June 2, 2003
June 9, 2003
AFP will take a vacation this week. No paper.
June 16, 2003
June 23, 2003
June 30, 2003
Whole Body Health
To witness the annual Bilderberg conference is to realize how the "Lords of the New World Order" — the self-chosen elite of international finance, business, and politics — are allowed to assemble in secret and conspire with the connivance of the mainstream media.
Given the tumultuous events in the Middle East and the serious strains in U.S.-French relations, one would expect that an event near Paris, in which scores of key U.S. and European officials meet with the heads of international finance and business, would attract considerable media attention. However, while Bilderberg 2003 at the historic Trianon Palace at Versailles was an extraordinary gathering of the global elite, it passed with scarcely a word in the controlled press.
In the historic Trianon Palace Hotel, where the Versailles treaty was handed to the defeated Germans after World War I, the individuals who head the world's largest oil companies and financial institutions convened during four days, in total seclusion, with selected political leaders and media owners.
Because of the near total blackout of Bilderberg in the mass media, knowledge of what was going on in the Trianon from May 15-18 was limited to those who read James Tucker's articles in American Free Press.
The Trianon Palace is a luxury hotel immediately adjacent to the magnificent grounds of the palace of Versailles. The entry to the hotel sits near the Grille de la Reine, a gated entry to the royal park built by the 17th century French monarchs, King Louis XIII and his son Louis XIV.
Some of the well-to-do residents of the neighborhood of the Trianon, unaware of what was occurring in the hotel, were shocked to discover that their cars had been towed away early on Thursday, May 16, as Bilderberg security had demanded.
By mid-day the street leading to the hotel had been completely cleared and a security cordon set around the entire neighborhood. Local residents who lived within the security perimeter were obliged to identify themselves to Bilderberg security and armed national police at the checkpoint at the end of the Boulevard de la Reine.
‘LIKE FORT KNOX'
The hotel property was thoroughly checked for mines and every vehicle was carefully examined for explosives at a second checkpoint before being allowed to come near the hotel. Bomb sniffing dogs scoured the neighborhood.
"It's like Fort Knox," said Christian Ebel, the local resident whose silver Porsche had been taken away on the back of a truck the day before. Ebel said he had never seen such security measures before in France.
The people of Versailles were noticeably puzzled and upset by the security measures that prevented them from entering the park at the Grille de la Reine to which they are accustomed. Security personnel, unable to explain the reason for such intense security, failed to answer the question everyone asked: "Why can't we go to the park?"
Standing by the security checkpoint hoping to catch the Bilderberg arrivals on film, I was able to explain to the bewildered locals what was happening in the Trianon and how they could enter the park by using the Grille du Dragon at the end of the nearby side street.
On several occasions, particularly when I was alone, officers of the CRS ordered me to stop taking photos although I presented my international press card when asked and remained on public property. When I asked by what law I was being ordered, one CRS officer said: "I don't know by what law. I have my instructions to tell you to go away."
Early on Friday morning, I helped a large group of school children held up at the checkpoint to get into the park.
Later in the afternoon, the group returned and I gave a short lecture about Bilderberg to a few dozen interested 10-year-olds as Bilderberg security and the French CRS riot police stood behind me.
One resident of Versailles who was aware of the power and influence of Bilderberg told me that the French press had neglected to report what was occurring at the Trianon.
"There has not been one word in any French paper about Bilderberg and there won't be tomorrow or the next day," he said. "The French press is not as free as the press in your country."
Another resident told me he had seen the president of France's national assembly, Jean Louis Debré, while jogging in the park.
While the mainstream U.S. and British press are unlikely to discuss Bilderberg in any detail, the fact that the conference was occurring in Versailles was reported on the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) news web site in a short piece titled "Elite power brokers' secret talks" by Emma Jane Kirby on May 15.
In January, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, American Free Press had asked John Simpson and others from the BBC why the government-owned network reported extensively on the Davos event yet completely ignored Bilderberg.
Bilderberg "delegates" at the "closed meeting" of the "world's financial and political elite" were "expected to be focusing their attention on post-war Iraq," Kirby wrote for the BBC.
With Iraqi oil high on the agenda there was no surprise in seeing Peter Sutherland, chairman of British Petroleum, attending David Rockefeller's Bilderberg conference along with Queen Beatrix of Holland and Queen Sophia of Spain. Photographs of the limousines with darkened windows indicate that King Juan Carlos of Spain also attended.
"By anyone's standards, it is a bit of a mystery," the BBC's Kirby wrote about Bilderberg. With its meetings "cloaked in secrecy" it is unclear what Bilderberg actually does, she wrote, adding that it is "an extremely influential lobbying group with a good deal of political clout on both sides of the Atlantic."
Two journalists from BBC radio, Simon Cox and Richard Vadon, interviewed Tucker during his daily 5 p.m. press conference at a nearby hotel. The "Club Class" program on Bilderberg is scheduled for July 3 on Radio 4 in Britain.
Two Turkish reporters also covered Bilderberg 2003, as did a couple from Norway's leading business daily, Dagens Næringsliv.
Tony Gosling of Britain, who publishes the web site Bilderberg.org filmed the arrival of conference attendees and their Saturday afternoon excursion to the Chateau of Versailles. It was during this excursion, when some 70 Bilderberg participants rode a tourist train from the hotel to the chateau, that I was able to photograph the attendees and meet David Rockefeller in the park with his bodyguard.
During the Bilderberg conference, two of Turkey's largest newspapers, Hurriyet and Zaman, reported that, despite Muslim opposition, Turkey's Treasury Minister Ali Babacan was attending with a handful of state bureaucrats.
Zaman wrote: " ‘This, the first serious encounter between the new Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the "Lords of the New World Order," which have been following Turkey closely for years, is truly significant,' says researcher Aytunc Altindal.
" ‘Some demands will be made of the AKP there," Altindal said. ‘If they satisfy the demands, they will feel free in foreign and internal politics, otherwise they will find themselves in a very tough situation indeed.' "
The Norwegian journalists were interested in two key Norwegians who were attending: the head of Norway's state bank and the chairman of Norway's largest energy and chemical company, Norsk Hydro.
A comprehensive article on Bilderberg is due to be published in Dagens Næringsliv a week after the conference.
Apart from a few local college students, no other journalists or photographers were seen covering the Bilderberg confab in Versailles.
In a May 16 article on WorldNetDaily.com titled "World government in action," Joseph Farah asked: "Do you believe there are powerful people who conspire together annually to solidify their grip on world domination? Do you believe all of this happens in secret, with the quiet complicity of the world media?"
