of anti-depressant medications in young people and the onset of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD).
RBD is the freakish sleep disorder, described by Dr. Tracy, in which patients act out their dreams, which are often unpleasant and violent.
The out of nightmares results from a loss of normal muscle paralysis in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep the dream stage of sleep. The normal muscle paralysis prevents one from acting out a dream or nightmare. RBD patients, however, generally act out their dreams in a defensive posture, as if fending off an attacker, says R. Robert Auger, M.D., a Mayo Clinic sleep medicine specialists, psychiatrist and primary investigator.
Dr. Tracy cited the Mayo study, saying this is exactly what she has been warning about for 14 years.
Asked about the significance of the Mayo Clinic study on the discussion of the dangers of SSRI anti-depressants, Dr. Tracy said: "It is extremely significant. This is the disorder I have been saying for 14 years is the main cause of such out-of-character violent behavior in association with the use of anti-depressants.
:If someone has the ability to move and act out the nightmares they are having anything can happen and it is generally the worst thing a person could imagine happening to them. This is why the very best mothers are killing their children - it is their worst nightmare.
"What cold be more terrible than to chemically induce first of all someone's most horrifying nightmare and then sleepwalk? In this way the individual acts out the one thing that is the most terrifying thing to them," Tracy wrote in 2003. "This is clearly why we have cases of such loving and caring mothers, like Andrea Yates, killing their children - that was her worst nightmare."
Anti-depressants are also thought to have played a role in the bizarre 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old who was found beaten and strangled in her Boulder, Colo., home. Patsy Ramsey, the recently deceased mother of Jonbenet, is suspected of having "strangled her daughter in a panic on Christmas night," according to Steve Thomas, the former police detective who spent two years investigating the killing. The unanswered question, however, is whether Mrs. Ramsey was taking anti-depressant medications at the time of the killing.
After the killing, it was reported that both John Ramsey and his wife were taking Prozac. In an October 1998 deposition, Ramsey was asked if he was "under the influence of any medication or alcohol."
"No alcohol, certainly, but I've been under a doctor's care for almost two years now and take Prozac," Ramsey said.
Asked about the significance of the fact that Columbine shooter Harris was taking SSRI anti-depressants, dr. Tracy remarked: It is very significant. We know that Eric Harris had the same nightmare about killing kids at school at least three times before he acted it out at Columbine. He even made the statement that he was going to stop his medication to fuel his rage.'"
Dr. Tracy told AFP that anti-depressants are highly addictive and that extreme care must be taken when a user begins to wean himself off the medication. The dosage has to be reduced carefully and gradually, and the weaning period should be about half the time the person has been on the medication. Any abrupt changes in dosage can cause suicidal and homicidal reactions, Dr. Tracy said.
"Two years ago," she said, "the FDA issued warnings noting that abruptly changing the dose of the anti-depressant, whether going up or down in dose, can produce hostility, psychosis and/or suicide.
"The manufacturers of Luvox, along with the makers of Zoloft and Paxil, should be held largely, not partly, responsible for the for the shooting rampage at Columbine," Dr. Tracy said. "Without these medications I do not believe Columbine would ever have happened."
Mark Taylor and Dr. Tracy worked with film-maker Michael Moore in a forthcoming documentary called The Drugging of our Children, which Dr. Tracy said should air on public television in the near future.
"In the documentary Michael Moore states that in the movie Bowling for Columbine they look at all the reasons people were saying Columbine happened and that none of those reasons made sense," Dr. Tracy said.
The only thing that makes any sense, Moore said, is the killers' use of anti-depressants.
"How else do you take a perfectly normal, high-achieving
child and turn them into murderous monsters almost overnight?"
Moore asks.
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The drugs that doctors use to treat the new disease of hypercholesterolemia are called statins - sold under a variety of names including Lipitor (atovastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), Mevzcor (lovastatin) and Pravachol (pravastatin). Statins work by inhibiting the production of cholesterol in the liver. Unfortunately, they also inhibit the production of two other important substances that are vital to the human body - ubiquinone and dilochol.
Ubiquinine, or coenzyme Q10, is a critical cellular nutrient biosynthesized in the mitochondria. It plays a role in ATP production in the cells and functions as an electron carrier to cytochrome oxidase, our main respiratory enzyme. The heart requires high levels of CoQ10.
Ubiquinone is found in all cell membranes where it plays a role in maintaining membrane integrity so critical to nerve conduction and muscle integrity. CoQ10 is also vital to the formation of elastin and collagen. Side effects of CoQ10 deficiency include muscle wasting leading to weakness and severe back pain, heart failure, neuropathy and inflammation of the tendons and ligaments, often leading to rupture.
Dolichols also play a role of immense importance. In the cells they directives to their proper targets, ensuring that the cells respond correctly to genetically programmed instruction.
Thus statin drugs can lead to unpredictable chaos on the cellular level, much like a computer virus that wipes out certain pathways or files.
The fact that some studies have shown that statins can prevent heart disease, at least in the short term, is most likely explained by the fact that they block the creation of mevalonate. Reduced amounts of mevalonate seem to make smooth muscle cells less active, and platelets less able to produce thromboxane. Atheroscletosis begins with the growth of smooth muscle cells in side artery walls and thromboxane is necessary for blood clotting.
GREAT PROMISE
Statin drugs entered the market with great promise. They replaced a class of pharmaceuticals that lowered cholesterol by preventing its absorption from the gut. These drugs often had immediate and unpleasant side effects, including nausea, indigestion and constipation, and in the typical patient they lowered cholesterol levels only slightly. Patient compliance was low; the benefit did not seem worth the side effects and the potential for use seemed very limited.
By contrast, statin drugs had no immediate side effects: they did not cause nausea or indigestion, and they were consistently effective, often lowering cholesterol levels by 50 points or more.
During the last 20 years, the industry has mounted an incredible promotional campaign - enlisting scientists, advertising agencies, the media and the medical profession in a blitz that turned the statins into one of the best selling pharmaceuticals of all time. Sixteen million Americans now take Lipitor, the most popular statin, and drug company officials claim that 36 million Americans are candidates for statin drug therapy.
What bedevils the industry is growing reports of side effects that manifest many months after the commencement of therapy. The November 2003 issue of Smart Money magazine reported on a 1999 study at St. Thomas Hospital in London, which found that 36 percent of patients on Lipitor's highest dose reported side effects; even at the lowest dose, 10 percent reported side effects.
The most common side effect is muscle pain and weakness a condition called rhabdomyolysis, most likely due to the depletion of CoQ10, a nutrient that supports muscle function. Pain, neuropathy, dizziness, cognitive impairment, depression, pancreatitis and heart failure occur in many statin-takers, especially in those taking the drug for a long period of time.
HEART FAILURE EPIDEMIC
We are currently in the midst of a congestive heart failure epidemic in the United States - while the incidence of heart attack has declined slightly, an increase in the number of heart failure cases has outpaced these gains. Deaths attributed to heart failure more than doubled from 1989 to 1997. Yet virtually all patients with heart failure are put on statin drugs, even if their cholesterol is already low. Of interest is a recent study indication that patients with chronic heart failure benefit from having high levels of cholesterol rather than low - yet virtually all heart failure patients are put on statin drugs.
In every study with rodents to date, statins have caused cancer. Why have we not seen such a dramatic correlation in human studies? Because cancer takes a long time to develop and most of the statin trials do not go on longer than two or three years. Still, in one trial, the CARE trial, breast cancer rates of those taking a statin went up 1,500%. In the Heart Protection Study, non-melanoma skin cancer occurred in 243 patients treated with another statin drug, simvastatin, compared with 202 cases in the control group.
