January 7, 2002
January 21, 2002
January 28, 2002
As a nation, Afghanistan is poor. But there's a world of treasure
beneath the
surface of the landscape.
Afghanistan has an extraordinary abundance of rare and strategic minerals—now all within easy reach of the global planners who installed a puppet government that they both control and protect.
Pipelines transporting the immense gas and oil reserves of Central Asia and the Caspian basin to global markets will undoubtedly play an important role in Afghanistan's future, but the country's abundance of strategic minerals has the potential to greatly enrich the Afghans—if the wealth of the nation is not plundered.
Afghanistan has rich and extensive mineral resources including gold, silver, uranium, beryllium, copper, chrome, lead, zinc, manganese, iron and nickel. Lapis lazuli, amethyst, beryl, ruby, emerald, sapphire, alabaster, tourmaline, jade, and quartz are just some of the precious and semiprecious gemstones that have been mined in the country for centuries.
California-based geologist Bonita Chamberlin, who spent 25 years exploring the country, is convinced that Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits including oil and natural gas and gemstones could bring the nation great wealth.
Chamberlin co-authored with Gary Bowersox, Gem stones of Afghanistan, (1995) regarded as the original and most complete study of Afghanistan's gems and minerals.
Chamberlin told American Free Press that she had identified 91 minerals, metals and gems at 1,407 documented potential mining sites in Afghanistan. These sites also contain solid combustible minerals, metallic and non-metallic minerals, rare metals, radioactive elements, precious metals and gemstones, salt and industrial minerals.
Beryllium and uranium are among the minerals in Afghanistan of the greatest strategic value, Chamberlin told AFP.
Chamberlin began surveying Afghanistan in the mid-1970s while working with companies cultivating cotton and grapes. The scope of her work changed during the Soviet invasion when heavy bombing uncovered significant deposits of rubies, sapphires, emeralds and other gemstones.
Afghanistan has plentiful mineral wealth due to the collision of the Indian subcontinent with the Asian continent, which trapped and combined chemicals from ancient seas with those from the land under tremendous geologic pressures. This collision "formed minerals that exist in very few places in the world," Chamberlin said.
Afghans are only lacking the infrastructure to exploit their nation's mineral wealth, Chamberlin said. "The people just need the expertise and the direction."
When the required infrastructure is developed, Afghans "could rule the world," Chamberlin told the Culver City Rock and Mineral Club in California.
BERYLLIUM
Beryllium is a strategic and essential material used in the aerospace, energy, defense, nuclear, automotive, medical and electronics industries.
A unique metal with properties unmatched by any other metal, beryllium is both extremely light and strong. It is one-third lighter than aluminum but six times stiffer than steel. It also has one of the highest melting points of the light metals.
Beryllium is used in the nuclear industry in fusion reactors and in the construction of nuclear devices for military applications. Beryllium alloys are essential structural materials for the production of high-speed aircraft, including the space shuttle and the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), missiles, surveillance and communication satellites. It is also used in Apache helicopters, tanks, and aircraft landing gear components.
Military electronic targeting and infrared countermeasure systems use high beryllium content components, as do advanced missile and radar navigation systems.
Beryllium alloys are used in battery contacts and electronic connectors in cell phones. Beryllium-copper provides the high reliability and miniaturization needed in these applications. FM radio, high-definition and cable television and underwater fiber optic cable systems all depend on beryllium.
Computer and laser technologies require beryllium. It is used in computers where lightness and stiffness are required. As computers get smaller, lighter and faster, the beryllium-copper alloy is often the only material that meets the demands.
RUBIES & SAPPHIRES
Afghanistan possesses rich gem deposits, many of which are used in lasers and advanced weapons technologies. Rubies have been used in lasers since laser technology was first developed.
Historical accounts indicate that the ruby mines of Badakhshan in Afghanistan were the source of many of the finest and largest rubies in gem collections around the world, such as those in the crown jewels of Iran, the collection in Istanbul's Topkapi, Russia's Kremlin and England's Tower of London.
Sapphire is used in Lockheed Martin's latest laser targeting system, "Sniper," which is used on U.S. fighters. The Sniper has a sapphire window and will be used on the new Lockheed Martin JSF.
Sniper's window is made of sapphire because it is extraordinarily durable and transmits a wide range of wavelengths. Tests have shown that the window was unharmed after being struck by a piece of granite traveling at 197 miles per hour and a metal nut at 150 miles per hour. The rock shattered and the nut was bent but Sniper's sapphire window suffered no damage.
OIL & GAS
Afghanistan has significant oil and gas deposits of its own. "Afghanistan has one of the largest, if not the largest, reserve of natural gas, which was already being tapped by the Soviets prior to their invasion," Chamberlin said.At its peak in the late 1970s, Afghanistan supplied 70 percent to 90 percent of its natural gas output to the Soviet Union's natural gas grid via a link through Uzbekistan.
Although the Soviets estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves to be 5 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and its oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels in the 1970s, current estimates range much higher.Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (mcf/d) in the mid-1970s but output fell to about 220 mcf/d due to declining reserves from producing fields. In 1980 the Jorquduq field was brought online and was expected to boost the nation's natural gas output to 385 mcf/d by the early 1980s.
Oil exploration and development work as well as plans to build a 10,000 barrels per day refinery were halted after the 1979 Soviet invasion.Sabotage of infrastructure by the anti-Soviet muja hideen fighters limited the country's total production to 290 mcf/d, an output level that held fairly steady until the Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
In February 1998, the Taliban announced plans to re vive the Afghan National Oil Company, which was abolished by the Soviet Union after it invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
U.S. OIL STRATEGY
Afghanistan occupies a central position in the U.S. strategy for the economic control of the oil and gas resources in the entire Middle East, according to experts .
Current estimates indicate that, in addition to huge gas deposits, the Caspian basin may hold as much as 200 billion barrels of oil—33 times the estimated holdings of Alaska's North Slope.
V.R. Raghavan, a strategic analyst and former general in the Indian army, believes that the prospect of a western military presence in a region extending from Turkey to Tajikistan could not have escaped the geo-political strategists who waged the military campaign in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and replace it with a government they could control and protect—with a multinational army.
In 1998, the California-based petroleum giant UNOCAL, which held 46.5 percent stakes in Central Asia Gas (CentGas), a consortium that planned an ambitious gas pipeline across Afghanistan, withdrew in frustration after several fruitless years.
The pipeline was to stretch 762 miles from Turkmenistan's Dauletabad fields to Multan in Pakistan at an estimated cost of $1.9 billion. An additional $600 million would have brought the pipeline to energy-hungry India.
Among the many advantages of the Afghanistan route, according to experts from the oil and gas industry, is that it would terminate in the Arabian Sea, close to key Asian markets.
Vice President Dick Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, a major
player in the oil industry, told oil industry executives in 1998,
"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge
as suddenly, to become as strategically significant, as the Caspian."
|Top|
Weapons obtained by purported terrorist Osama bin Laden on his visit to the United States may be in terrorists' arsenals today.
In the revelations about bin Laden's presence in America during the mid-1980s as a CIA asset, independent journalist J. Orlin Grabbe delves into the strange background of Michael Riconosciuto and the scientific genius's links to the U.S. intelligence community.
Ted L. Gunderson, a retired senior FBI special agent and regional correspondent for American Free Press, who was also associated with Riconosciuto in many of the endeavors, says that he was "flabbergasted" when the Grabbe article was given to him.
He said he was stunned by both the detail that Grabbe had dug up and the accuracy of the story.
Grabbe claims that Riconosciuto discussed with the Afghan representatives their obtaining Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) and that he was able to arrange for the Afghan freedom fighters obtaining modified Red Chinese missiles to use against Soviet helicopters and other aircraft.
Grabbe reports that he developed an a-neutronic bomb, which is the most powerful explosive ever developed next to an atomic device, which when tested in the Nevada desert "sank the ground level of . . . the site by 30 feet."
Gunderson, who was nearby when the device was tested, confirms the accuracy of Grabbe's report, adding, "not only did it sink the level of the test site but a couple of technicians were killed."
Gunderson explained that President Reagan "personally placed the device on the highest level of U.S. security."