"There really are conspiracies at work. There really are powerful people plotting world domination," Farah wrote about the Bilderberg gathering in Versailles.
"And they really operate in near-total secrecy as the world press sits on its collective duff."
On May 20, American Free Press asked David Oakley, news editor at London's Financial Times, why Britain's leading business daily did not cover the Bilderberg conference, while others did.
"We are very, very busy," Oakley said. "We would write about it, even put it on the front page," he said, "if we could find out what they are talking about." To write about it otherwise, Oakley said, "does not move the news agenda along."
On May 21, Financial Times published a feature article mentioning Bilderberg by Martin Wolf.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
But the Wall Street Journal, which is always represented by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor, is standing fast to its pledge of secrecy.
AFP called Gigot at WSJ's New York office. He was "unavailable" said his secretary, identified only as "Marianne."
She sounded surprised by the question but acknowledged that Gigot was at the Bilderberg meeting in Versailles.
Why does WSJ never report on Bilderberg?
"He's a participant, not a reporter," she said. "Participants don't report on this."
"But it is a major story being ignored," AFP said.
"Why is it a story?" she challenged.
"When you have 120 world leaders in international finance, political leaders, including heads of state and high officials of the U.S. government, how can that not be a story?" AFP asked.
A pause followed, then AFP added:
"Bilderberg meetings are sealed off, reporters are not allowed in."
"That's their problem."
"And Mr. Gigot will report nothing?"
"I told you, he is a participant and participants don't report on these meetings."
In fact, "participants" are ordered to give no interviews and report nothing on what transpires.
"When your paper, The Washington Post and all three major networks participate and promise to not report, is this not a conspiracy?"
"I told you, you have to ask them," she said, terminating
the conversation.
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While most Americans, prodded by the media, are still basking in the glow of the "victory" in Iraq, what they don't realize is that many of America's top military figures are turning hard against George Bush and want to see him removed from office in 2004.
Retired military officers are fed up with President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the "armchair generals" among the civilian war hawks who orchestrated the recent U.S. war in Iraq, which increasingly is looking like the debacle that critics predicted.
Long before the Iraq war erupted, American Free Press was the first national publication to point out that, contrary to popular perception manipulated by the mass media, America's top military figures - both retired and on active duty - were increasingly dissatisfied with the Bush administration, especially because of its drive to turn America's defense system into an arm of imperial power. America's military leaders did not want the United States to engage in conflict against Iraq. They said that such a war was not in America's best interests.
In the meantime, Rumsfeld and his neo-conservative deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith - hard-line advocates of placing Israel's interests at the center of U.S. foreign policy - were infuriating the traditional leaders of the military inside the Pentagon by their attempts to meddle in military affairs. Rumsfeld exacerbated the situation when he announced a massive reorganization of the Pentagon aimed at eliminating veteran military leaders who opposed the schemes of Rumsfeld and his cronies.
Now, the split between Bush and Rumsfeld and the military is coming full circle to the point that even the pro-Bush Washington Times reported on May 16 that executives in the defense industry (along with many retired military officers) are openly talking about rejecting Bush in the 2004 election. The Times noted that one retired general declared, "I don't know who the Democratic nominee is going to be, but I will probably support him."
Ironically, the Times noted, despite the often-discussed mutual disdain between the liberal Clinton administration and the military leadership, senior Bush administration officials had said that they perceived that Clinton "had let the generals and admirals run the Pentagon," but that this would change under bush. One of Bush's first goals, they said, was to reassert civilian control.
The concept of "civilian control" - in the context of the maneuvers by Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. - is actually a complete overhaul of the Pentagon, the hallmark of which is the appointment of "neo-conservative" party line functionaries who are bound together by their determination to impart U.S. foreign and defense policy in a manner most beneficial to the demands of Israel and its powerful American lobby.
The recent firing of Army Secretary Thomas White, a highly decorated and widely respected Vietnam veteran, is just one example of how the bush regime has carried out its agenda. On May 2, The Washington Times cited a senior Army official who said, "The Army staff is in a state of belligerence over this final insult. The issue now is when does this attack on the Army stop? When does President Bush put a stop to this? We Republicans did not come into the building to experience a Stalin siege."
The Army officer's reference to a "Stalin siege" is especially ironic considering the fact that the neo-conservative clique running the Bush administration is largely led by self-styled "ex-Trotskyites" - all extreme Zionist ideologues - whose break with communism came in the early 1950s when Soviet ruler Josef Stalin began moving to purge hold-out followers of Leon Trotshy and suspected Zionist agents from the Soviet leadership. A new book, Stalin's Last Crime, by Jonathan Brent and Vladimir Naumov, contends, based on newly released KGB files, that Stalin was poisoned to death in 1953 to prevent this trend from escalating into "another Holocaust."
There is a rebellion in the military against Bush. In any non-democratic
country, this would certainly spell the end of a flawed ruler
of the sort now reigning in the White House. However, the opposition
to Bush could indeed point toward his political demise as military
families across the country abandon Bush as the 2004 election
cycle begins.
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So far, all the reasons cited for invading Iraq have failed the test of truth. Not surprisingly, the "reasons" have changed.
Where are the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) which propelled America into a costly war with Iraq? The Pentagon's Task Force 75, established to track down Saddam Hussein's WMDs, is heading home now, having failed totally to find Iraqi stores of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
They found nothing - unless two trailers that are suspected of being mobile laboratories are considered significant, although neither was found with even a trace of either a biological or chemical weapon.
The absence of any trace of WMDs in Iraq can be compared with the FBI's total failure to present evidence of potassium nitrate, one of the two key ingredients it claimed was in the bomb that was supposed to have blown up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The FBI claimed the evidence was destroyed by mistake in its national laboratory. But who needs evidence?
The Bush administration probably hopes that the American people and the entire world would forget George II's descriptions of Iraqi weapons caches during his Jan. 29 State of the Union address, which rallied the nation to go to war with Iraq.
That was followed by Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security council that chemical and biological weapons, "hundreds of tons" of them, were in Saddam's war arsenal.
Even worse, Powell said, Saddam had been buying uranium from Niger to fast-forward his nuclear weapons program. Of course, Powell's claim was later discredited when it was discovered that his intelligence had been based on forged documents.
The UN accomplished a rare useful feat: With opposition from France, Germany, Russia, China and several lesser nations, the UN refused to be stampeded into rubber-stamping a war with Iraq
So bush, with the support of Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, decided to go it alone. Thus, a new American imperialism was born for the 21st Century.
Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of the Washington-based American Project, writes that the WMDs Saddam was supposed to have had "increasingly seem as phony a casus belli as the destruction of the battleship Maine in an Havana harbor," which propelled America into the Spanish American War of 1898.