Manufacturers of statin drugs have recognized the fact that statins depress the immune system, an effect that can lead to cancer and infectious disease, recommending statin use for inflammatory arthritis and as an immune suppressor for transplant patients.
Recently published studies do not provide any more justification for the current campaign to put as many people as possible on statin drugs. Fro example, the Honolulu Heart Program found increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol. The Antihypertensive and Lipid Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial, the largest North American cholesterol-lowering trial ever and the largest trial in the world using Lipitor, showed mortality of the treatment group and controls after three or six years were identical. The Prospective Study of Pravastatin in the Elderly at Risk, or PROSPER study, studied the effect of pravastatin compound to placebo in two older populations of patients. Total mortality and total serious adverse events were unchanged by pravastatin as compared to the placebo and those in the treatment group had increased cancer. In other words: not one life was saved.
PALTRY BENEFITS
With such paltry evidence of benefit, statin drugs hardly merit the hyperbole heaped upon them. Yet the industry maintains a full court press, urging their use for greater numbers of people, not only for cholesterol lowering but also as treatment for other diseases - cancer, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, stroke, macular degeneration, arthritis and even mental disorders such as memory and learning problems, Alzheimer and dementia.
New guidelines published by the American college of Physicians call for statin use by all people with diabetes older than 55 and for younger diabetes patients who have any other risk factor for heart disease, such as high blood pressure or a history of smoking.
David A. Drachman, professor of neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School calls statin "Viagra for the brain." Other medical writers have heralded the polypill, composed of a statin drug mixed with a blood pressure medication, aspirin and niacin, as a prevent-all that everyone can take. The industry is also seeking the right to sell statins over the counter.
Can honest assessment find any possible use for these dangerous drugs? Maverick cardiologist Peter Langsjoen of Tyler, Texas, suggests that statin drugs are appropriate only as a treatment for cases of advanced cholesterol neurosis, created by the industry's anti-cholesterol propaganda.
One thing is for sure. If you are concerned about your cholesterol,
a statin drug will certainly relieve you of your worries.
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The consumption of unfermented soy products, which are cheap substitutes for milk and meat, has burgeoned in the past decade. Presently they are eaten in large quantities. However, because they contain phytoestrogens, they are not benign by many nutritionists' standards.
Perhaps 30% of bottle babies in this country are being fed soy milk. As a result their phytoestrogen levels are reported to be 20 times higher than those fed mother's milk. According to Dr. W.C. Douglass, this causes early onset of puberty in girls, as early as age seven, and delayed puberty, with confused sexual identity, in boys. We are mixing up our kids' sexuality.
Douglass claims that a baby on soy milk gets the equivalent of five birth control pills per day. Could this be the reason for our declining birth rates? The British, French, Israeli and New Zealand governments discourage the consumption of soy milk. The U.S. government promotes this.
The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology evaluated potential uses of soy products in foods and concluded that the only safe use was "as cardboard package sealers," said Douglass.
At the Third International Phytoestrogen Conference in 1995, FDA regulator Michael Bolger is reported to have indicated that soy isoflavones were implicated in infertility, uterine hypertrophy and testicular atrophy in rodents, reproductive failure in cheetahs and menstrual cycle effects in women.
It should be noted that soybeans were a cover crop, plowed
under between food crops to fertilize the soil, in ancient China.
The Chinese ate small quantities of fermented soy foods, but not
the beans themselves.
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According to a report in the August 8, 1980, edition of The Journal of the American Medical Association, "Nutrition has been neglected by the medical profession." Beriberi is a vitamin B1 deficiency disease that damages the heart and nervous system. Doctors now know that there are two kinds of beriberi, referred to as "wet" and "dry" beriberi.
Symptoms of "dry" beriberi disease include pain, tingling, or loss of sensation in hands and feet (peripheral neuropathy), muscle wasting with loss of function or paralysis of the lower extremities, and potential brain damage.
"Wet" beriberi is characterized by swelling, increased heart rate, lung congestion, and enlarged heart related to congestive heart failure.
Oddly, these symptoms also can be used to describe the exploding epidemic of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases that are killing millions of Americans. Establishment experts have been blind to this connection.
Establishment medicine originally mocked the heroes who discovered that beriberi was a nutritional deficiency. Beriberi was cured when people went back to eating brown rice, so the establishment scientists had no choice bu to jump on the bandwagon.
The same close-minded scientists, who scorned the secrets of nature, couldn't wait to mess with Mother Nature. Once they could no longer pretend there was no such thing as vitamins, they couldn't wait to synthesize the mirror image of what they denied existed - thiamine from coal tar - and praised the works of their hands to the skies.
Just before World War II enrichment of refined, devitalized flour with synthetic fractions of counterfeit vitamins, such as thiamine hydrochloride mononitrate (synthetic forms of B-1) became compulsory.
Casimir Funk, who discovered the method for concentrating vitamin B in the early 20th century, and coined the term, "vitamins," forewarned, "The synthetic product is less effective and more toxic.
Scientists later discovered that animals on a synthetic-vitamin-enriched diet "dropped dead long before the animals on an un-enriched diet became disabled."
In 1941, Agnes Fay Morgan, Ph.D., a food research scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, warned that such phony enrichment might "precipitate conditions worse than the original deficiency."
Dr. Barnett Sure fed a group of pigs twice the daily requirement of synthetic B-1. A control number of pigs were given the same amount of natural B-1. All of the first generation offspring from the pigs fed the synthetic vitamin were sterile. None of the first generation offspring was sterile from the pigs fed natural B-q. Humans and pigs have very similar metabolism.
"Synthetic vitamins are reverses...or mirror images of natural vitamins...There is no way that a fraction of a vitamin can be called vitamin," according to Richard Murray, D.C.
This leads some nutritionists to argue that there is no way that synthetic chemical concoctions can be called the staff of life. People who get sufficient nutrients are not plagued with the cases of nutritional deficiencies that disable and kill so many Americans.
The evidence strongly suggests that synthetic, "enriched
vitamins" mask, or even cause, nutritional plagues that were
supposedly wiped out more than 100 years ago.
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THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA would like you to believe it's as simple as black and white. The Israelis wear the white hats while all Arabs who oppose the Israeli war machine wear the black hats.
There are many reasons why this deception continues. Of course, some in the mainstream media are so ignorant they actually believe that if Israelis - backed by our tax dollars and weapons - simply killed all of those uppity Arabs, there would finally be peace in the Holy Land.
Still others are intimidated by the powerful Israeli lobby, which bludgeons critics like us with charges of "racism" and "anti-semitism." You can criticize the president and Congress without being called "anti-American," but you cannot criticize Israel without being called "anti-Semitic."
And then there are the horribly misled people who call themselves Christians and still support Israel's slaughter of Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. Funny - we thought that Christ was teacher of love they neighbor not kill thy neighbor.
So that's why you have read and heard that Israel had to invade Lebanon and bomb it mercilessly. It is not Israel's fault that innocent children, mothers, fathers and the elderly have been killed. It is those bloodthirsty terrorists, who have pushed "democracies" to the brink and now they have to defend themselves in the name of freedom.
That's why we refer you to pages 10, 11,13, and 15, where fearless columnist, writing for American Free Press, provide you with the unvarnished story regardless of the threats issued by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Anti-Defamation League.
The truth is it matters not where the two Israeli soldiers were captured who supposedly started this war. Israel has launched a bloody war on southern Lebanon and Gaza that has been in the planning for years. Hundreds have been killed; hundreds of thousands have been violently displaced and their ancestral homes reduced to rubble.