Gunderson, as well as Riconosciuto and other associates, told American Free Press in the past that the technology for the bomb, as well as parts, were stolen from storage facilities located in the state of Washington. Riconosciuto has told others that the ability to make the device is in the hands of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Grabbe reported that Samuel Cohen, inventor of the a-neutron bomb, had indicated he had spoken to Riconosciuto. "He's an extraordinarily bright guy," said Cohen. "I also have a hunch, which I can't prove, that they both [Riconosciuto and an associate in the development of the a-neutronic bomb] indirectly work for the CIA."
As Grabbe accurately reports, "Riconosciuto is one of the original architects of a computer program known as the PROMIS backdoor.
GLOBAL PLOT
PROMIS was a people-tracking software system dispersed to intelligence organizations and government drug agencies worldwide. The global spread of PROMIS was part of a U.S. plot to spy on other spy agencies.
In fact, it was over PROMIS that Riconosciuto got in trouble with his CIA associates. For providing an affidavit in the now famous INSLAW case regarding the theft of PROMIS software and technology, Riconosciuto found himself in 1991 facing trumped-up drug charges for crossing the CIA and the Justice Department. He was found guilty, and silenced, for the most part, when he was sent to federal prison.
Riconosciuto is lucky to be alive. Others with inside INSLAW knowledge have died mysteriously. The whole INSLAW affair—described on page 18 of this issue of AFP—is a murky scandal indeed.
However, it appears that Riconosciuto has maintained many of his old contacts through the use of prison computer systems, an effort that has now been halted, after more of his knowledge about America's spy organizations became known.
Today, Riconosciuto, who is suffering from advanced cancer, is "in the hole" at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Medical Center at Springfield, Mo. and unable to communicate.
But Riconosciuto was not locked up before it was revealed that
three dozen MANPADS, Russian Strella and Igla surface-to-air-portable
missiles, had been imported into Quebec, Canada, from Colombia,
where they had arrived from Eastern Europe. The missiles are believed
to be in terrorist hands and are capable of taking down U.S. commercial
airliners.
|Top|
The budget President Bush submits to Congress in February will further concentrate power in Washington in the name of "homeland defense."
President Bush is preparing a budget proposal for fiscal 2003 that will exploit terrorism threats to concentrate still more power in Washington, according to well-placed White House and congressional sources.
It will more than double federal funds for local police, firemen and other "first responders" and a major increase for public health agencies and hospitals.
For decades, long before terrorism fears, Congress and administrations—regardless of Democratic or Republican control—have been spoon-feeding funds to localities to increase federal control over states without regard to constitutional restraints.
Now that it can be rationally argued that defending the nation against terrorist attacks is a federal responsibility, lawmakers who hate 10th Amendment restraints will gleefully seize power from the states. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) has publicly denounced 10th Amendment restraints. Others share his feelings but are not stupid enough to express them publicly.
Funding for regional "doomsday rehearsals," in which state and local officials would practice their response to an attack, is also sought. "Rehearsals" would be under federal supervision.
Billions more will be sought to buy expensive baggage inspection and security equipment for the commercial airline industry.
Congress has already approved $20 billion for homeland security, mostly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush's budget for the coming year would increase that by at least $15 billion—a 43 percent hike.
It will probably be a typical long and bruising budget battle, with Congress keeping the government operating after next Oct. 1—when fiscal year '03 kicks in—with "continuing resolutions" funding agencies at current levels until appropriation measures are passed.
Congress is likely to push for still more spending on homeland defense. Democrats will want to increase domestic spending. Republicans will fight to keep the budget "semi-balanced," in the words of one.
Congressional leaders were forced to delay action on several domestic proposals during the first session, including a prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries and health care reforms. Pressure will mount to spend more in those areas.
BIOTERRORISM
With fear of bioterrorism rising, the budget proposal calls for $1.2 billion to stockpile emergency medicines, including anthrax vaccines and enough smallpox vaccines for every American.
The money to be provided in the president's budget is just a "down payment" and it will be necessary to build on that in the future, said Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, former governor of Pennsylvania.
"This year is identifying some of the immediate needs, and then, beginning in 2004, building on those needs and moving forward," Ridge told a gathering of state legislators.
Congress is spending $908 million this year to help local police, firemen, ambulance drivers and health care officials to respond to emergencies. That figure would more than double to about $2 billion under the president's new budget.
The administration would disperse these additional funds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the form of a "menu" of block grants, which could be tailored to the specific needs of local authorities, Ridge said.
There will also be a substantial increase in spending by the Department of Health and Human Services on regional and local public health agencies and hospitals to expand research and the availability of hospital beds, Ridge said.
Administration officials expressed concern that recent trends of hospital consolidation and increasing outpatient treatment have left many public and private facilities without enough beds to deal with large numbers of victims in the event of another large-scale attack.
"You see some hospitals are closing, some are reducing
the number of floors, but at the same time we're saying to a region,
‘Well, be ready in the event of a catastrophic situation
to have beds available,'" Ridge said. "So we want to
help hospitals do that."
|Top|
The world's most hated man was once a welcome guest of the CIA in the United States of America.
Osama bin Laden, the most hunted man in the world and accused perpetrator f the heinous attacks of Sept.11, was once a CIA asset. The CIA brought him to the United States to seek help for Afghans fighting to oust Soviet troops from their country.
The CIA link was revealed by a shodowy independent newsman, J. Orlin Grabbe, and has been making ripples across the Internet since his recent appearance on the Rumor Mill News reading room forum web site.
The story has been confirmed by American Free Press.
Bin Laden, using the name Tim Osman, and an associate met with a retired former FBI top executive and a CIA explosives, armaments and computer electronics expert during the late spring of 1986, according to Grabbe. The purpose was to determine if the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan might help the rebels combat Soviet aircraft ravaging their country.
Did such a meeting take place?
"Yes," said retired Senior Special Agent Ted L. Gunderson, at the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, Calif., where Gunderson and the three others met to discuss the clandestine operation. Gunderson now serves as a regional correspondent for this newspaper.
Gunderson was not aware that bin Laden was likely one of the men at the meeting until the Grabbe story was brought to his attention. He explained to AFP in an exclusive interview that he was contacted by a "top figure" in the Reagan administration and asked to meet with the representatives of the Afghan freedom fighters to "see what we might do to help them."
"You must remember," Gunderson explained, "at the time, the Soviets invading Afghanistan were the ‘evil-doers' the communists, and I, being devoutly anti-communist all my life, was willing to do anything on behalf of our government to aid the Afghan people fighting them."
Gunderson equated the situation with the old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Attending the meeting in Addition to Gunderson and "Tim Osman" was Michael Riconosciuto, a CIA scientific asset and a man with contacts among the armaments business who, Gunderson figured, might be able to help the Afghan freedom fighters in procuring the needed anti-aircraft hardware.
While Riconosciuto accompanied gunderson to the meeting in Sherman Oaks, the mysterious Osman was in the company of a man identified as "Ralph Olberg," an American businessman who was leading the procurement of American weapons and technology on behalf of the Afghan rebels, Grabbe reports.
Olberg, according to Grabbe, worked through the Afghan desk at the State department and apparently, before that, through the office of Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.), until the one-time Democrat president candidate and vice president during the administration of Lyndon Johnson, was forced to leave office in the late 1970s suffering from terminal cancer.
Olberg, according to Grabbe, "looked after the Afghanis through a curious fron called MSH - Management Sciences for Health."
When Humphrey was unable to continue in office he was succeeded briefly by his wife, Muriel, who served until Republican David Durenberger was elected to fill the seat in November 1978.
While efforts to track Olberg today have met with little success, AFP has discussed Olberg with a former member of the staff of Durenberger, who is also no longer in office.
The former staffer, now retired and wanting to remain anonymous, said that he remembers Olberg as a man who was always talking about the plight of the Afghan people and who was frequently "in and out of the senator's Washington office." The source could be of no further help.
In any case, Gunderson told AFP that during the meeting in Sherman Oaks, most of the talking was between Riconosciuto and Olberg, while Osman said nothing and "sat silent in a corner of the room." The former FBI top agent said the meeting lasted for about an hour and a half.