And what does the Bush administration say now about these horrible
WMDs? Officials firs point to freeing the Iraqi people from the
brutal dictatorship headed by Saddam. But was Saddam as bad as
the group which has a strangle-hold on mainland China?
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Never has a president of the United States been under such Bilderberg Pressure as the current George Bush. All U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon have had membership in, or close ties to, the world shadow government.
Versailles, France - President Bush is under heavy Bilderberg pressure to monetarily punish Israel unless the peace process progresses and to share the spoils of war on Iraq with Europe.
Bilderberg also hotly debated establishing a European Union army independent of NATO, whether to accept Turkey into the EU and punishing Belgium because of the rise of a "right wing" party".
Bilderberg had similarly punished Austria economically for holding a free election in which Jorge Haider's nationalist party did well.
It is unprecedented for a U.S. president to come under such hostile Bilderberg fire. Not only have such secret meetings been traditionally congenial with participants celebrating their progress toward world government, but Bilderberg has had strong, direct influence over every president since Richard Nixon.
With bush scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon May 20, immediately after the Bilderberg session, the messages from Versailles came frequently and urgently: tell Sharon he must accept the modest steps required in the "road map to peace" or the billions of dollars in U.S. aid will be turned off.
"That is language Israel will understand but Sharon doesn't believe you will do it," a European told the Americans. "You have opposed Israeli expansion and occupation of Palestinian lands with your moth but not your money. Why are you so afraid of the Israeli lobby?"
The answer is obvious to people who follow U.S. politics. The late Sen. J. William Fullbright and congressmen Paul Findley of Illinois and Robert McCloskey of California, among others, all said they lost their seats because of questioning the amount of aid given Israel each year.
The May 20 trip was later postponed because of a suicide bombing incident.
The Europeans are cynical about the United States urging the United Nations to approve the "coalition of the willing" controlling Iraqi oil for the "benefit of the Iraqis" and using the revenues to rebuild what was destroyed. Effectively, this gives control of Iraq to the United states and Britain, with a tip of the hat to Poland and Spain.
Several Europeans suggested the "coalition" would generate huge profits by rebuilding Iraq with its oil money and asked: what European companies would get fat contracts? They noted that the new civilian boss of occupied Iraq is L. Paul Bremer of Kissinger Associates.
Henry Kissinger was there, but was protected by an armada of security who kept him from having to respond to a subpoena from a French court investigating war crimes.
The U.S. government has already awarded a $680 million contract to construction giant Bechtel, based in San Francisco. George Schultz was head of Bechtel when named secretary of state by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and regularly attended Bilderberg/Trilateral meetings. Schultz is still on the Bechtel board.
Another contract that captured Bilderberg attention went to Kellogg Brown & Root to fignt oil fires and operate the oil infrastructure in Iraq. KBR is a subsidiary of Hilliburton, headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president. Cheney belongs to the Trilateral Commission.
Even as Bilderberg was meeting, Secretary of State Colin Powell was visiting Russia and Germany for make up meetings seeking support for a UN Security Council resolution endorsing U.S.-British control of Iraq and its assets. While both nations displayed a desire to have friendly relations, both suggested the U.S. plan needs adjustments.
While honeymooning with Russia and Germany, the United States continued to "punish" France with insults. As Bilderberg met here on May 15, Richard Haass, a senior Bush policymaker, was a short distance away in Paris saying France could redeem itself by supporting the resolution.
"I think France has paid some price already, and by that I mean that it's reputation in the United States has taken a hit," Haass said. Pointedly, Powell paid no official visit to the French.
But bashing America was somewhat chilled for the Europeans by a report from the respected French Institute of International Relations predicting an economic doomsday for the continent. By 2050, said the report, World Trade in the 21st Century, Europe's share of the world economy will be only 12 percent, compared with 20 percent today.
"The enlargement of the European Union won't suffice to guarantee parity with the United States," the report said. "The EU will weigh less heavily on the process of globalization and a slow but inexorable movement onto ‘history's exit ramp' is foreseeable."
North America will retain its "technological hegemony," the report said. Greater China, which includes Taiwan, will grow to account for almost one-quarter of the world's economy and the Japan-Korea region's share of trade, along with the yen, will sharply decline in importance.
"Very depressing," said one European. "Very depressing."
"Lord" George Robertson, secretary-general of NATO, led the opposition, which is shared by many Europeans, to an independent EU army.
Robertson argued that it would be incoherent for an EU army to operate outside NATO. He cited "the agreement that NATO should be prepared to operate beyond its traditional area of responsibility in Europe." NATO can now operate anywhere in the world as directed by the UN Security Council, Robertson said. NATO has evolved into a standing UN army, Robertson said.
"NATO must remain the sole global force able to impose the will of the UN anywhere on Earth," said another European.
Europeans urged the British to press for a favorable decision on embracing the euro on June 9, but this seems unlikely. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has attended Bilderberg meetings, is strongly pro-euro. But the British people are opposed and it would be politically dangerous for Blair to embrace the euro without a popular referendum. Many French and Germans were outraged when their governments surrendered the franc and mark without a vote.
The last time Bilderberg punished a country because it disliked the results of a fair election was in Austria when Haider's nationalist party was on the rise. So Bilderberg moved its meeting from a resort near Innsbruck where it had congregated years earlier. The facility was tailor-made: a posh resort atop a tall mountain easily sealed off.
But since such elaborate arrangements have to be made years
in advance, Bilderberg was unable to find it customary luxury
resort. Bilderberg ended up, uncomfortably, at the Dhateau du
Lok near Brussels - with some luminaries staying in little cottages
surrounding a central building.
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So far, Bilderberg has succeeded in keeping secret its list of participants and official agenda. But what transpired at the meetings has been exposed and many participants positively identified.
Reporters and photographers, sometimes working in shifts, patrolled outside the Trianon Palace all day, every day, as Bilderberg met behind closed doors and armed guards.
Every day, they gathered at the Novotel bar to compare notes and pool information. Copies of American Free Press's first story, filed from Versailles for the May 26, 2003 edition, were provided to the European journalists.
The only other American "journalists" at the meeting were Bilderberg participants.
Hundreds of photos were circulated on a table for all to examine. Most would not be published - just a face behind a darkened Window in a limo.
But Gunnar Blondal, a journalist from Norway, had a laptop computer that could enhance photos, leading to many positive identifications - usually by two or more reporters.
Others were identified by sight as they ventured outside into the brisk, spring air.
Others were identified by subterfuge - such as contacting the Trianon with an "emergency call from home" and getting the participant on the phone.