Meanwhile, our spineless representative in Washington have overwhelmingly approved of Israel's war crimes. Only eight congressmen had the courage to vote against the measure, which sided with Israel and blamed the horrendous violence on Lebanon: Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), John Conyers (D-Mich.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-Mich.), Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Ron Paul (R-Texas), Nick Rahall (D-W.V.) and Pete Stark (D-Calif.).
There is no denying that the United States is complicit in the genocide in Lebanon and Palestine as our tax dollars are used to supply Israel with the bombs and ammunition it uses to rainh down on the innocent.
The truth is found simply and easily in the Balfour Declaration, an historical fact which has been totally ignored by all of the talking heads, wrong-minded preachers and their feckless Zionist Christian fellow travelers.
Read Lord Balfour's letter in its entirety below.
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The Balfour Declaration was a letter from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community. Balfour's letter officially stated that the British government supported Zionist plans for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine, explicitly stating that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of existing communities there. It reads:
Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing on-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely
Arthur James Balfour
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The brutal and indiscriminate attack upon the people and infrastructure of Lebanon by the Zionist state of Israel is a crime against all basic standards of decency and humanity. The excuse given for this murderous invasion was the attack by Hezbollah on the Israeli Defense forces (IDF). What this might have to do with the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese innocent men, women and children, who are subjected to an ongoing living hell, is beyond comprehension.
Indeed, this current aggression is only the second chapter of the recent viciousness; the first being the furious reinvasion of Gaza and the onslaught on its civilians and the ruination of its basic human services.
Voices may be heard that the IDF is simply responding. This, of course, ignores the question of the evil implicit in punishing blameless people for the deeds of others. And it totally ignores the root of the problem: the dispossession and subjugation of the Palestinian people, which began in 1948, was expanded in 1967, and continues unabated to this day. The crux of the matter is that beyond the immorality of the Zionist treatment of the Palestinians is the ultimate fact - the ideology of Zionism and ensuing establishment of the Zionist state conflicts with the basic teachings of Judaism.
TRANSFORMED
Zionism is the transformation from Judaism, a godliness and spirituality, into a Godlessness, materialism with nationalistic aspirations. Theodor Herzl and his cohorts, the fathers of this relatively new ideology of Zionism (approximately 100 years), have taken the Almighty out of the equation.
The Jewish people are forbidden to oppress another people. The creation of the state of Israel came about through the theft from, and the subjugation and oppression of, the Palestinian people.
The state of Israel does not speak in the name of Jews. They have stolen the name "Israel" from the Jewish people. Jew are commanded to be loyal citizens in every country in which they reside. Zionism and the state of Israel are the main causes of the exacerbation of anti-Semitism universally. The government of the illegitimate state of Israel continually attempts to uproot the Torah and its statutes.
We pray that all misery in the Holy Land and Lebanon shall come to an end and that Zionism, the root of the suffering, continue to fade from Jewish consciousness, to be replaced by the faith of Torah. We shall all witness soon the peaceful dismantlement of the Zionist state of Israel
May we merit seeing the day when all humanity will serve the Almighty in harmony and peace. Amen.
Rabbi Yisroel Weiss is with the Neturei Karta, an organization
composed of anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbis. For more information
visit Neturei Karta's web site at www.nkusa.org.
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He graduated medical school at the top of his class and did so at such an unprecedented young age that legally he had to wait a few years before being able to begin his practice. He was fluent in five languages and owned close to 20 farms that he leased out. He was a watcher of world events and studied them carefully, weighing them against the backdrop of history and analyzing them for their significance. All of these accomplishments he credited to the fact that he was Lebanese.
The idea that he was proud of being Lebanese is an understatement to say the least. "Siddi," the Arabic word for grandpa, was conviced that the Lebanese had go "the whole ball rolling" for mankind, so to speak. The forerunners to the modern-day Lebanese - the Phoenicians - had brought the Phonetic alphabet to the world. They colonized virtually the entire Mediterranean and were masters of seafaring and commerce. The temple of Solomon was built with cedars that had been harvested from Lebanon. The cities of Tyre and Sidon were mentioned by Jesus in the gospels.
There were many things I did not understand about my old-world grandfather as I was a youth growing up in America. For the most part Americans have become a silly people over the course of the last 50 years, addicted to trivial, self-centered matters. This tendency has a trickling down effect upon everyone, and unfortunately I was no exception.
And so now, I cannot help but wonder what he would say about current events taking place. What would tear out his heart would be contemplating the foolishness of his people.
The destruction of what was the "Paris of the Middle East" stems from the fact that the Lebanese people opened the floodgates and allowed the drowning waters of the Zionist agenda to destroy them. The allowed Israel to initiate the civil war in the 1980s that destroyed their country. After rebuilding, they allowed their citizens to be corrupted by the Zionist culture.
And last but not least, with the assassination of Rafik Harriri a year ago - an event that has the bloody fingerprints of Mossad all over it - the Lebanese people took the bait that had been offered to them by their enemies in the Zionist-controlled media, blamed Syria and started screaming for the Syrian withdrawal that left them open to this invasion.
As an American of Lebanese descent, I know what my grandfather,
Siddi Khalil, would say. As for myself, however, all that I can
say to him as he watchers all of this from the other world is,
"I,m sorry, Papa."
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As Israel kicked its military assault in Lebanon into high gear, the pro-Israel controlled media in the United States bombarded the U.S. population with carefully crafted lies designed to provide support for Israel's illegal aggression and conceal the hidden agenda behind it. Because these falsehoods are constantly repeated as truth and never questioned by the media in the United States, it is necessary to point out the lies upon which the Israeli assault is based.
Lie No. 1: Two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped in Israel.
This first lie, which has been used as an acceptable casus belli, was the falsehood about the "kidnapping" of two Israeli soldiers from Israeli territory on July 12.
Initial news reports from international wire services, based on a Lebanese police report, however, clearly indicate that the two Israeli soldiers were not kidnapped at all, but captured - inside Lebanon - after having crossed the border and infiltrated the Levanese village of Aitaa al-Chaab. These first reports have not been retracted or proven false.
The capture of the Israeli soldiers in Lebanon was reported by a number of leading international press services, including the German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), Agence France Presse from France, AP and UPI, yet is never mentioned by the mass media outlets on this matter on July 12-13, 2006.
On July 12, DPA reported from Beirut: "The Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement announced Wednesday that its guerrillas have captured two Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.
"Lebanese police said that the two soldiers were captured as they infiltrated' into the town of Aitaa al-Chaab inside the Lebanese border," DPA reported.
In addition it appears that the Israeli attack has been part of a long-standing plan targeting Southern Lebanon.
"Israel's military response by air, land and sea" to the provocation was "unfolding according to a plan finalized more than a year ago," Matthew Kalman wrote in a July 21 article in The Sun Francisco Chronicle.
"More than a year ago." Kalman wrote from Jerusalem about the Lebanon campaign, "a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on and off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail."
To set the stage, Ehud Olmert, the new Israeli prime minister, began his term with extremely violent terror attacks against the people of the Gaza Strip, which culminated in the fatal artillery strike that destroyed a Palestinian family on the beach.
Duraid Al Baik, foreign editor of Gulf News described the first two months of Olmert's term "the bloodiest, deadliest and the most criminal period of the 58-year old state of Israeli." Incidents of Israeli state terror, however, are generally not reported as such in U.S. new networks.
Lie No. 2: The massacre of Qana was caused by Hezbollah, which had fired missiles from the area.
On July30, Israel bombed a four-story residential building in Qana, which collapsed on top of several dozen people, who had taken shelter in the basement. Most of the victims were the children of two families. The Israelis and the U.S. controlled media quickly defended the action saying that Hexbollah had fired missiles from the area. This also turns out to have been a lie.