The retired FBI chief, who left the bureau as a senior special
agent in charge of its Los Angeles office, a post equivalent to
deputy director, said he assumes that the relationship continued
between Riconosciuto and the Afghan representatives ant that he
was "certain in my own mind" that arrangements were
made to supply the freedom fighters with weapons.
|Top|
German experts say the "smoking gun" videotape of Osama bin Laden has been rigged and is of no value as evidence of guilt.
Independent Arabic translators say that the most important parts of the Pentagon's translation of the "Smoking gun" video of Osama bin Laden were translated incorrectly and that incriminating words have been put into his mouth.
Two independent translators and an expert on Arabic studies carefully analyzed the Pentagon's translation of the video, which President Bush called "a devastating declaration of guilt." The experts worked from the original Arabic soundtrack and found that the government's translation of the Arabic was not only inaccurate but even "manipulated."
The Arabic language experts were interviewed on the German state television show, Monitor, which broadcast the analysis of the "smoking gun" video on Dec. 20.
One of the Translators, Dr. Abdel El M. Husseini, said, "I have carefully examined the Pentagon's translation. This translation is very problematic, at the most important places which have been presented as proof of bin Laden's guilt, the Pentagon translation does not agree with the Arabic heard on the video.
The Pentagon translation has bin Laden saying, "We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy..." Alami said. "The words ‘in advance are not even heard on the tape. This translation is wrong. When we take the original Arabic from the tape there are no misunderstandings which allow us to read this into the original."
At another point, the government translation has bin Laden saying: "We had notification since the previous Thursday that the event would take place on that day is not heard in the original Arabic."
The Pentagon's translation also mistranslated the sentence "We ordered each of them to go to America" in the active voice while the original Arabic is in the passive voice: they were ordered to go." The translation using "we" is wrong, Alami says.
Alami said that the following sentence that has been translated by the Pentagon, "they didn't know anything about the operation," is not understandable on the tape.
Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Hamburg said, "The American translators who listened and transcribed the tapes have apparently written a lot of things into the text that they wanted to hear, which are actually not heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it.
"Regardless of whether bin Laden or his organization was involved in the attacks or not, this tape is of such bad quality, is some places it cannot be understood at all, and those parts which can be understood are torn out of context so that the tape cannot be used as evidence to prove anything," Rotter said.
Although the independent expert analysis has been widely reported
in Germany, it has not been reported in the American mainstream
media.
|Top|
A beneficial side effect of the horrors of Sept.11 is that legislation granting amnesty to aliens and other mischief has been shot down.
What a difference a day makes: prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush was prepared to grant amnesty to millions of criminal aliens, legislation with similar designs was pending in Congress, the border was a sieve and there was talk about "open borders" with Mexico.
Now, White House and congressional amnesty ambitions are dead. The border with Mexico - although far more security is needed - is more strongly protected than in decades with the seizure of more criminal trespassers and trucks lined up at entry points for careful scrutiny.
Legislation proposed by Rep. Luis Gutierrez to legalize immigrants who could prove they have been here since 1996 was pending (the current cutoff is 1972). By 2007, the entry date would be 2001. The bill had 45 sponsors. Immigrant advocates had planned to rally and lobby on Capitol Hill on Sept. 25. After Sept. 11, it was cancelled at the request of Gutierrez.
Another proposal would have extended an expired program that allowed some illegal aliens - mostly with spouses who were here legally - to pay a $1,000 fine and apply for permanent residency without having to leave the United States. That extension was dropped by the House.
U.S. officials have privately told Mexican officials that immigration laws are unlikely to change any time soon because of Americans' new concern over protecting the country from criminals and terrorists.
"There was a lot of hope, a lot of optimism in our community," Benjamin Prado of San Diego's La Raza Knights Coalition, told Associated Press. "Now the situation has changed dramatically."
Apologists use the euphemism "undocumented immigrants" to describe illegal aliens. More Americans are demanding documents showing and applicant is here legally as a condition for employment. Documents would also allow aliens to get jobs, driver's licenses and cash checks.
Rosa Guzman, 289, from Alamo, Tex., wants a job in a supermarket or Wal-Mart. She sees help wanted signs all the time but said it is pointless to apply. "The first thing they ask for is your Social Security card," she complained. At present, the "single mother" of four stays home and earns a bit of money selling tamales to neighbors. Such are the indicators of a return to rational standards.
Manual Ortega, 47, wants a certificate showing he has been trained in welding. He could obtain the certificate within a few hours of course work if he were legal, he told AP. Without papers, he can only work for cash, which restricts opportunity and income.
Carolyn Benitez, head of the La Familia senior center in Wichita,
Kan., said some immigrants who had hoped for amnesty have returned
to Mexico.
|Top|
The Communists Lost the cold War - But They're Winning the Culture War. Now It's Time to Expose Them and Fight Back!
The only way to describe what's happening to us is to understand the nihilistic movement named Cultural Communism.
The rise of political correctness has coincided with the fall of Western Cultural norms. Few recognize the connection between the two trends. The connection is called Cultural Communism. What we here in the United States and in Christian Europe are actually witnessing is the planned destruction of Western civilization. It is no accident.
When the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia, their attack was economic and political. Only after they had seized power did they turn to destroying the Christian-based culture of the West.
With the political correctness movement we see the reverse - an attack on the Christian culture so that the communists can take over. And cultural bolshevism is winning while Christian leaders wring their hands.
In a recent speech to a meeting of the World Council of Churches, Anglican Archbishop Dr. George Carey of Canterbury said: ‘For much of this century, the Western church, especially in Europe, has accepted decline as the inevitable result of secularism."
True; but he failed to identify the driving force behind the slide. Nature abhors a vacuum. When one culture dies, it is replaced by another until nothing is left of the former. And when Western Christian culture is destroyed, it will be replaced by chaos, anarchy and violence as a norm. All this without any casualties on the side of the conspirators.
Cultural bolshevism encompasses all of the modernist changes that have invaded America including - but not limited to - multiculturalism, feminism, racial and gender quotas, school busing based on race and so forth.
How far we have sunk into the morass of this cultural bolshevism in less than 50 years is easily identifiable - and frightening.
As essayist William S. Lind says: "If a man form America of the 1950s were introduced into America in the 1990s, he would hardly recognize it as the same country. He would be in immediate danger of getting mugged, car-jacked or worse, because he would not have learned to live in constant fear.
Again, this is not by accident. Every step in the decline of Western culture has been planned for years. It started in Germany in the early years of this century. Germany was the original target of the bolsheviks. When Hitler took over, they came here.
What started as an ideological plan was institutionalized at the Frankfurt School. Goals were wet, designs implemented and the move - seen by the plotters as inevitable once it got started - toward cultural communism began.
One of the main targets of cultural bolshevism is Christianity. Some leader, such as the archbishop of Canterbury quoted above, witness the decline as a natural force. They unwittingly help the bolsheviks. Others see the planned destruction without specifically identifying the enemy of suggesting practical ways of resisting.
For instance, in a letter to The Washington Post (Dec.l3m 1998), Rev. Stanley W. De Boe, director of the Center for Jewish and Christian Values in Washington, quotes Jack Shaheen, CBS News' Middle East consultant, "Almost all Hollywood stories about Arabs are about the bad ones.
Then he makes the salient point: "Just as troubling is the problem of religious stereotyping in films. Substitute the word ‘Christian' in the sentence above, and it's just as valid."
Right. Hollywood, the self-proclaimed setter of cultural standards and norms, sees Christianity as the enemy. Boe's further comments are apropos:
Post reporter Sharon Waxman missed an opportunity to address the issue n her Nov. 7 front page article about protests over the movie The Siege, when she asked readers to imagine Hollywood producing a movie with "...a nefarious rabbi..." Such movies "would certainly spark an outcry," she conceded, but "would Hollywood choose to portray them in the first place?"
Of course not. He says, correctly:
Most characters with strong religious beliefs tend to be lampooned, demonized or exposed as hypocrites. Heroes on the other hand, often have no religious convictions. The message, whether intentional or not [emphasis ours], is that traditional religious beliefs should be considered dangerous.