WHO SHOWED UP?
By these means, the following have been positively identified as participating:
Queen Beatrix of the Netherland; Ali Babacan, minister of the
economy in Turkey; King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia of Spain;
Jacques Chirac, president of France; Kenneth Clark, former British
chancellor of the exchequer and member of Parliament; Etienne
D'aviganon, Societe General of Belgium; Jean Louis Debre, president
of the French National Assembly; Kermal Dervis, Turkey; Paul Gigot,
Wall Street Journal; Sevein Gjerem, CEO of the National
Bank of Norway; Henry Kissinger, head of Kissinger Associates;
Pascual Lamy, European Union; Egil Myklebust chairman of the aircraft
firm Norsk Hydro SAS; Richard Perle, Defense Policy Board; Andres
Fogh-Rasmussen, prime minister of denmark; Dvid Rockefeller, J.P.
Morgan International Council; Dominque de Billepin, French foreign
minister; Wolfgang Schaulde, opposition leader in Germany; Otto
Schilly, minister of the home office in Germany; Paavo Lipponen,
former prime minister of Finland; Jarmd Ollila, DEO of Nobid in
Finland; Anna Lindh, foreign minister of Sweden; Peter sutherland,
Chairman of Goldman Sachs International and chairman of BP Amoco
and Marty Taylor, secretary of Bilderberg.
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By focusing on the marginal vandalism and violence that accompanied the recent Group of Eight summit in France, the plutocratic media has misrepresented the extent and character of the widespread European opposition to globalization.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland—Authorities estimate the number of protesters at the recent Group of Eight (G-8) summit in Evian, France at 150,000.
The protesters were from all over Europe and America and represented many groups, right and left, religious and secular, political and educational.
Although violence was the focus of the press (it was marginal and perhaps perpetrated by agents provocateurs) the real news was the huge number of people exercising their democratic right of protest.
"Democracy" seems to be a word commonly used by politicians to whitewash their misdeeds and aggressions but it means little otherwise.
Rather than delve into the peaceful and massive Sunday protest, the largest in the history of Geneva, or discuss the issues that compelled thousands of Europeans to march, the mainstream media chose to dwell on the sporadic violence committed by a small group of militant "anarchists," estimated by the Swiss press to have consisted of about 30 individuals. Such skewed reporting discredits the public's legitimate grievances and misrepresents the character of European opposition to globalization.
The G-8 is an informal summit of the leaders from the world's seven wealthiest nations: the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan—plus Russia. Senior officers from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the United Nations, also attend. This year, for the first time, the leaders of China, India, and a number of other nations were invited.
As the G-8 met from June 1-3, the area around Lake Geneva appeared to be under military occupation with 20,000 police and military personnel providing layers of security.
The summit is estimated to have cost French and Swiss taxpayers $240 million. Expecting mob violence, the city of Geneva made an unprecedented request for 1,000 German police to help keep order. The security measures for the Swiss cities of Geneva and Lausanne cost more than $32 million.
Across the lake from Evian, Lausanne's Hotel Beau Rivage housed the delegations of the second-tier nations from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, who were invited to join some G-8 discussions by the host, French President Jacques Chirac.
The neighborhood around the Beau Rivage and the harbor of Lausanne was sealed off with a wall made of shipping containers, barricades, and coils of razor wire. Boats were not allowed on the lake for the duration of the summit and air space over the lake was closed to all traffic.
Chirac invited five African leaders to the summit. "The G-8 has to open up and expand its dialogue with other countries," a spokesman for the French president said of the unprecedented inclusion of non-member states.
Chirac urged G-8 members to fulfill their pledges, from previous commitments, and provide Africa with $6 billion in development aid.
As the summit ended, however, Chirac's agenda for development aid to Africa appeared to have been "hijacked" by U.S. and British proposals concerning the "war on terrorism," Iraq and weapons of mass destruction.
While the protesters that made up the massive protest march from Geneva to the French border town of Annemasse represented a wide range of groups, their opposition to the G-8 was unanimous and clear. The most common complaints were that the G-8 is illegitimate, undemocratic and favored "profits over people."
"This club of predominantly rich and dominant states reflects the development of a globalization founded on the pursuit of profit and conformed to the narrow interests of multinational corporations," one of the protest organizations says on its web site. "The recommendations of the G-8 are put into practice by international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank; these few countries are also the major shareholders of the World Trade Organization.
"The G-8, in effect, asserts its function as a kind of world government, a role for which the world's people never asked of it," it says.
"We didn't elect them to do this," French protesters in Annemasse told AFP. "They [G-8 leaders] are making decisions about things and places where they have no right."
The marchers were strongly opposed to the war in Iraq and condemned Anglo-American "imperialism" in the Middle East.
Many marchers, the great majority of whom came from workers' groups and socialist organizations, carried Palestinian flags and peace banners demanding an end to the occupations of Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The march drew people from all walks of life and the whole of Europe, the Middle East, and beyond. The diversity of the march could be seen in the banners that included French farmers, Swiss workers, teachers, church groups, Turkish communists and groups from Greece.
Teachers from the south of France told AFP that they had come to protest plans to privatize the public services, including education, in France.
"What is the point of G-8 summits?" The Financial Times of London asked as the summit leaders gathered in Evian. The agenda is not clear, the paper wrote, and G-8 venues "tend to be redecorated by anti-globalization protesters" while the summiteers "wallow in waffle."
President Bush arrived late, left a day early, and looked uneasy throughout the summit.
As Bush arrived in Evian, Le Temps, a leading Geneva daily, asked, "And the prisoners of Guantanamo, Mr. President?"
As Bush departed on Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was left to take the heat in a sweltering press conference. Blair was peppered with questions from British journalists about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and serious allegations that he had conspired with Bush and had "duped" the British people with exaggerated claims about Iraq's abilities.
Denying the accusations that have come from former cabinet members, Blair said: "I think it is important that if people actually have evidence that they produce it."
"Precisely, Prime Minister" was the headline on the
following day's Independent of London, which showed the
visibly uncomfortable prime minister sweating in front of the
Union Jack.
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The mainstream "news" media is engrossed with a sensational murder case to the exclusion of significant stories.
Why is the Establishment news media so enthralled with a simple murder case in California? While many important stories are going unreported or underreported, the national news media can't seem to devote enough newspaper space or radio and television broadcast time to the murder case of pregnant mother Laci Peterson in Modesto, Calif., and the subsequent arrest and prosecution of her husband, Scott, for the crime.
As ghastly as it is, the Peterson case is not a story worthy of national news coverage. Similar murder cases take place in America every day and go unmentioned by the national media.