"There were no rocket launches from Qana on the day of the strike," Ha'aretz in Israel reported two days after the bombing. It now appears that the military had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of committing a war crime in Qana and treating southern Lebanon as a "free-fire zone." It said the failure to distinguish between civilians and combatants is a war crime and asked the United Nations to investigate Israeli's serious violations of international law.
Lie No. 3: Israel does not target civilians or ambulances.
The fact that some 800 Lebanese civilians were killed during the first three weeks of the Israeli onslaught and that some 20,000 were killed in Israel's previous invasion in 1982 reveals the falsity of this claim, but there are specific incidents, such as the targeting of Red Cross ambulances, that expose this as a lie.
That Israel targets ambulances is obvious from the images seen on news reports showing Lebanese ambulances pierced by Israeli missiles exactly in the center of the red cross painted on the roof. As respected Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk noted in a recent article, "Israeli missiles had clearly pierced the very center of the red cross on the roof of each ambulance... All the crews were injured. Did the pilots use the cross as their aiming point?"
Lie No. 4: Israel would never target a UN force."
After Israeli bombs struck the UN observation station at Khiam in Lebanon, killing four international observers, Israel's foreign Minister Tzipi Livni denied that the bombing had been deliberate as the UN as the UN secretary general suggested. "Israel would never target a UN force," Livni said. "It is not part of our policies, it is not part of our values."
Livni's statement is another barefaced lie. Israel has often targeted UN bases, including several in the days before the station at Khiam was hit. Apart from the recent murder of four UN observers, the most egregious Israeli atrocity committed against a UN base occurred on April 18, 1996, during the Israeli "Grapes of Wrath" aggression against Lebanon, when then prime minister Shimon Peres, who is not the vice premier, ordered the precision guided artillery shelling of a UN base at Qana, in which hundred of Lebanese had sought shelter. More than 106 Lebanese civilians, most of them children, were killed in this deliberate Israeli attack on a UN base.
"Israel's slaughter of civilians" during the 1996 Israeli offensive in Lebanon was "so cavalier, so ferocious," Fisk wrote at the time, "that not a Lebanese will forgive this massacre."
Lie No. 5: Hezbollah is a terrorist organization which Israel is fighting in the "war on terror."
Only three nations, Israel, the United States and Canada, consider
Hezbollah, an Islamic resistance group that was created during
the first Israeli occupation of Lebanon, to be a terrorist organization.
The group's leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has vehemently denied
that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. In Lebanon, Europe, Russia,
China and across the Arab and Islamic world, Hezbollah is regarded
as a legitimate resistance organization.
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Negotiations are under way for communist Beijing to utilize as a "logistics hub" the former Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, which was closed in 1995 during the Clinton administration's base reduction program.
If the deal is consummated the Chinese will also gain access to two major Texas ports at Corpus Christi and Houston on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico, an 11,000-foot-long airstrip, which is part of the Kelly base facilities, rail links with railcar switching facilities and links with five interstate highways. The Chinese are keenly interested in the deal because the San Antonio base will help facilitate its trade with Mexico.
San Antonio will give China access to a highway corridor along I-35, linking San Antonio to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the border from Laredo in west Texas.
Nuevo Laredo is a major staging ground for Mexican drug cartels, which have fostered an atmosphere of lawlessness in the city. Almost daily people, including police, are shot in the streets. In addition, frequent clashes occur between drug smugglers and U.S. Border Patrol and state and local police on the U.S. side of the border in Laredo.
There have also been reports that Chinese military units have been operating with Mexican army troops, who assist the drug smugglers and have made incursions into the United States.
"San Antonio is a strategic site for commerce between China and the United States and for the exportation of Chinese products to Mexico and Latin America," Zhou Ming, general director of the Chinese State Agency of Promotions and Chinese Investments, said after a Chinese delegation visited San Antonio last year, according to a report in the Spanish-language newspaper Rumbo, which reports on activities in Mexico and U.S. border states.
Like most Chinese industrial, investment and commerce kingpins, Ming has ties to the People's Liberation Army, which controls most industry in China with much of the profits going to build up the Chinese military.
Considerable slave labor is used, making it impossible for U.S. workers to compete.
A year ago, San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger and other municipal officials traveled to China to promote the former air base facilities, now renamed the San Antonio Port Authority.
The mayor's office is working with the Port Authority, the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio and the San Antonio based Omega Group International, which maintains offices in Austin, Texas, San Francisco, Mexico City and Beijing and Qingdao, China.
According to Rumbo, Omega International sponsored visits by Chinese officials last year to San Antonio. J.J. Saulino, press secretary to Hardberger, told AFP that the mayor is interested in the project and traveled to Guangdong province in China to promote it.
Jorge Canavati, vice president of the San Antonio Port Authority, claimed the Rumbo article was "not accurate" and abrasively brushed off questions about the effort to get the Chinese into the former U.S. air base facilities.
The former air base, often referred to as a "dry port" or an "inland port," because it is not a coastal facility or located on a navigable waterway, "has no limits for the products, from toys to heavy equipment from China," Vivian Lee, president of the Omega Group, was quoted by Rumbo as saying.
AFP was told by Rogello Garcia, a spokesman for the Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, that a Chinese delegation was in San Antonio last spring to further work out details of the project.
Kelly Air Force Base was opened in 1916 as a training facility. Nearby Lackland Air Force Base was a spin-off from Kelly. The Texas Air National Guard 149th Fighter Wing still utilizes the facility, along with the Air Force Reserve 433rd Airlift Wing.
A spokesperson with the Port Authority told AFP that the base has been used to repair and maintain C-5A Galaxy transport planes, which are the largest aircraft in the Air Force. The base has an 11,000-foot runway to accommodate the C-5A, which the military shares with the Port Authority.
In addition to the airstrip, the Port Authority has a 1,200-acre yard operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. The Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad is also linked to the inland port.
A retired Air Force intelligence officer told AFP that taking over the San Antonio base would likely streamline Chinese exports to the United States and would give them access to ports in Houston and Corpus Christi on the Gulf coast.
The Chinese already control the Panama Canal, through the Hutchison-Whampoa
Company, and maintain a major airfield and port facility at Freeport,
Bahamas, where Hutchison-Whampoa has a contract through the
Bush administration to provide security for container ships bound
for U.S. ports on the East Coast.
Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco has taken over port facilities and warehousing space at the California ports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Long Beach. This is one of the reasons cited for China's interest in the San Antonio inland port, as it has extensive space available for constructing warehouse buildings. According to Port Authority sources, a 108,800-square-foot warehouse facility has already been built at the former base at a cost of $5 million and a slightly smaller 102,400-square foot building has also been built.
Best known for his ground-breaking work exposing the U.S. government's abandonment of American POWs and MIAs in Korea and Vietnam, Mike Blair specializes in military affairs and gunowners' rights, Blair was cited by Project Censored for having uncovered the top "most censored" story of 1990a scheme to scuttle the Bill of Rights in the name of "fighting crime."
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute
- as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645
Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
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"Crude oil is the currency' of the world," said Lindsey Williams at a gathering of the Midwest Concerned citizens group in Kansas City on July 22. But Americans will never hear about huge oil and gas reserves in the United States, which, if ever tapped, would bring today's fuel prices at least as low as $1.50 per gallon and make America more energy independent.
As a Baptist missionary in the 1970s, Williams said he rubbed elbows with members of the world's power elite who boasted of detailed 30-year and 50 year plans to control the flow of oil and information.