And there is a key part of the problem - the inability of leaders to admit that these incessant attacks on our culture are a part of a plan - a conspiracy.
MEA CULPA
The Frankfurt School, mentioned above, moved to the United States in the 1930s when the National Socialists threw them out. It moved back to Germany after World War II to help subjugate the defeated nation culturally. Its success in convincing Germans that their very culture is evil and must be replaced while they sit in sackcloth and ashes, endlessly crying "mea culpa," is evidenced most clearly in the "anti-hate" laws of that benighted country.
German culture has been seriously damaged, even as the younger generation questions the doctrine of "eternal guilt." Will American culture be next?
Lind says:
Cultural bolshevism's political correctness looms over American society like a colossus. It has taken over both political parties...and is enforced by many laws and government regulations. It almost totally controls the most powerful element in our culture, the entertainment industry. It dominates both public and higher education...It has even captured the higher clergy in many Christian churches. Anyone in the Establishment who departs from its dictates swiftly ceases to be a member of the Establishment.
The hour grows late. We must identify the enemy and fight him,
even when that means punishment by the powers-that-be. We must
call this attack what it is - a deliberate effort to destroy all
that made us the most powerful country in the world in order to
turn us into the field workers of the coming Global Plantation.
|Top|
Sickening changes in society are to blame for teenage murder rampages, not gun laws.
A moral decline in America has caused a rash of school shootings, not a lack of gun laws, according to experts. Today's teachers are unprepared to teach character in schools where God has been banished, according to a study by the Character in Education Project, based in Washington.
"Children don't naturally kill, it's a learned behavior," said Col. Dave Grossman, head of the Killogy Research Group in Jonesboro, Ark.
"Children learn to kill from violence in the home and , most pervasively, from violence as entertainment in television, movie and interactive video games," said Grossman, whose group specializes in these matters.
Their views, along with those of educators, clergymen and others over a period of several days since the latest massacre in Colorado, point to America's moral decay over the last four decades. What follows is their consensus.
Then: In the 1950s children were rarely born out of wedlock. There were a few "loose" girls in schools, but most were proud of their virginity. Boys knew if they "got a girl in trouble," they faced marriage or a heavy financial obligation for at least 18 years.
Now: Children are having children, 70 percent of black babies and 25 percent of white babies are illegitimate. In many cases, the father cannot be identified without expensive genetic testing because there as so many candidates to choose from.
Then: When 95 percent of the children had birth certificates and fathers, they were supervised. Homework was checked, chores were done, parents and teachers discussed children's school progress.
Now: Many child mothers don't even know or care if the kid is in school. The children's children have no supervision or home training. They wander the streets and malls.
Then: Families sat down to at least the evening meal together, where events of the day were discussed. If a child was troubled, caring parents could discern it and help.
Now: Even in the middle and upper class families, many rarely share a meal together. Both parents work out of economic necessity in some families and sheer greed in others.
Then: Teenagers understood reality. Some families had early, small-screen black-and-white television sets, but their lives were not programmed around programs. Interactive video games had mot arrived. The film industry, for the most part, provided wholesome entertainment.
Now: Bored teenagers develop a blur between reality and fantasy. With so much violence in entertainment, with the same star dying in many episodes, some cannot cope with the reality that, when you kill someone, they are dead.
(A clergyman recalled that Florida case of a teenage boy who killed his mother some years ago. His lawyer argued that, because he spent hours every day staring at the idiot box, the boy thought his mother would come back for the dead - just like the slain cop who reappears in the next episode).
Then: The children of the Great Depression understood hardship. One-quarter of all families had no income and there was no federal "safety net." Yet violent crime was rare. Why? Because the poorest of families were in church on Sundays and parents reinforced moral instruction at home. People helped each other, sometimes sharing soup and milk.
Now: Even in affluent families, most do not attend church. Parents and children communicate very little. Many of the children's friends and their parents are strangers to their own families. Parents are unaware of the evil influences over their children.
"We are reaching the stage of desensitization at which the inflicting of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment," said Grossman, a former psychology professor at West Point.
"We are leaning to kill and we are learning to like it," Grossman said.
The subject of gun laws never came up.
|Top|
Congress Chastised for Ignoring Watchdog Responsibilities
A panel of experts denounced the Federal Reserve Board for secrecy and Congress for failing to hold it accountable, but their views were ignored by the myopic mainstream media.
Experts chastised the Federal Reserve Board for opera ting in secret, "scandalous" misuse of funds and Congress for abandoning its watchdog responsibilities for a sweetheart role.
But the forum by the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, held Jan. 8 at the National Press Club in Washington, was ignored by the mainstream media. The center is one of Ralph Nader's projects.
Several speakers denounced the Fed for secret meetings with transcripts of the minutes shredded and Congress for holding only sweetheart oversight hearings.
"Fed officials may have skirted or violated the law when they made loans to foreign countries without congressional authorization," said Robert Auerbach, a professor at the University of Texas and former economist with the House Banking Committee.
"Fed officials including Chairman [Alan] Greenspan planned and provided misleading testimony to Congress about the records of their meetings," Auerbach said. The late Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-Tex.) said in 1993 that Fed officials "planned to deceive and mislead Congress."
"Greenspan's career has been shielded from close scrutiny by an adoring cadre of financial journalists and a Congress that treats [him] more as a deity than a public official," Nader said.
"Members of the Senate and House Banking Committees compete with each other in praising" the Fed and most of their questions are "softballs," Nader said. "Only a handful . . . led often by Bernie Sanders (I-Ver.) can be counted on to challenge the Federal Reserve with anything that resembles a tough question."
When Greenspan was reappointed in 1996, after a General Accounting Office report found waste and abuse at the Fed, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) wanted the Sen ate to debate the issue but was rejected by the leadership.
"Greenspan's cheerleaders in the media started at tacking Harkin for insisting on a full debate of the nomination," Nader said. "The Washington Post labeled Harkin an ‘obstructionist.' The New York Times blasted Harkin's remarks as ‘thoughtless barbs.' And Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Harkin's efforts an ‘outrage.' " (All three are Bilderberg-controlled newspapers.)
"The Federal Reserve takes in billions of dollars through the buying and selling of government securities . . . they draw interest from the Treasury on this growing portfolio of government securities, and the Federal Reserve then spends whatever it desires out of these funds and returns the remainder to the Treasury each year," Nader said.
The Fed "draws up its own budget and finances it from its own activities," Nader said. "Congress has no approval or disapproval process for any part of the budget. The budget does not go to the Office of Management and Budget. It is drafted and administered solely by the Fed."
"We're talking personal scandal here," said Jeff Faux, president of the Economic Policy Institute. "We're talking about the scandal of a huge concentration of power beyond the reach of democratic institutions."
Despite the scathing denunciations, the fact that the Fed is
a private—not federal—consortium of bankers was unaddressed.
|Top|
Here's the story behind the story of who's promoting the major media's attacks on the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the major media in the United States—particularly the broadcast media —has waged a continuing propaganda campaign against Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that the ruling family in that country is a longtime U.S. ally.
The media continues to put forth what is actually the Israeli opinion and propaganda line (disguised as "news") that Saudi Arabia is not truly a U.S. ally and is, in fact, an effective "state sponsor" of international terrorism.
The media campaign against the Saudis has been so intense that even the courtly and urbane Prince Bandar, the otherwise soft-spoken longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States, recently described much of the anti-Saudi nonsense by using an expletive that refers to barnyard droppings.
Although the overwhelming majority of the television audience and newspaper readers don't know it, many of the attacks on Saudi Arabia in the major media come practically verbatim from a 49-page "white paper" is sued by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a key public relations arm for the Israeli lobby.
Hidden behind the deliberately ambiguous and indifferent title The U.S.-Saudi Relationship, the ADL has circulated perhaps tens of thousands of copies of this propaganda screed to newspaper editors and reporters throughout the United States over the past 20 years.
In doing so, the ADL discreetly suggests that the document be used by editors and reporters as "background" in preparation of stories relating to Saudi Arabia.
Finding a handy "capsule" document at their disposal,
reporters—who generally have no particular axe to grind one
way or the other, or who otherwise know it is in their best interests
to promote the Israeli propaganda line—quote the document
freely and regularly, never revealing the ADL as the source.
|Top|
Another Ruby Ridge-style standoff could be avoided if overzealous local bureaucrats back down in their attempts to take an Idaho couple's home.