However, experienced and objective journalists cannot help but note that the Peterson case erupted in the national media at about the time the war in Iraq was winding down.
Mrs. Peterson's disappearance had been reported before that time in the media but it became a real media sensation at the end of the Iraq war. Why?
Here are two stories that the national media should be jumping all over but don't seem particularly interested in covering.
* Where are the weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that were supposed to have been in Iraq? Claims of Saddam's stockpiles propelled us into a war with the Middle east nation that caused the death of more than 200 American servicemen and the wounding of several hundred others with more to come.
* Why is the Halliburton Co., headed by Dick Cheney prior to his becoming vice president, the recipient of a classified contract to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure after the war, including its oil producing equipment and the actual marketing of Iraqi oil?
In the case of Saddam Hussein's elusive WMDs the U.S. government has yet to produce a single piece of tangible evidence that his regime had vast stores of chemical and biological weapons or advanced technology that allowed Iraq to be close to developing nuclear weapons.
President George W. Bush - Iraq has the "materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent" and Iraq has "30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - Saddam Hussein "has an active program to acquire and develop nuclear weapons."
Secretary of State Colin Powell - "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent."
Okay, so where are they?
Is American intelligence, which supposedly came up with the above figures, so bad that it made such colossal errors or failed to detect, as we are now led to believe, that the Iraqis towed hundreds of tons of WMDs across the border into Syria?
Could this transfer of WMDs to Syria, or wherever, have escaped every drone spy aircraft, U-2 spy plane, and high-flying spy satellite that criss-crossed Iraqi skies?
"If we fail to find WMDs, it's because they didn't exist," Jay Bookman recently wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. No one in the Bush administration has challenged Bookman's conclusion.
As for the Halliburton story, most Americans have probably never even heard of it.
But Halliburton has been handed a contract, for which hides were never accepted by the Bush administration to earn billions from the reconstruction of Iraq and U.S. control of Iraqi oil. This is in spite of the fact that Halliburton has a history of fleecing the U.S. government - and the taxpayers who support it - and for doing business, against various sanctions - with Iraq, Iran, Libya and other unfriendly countries.
So why is it rewarded with a multi-billion dollar contract for which it did not even have to bid, contrary to the dictates of U.S. law?
And who is shouting to the rooftops about such an outrage? It appears only a liberal Democrat congressman from California, Rep Henry Waxman, who wrote a letter recently to Secretary Runsfeld, stating:
"Since at least the 1980s, federal laws have prohibited
U.S. companies from doing business in one or more of these countries
(Iran, Iraq and Libya). Yet Halliburton appears to have sought
to circumvent these restrictions by setting up subsidiaries in
foreign countries and territories such as the Cayman Islands.
These actions started as early as 1984; they appear to have continued
during the period between 1995 and 2000, when Vice President Cheney
headed the company and they are apparently ongoing even today."
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Ariel Sharon's dramatic reversal of Israeli occupation policy - publicly, at least - is a direct result of pressure from the powerful, secret Bilderberg gang.
In a rare moment in its half-century of secret meetings to plan the world, Bilderberg has accomplished some good: pressuring the Israeli government to at least publicly back off its policy of expanding Israel and oppressing Palestinians.
Even as Bilderberg was secretly meeting inside the Trianon Palace in Versailles, France May 15-18, the Israeli prime minister was rejecting the "road map" to peace with contempt.
Sharon told the Jerusalem
Post and other Israeli media that Israel would never return
any of the Palestinian lands seized in the past half-century.
Sharon laughed at suggestions that U.S. aid may be reduced or
eliminated unless his policy of expanding the occupation ended.
He boasted that all U.S. administrations have opposed Israeli
settlements while blank-check aid never stopped.
According to The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Sharon has boasted: ‘We the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it."
European Bilderberg participants were outraged at Sharon's attitude and complained vociferously to American participants (American Free Press, May 26, 2003). Europeans placed angry calls to their own government officials and to Israel.
A week later, on May 26, Sharon reversed himself - at least publicly. He told his stunned countrymen that he was determined to reach a peace agreement and end the "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It was the first time Sharon had publicly uttered the word "occupation" - which is anathema to many Israelis who claim the land as their own religious and political reasons.
"To keep 3.5 million people under occupation is bad for us and them," Sharon told outraged members of his Likud Party in comments broadcast on Israeli radio. "This can't continue endlessly. Do you want to remain forever in Ramallah, Jenin, Nablus?" he asked, naming towns in the West Bank.
Response to Bilderberg
Sharon's startling reversal of rhetoric was in direct response to European Bilderberg luminaries because he feared the U.S. government could be pressured into punishing Israel's occupation by reducing or ending the annual foreign aid.
While Sharon's comments are widely viewed with cynicism by those who expect him to find some was to escape the "road map" he has officially embraced, some held out hope that the Israeli leader might be sincere.
"Sharon is a pragmatist," said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. "He is capable of change when circumstances require."
But Yossi Sarid, a member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), was more cynical, saying Sharon wanted the U.S. government to assume that he was committed to the peace plan while his hawkish allies could assume he was just making a tactical move to appease the Europeans and Americans.
"Ariel Sharon likes to walk in the fog, because then no
one knows where he is headed," Sarid wrote in the Yediot
Ahronot newspaper.
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Usually, Bilderberg has about five new faces among the 120, some to be quickly cast aside when deemed useless, others to be made into presidents. Here's an examination of the new faces and cast-asides from the latest secret confab.
The most interesting aspect of the official Bilderberg participant list - the people whose presence is acknowledged however reluctantly - is those who were supposedly absent.
For the first time in a half-century, nobody from The Washington Post was on the 2003 Bilderberg list. Traditionally, the Post publisher attends and, in recent years with columnist Jim Hoagland.
Three senators invited in recent years, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) And Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) are unlisted. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) Is the only lawmaker listed. He was a long-time Bilderberg luminary representing Goldman Sachs until buying himself a Senate seat for more than $60 million.
"Journalists" who attended on promise of adhering to strict Chatham House rules and reporting nothing - a vow that permanently commits any media outlet that's ever participated - included:
Paul Gigot, Wall Street Journal; Thomas Friedman, New York Times; Nicholas Beytout, Les Echoes of France; Olli Kivinen, Helsinki Sanomat; Matthias Nass, Die Zeit; Marco Panara, La Republica of Italy; Martin Wolf, Financial Times, London; Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek International and "rapporteurs" John Micklethwait and Gideon Rachman of The Economist.
The absence of senators who have been invited several times does not necessarily suggest that they have fallen from favor. They have been embarrased by inquiries from constituents - many of whom have made public their exchange of letters in which their lawmaker tried to rationalize his participation. The office of each of the missing senators promised to determine if their lawmaker had attended Bilderberg and call back. None did.