A huge quantity of crude oil and natural gas exists under Gull Island, located in the waters of Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, says Williams. He cited key British Petroleum memoranda and related the statements of upper echelon oil officials who told him that Gull Island would be kept under wraps, limiting domestic supplies so Americas would someday see prices hit up to $10 a gallon at the pump.
"Every issue in the world today relates to crude oil," said Williams. The U.S. occupation of Iraq and the saber rattling about attacking Iran fit into the crude oil matrix.
Iran is being targeted because it's one of several countries that want to use their own currencies for oil sales, rather than using the U.S. dollar. Williams told AFP that any country that doesn't want to "play ball" with the U.S. government and the financial and oil interests is, in essence, put on a hit list. The United States, he said, learned that Iran intended to form its own bourse and not use the dollar for oil sales. Therefore, the notion that Iran is a menacing "almost-nuclear" country was trumped up, presented as fact via the corporate media and Iran is now in the crosshairs.
Other nations wanting more independence from U.S. meddling include Norway, Venezuela, Nigeria, Bolivia, Sweden and Russia.
The 30-year plan, which was first proposed three decades ago and is nearing fruition, included smug assurances from oil officials that the United states will triple its crude-oil usage and alternative fuel will not be allowed to gain enough ground to make a difference. They also noted that all foreign oil production will be scaled back to the United States and that Americans soon will pay $4 to $5 a gallon at the pump and could pay as much as $7 to $10 down the road.
In the early 1960s crude oil was selected as a tool of world control, Williams said, adding, What we pay at the gas pump is a form of taxation." The American consumer's dependence on crude oil thus far has enabled people from foreign oil-producing nations t buy T-bills (U.S. Treasury notes) in order t support the U.S. national debt and continued deficit spending. The need to support that debt puts the U.S. government in a bind, forcing Americans to remain dependent on foreign oil.
Williams, as a chaplain in 1970 when the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline was finished, ministered among the pipeline workers. However, as time passed he made a favorable impression with the top brass and was asked to improve worker-company relations. Next thing he knew, he said he was sitting at meetings of the World Bank, the international Monetary fund and various meeting of oil executives over a three-year period.
He told AFP that the IMF-World Bank acts as a middle-man between oil producing nations and refineries. In so doing, they set oil prices, he said. The big event in that three-year period was in1977 when an Atlantic Richfield oil executive told him, "We have just drilled into the largest pool of oil in North America - and in the world." That pool was Gull Island. It was said that there was enough natural raw to supply America for 200 years. But to this day, "not one drop" of that oil has been released to American refineries, Williams said.\
Williams said the executive had warned him that the Gull Island find was highly classified. Do not repeat any of this, he was told. Obviously, that warning did not stop him.
Watch AFP for updates on this and many other important domestic
stories. Correspondent Mark Anderson can be contacted at truthorelse@msn.com.
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While the media has focused on Israel's war in Lebanon, the Israeli military has been destroying the infrastructure of Gaza. There too, children have been dying and buildings have been reduced to rubble.
In the past couple of weeks, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) has also carried out a scorched earth policy in agricultural sectors of the Gaza Strip. Tanks and bulldozers have leveled citrus and olive groves, as well as greenhouses and wells.
The result has been devastating to the Palestinian economy, further compounded by Israel's continued policy of restricting commerce in and out of Palestinian zones.
In contravention of international law and the plain wording of Israel's founding documents, including the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Israel has hit power plants, water treatment facilities and other services in a strategy to punish the civilian populations.
The one stark element of the Middle East crisis, now felt in Lebanon but always a feature of Israeli aggression against Palestinians, is the high number of children killed by the IDF.
Since 2000, 763 Palestinian children have been killed and over 20,000 injured, with at least 2,000 maimed for life. At least a third of those killed were shot by Israeli sharpshooters, and 50% received single gunshots to the head or upper torso.
The group "Physicians for Human Rights" studied the death toll of kids killed by those types of shots and concluded that Israeli snipers deliberately aimed for the head. So far this year 59 Palestinian children have been killed and many more wounded.
At the same time Israelis have kidnapped 342 Palestinian juveniles and are holding them in jails throughout Israel.
Some of those are targeted for Israeli intelligence and brainwashing programs aimed at turning them into spies on their release.
Despite the exceptionally high death toll of children in the Occupied Territories, no Israeli sniper or regular soldier has been found guilty of killing a child. That is even more shocking when one realizes that many children were shot on their way to school or while playing games.
One of the first to be killed was a 6-year-old, who was shot in the back as he stepped away from a window in his home.
That was in 2000 when a young Israeli sniper gave a revealing interview to well-known Jewish reporter Amira Hass of the daily newspaper Haaretz. The sniper described the high level of skill of IDF marksmen and claimed they could deliver headshots at 200 yards. More importantly, he admitted that the IDF told its marksmen they could shoot Palestinian kids of 12 and over.
Horrifying incidents include a 13-year-old boy, who was shot in the back in Ramallah on Jan. 23, 2006. Three days later, a 9-year-old boy was shot several times and died in the Gaza Strip. And, on Feb. 15, a mentally-challenged 15-year-old carrying a toy gun was shot several times through the chest. No soldier was charged with those murders.
A large percentage of children have also died as a result of what the IDF frequently calls "collateral damage" or "mistakes"meaning children were burnt or blown up during one of Israel's many "targeted assassinations" when a missile was fired at a car on a busy thoroughfare or when a tank fired into an apartment building. It has also happened when an artillery shell landed on a beach while children were playing.
Israelis point to the 121 Israel children who have died since 2000. That, too, is a terrible statistic. However, those deaths received significantly more coverage in the United States than the deaths of Palestinian children. That was the conclusion of a detailed survey by the group "If Americans Knew" which found that The New York Times gave three times the coverage to the death of an Israeli child.
According to the group, an explanation for the disparity in coverage lies in the fact that Times staff are based in Israel and never venture into Gaza or the West Bank.
So far, the Bush administration has refused to speak out against Israel over its use of excessive military force. At the same time, President Bush has lectured the Lebanese government about observing UN resolution 1559 requiring the disarming of Hezbollah, but has conveniently ignored Israel's blatant disregard for the 65 UN resolutions imposed on it since 1952.
During that period, it has also flouted the Geneva Conventions, as well as many of the basic tenets of international human rights law.
Nowhere is it mentioned that, between 2001 and 2003, Israel built 60 new Jewish settlements on land stolen from Palestinians and has continued to annex private property for its communist-Berlin-style wall.
In addition, the Bush administration has failed to press Israel for currently holding more than 10,000 Palestinians in its own version of concentration camps. To put that in perspective, in the past four decades, some 20% of the Palestinian population650,000 peoplehas been kidnapped by Israeli authorities and held in prisons.
The IDF has also thought nothing of attacking ambulances, preventing injured from getting medical treatment, and has injured a large number of ambulance staff. In a three-year period, 253 ambulances have been targeted and attacked and 192 of them badly damaged.
This year, Israel exploited Washington's disapproval of the election of Hamas as the legitimate Palestinian government as an excuse to turn up the heat on the Occupied Territories. It also breached international law by seizing and imprisoning elected representatives of the Palestinian people and holding them without charge.
If Israel's two wars expand to include Syria and Iran, many fear the likelihood that the United States will be drawn into backing Israel militarily by the neo-con lobby. That would leave 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq caught in a dire situation between millions of angry Iraqi Shiites, who remain sympathetic to Iran, and the Iranian military.
Richard Walker is the nom de plume of a former mainstream
news producer who now writes for AFP so he can expose the kinds
of subjects that he was forbidden to cover in the controlled press.