In its Dec. 10 issue, American Free Press reported how an ongoing standoff over property taxes in Kootenai County, Idaho could ignite a bloody Waco or Ruby Ridge-style conflagration.
County officials are determined to collect back taxes that Richard Masker and his wife, Deon, can't afford to pay. One county commissioner, Gus Johnson, told AFP that the county is willing to risk a shoot-out with the Maskers in an attempt to seize the Masker home.
Johnson and his fellow commissioners - Ron Rankin, Richard Panabaker and Thomas Malzahn - refuse to lower of forgive the back taxes. According to Masker, the commissioners forced him into signing an agreement to repay the back taxes which increases their tax burden by an additional $10,000, practically doubling the amount the county authorities claimed Masker owed in the first place.
Although the local press has attempted to smear the Maskers and paint them as uneducated, ill-mannered, disconnected extremists, the truth is the couple, both 60 and married 14 years, are well-educated and have many friends and family. Mrs. Masker plays violin for a regional symphony orchestra. Mr Masker, a retired superintendent of a highly-rated city water department, has also been involved in writing and radio broadcasting for many years.
The Maskers, who have nowhere else to go, say that they will stand and die with honor rather than surrender their home. They have enough food and water stored away to live on and intend to keep in touch with friends by walkie-talkie if their phone lines are but off. Contrary to what the local press has reported, the Maskers have never, at any time, threatened to kill anyone, although the press has been promoting that myth. If the authorities storm their home they vow to "shoot to kill" if attacked. They have 65 gallons of gas that they will not hesitate to use to burn the house down around them to keep it from being unlawfully seized.
Although the local media refuses to print letters to the editor
that have been written in support of the Maskers, the local political
elite are watching the Masker affair closely. As of Dec. 27, the
monthly payment of back taxes came due and was not paid. Another
payment will be due on Jan.27. The Maskers will not pay it.
|Top|
A top German spook refutes the official version of what happened on Sept. 11, questioning why hasn't Congress called for a special inquiry to investigate what really occurred on that terrible day.
The German newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, recently interviewed Andreas von Bülow, the former head of the parliamentary commission that oversees the German secret services, about the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
Von Bülow, who was interviewed by AFP in early December, said the provocative Tagesspiegel interview, published on Jan. 13, was the first time the German press had asked him about the problems surrounding the attacks.
"The planning of the attacks was technically and organizationally a master achievement—to hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes and within one hour, to drive them into their targets, with complicated flight maneuvers," said von Bülow in the Tagesspiegel interview. "This is unthinkable, without years of support from state intelligence services."
This led the interviewer to call von Bülow "a conspiracy theorist."
"Yeah, yeah. That's the ridicule from those who prefer to follow the official, politically correct line," von Bülow responded. "Even investigative journalists are fed propaganda and disinformation. Anyone who doubts the official line is called crazy."
Despite the controversial content of von Bülow's recent comments, "there has been no response in the German press," von Bülow told AFP. "The media has to ask the questions," he said, "Ashcroft and Bush—they are the officials who have to answer the questions."
Since Sept. 11, "public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong," von Bülow said. "I wonder why so many questions have not been asked. Normally, with such a terrible event, various leads and trails appear and are discussed by the investigators, the media and the government: ‘Is there something here or not? Are the explanations plausible?' In this case, that is not happening at all."
Before a government goes to war, it must first establish who the enemy is, von Bülow said. "It has a duty to provide evidence.
According to its own admission, it has not been able to present any evidence that would hold up in court.
Concerning the video evidence, von Bülow said: "When one is dealing with intelligence services, one can imagine manipulations of the highest quality. Holly wood could provide these techniques. I consider the videos inappropriate as evidence."
Von Bülow, who controlled the budgets of German intelligence from 1969 to 1994, cannot understand why Congress has not opened a formal investigation into the attacks and the failure of American intelligence agencies to prevent them.
"There are 26 intelligence services in the U.S.A. with a budget of $30 billion, which were not able to prevent the attacks," von Bülow said."Officially, there is nothing." he told AFP. "They say that they didn't have any idea that this would happen."
While four planes had been hijacked "for more than 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies kept the fighter planes on the ground," von Bülow said, "however, 48 hours later, the FBI presented a list of suicide attackers. Within 10 days, it emerged that seven of them were still alive.
"Why has the director of the FBI not taken a position regarding these contradictions? Where did the list come from, why it was false? If I were the chief investigator in such a case, I would go before the public on a regular basis, and provide information on which leads are valid and which are not," he said.
"And what about the obscure stock transactions? In the week prior to the attacks, the amount of transactions in stocks in American Airlines, United Airlines, and insurance companies, increased 1,200 percent. It was for a value of $15 billion. Some people must have known something. Who?"
Although von Bülow told AFP in December that he believes that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is behind the Sept. 11 attacks, such political discussion is beyond the pale in German journalism.
ISRAEL KNEW?
When asked by Tagesspiegel who might have known about the attacks, von Bülow's comments about apparent Israeli culpability and the agenda of Israel's Ariel Sharon were deleted.
Israel is protected in the German media, in which any criticism of the Jewish state is stifled. This is be cause of "the special relationship" between the two states.
However, the Israeli agenda has gone forward as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Don't believe the Arabs—they are foes," is the message behind the "brainwashing" being done by the U.S. government and the unquestioning mass media, said von Bülow.
"With the help of the horrifying attacks, the Western mass democracies are being subjected to brainwashing. The enemy image of anti-communism doesn't work anymore; it is to be replaced by peoples of Islamic belief. They are accused of having given birth to suicidal terrorism."
The image of the new enemy comes from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, two policy-makers of American intelligence and foreign policy, von Bülow said. "Already in the middle of the 1990s, Huntingon believed, people in Europe and the U.S. needed someone they could hate—this would strengthen their identification with their own society. And Brzezinski, the mad dog, as adviser to President Jimmy Carter, campaigned for the exclusive right of the U.S. to seize all the raw ma terials of the world, especially oil and gas."In his analysis of political processes, von Bülow said, a global map of civil wars and conflicts coincides with the locations of these strategic minerals.
"The same is the case with the third map: nodal points of the drug trade," he said.
The huge raw material reserves of the former Soviet Union, as well as the pipeline routes, are now at the disposal of the United States and Britain.The fact that the events of Sept. 11 "fit perfectly in the concept of the armaments industry, the intelligence agencies, the whole military-industrial-academic complex," von Bülow says, is "conspicuous."
"What has gone on, and goes on, in the name of intelligence services, are true crimes," von Bülow said. He is the author of Im Namen des Staates, a book which documents some of the criminal activities of the CIA and the German intelligence services."
Von Bülow, who told AFP that "95 percent of the work of intelligence agencies around the world is deception and disinformation," pointed to the false leads that were apparently planted to incriminate Arab terrorists in the attacks. These leads, he said, were like tracks left behind by "a herd of stampeding elephants."
The abundance of such obvious clues, such as Mohammed Atta's passport, which mysteriously survived the crash and explosion that allegedly destroyed the shock- and fire-proof cockpit recorders, were like the Ger man childrens' game Schnitzeljagd, or Schnitzel Hunt, in which small bits of paper are left behind as clues for the children, von Bülow said.
Atta's passport, which he had reported as having been stolen long before Sept. 11, amazingly reappeared unburned and intact on top of a pile of rubble near the World Trade Center, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Atta, the suspected leader, allegedly left Portland for Boston on the morning of Sept. 11, in order to board the plane that later hit the World Trade Center.
"If this Atta was the decisive man in the operation, it's really strange that he took such a risk of taking a plane that would reach Boston such a short time before the connecting flight. Had his flight been a few minutes late, he would not have been on the plane that was hijacked. Why should a sophisticated terrorist do this?" von Bülow said.
"They made payments with credit cards with their own names; they reported to their flight instructors with their own names.
They left behind a rented car with flight manuals in Arabic for jumbo jets. They took with them, on their suicide trip, wills and farewell letters, which fell into the hands of the FBI, because they were stored in the wrong place and wrongly addressed.