Another interesting absentee is George Soros. The global billionaire had been a fixture at Bilderberg for years. But he was convicted of financial crimes in a French court. For all the evil work conducted in secrecy since 1954, Bilderberg is reluctant to have felons present. Bilderberg abandoned its first chairman, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, after he became ensnared in a Lockheed scandal.
Queen Beatrix has attended all Bilderberg meetings for more than 20 years. She has never served time in prison.
Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and Richard Perle of the Pentagon's advisory board attended to try and justify the invasion of Iraq.
The Europeans were unappeased and outraged.
Perle had been a Defense department official under President Ronald Reagan and attends bilderberg when Republicans occupy the White House.
John Bolton, under-secretary of state, also participated.
Interlocking leadership with the Trilateral commission - a more public arm of Bilderberg - had the usual representation: David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Peter Sutherland, head of Goldman Sachs International and BP Amoco.
Other Bilderberg wings were represented by George Perkovich (U.S.A.) And Lila Shevtssova (Russia) of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and James Steinberg of the Brookings Institution.
Rockefeller, Kissinger and numerous other Bilderberg luminaries
belong to the 3,000-member Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR
functions as the propaganda ministry of the world shadow government
and, traditionally, scholarly papers appear within months advocating
bilderberg causes discussed at the secret meetings each spring.
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Honorary Chairman,
Davignon, Etienne, Vice Chairman, Societe Generale de Beligique
Honorary Secretary General,
Taylor, J Martin - UK, Chairman WH Smith PLC; International
advisor, Goldman Sachs International.
Adler, Alexandre-France, Editorial counsel, Le Figaro
Ambrosetti, Alfredo-Italy, Chairman Ambrosetti Group
Babacan, Ali-Turkey, Minister of Economic Affairs
Bakoyannis, Dora-Greece, Mayor of Anthens
Balls, Edward-UK, Chief economic Advisor to the Treasury
Balsemäo, Francisco Pinto-Portugal, Professor of Communication
Science, New University, Lisbon; Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.;
Former Prime Minister
Barroso, José M. Duräo-Portugal, Prime Minister
Bayar, Mehmet A.-Turkey, Deputy Chairman of DYP (True Path
Party)
Becker, Erich-Austria, Chairman of the Managing Board and
CE, VA Technologie AG
Bendetti, Rodolfo de-Italy, managing Director CIR S.p.A.
Bernabé, Franco-Italy, Chairman Franco Bernabe &
C.S.p.A.
Beytout, Nicolas-France, Editor-in-Chief, Les Echos
Bishara, Ahmad E.-Kuwait, Secretary General of Kuwait's
liberal National Democratic Party
Black, Conrad M.-Canda, Chairman, Telegraph Group Limited
Bolkestein, Frits-International, Internal Markets Commissioner,
European Commission
Bolton, John R.-USA, Under-Secretary of State for Arms
Control and International Security
Bon, Michel-France, Honorary Chairman, France Telecom
Bruguiè, Jean-Louis-France, First Vice President,
Justice Department
Burda, Hubert-Denmark, Publisher and CEO, Hubert Burda
Media Holdin GmbH & Co.
Camus, Phillipe-France, CEO, European Aeronautics Defence
and Space company European Aeronautics Defence and Space company
(EADS)
Cary, Anthony J.-International, Head of christopher Patten's
cabinet, EU. Patten is European Commissioner for Enlargement
Castries, Henri de-France, Chairman of the Board, AXA
Cebrián,Juan Luis-Spain, CEO, PRISA
Claes, Willy-Belgium, Former Minister of State and former
Secretary General of NATO 1994 -1995
Clarke, Kenneth-UK, Member of Parliament, [former Chancellor
of the Exhequer]
Collins, Timothy C.-USA, Senior Managing Director and CEO,
Ripplewood Holdings LLC
Collomb, Bertrand-France, Chairman and DEO, Lafarge
Copé, Jean-François-France, Secretary of
State in charge of relations with Parliament; Government Spokesman
Corzine, Jon S.-USA, Senator (D,N.J.)
Dahibäck, Claes-Sweden, Chairman, Investor AB
David, George A.-UK, Chairman of the Board, Coca-Cola H.B.C.
S.A.
Donilon, Thomas E.-USA, Executive Vice President, Fannie
Mae
Draghi, Mario-Italy, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director,
Goldman Sachs International
Eldrup, Anders-Denmark, CEO, Danish Oil and Gas Corporation
Feldstein, Martin S.-USA, President and CEO, National bureau
of Economic Research
Fell, Anthony S.-Canada, Chairman, RBC Dominion Securities
Inc.
Friedman, Thomas L.-USA, Foreign Affairs Columnist, The
New York Times
Gergorin, Jean-Luis-France, Executive Vice President, Strategic
Coordination, European Aeronautics Defence and Space company (EADS)
Gigot, Paul A.-USA, Editorial Page editor, The Wall
Street Journal
Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry-France, French President
1974-81; Chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe
Gjedrem, Svein-Norway, Governor, Central Bank of Norway
Gleeson, Dermot-Ireland, Chairman designate, Allied Irish
Banks, p.l.c.
Gould, Philip-UK, Public Relations adviser to Prime Minister
Tony Blair
Haass, Richard N.-USA, Director, Office of Policy Planning
Staff, State Department
Halberstadt, Victor-Netherlands, Professor of Economics,
Leiden University; Former honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg
Meetings.
Harper, Stephen-Canada, Leader of the Opposition
Hertog, Roger-USA, Vice-Chairman, Alliance Capital Management
Hoop Scheffer, Jaap G. de-Netherlands, Minister for Foreign
Affairs
Hubbard, Allan B.-USA, President, E&A Industries
Hubbard, R. Glenn-USA, Russell L. Carson Professor of Economics
and Finance, Columbia University
Johnson, James A.-USA, Vice Chairman, Perseus L.L.C.
Jordan, Jr., Vernon E.-USA, Senior Managing director Lazard
Freres & Co. L.L.C.
Kielholz, Walter B.-Switzerland, Former Chairman of the
Board, Credit Suisse; Executive Vice chairman of the Board of
Directors, Swiss Re
King, Mervyn A.-UK, Deputy Governor, Bank of England
Kissinger, Henry A.-USA, Chairman Kissinger Associates,
Inc.; Member, Defense Policy Board; Member, J.P. Morgan International
council
Kivinen, Olli-Finland, Senior Editor & Columnist, Helsingin
Sanomat
Kok, Wim-Netherlands, Former Prime Minister
Kopper, Hilmar-Germany, former Chairman of the supervisory
Board, Deutsche Bank AG
Kravis, Henry R.-USA, Founding Partner, Kohlberg Kravis
Roberts & Co.