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute
- as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645
Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
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The blind U.S. support for Israel's illegal aggression against the largely defenseless populations of Lebanon should remove any doubt that the Bush administration is completely controlled by har-core Zionists with a dangerous plan to reshape the Middle East. It also requires a rethinking of the events in Lebanon that preceded Israel's latest aggression.
U.S. and Israeli aggression in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan is destabilizing the region and fomenting hatred of the United States. The Bush administration's reckless adventurism in the Middle East and blind support for Israel aggression has cone irreparable damage to the image of the United states across the region and around the world.
The U.S. veto of the UN security Council resolution calling for Israel to stop attacking the Gaza Strip and the blocking it has provided for Israel at the UN to continue its aggression against Lebanon reveal the degree of Zionist control over the Bush administration and its policies.
During the past three months, as Israel began its military campaigns against Gaza and Lebanon, the Zionist control of the Bush White House became clear to all as John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did everything in their power to protect and defend Israel's illegal aggression against the civilian populations of Palestine and Lebanon.
Miss Rice's comments reveal that she is supporting the long-term Zionist agenda to reshape the Middle East. The Zionist agenda calls for the Balkanization, or breaking up, of Lebanon and other countries of the Middle East to destabilize the region and increase the power and size of Israel. The plan to Balkanize the region calls for the destruction of the existing nations of the Middle East and replacing them with ethnic statelets, as was done to the former Yugoslavia.
During the State Department press briefing on July 21, 2006, Miss Rice defended her position that she was not calling for an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon.
"I have no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante." Rice said. I think it would be a mistake. What we're seeing here is the growing - the birth pangs of a new Middle east and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East - not going back to the old one."
Israel has long coveted the land and water of south Lebanon, Israel has also planned for some time to occupy south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Its first invasion of Lebanon, which began in 1978, was meant to accomplish the annexation of south Lebanon to Israel. It was only due to the steadfast resistance of Hezbollah that Israel was forced to withdraw from most of Lebanon after 20 years of occupation. Israel, however, annexed part of south Lebanon, an erea known as Shebaa Farms, which has remained a point of contention between Lebanon and Israel.
Events such as the murder of Fafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister who had done so much to rebuild Lebanon, and the U.S. pressure put on Syria to withdraw from Lebanon.
Syria was blamed for killing Hariri and forced to withdraw from Lebanon, although no proof was found of Syrian involvement in the crime. The actual evidence seen at the crater in the street strongly suggests that Hariri's car was targeted and struck with an American-made Israeli precision guided missile with a delayed fuse.
In the wake of Hariri's murder, however, Syria was blamed , and France and the United States put intense pressure on Damascus to pull its troops out of Lebanon. This created a power vacuum and left the door open for the latest Israeli aggression, which has destroyed the nation's infrastructure and turned one-fourth of the Lebanese population into refugees.
Israel had discovered, however, that Hezbollah is capable of
inflicting pain on Israeli forces by knocking out its tanks and
ships and targeting its soldiers.
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Neo-conservative leaders, including former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, are predicting dire consequences, claiming that another world war has commenced. In particular, Gingrich argues that the war against global terrorism constitutes a third world war that is engulfing the world. Are they correct?
Not yet, according to several foreign affairs specialists. But there are a number of areas of the world experts say could drag the United States into a true world war. As it stands now, France, Russia and China have vehemently opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And none of them has taken military action in defense of the Middle East country.
Some foreign affairs experts point to a number of scenarios, prompted by U.S. meddling, that could spark a third world war.
A flash point for such a global conflict could occur if demands for reforms pit Washington against Moscow in Belarus, which was once part of the Soviet Union. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has asked the Russians to help stop recent violent demonstrations by students seeking reforms. The United States has been accused of sponsoring some of the protests.
The scenario could play that a heavy Russian response could prompt Poland, now a NATO member, to step up an effort to protect critics of the Belarus-Russian forces, which could force a confrontation between NATO and the Russians.
It might sound unlikely but World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 by young Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Two months later the world was at war and four years later more than 10 million people were dead.
There is yet another possible scenario.
North Korea's demented leader, Kim Jong II, could launch another long-range missile over Japan. But instead of falling harmlessly into the sea after passing over Japan, the missile could malfunction and land in downtown Tokyo.
The accidental bombing would likely compel the U.S. Navy to take out North Korea's missile launching facilities. Kim would then respond by opening fire on the South Korean capital of Seoul. South Korean and American ground forces would clash with North Korean troops, and, like in the Korean War of 1950-53, the North Koreans might be pushed north to the Yalu River, where the nuclear-armed Chinese would be waiting.
The current situation in Lebanon presents another powder keg.
Hezbollah is being supplied with weapons and equipment by Iran, Syria and, possibly, China. If Israel took aggressive steps to halt the shipment en route and attacked Iran's nuclear facilities at the same time, there could be far more trouble than what is going on today.
Iran would react by sending its Revolutionary Guards into Iraq, where they would clash with U.S. forces. Outraged, moderate Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan would most likely be forced to side with their fellow Muslims and the region would explode into a larger war, enveloping the 150,000 U.S. troops currently caught in a quagmire in Iraq. Gas would cost $10 per gallon.
Finally, a fourth scenario would likely involve al Qaedia. For years, the purported global terror group has tried to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. If it succeeded, it could drive Pakistan into chaos. India would certainly take advantage of the chaos to go after the Kashmir-based guerrilla fighters responsible for the recent railway bombings in Mumbai. Pakistan, now in total chaos, would strike India with its nuclear weapons. India would then counterstrike with its own nukes.
There are other scenarios, including a decision by china to take advantage of the United States being tied down in Iraq and invading Taiwan.
World War III? It's certainly possible.
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Last summer, I was surprised to learn that two local people who had befriended us were actually FBI informants who had been tasked to monitor my family. For this reason we feel vulnerable in our home and are reluctant to spend time here.
This summer, however, we were compelled to return to our modest suburban tract house in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (outside of Chicago) that has been the family home since 1957 because our travel-weary children missed their beloved home so badly.
Since returning in July, I have noticed an unusual amount of police activity around my house, which lies on a quiet side street where one normally sees a police cruiser once or twice a week.
On Aug. 14, as I rode my bike to the store, I noticed a most unusual vehicle approaching my house. It was an unmarked car with three well-armed men wearing body armor. It looked like the kind of car that one might expect to see in occupied Baghdad.
The next evening, I happened to step outside at the precise moment the same car slowly passed in front of my house where the neighborhood kids were playing.
Surprised by this coincidence, I yelled from my porch, "Hello, FBI," and waved.
The man sitting in the front passenger seat waved back. Alarmed, I immediately alerted my wife and kids. My wife suggested I ask the non-uniformed agents about what they are doing in our neighborhood. I had had a busy work day having made several phone calls to the Israeli Embassy, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the office of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Most of my calls were related to ongoing 9-11 research.
One of the more interesting calls was to a Mr. Shalom Yoran, a New York-based former officer in the Israeli air force who happens to be the former president of Bedek, the parent company of Israel Aircraft Industries. Because he managed a private aircraft leasing company that ceased to operate shortly after 9-11, I am interested in his opinion about what happened on that day.
As I rode my bike to the store, I became increasingly troubled about the dark car with armed agents I had seen passing in front of my house. Because my neighborhood does not have any crime or gang problems, I found it very odd that the undercover quasi-military squad should be patrolling around my house day after day.
Concerned about the safety of my family, I called 911 to report that a suspicious car with armed men, who I thought to be federal agents, was loitering in my neighborhood for no apparent reason. I was told that a police officer would meet me at my house in 20 minutes.
Minutes after I reached my home, I was surprised to see the very same suspicious car stop in front of my house and three armed and armor-clad men standing on my driveway.