Clues were left behind, like in Schnitzeljagd, which "were meant to be followed," he said.
Von Bülow compared Sept. 11 with first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.
"In the middle was the bomb maker, a former Egypt ian officer," von Bülow said. "He had pulled toge ther some Muslims for the attack. They were sneaked into the country by the CIA, despite a State Department ban on their entry. At the same time, the leader of the band was an FBI informant.
"And he made a deal with the authorities: At the last minute, the dangerous explosive material would be replaced by a harmless powder.
"The FBI did not stick to the deal. The bomb exploded, so to speak, with the knowledge of the FBI. The official story of the crime was quickly found—the criminals were evil Muslims," von Bülow said.
When asked what he would do, von Bülow said: "My
task is concluded by saying it could not have happened that way.
Search for the truth."
|Top|
The right to know—one of our most precious rights—is under attack from the federal government.
Of the rights under attack by the Justice Department, one assault has gone virtually unnoticed: that of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), probably the greatest populist reform of the late 20th century.
Recently, Attorney General John Ashcroft sent a memo urging all federal agencies to resist most FOIA requests. Without the FOIA, journalists, newspapers, historians and watchdog groups would never be able to keep the government honest. They and the general public would have little recourse in knowing what government does rather than just what it says. Justice is probably the one department where the FOIA is most vital.
More chilling is the fact that this order is directed toward matters unrelated to national security.
The order asks agencies to consider whether "institutional, commercial and personal privacy interests could be implicated by the disclosure of information . . . When you decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions."
Examples of the vital importance of FOIA abound, namely:
• The use of federal farm subsidies as corporate welfare rather than for family farms;
• Antitrust violations by utilities serving North and South Carolina;
• Continuing misconduct by the upper echelons of the National Guard;
• U.S. support for the 1975 invasion of East Timor; and
• Government complicity in the robbery of 24,000 acres of land from black farmers.
ASSAILED BY FORMER PRESIDENTS
Another widely publicized assault on freedom of information was a recent executive order sealing presidential records.
Former Presidents Ford, Carter, and Clinton have all publicly stated opposition to this order.
Most of President Bush's papers are from his service as governor of Texas. Those documents fall under the Texas Public Information Act. The files are currently sitting in limbo at the Bush Presidential Library, and the library has been known to violate the state law in administering requested information.
The opinion of the watchdog group Public Citizen, submitted at the invitation of Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, states that the papers are state records under state law and that the president has no power to give them away or place them above state law.
All this comes as the Enron scandal emerges. These actions could have devastating consequences for the administration since surely it will attempt to put most of the records regarding Enron under the protection of the Justice Department's resistance of the Freedom of Information Act.
This could put the White House in a box. However, a congressional
committee would be able to penetrate whatever barriers can be
put up between these records and the public. The mainstream media
would be unable to resist ducking this scandal for more "America's
New War" nonsense.
|Top|
Don't kid yourself: Profits, earnings and not rocking the boat are what motivate today's mainstream press.
You are now reading the only newspaper of national and international circulation that can, with no inhibitions, bring you the unvarnished facts. All other national and international newspapers and network news broadcasters are held back by economic chains that bind them to one-sided, hide-the-truth reporting.
The chains are wielded by a few men representing vast, global special interests. They have used this enormous power to determine what you can - and cannot know. In at least on incident, it was used to kill the largest-circulation newspaper in Washington for failing to conform.
No newspaper, radio or television station can survive without the approval of the news distorters who place ads in the media.
They control advertising - the lion's share of a newspaper's income. If the circulation department can break even - bring in enough to pay salaries of bundle throwers, the paperboys' 50 percent commission and associated costs, it has done great.
Paid circulation is important because it distinguishes a newspaper from a give-a-way. It qualifies the paper for periodical mailing privileges, saving significant postage costs. The periodical requirement that, on average, 25 percent of the paper be "reading matter" and not advertising establishes the paper as a disseminator of information.
Unless the paper is periodical mater with paid circulation, the advertising department will starve. Without advertising, a newspaper would die of economic strangulation.
Thus, those who control advertising can kill a newspaper. Of course, the local mom-and-pop store, barber or restaurant owner controls their own advertising and employs the medium that produces the best results.
But the bulk of advertising is national or regional in scope. Wrigley's want to sell chewing gum in the great cities and tiny hamlets. Similarly, the ad targets of great chain stores are national or regional.
They deal with giant advertising agents, such as J. Walter Thompson and others in New York. The agencies will design their ads and decide the media the ads will appear in.
They make life-and-death decisions for newspapers. Newspapers, to survive, follow orders to ignore major news developments, provide one-sided reporting on the Middle East and otherwise toady to the elite dictators.
"Year after year, newspaper companies have demonstrated that this is a highly profitable industry, regularly achieving profit margins of more than 20 percent," said Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation, in reporting on the Inland Press Association Editorial Conference in Chicago.
"In 1999, for example, the average profit margin for all publicly reporting newspaper operations was 22.2 percent," Giles said.
Knight-Ridder, for example, runs an estimated 23 percent profit margin.
What is the purpose of a newspaper? To report the news. No, newspapers are all owned by corporations and corporations must show a profit. The day of the family-owned newspaper dedicated to the community it serves has passed.
A dramatic demonstration of advertising's power over newpapers came 48 years ago - on St. Patrick's Day, 1954 - when The Washington Post gobbled up The Washington Times-Herald.
The Times-Herald had the largest circulation in Washington, followed by The Evening Star. The Post was third, followed by the tabloid Daily News.
The Times-Herald was owned by the late and legendary Col. Robert McCormick, also owner of The Chicago Herald-Tribune.
The Times-Herald was widely known as a nationalist newspaper that condemned American international adventuring. It also supported Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, whose hunt for communists in the government was hysterically condemned by the liberals and internationalists.
The Times-Herald also expressed reservations about the new state of Israel invading Palestinian lands - long before such outrages as the attacks on Egypt in 1967 and later aggressive wars.
Because of its patriotic, America-first stance, the New York ad agencies and major national and international companies yanked their advertising. The Post, despite having significantly less circulation and a poor product, had more advertising than the Times-Herald.
The paper was finally killed by this economic strangulation. On St. Patrick's Day, 1954, the little Post bought the big Times-Herald. Ironically, it was at almost the same the late Post publisher, Philip Graham, was to attend a Bilderberg meeting and before his mysterious death was covered up by the Post. It was the first year that the international secret elite started calling itself "Bilderberg."
Of the hundreds of daily newspapers that have died in recent years, how many have been killed by ad boycotts?
A newspaper will be killed or economically disciplined for questioning Israel's expansionist wars, the brutal and illegal occupation of Palestinian territory or U.S. blank-check aid to Israel.
For more than a half-century, mainstream media coverage of the Middle East has been so one-sided - with many significant developments simply not reported - that AFP readers find educated people who are unwilling to believe that Israel is illegally occupying the West Bank and Gaza and that the Israeli military kills and tortures Palestinians for no reason.
This cover-up is not from ignorance. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International heavily document these facts every year and release them at a press conference. It is simply not reported, leaving intelligent people uninformed.
By their own accounts, several leading lawmakers have been politically killed for the same reasons. They include Sens. J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.), Charles Percy (R-Ill.), James Abourezk (D-D.D.) and Reps. Paul Findley (D-Ill.), Pete McCloskey (R-Calif.) and John Rarick(D-La.).
Control has become even more firm in recent years as more than 300 daily newspapers folded, even as the industry, on average, enjoys substantial profit margins.
In 1950, there were 1,774 daily newspapers in the United States and 203 had circulations exceeding 50,000. In 1999, the total number of dailies fell to 1,483 with 239 having a circulation exceeding 50,000.
This means that American Free Press, with almost 60,000 subscribers and growing each week, has more subscribers than 1,244 of the nation's 1,483 newspapers.
Today, there are few locally owned newspapers even in small cities. Gannett, which owns USA Today, has 120 newspapers, mostly small dailies. The New York Times owns the 10,000-circulation Tifton, Ga. Gazette.