Kravis, Marie-Joseé-USA, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute,
Inc.
Lamy, Pascal-International, trade Commissioner, European
Commission
Lellouche, Pierre-France, Vice Chairman, NATO Parliamentary
Assembly
Lévy-Lang, André-France, Former Chairman,
Paribas
Lindh, Anna-Sweden, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Lipponen, Paavo-Finland Former Prime Minister, Speaker
of the Parliament
Lykkwroft, Mogens-Denmark, Chairman, social Democrat Party
MacMillan, Margaret O.-Canada, Provost, Trinity College
University of Toronto
Margelov, Mikhall V.-Russia, Chairman, Committee for Foreign
Affairs, Council of Federation
Montbrial, Thierry de-France, President, French Institute
of International Relations (IFR)
Monti, Mario-International, Competition Commissioner, European
Commission
Mundie, Craig J.-USA, Chief Technical Officer, Advanced
Strategies and Policy, Microsoft Corporation
Myklebust, Egil-Netherlands, Chairman, Norsk Hydro ASA
Naas, Matthias-Germany, Deputy Editor, Die Zeit
Queen Beatrix-Netherlands, Queen of Netherlands
Olechowski, Andrzej-Poland, Leader, Civic Platform
Ollila, Jorma-Finland, chairman of the Board and CEO, Nokia
Corporation
Padoa-Schioppa, Thomasso-International, Member of the Executive
Board, European Central Bank
Panara, Marco-Italy, Journalist, La Republica
Passera, Corrado-Italy, Managing Director, Banca IntesaBCI
Perkovich, George-USA, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace
Perle, Richard N.-USA, Member, Defense Policy Board; Resident
Fellow, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) for Public Policy
Research; Member, Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
Prince Philippe-Belgium, Crown Prince of Belgium
Poli, Roberto-Italy, Chirman, Eni S.p.A.
Ranque, Denis-France, chairman and CEO, Thales Aerospace
and Defence
Rasmussen, Anders Fogh-Denmark, Prime Minister
Relsman, Heather-Canada, President and CEO, Indigo Books
& Music Inc.
Riboud, Franck-France, Chairman and DEO, Danone Foods
Tingier, Michael-Switzerland, DEO, Ringier AG
Rockefeller, David-USA, member, J.P. Morgan International
Council
Rodriques, Eduardo Ferro-Portugal, Leader of the Socialist
Party; Member of Parliament
Rodriquez Inciarte, Matias-Spain, Executive Vice chairman,
Banco Santander central Hispano
Roy, Olivier-France, Senior Researcher, CNRS
Ruggie, John-USA, director, Center for Business and Government,
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Ruys, Anthony-Netherlands, Chairman of the Board Heineken
N.V.
Sanberk, Özdem-Turkey, Director, Turkish Economic
and Social Studies Foundation
Scaroni, Paolo-Italy, Managing director, Enel S.p.A.
Schäuble, Wolfgang-Germany, Deputy Parliamentary Leader,
CDU/CSU Group
Schily, Itto-Germany, Minister of the Interior
Scholten, Rudolf-Austria, Member of the board of Executive
Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollband AG
Schrempp, Jurgen E-Germany, Chairman of the Board of Management,
Daimier Chrysler AG
Schwab, Klaus-International, President, World Economic
Forum
Seldenfaden, Toger-Denmark, Editor in chief, Politiken
Shevtsova, Lilia-Russia, Senior associate, Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace
Queen of Spain
Steinberg, James B.-USA, Vice President and Director Foreign
Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution
Steyn, Mark-Canada, journalist for various publications
Sutherland, Peter D.-Ireland, Chairman and Managing Director,
Goldman sachs International; Chairman, BP Amoco
Thornton, John L.-USA, President and CEO, Goldman Sachs
Group, Inc.
Trichet, Jean Claude-France, Governor, Banque de France
Tsoukalis, Loukas-Greece, Professor, University of Athens;
President Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy
Tumpel-Gugerell, Gertrude-Austria, Vice Governor, Central
Bank of Austia
Vasella, Daniel L.-Switzerland, Chairman and CEO, Novartis
AG
Veer, Jeroen van der-Netherlands, President, Royal Dutch
Petroleum Company; Vice Chairman of the Committee of Managing
Directors of Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies
Villin, Philippe-France, Vice Chairman, Lehman Brothers
Europe
Vries, Klaas de-Netherlands, Member of Parliament (Labour);
Former Minister of the Interior
Wahlroos, Björn-Finland, President and CEO, Sampo
pic.
Wallenberg, Jacob-Sweden, chairman of the Board Skandinavivsha
Enskilda Banken
Williams, Gareth-UK, Leader of the House of Lords
Wolf, Martin H.-UK, Associate Editor/Economics commentator,
The Financial Times
Wallenberg, Jacob-Sweden, Chairman of the Board, Skandinavivsha
Enskilda Banken
Williams, Gareth-UK, Leader of the House of Lords
Wolf, Martin H.-UK, Associate Editor/Economics Commentator,
The Financial Times
Wolfensohn, James D.-USA/International, President, The
World Bank
Wolfowitz, Paul-USA Deputy Swcretary of defense, US Department
of Defense
Zakaria, Fareed-USA, Editor, Newsweek International
Zoellick, Robert-USA, Principal Trade Adviser to the President
Zumwinkel, Klaus-Germany, Chairman, Deutsche Post Worldnet
AG
Rapporteurs
Micklethwait, R.John-UK, United States Editor, The Economist
Rachman, Gideon-UK, Brussels correspondent, The Economist
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Federal officials are reopening secret files that have been kept on people over the years in a sweeping new program to try and round up those the government believes may want to commit terrorist acts in the future.
The federal government's "anything goes" policy in regard to illegal immigration over the past years is now making work for the Justice Department.
So many illegals are now suspected of being potential terrorists that prosecutors are reviewing files going back at least 25 years that include sensitive telephone and email wiretaps. They are attempting to determine if there are any violations which they believe warrant prosecution.
Senior federal prosecutors from across the country met June 3 in Washington with Attorney General John Ashcroft, who ordered the review of more than 4,500 intelligence files to help in what Ashcroft believes is the pursuit of "hundreds and hundreds" of suspected terrorists in America.