With my wife and 8-year old daughter beside me, I went into my yard and asked the men who they were and why they were loitering around my house.
"Why are you driving around with this gear and unmarked car menacing our neighborhood," I asked? "Who are you?"
The non-uniformed agents were unwilling to identify themselves or to address my concerns and maintained a hostile and confrontational attitude throughout.
Seeking the support of my brother, I turned to my house when the three men tackled me and used a Taser gun to shock me into submission.
After violently subduing me, one officer knelt on my head and another on my arm, as I was handcuffed.
Within two minutes, at least a half-dozen police cars, two fire trucks, and 15 police officers, including a senior officer, had arrived at the Bollyn residence.
While I was being held down, my wife went to get a camera. An officer told her that she would be arrested if she dared to take any photos. However, according to a lawyer, it is illegal to prevent someone from photographing a police assault.
Having witnessed her father being violently arrested, my 8-year-old daughter was very distraught and crying. The police ordered my wife to take her away.
As the Bollyn children have seen much of the world and witnessed major political events in their lives, my wife simply consoled our daughter and allowed her to watch the abuse of police power, saying, "This is our new America."
"Go back where you came from," a police officer, in a most insulting manner, told my wife, a Swedish citizen.
While I have received several death threats during my career with AFP and the court-killed Spotlight, this is the first time I have actually been beaten and abused by authorities.
Sitting in the unmarked car, Tasered and handcuffed, I was enraged as the officer named Fitzgerald indulged in offending me and my late mother. I was unable to contain my anger hearing him insult my late mother, one of the founding pioneers of the village.
Fitzgerald then repeatedly told me that I was going to be beaten.
"This guy is going to beat the [expletive] out of you," he said when a senior officer approached the car. When I repeated his words and asked him what he said, Fitzgerald would simply lie, saying, "I didn't say that."
This verbal abuse continued during the drive to the station. When I would lean forward, the officer would quickly slam on the brakes so my head hit the plexiglass separation window. After doing this several times, I held myself back on the seat and didn't say another word.
At the station, a host of 10-12 rubber-gloved cops awaited me in the police garage. As Fitzgerald drove in to the garage, he told the gang: "He says cops are a bunch of [expletive]. You take care of him now."
When I was pulled from the car, I told the police I am a journalist and that I would write about the arrest.
The verbal abuse then came from all sides. The son of village pioneers, I was most offended by those who said I should get out of town, an insult I found to be particularly painful.
In the station, my shirt was quickly ripped off and I was left in my shorts and an undershirt. Asked why I was being detained, an officer said I had resisted arrest and threatened the police with clenched fiststwo complete fabrications.
I was subsequently charged with resisting arrest and aggravated assault, which resulted in six hours of abuse at the hands of the local police.
I was thrown into a cell without water. When I asked the undercover police unit why they had been prowling around my house, they said, "We are watching you."
Thirsty, I asked for some water and was told, "Drink from the toilet."
"Why am I being treated this way?" I wondered.
Later, an officer named Schultz came to tell me that because
I had been shocked with a Taser gun, paramedics had been called
to check me. However, no paramedics came to check me or to look
at my injured elbow.
At midnight, an officer told me that I had to pay $100 to get
out. "What am I being charged with?" I protested. "I
called 911 and the police beat me up in my front yard for no reason."
My brother paid my bail and shortly after midnight I was pushed
out onto
the dark streets for the long walk home.
I have good reason to believe that this operation was neither accidental nor an initiative of the local police. Whether this is how the Hoffman Estates police treat all arrests or if I received special treatment as part of an ADL-FBI operation remains an open question.
Shortly after the arrest, AFP managing editor Christopher J. Petherick spoke with Lt. Richard Russo, acting press spokesman for the Hoffman Estates Police Department, on Aug. 16.
Russo faxed American Free Press a copy of the "Media Information Release Form," which provided details about my arrest.
Russo told Petherick the undercover officers were engaged in something called "gang suppression" in my neighborhood.
Petherick asked Russo how a resident's 911 call could have escalated to the point that police officers threw that unarmed man to the ground and shot him with a Taser.
Russo told Petherick that the arresting officer had "physically" stopped me and Tasered me because I had made statements indicating that I was "going to go inside the house and get a weapon." However, this charge is completely false and was most likely fabricated after the fact in an obvious attempt to justify the armed agents' use of extreme force.
When AFP received the press release from the police, the allegation that I was going into my house to get a weapon had been dropped and replaced with phrasing that the officers felt I "may be trying to get a weapon."
"Keep in mind that Christopher, who has no criminal record, was the person who called the police in the first place," Petherick noted.
"There are really two key scenarios at play here," Petherick said. "At a minimum, this was a brutal demonstration of the violent militarization of U.S. law enforcement. At its worst, this could be a deliberate attempt to intimidate and harass an American reporter, who has been writing about some of the most controversial issues in the world today."
The following day, Chief Clint Herdegen contacted me, but would only say that he was not prepared to answer any questions. My day in court is scheduled for Sept. 13.
Readers who would like to contribute to a legal fund for Christopher Bollyn, can make a tax-deductible donation to The Christopher Bollyn Legal Fund, care of The Foundation to Defend the First Amendment, 645 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Suite 100, Washington, D.C. 20003. Please make your check or money order out to "FDFA."
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute
- as long as full credit is given to American Free Press - 645
Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
|Top|
For more than a month, the mainstream media has covered up a letter
from Saddam Hussein to the American people in which he destroys
the myth of weapons of mass destruction and urges the United States
to end its wars of aggression prompted by the thirst for oil.
Officials of your government are still lying to you and not giving
you true explanations of the reasons that led them to embark on
their aggression against Iraq, Saddam wrote to the American people
on July 7 from his cell in Solitary confinement, apparently in
Iraq.
Of the WMD claims, Saddam wrote: Inspection teams carried out
searches even of some private houses as well as government departments,
presidential palaces and government documents. Those teams knew
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction because most of the leading
members in those teams were Americans and British and, in addition,
they had spies and volunteers of other nationalities.
U.S. government officials exploited the 9-11 attacks and stacked
the deck to bring up the goal they had already decided upon earlier
which was to invade Iraq, Saddam said.
The officials in your country thought this was their chance to
impose their will on the world by means of their control of Middle
East oil and its production and marketing in new ways for new
goals, Saddam wrote.
WORLD
POLICEMAN
President Bush[s oft-stated goal of exporting democracy prompted
this reaction from Saddam: Who authorized America to make the
countries of the world tailor their policies to Americas measurements,
and if they dont oblige, then war should be waged against them?
How can one understand Americas call for democracy if it does
not permit a difference of opinion even in issues of a regional
character, to say nothing of international ones? Who appointed
the American government to be the world policeman, to form the
world in the mold it likes, giving national orders to the countries
of the world?
U.S. officials had been laying the groundwork for years to facilitate
aggression against Iraq, he said. No one asked American officials
why no Iraqi took part in the events of 11 September, he said.
He asked an American official about two weeks after his arrest
on what the United States based its false charges of WMDs, Saddam
wrote. He said, because you, Saddam Hussein, did not send a letter
of condolence to President Bush after the 9-11 attacks. I smiled,
Saddam added.
Are the great states so deluded as to imagine that whoever does
not send a letter of condolence deserves that war should be waged
against him, his country, and his people? Saddam asked. Saddam
did agree on a telegram of condolence from the government of Iraq.
A U.S. general told him that he would be allowed to live if he
agreed to read in his own voice and sign a stupid statement calling
on the people of Iraq and the courageous resistance to lay down
arms, Saddam wrote. They said if I refused, I would be shot just
like Mussolini. I disdainfully refused.