American Free Press considers the ad boycott the price
of bringing you news and information none other dares report.
|Top|
The raw power of those who decide what you can and cannot know is shown by the Bilderberg cover-up.
Newspapers and network broadcasters are able to impose a nearly total blackout of the annual Bilderberg meetings in which they have such large interests.
Officials of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, all major news magazines and all major television networks have sent officials to attend these super-secret Bilderberg meetings on their pledge to report nothing.
Not only has this pledge been faithfully kept, it has been imposed on others. Associated Press carries no Bilderberg coverage because its major customers do not want such stories. AP operates like a farmers' cooperative - big city papers pay much more for the service than those in small cities. Thus, the Bilderberg-controlled papers have economic leverage on AP.
Editors of small dailies depend on wire services for national, world and state news outside their own circulation area. They work hard to keep up with the city council and high school football team. Most have no idea that Bilderberg exists and, if they did, they would be outraged.
If 120 film stars or professional football players met secretly at sealed-off resorts surrounded by armed guards for three days, Bilderberg-controlled newspapers would go to great efforts to learn and report what transpired.
But when 120 of the world's most powerful men - heads of state
from Europe, international financiers, high officials of the White
House, Treasury and Defense departments and congressional leaders
meet to conduct public business in secret, they have no curiosity.
U.S. taxpayers subsidize Bilderberg by paying transportation costs
of federal officials - and they don't fly coach.
|Top|
For a dictatorship to be successful, the citizens must be disarmed. That's why the plutocrats are so upset about a recent pro-gun ruling.
An Ohio judge ruled in favor of the law of the land and against political correctness on Jan. 9 when he blocked police from enforcing the state's decades old ban on concealed weapons.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman said the law effectively barred people from protecting themselves and was therefore contrary to the state's constitution.
In his decision, Ruehlman wrote: "The very thought a potential victim might possess a firearm deters that element of our society that cares nothing about laws or human life but rather understands only one thing - brute force."
Lawyers for the city of Cincinnati, the county and the state said they would appeal the order.
A Cincinnati private investigator and four others who said their jobs required them to carry weapons for self-defense, sued in July 2000, saying the Ohio Constitution allows citizens to bear arms, concealed or not. Ohio now lets only law enforcement officials and state and federal government officers carry concealed weapons.
Gun-rights supporters say they hope the lawsuit will prompt
other states to enact laws allowing concealed weapons for the
public. Forty-three states allow concealed weapons in some form.
|Top|
There are many reasons why Americans should pressure the federal government to stop funding the IMF. A popular congressman from Texas illustrates a few.
Imagine a hypothetical bank run by a group of international executives operating behind closed doors, making decisions of enormous international importance. Imagine the bank consistently made high-risk loans to shaky governments with weak economies and currencies. Imagine it made those loans at substantially below-market interest rates, even though the risks involved warranted high interest rates. Imagine it knew that certain corporate interests would benefit directly from contracts awarded by the borrowing nations. Finally, imagine the bank schemed with governments around the world to have taxpayers foot the bill for the predictable losses stemming from bad loans. Surely no reasonable person would invest his money in such an institution, right?
Believe it or not, such an institution exists, and it's called the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF is an international organization comprised of member states, much like the UN, that takes your tax dollars and sends them overseas.
It's expensive, too, just like the UN. It receives approximately $37 billion from American taxpayers each year, and it wants to increase that amount to $50 billion beginning in 2003
Why on Earth would Congress fund such a lousy scheme?
IMF supporters claim the organization exists to fight poverty in developing countries, but the evidence shows otherwise. At best IMF borrowers are governments of countries with little economic productivity; at worst the money ends up in the hands of corrupt dictators.
Either way, most recipient nations end up with huge debts that they cannot service, which only adds to their poverty and stability. IMF money ultimately corrupts those countries it purports to help, by keeping afloat reckless political institutions that destroy their own economies.
In truth, Congress funds the IMF because of the corporate interests it subsidizes.
The huge multinational banks and corporations love the IMF. Big banks used IMF funds - taxpayer funds - to bail themselves out from billions in losses after the Asian financial crisis. Big corporations obtain lucrative contracts for a wide variety of construction projects funded with IMF loans. Itls a familiar game in Washington, with corporate welfare disguised as compassion for the poor.
The he recent financial collapse in Argentina provides a perfect example of the folly of IMF "assistance."
Although the Argentine economy has been in serious trouble for several years, IMF loans with an incredibly low interest rate of 2.6 percent kept pouring into the country.
According to Congressman Jim Saxton (R-N.J.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, this "continued lending over many years sustained and subsidized a bankrupt Argentine economic policy, whose collapse is now all the more serious. The IMF's generous subsidized bailouts lead to moral hazard problems, and enable shaky governments to pressure the IMF for even more funding or risk disaster."
Yet unless Congress acts this year, U.S. taxpayers will be forced to pay for even more bad loans to equally unstable countries.
The IMF was a bad idea from the very beginning - economically, constitutionally, and morally.
There is no justification for taxing working Americans fo the federal government can bail out foreign leaders and Wall Street.
Participation in the IMF cost us billions every year, billions that should be returned to taxpayers. Hopefully the Argentine debacle will cause Congress to rethink our foolish participation in the IMF.
Rep. Ron Paul, M.D., represents the 14th District in Texas
in Congress.
|Top|
Scan the"mainstream" media carefully and you may find items relating to the Sept.11 terrorist attacks that actually contribute to the growing body of questions that are being raised about the official version of what happened that tragic day.
Occasionally even Establishment newspapers and magazines will publish a few grains of truth. Through careful reading of the "elite" media, one may catch details that - considered in context - shed a different light on the "official" story about some event in the news; in this case, the Sept.11 terrorist attacks.
For example, several recent examples of items found in Newsweek, published by the powerful Meyer-Graham empire (owners of The Washington Post) are worth noting.
On Jan. 7 Newsweek described as "fantastic," among other things, the statement by the Egyptian father of alleged Sept. 11 hijacking ringleader Mohammed Atta, the American authorities had captured five Israelis celebrating after the World Trade Center attacks. Newsweek described the senior Atta's concerns as a "rant" that "as if by repeating it often enough he could make it true."
However, the Newsweek writer was evidently unaware that even The New York Times - as long ago as Oct. 8 - had acknowledged that there were five Israelis taken into custody in the New York area immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, an interesting item first unveiled nationally in the United States by AFP in its Oct. 1 issue.
Yet, as AFP noted in several consecutive articles (Dec. 17, Dec. 24 and Jan. 7/14) the story of these five Israelis has taken on a life of its own. It turns out that as many as 60 Israelis are in U.S. custody, at least some of whom are suspected by the FBI of having material evidence about the Sept. 11 attacks, including likely foreknowledge of the impending attacks.
NO EVIDENCE
Despite all the media hoopla over the indictment of Moroccan-born Frenchman, Zacarias Moussaoui, even Newsweek admitted (buried in the final paragraphs of a report in its Dec. 24 issue) that the indictment of Moussaoui "does not allege any contacts between Moussaoui and any of the 19 other hijackers.
Newsweek quoted a Justice department official as saying that "there's no direct testimony in this case, It's all circumstantial." Justice has no explanation as to why Moussaoui seemed to constantly be acting alone in the midst of the so-called "conspiracy" while all the other hijackers met and traveled together.
Although Newsweek claims the feds have intelligence linking Moussaoui to one of the hijackers, "prosecutors left that point out of the indictment, for reasons that are unclear."
NOW YOU TELL US
On Dec. 24, Arab- and Muslim-hating Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter, who is a fervent supporter of Israel, admitted in Newsweek that until the release of the purported "smoking gun" video in which Osama bin Laden is said to have claimed advance knowledge of the Sept.11 terrorist attacks that "for all of the exertions of Tony Blair and American authorities, evidence of bin Laden's prior knowledge of Sept. 11 had been circumstantial until the tape.
In truth, for nearly two months, Blair and even the Bush administration continued to claim they had "evidence" of bin Laden's involvement and /or foreknowledge. Blair's "evidence" was, in fact, largely a compendium of quotations by bin Laden about other acts of terror for which he was said to be responsible along with saber-rattling statements critical of the United States and Israel.
WAS HE RIGHT?
When former Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul asserted his informed opinion that President Bush himself believed at one point on Sept.11 that traitors, perhaps within the Air Force, had played a part in the hijackings and that they were part of a more wide-ranging attempt at a coup d'etat orchestrated by Bush-hating partisans of Israel, critics dismissed Gul as a Muslim sympathizer of bin Laden, failing to point out that Guo's actual comments presented Bush himself as a victim (or potential victim) of the Sept.11 attacks.
However, in its Dec. 31/Jan.7 issue, Newsweek revealed that on Sept. 11, a military officer in the White House communications room announced that a threat had been received against the president's official plane, Air Force One. When the top aide to the vice president's chief of staff asked, "How do we know?" According to Newsweek, the officer replied that the warning included the aircraft's code name, which is classified.
According to Newsweek, "The threat was almost surely bogus - though to this day White House officials say they do not know where it came from." Newsweek quoted White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as saying, "I don't think we'll ever know," where the threat came from. Newsweek also reported that there was another report from the Federal Aviation Administration of another plane - about 30 seconds away - heading straight for the capital. Yet, says Newsweek: "The plane was a phantom of the fog of war; it never existed."
The truth is that in the wake of the terrorist attacks, numerous independent American researchers have begun to raise serious questions about the circumstances surrounding the failure of the Air Force to respond. This is another question relating to the mysteries of Sept. 11 that just won't go away.
Other mainstream media voices also provide facts and insights that - considered in the context of the overall media coverage of the events of Sept. 11 - shed new light on the truth (or how the media is covering up the truth).
SADDAM AGAIN
On Dec. 23, The New York Times featured a commentary by its reporter, Elaine Sciolino, that cast new light on widely-stated claims and assumptions regarding the question of "who did what?" on Sept 11.
For example, Sciolino admitted that despite the efforts by many - including former CIA Director James Woolsey - to try to make a connection between bin Laden and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the events of Sept. 11 "administration officials debate the credibility of claims by Czech officials of a meeting in Prague" between an Iraqi intelligence officer and Mohammad Atta, said to be the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers who were purportedly working as agents of bin Laden and his al Qaeda network.
Sciolino also makes the point that bin Laden "preaches an extremist, Militant version of Islam and claims loyalty only to God" whereas Hussein "is a secular state builder whose loyalty is to himself" who has launched a "modernization campaign" in which "he has allowed drinking of alcohol in public and freedom in women's dress." Sciolino notes that Yaphe, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University, points out that "not only is Saddam not an Islamic fundamentalist, he has been at war with the fundamentalist."
This simple fact explodes the widely-heralded myth, promulgated by the media, that Saddam and bin Laden are somehow "on the same side" or otherwise "working together" in some gigantic Muslim or Arab conspiracy against the West.
TERRORIST HISTORY
On Dec. 23, writing on the op-ed page of The New York Times - which evidently did not feel comfortable in censoring a former U.S. President - Jimmy Carter upset many American supporters of Israel by unveiling Israel's ugly terrorist past. Carter described his own efforts to reach a Middle East peace and discussed former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Carter wrote that Begin, "as leader of the guerrilla group Irgun Zvai Leumi, had been widely considered to be a terrorist, responsible for a bombing that killed 96 in Jerusalem's Keng David hotel in 1946."
In fact, details about Israel's terrorist past are generally suppressed in the American media, which is dominated by families and financial groups with ethnic and emotional ties to Israel.
Carter also pointed out that as leader of Israel's Herut Party, Begin "insisted that Israel's territory should include all the land west of the Jordan River and substantial portions of the nation of Jordan," effectively exposing the imperial aims advanced by Begin and other like-minded Israelis (whose views are shared by current Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his supporters among Israel's majority).
SPREADING HATRED
Although the major media has spent endless energy for years in "anti-hate crusades, Sept. Sept. 11 sparked what has now become an endless crusade in favor of hate - against Muslims.
Many major "experts" on terrorism of Islam cited on a regular basis in the mainstream media are Jewish and/or tied to pro-Israel organizations and "think tanks." They include such names as Steven Emerson, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Benjamin and Daniel Pipes.
In fact, on Dec. 16, 2001, The New York Times Book Review featured an advertisement for an anti-Muslim screed, "Why I Am Not a Muslim," written by a Muslim apostate, Ibn Warraq, which featured a review by Pipes describing Warraq's book as "a well-researched and quite brilliant...indictment of one of the world's great religions." That's hate - pure and simple.
WHO WAS IN CONTROL
Despite all of the media hoopla about bin Laden wide-ranging al Qaeda network, The Washington Post reported on Nov. 5 that European investigators believe that the group that is alleged to have carried of the Sept. 11 attacks was "tightly insulated" and "had little if any contact with other all Qaeda terror cells in Europe."
The Post said that hijackers were "elite, insulated," and that the question remained, according to one French terrorism expert, Roland Jacquard, as to who was in control: "Who give the order?" asked Jacquard.
Suggesting that Mohammed Atta was the ringleader, Jacquard says Atta "probably" gave the order. However, Jacquared noted, "But Atta also received instructions. And there is someone between Atta and the mountain" (in Afghanstan where bin Laden was said to have made his lair)."
The Post didn't make the suggestion that perhaps this "elite, insulated" group - which didn't seem to have any contact with the rest of the al Qaeda network - may have been under the control of agents of Israel's Mossad.
On Oct. 29, AFP reported in detail how Israeli intelligence has financed "Islamic fundamentalist" and "Arab terrorist" groups to advance Israel's strategic aims and on Oct. 1, AFP provided a history of how Israel has staged assassinations and terrorist attacks and blamed them on Arabs," "right-wing extremists" and others. Even the pro-Israel Washington Times reported on Sept. 1 0 that high-ranking U.S. Army officers believe that Israel's Mossad "has the capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act," - a point noted in AFP on Oct. 1.
DOUBLE STANDARD
As evidence that "evil" Muslims are falsely blaming Israel for either instigating or benefitting from the Sept. 11 terror tragedy, Dr. Herold Brackman prepared a special report for the Simon Wiesenthal Center entitled 9/11 Digital lies: A Survey of Online Apologists for Global Terrorism.
One such bit of "evidence" marshaled by Dr. Brackman was a quote attributed to Sheikh Muhammed Hussein Fadlullah of Hizbollah on Islam On Line on Sept. 15, 2001. The sheikh's offending remark was the "Israel is the main beneficiary of this terrible tragedy."
In fact, the sheikh's comment was no different from that of a well-known Jewish-American analyst and former CIA official, George Friedman, who stated on his own web site, stratfor.com, that "the big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel."
Friedman made this remarkable assessment just hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, yet the Wiesenthal Center has not skewered this pro-Israel analyst for making the same claim.
WHO STARTED THE RUMOR
Although the major media continues to bellyache about an alleged "Muslim rumor" that 4,000 Israelis (or Jews in general) did not show up for work at the World Trade Center the day of the terrorist attack, what has been lost in the shuffle is that it was The Jerusalem Post (Israel's leading newspaper) that instigated the rumor when it featured an article on Sept. 12 reporting in a headline that "Thousands of Israelis missing near WTC, Pentagon," specifically citing the now-infamous figure of 4,000.
And despite media proclamations that there is no truth to the "Muslim rumor" that Israelis did have advance warning of the attacks, Newsbytes, a Washington Post subsidiary, reported on Sept. 27 that "Instant Messages to Israel Warned of WTC Attack." A similar report also appeared in the Sept. 29 issue of Israel's Ha'aratz newspaper.
SUICIDE FACILITATOR?
Although the major media has stoked the fires of anti-Palestinian hatred in the wake of Sept. 11, comparing Palestinian suicide bombers to the purported "Arab suicide bombers" who directed airliners into the WTC and the Pentagon, only The Sunday Times of London dared to note the facto on June 24 that following a devastating explosion that killed 22 Israelis outside a Tel Aviv discotheque, it was discovered that the taxi driver, Rashid Al-Nadi, who took the suidice bomber to that disco was a Palestinian who, according to Palestinian sources, "had been working with Israeli police intelligence since 1999, giving them information about Palestinian activities in the area."