WORLD EMPIRE
American officials envision a world empire but have forgotten
the lessons of Vietnam where the heroic Vietnamese expelled them
by force, Saddam wrote.
People of America, your president lied to you, and deceived you,
and tricked you into using the media that portrayed Iraq to you
as incorrigible and Saddam Hussein as a hateful dictator, Saddam
wrote. If Saddam were a dictator, why did he establish a parliament
with elections for the first time in 1980 during wartime, where
there had been no parliament in Iraq since 1958? Saddam asked.
If a dictator, how could I visit schools, universities, towns
and villages and spend the night with the people wherever the
sun went down.
Most Americans had not chance to learn the truth because the Zionists
in the lobby who advocated the war together with some of the center
of power were deceiving you and tricking you, hiding from your
eyes the real truth, Saddam wrote. Save your country esteemed
ladies and gentlemen, and leave Iraq.
Saddams complete letter can be found on AFPs web site at www.americanfreepress.net.
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President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are
puppets of the Anglo-American military-industrial elite, but this
doesnt exonerate them from the electric chair, said author and
professor Michel Chossudovsky at the recent Perdana global Peace
conference conducted in Kuala Lumpur by former Malaysian Prime
Minster Mahathir Mohamad.
Their war crimes are known but are being presented as an error
by the mass media in the United States, said Chossudovsky.
America, Britain, Israel and NATO, as well, are acting as a threat
to the future of humanity in the course of the ongoing offensive
against Iran, he said. Chossudovsky referred to the neo-conservative
Project for a New American Centurys grand design as a chart for
global military conquest.
The media itself has become criminal by its role in promoting
the warfare system, particularly since, Chossudovsky said, The
future of humanity is at stake, but the media is ignoring the
dangers. Without the lies and distortions of the media, the campaign
for war could not be sustained .
The professor said that people need to rally together: We can
and must confront the consensus and undo the media lies and bring
the war criminals to justice. We require a massive campaign to
change the course of history. We need to dismantle media disinformation
and propaganda.
There is, he said, a collective responsibility of the institutions
- including the U.S. congress which, Chossudovsky asserted, is
complicit in the war system.
In addition, the targets of the war on terror - Osama bin Laden
and Abu Musab al-Zarqawai - are no less than creations of the
CIA who have played a vital role in the staging of the war on
terror.
Chossudovsky pointed out that former President Harry Truman recorded
in his own diary that the nuclear bombs intended to be used on
Japan were aimed at military targets only. Even after the attack
on Hiroshima, he said, Truman asserted in his diary that Hiroshima
was a military base for the Japanese, which it was not. Chossudovsky
added that, today, the levels of media distortion and sophistication
are much greater - so much so that people have no concept of the
fact that we are today at what he called the crossroads of the
most serious crisis in our history.
The theme has been promulgated, Chossudovsky noted, that nuclear
bombs are safe for civilians and can be used in conventional warfare.
There are no safeguards anymore against the use of nuclear weapons
and there is talk of theater war usage of nuclear weapons, suggesting
that nuclear weapons and their fallout can somehow be limited.
But the use of nuclear weapons, he said, makes it nuclear warfare,
pure and simple.
The use of one nuclear bomb against Iran will be a catastrophe,
the use of one nuclear bomb against an Iranian nuclear facility
will make it an even greater catastrophe considering the release
of additional nuclear materiel under such circumstances.
Even the so-called bunker buster nuclear weapons that are being
considered for use against Iran are six times more explosive that
the Hiroshima bomb. The war-planners imply that the bunker busters
are safe for use near civilians. Preparations - concrete military
plans - have been under way for some time for the use of nuclear
bombs and their so-called integration into conventional warfare.
Military manuals even now are in line with the Nuclear Weapons
Deployment Authorization which gives military commanders on the
ground the authority to determine whether nuclear weapons should
be used, he said.
If the Media is lying we must confront the media and the flow
of disinformation that permeates the print and broadcast media,
said Chossudovsky.
Iran is not the treat to global security. It is the United States
which is a threat. This is a fundamental conclusion, he added.
He said that the military and intelligence community in the United
states must confront what he called the criminal nature of the
U.S. administration and those Western nations that remain silent
in the face of an impending threat of a nuclear war.
We must reverse the course of history. Otherwise a nuclear holocaust
is in the offing.
|Top|
The stature of Hezbollah, the indigenous Shiite resistance movement
of Lebanon, has grown immensely as a result of its successful
defense of south Lebanon. The citizen-based resistance movement
has changed the balance of power in the region by inflicting heavy
casualties on the invading Israeli forces.
The Shiite grass-roots resistance movement demonstrated its significant
military capabilities by knocking out scores of Israeli tanks,
blasting warships off the coast of Lebanon, downing a helicopter
and launching missiles deep into Israeli-held territory.
During the last week of fighting in Lebanon, the United States
was seen as frantically trying to get a cease-fire arrangement
passed by the UN Security Council. The position of the United
States suddenly changed from being one of protecting Israels illegal
aggression to urgently seeking a compromise deal that would bring
a face-saving cease-fire for Israel.
Osama Siblani, the Lebanese-born publisher of the Arab
American News of Dearborn, Mich., explained the real reason
the U.S. position had changed. On Aug. 11, in a radio interview
with Agence France Presse, Siblani said Hezbollah had damaged
some 78 Israeli Merkava tanks and that scores of other Israeli
military vehicles had been either destroyed or damaged.
Three Israeli navy vessels were also it, Siblani said, Including
one sunk during the final days. An Israeli helicipter was also
brought down by a Hezbollah missile in the last week of Israels
illegal invasion.
Joel Greenberg of The Chicago
Tribune, interviewed wounded Israeli soldiers at Rambam
Hospital in Haifa, Providing insight into the strong Hezbollah
resistance Israeli soldiers encountered.
They know the terrain very well, they have up-to-date equipment,
including night-vision gear, and they are true believers in what
they are doing, Staff Sgt. Gur Nedzvetsky, a wounded Israeli paratrooper
told Greenberg. The most important thing is to be prepared emotionally
for battle and in that they are very strong.
Hezbollahs most effective weapon is an array of Russian made anti-tank
missiles, which proved effective in penetrating the armor of Israels
Merkava tanks and smashing through houses in which Israeli troops
took up positions, Greenberg wrote.
Greenberg said that he did not know the full extent of Israeli
losses.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not respond to inquiries
about the number of Israeli casualties.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded in an ill-advised
invasion that is increasingly being viewed as a military blunder.
Greenberg said it is unclear whether ordinary Israelis were prepared
for how high the price would be.
Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of the research division
in Israeli military intelligence, said Hezbollah is a formidable
foe. This is not a militia, he said. This is a well-equipped infantry
division using guerrilla tactics.
Hezbollah is everywhere, but they are very hard to find, Capt.
Hanoch Daub told Greg Myre of The
New York Times. They work in small units of two or
three men. They wear civilian clothes. You dont see them. You
just see their fire.
Daub and his crew were wounded when Hezbollah blasted the tank
he was riding in at the town of Bint Jbail.
Hexbollahs successful resistance has destroyed the twin myths
of Israeli invulnerability and Arab impotence, Israeli intellectual
Israel Shamir wrote. Seldom is a generation able to witness such
a shining example of valor... for three long weeks a handful of
Hezbollah warriors - two thousand by the most optimistic count
- fought to a standstill 10, 20, 30 times more numerous Israeli
troops.
Hezbollahs deeds deserve to be immortalized by poets. Shamir wrote.
If they survive, they win.
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