The wiretaps and clandestine searches of people's homes, businesses and records were performed during the past 25 years on suspected spies and terrorists under authority of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The searches and surveillance were authorized by a super-secret U.S. spy court, which issued warrants allowing the FBI to break into homes, offices, hotel rooms and other places to install secret cameras, copy computer files and eavesdrop on telephone conversations. The agents also intercepted emails and pried into subjects' safe deposit boxes.
Until recently, Justice Department prosecutors were not entitled to the contents of files of U.S. intelligence agencies, which were limited only to government espionage and counter terrorism experts.
However, a recent federal court ruling now allows the review by Justice Department prosecutors of the old intelligence files.
"All U.S. attorney offices around the country are looking at the closed and open intelligence investigations to review for criminal purposes nationwide," Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, explained.
"I'm not forecasting who, what, when and where we'll bring whatever in the future," he added, "but it's not limited to any one U.S. attorney's office."
In many instances, American Free Press has learned, the secret wiretaps and searches are so sensitive—even after decades of languishing in secret files—that prosecutors may never be able to even hint about them in open court or that a defendant was the target of such surveillance by government counterintelligence or counterterrorism agents.
Civil libertarians contend that the advent of secret evidence
would make it impossible for suspects to defend themselves in
court as they and their lawyers would need a security clearance
to gain access to the details.
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A newly released report notes that during the coalition air assault on Iraq, Central Command "authorized" bombing strikes against "media facilities" in which a number of journalists were killed and employed weapons that human rights groups want banned.
A detailed analysiis of the coalition air campaign done by Michael Moseley of the U.S. Air Force says there were 10 authorized strikes against "media facilities," including the bombing of the Bagdad office of the Qatar-based al Jazeera Arabic television news network, according to an article in The Age, an Australian newspaper that obtained an unclassified version of the report.
In Baghdad three journalists were killed on April 8 when their offices were shelled or bombed by U.S. forces. Two journalists died when a tank shell struck the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel and the third died when the offices of the Qatar-based al Jazeera were hit by a single missile fired from a U.S. aircraft. A third office belonging to a news network from Abu Dhabi was also hit on the same day.
Robert Fisk, a British journalist reporting from Baghdad for The Independent, said that U.S. claims made by Gen. Buford Blount that there had been sniper fire coming from the Palestine Hotel were false.
"I was between the tank and the hotel when the shell was fired,' said Fisk. "There was no sniper fire - nor any rocket-propelled grenade fire, as the American officer claimed - at the time.
In a scathing article titled "Did the U.S. murder these journalists?" Fisk wrote that Mohamed Jassem al-Ali, managing director of al Jazeera, had written to Victoria Clark, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, at the Pentagon on Feb. 24 informing her of the precise coordinates of al Jazeera's office in Baghdad. Al-Ali's letter informed the Pentagon of the location of the office and the fact that civilian journalists would be working in the building.
When al Jazeera's office was bombed on April 8, killing the station's reporter Tareq Ayoub, Al-Ali wrote again to Clark: "We find these events unjustifiable, unacceptable, arousing all forms of anger and rejection and most of all in need of an explanation."
The explanation seems to come in Moseley's reported analysis of the bombing campaign, which states there were 10 authorized strikes against "media facilities." Moseley's assessment, titled "Operation Iraqi Freedom - By the Numbers," is based on military records from March 19 to April 18.
American Free Press sent the Pentagon a copy of the June 3 article from The Age with a few questions. In reply to the question whether it were true that the bombing of al Jazeera's office in Baghdad had been authorized, came a terse statement "attributable to Defense officials: Coalition forces did not deliberately nor specifically target news media."
There was no response to the question: Is it true that al Jazeera provided the Pentagon and/or Centcom with the exact coordinates of their Baghdad office in order to inform the U.S. forces of their location as a precaution?
However, the fact that al Jazeera had informed the pentagon of and the code of its signal to the satellite transponder was reported in The Guardian on March 24.
Al Jazeera' s office in Kabul was also bombed in November 2001, despite having provided U.S. authorities in Washington with the coordinates of its location as a precaution. The Kabul office was destroyed by U.S. "Smart" bombs two hours before the Northern Alliance took over the city.
It was the fact that al Jazeera was broadcasting "blood-and-guts images from the invasion of Iraq" around the world that angered the United States, according to The Guardian. Millions of viewers throughout the Middle East saw pictures of Iraqi and American victims...that many western news organizations would consider too shocking to publish," it said.
When secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denounced al Jazeera for broadcasting images of captured U.S. soldiers, Jihad Ballout, a spokesman for the network responded: "Look who's talking about international law and regulations. We didn't make the pictures - the pictures are there. It's a facet of the war. Our duty is to show the war from all angles."
The assessment of the coalition air campaign also reported that 240,000 cluster bombs were dropped on Iraq. Because cluster bombs spread hundreds of "bomblets" over a large area they are not meant to be used in civilian areas. Due to a high frequency of unexploded bomblets, areas bombed by cluster bombs are "contaminated" and dangerous for years.
A leaked map of unexploded cluster bombs dropped by coalition aircraft was recently revealed in The Observer, a British newspaper. The map shows "an appalling level of contamination," according to Richard Lloyd, director of Landmine Action. Lloyd, who visited Iraq to assess the danger, said about the map, "It confirms that American and British forces attacked built-up areas in cities with cluster bombs."
Asked about the use of cluster bombs in Iraq, Defense officials told AFP, "Coalition forces conducted meticulous targeting techniques and used highly accurate weapons systems in order to minimize harm to Iraqi civilians and their infrastructure," adding that they were "still working on information on the use of cluster bombs."
"Operation Iraqi Freedom - By the Numbers" also said
that the U.S. used 800 Tomahawk missiles. AFP asked the U.S. Navy's
office of Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aircraft about the approximate
cost of each missile. The Tomahawk Block 3 missiles used in Iraq
were produced by Raytheon's missile division in Tucson, Ariz.,
and cost $1 million each, according the the Navy, but today's
replacement cost for the missiles used would be $1.4 million "per
copy" or about $1.2 billion.
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As many critics of waging an aggressive war on Iraq feared, it now appears likely that the United States will become increasingly mired in the efforts to reconstruct a country ravaged by war and sanctions for more than a decade.
Recently fired Army Secretary Thomas White said last week that senior defense officials "are unwilling to come to grips" with the scale of the postwar R.S. obligation in Iraq. Similarly, in February, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki brought the same message to Congress:: Occupation of Iraq would take "several hundred thousand" troops. Both men have been publicly admonished.
But as our commitment in Iraq continues to expand, how far off are these statements?
A recent Washington Post editorial suggests that, "The reality is that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will likely be in Iraq for years to come, and that country will not recover without extensive investment by the United States and other international donors."
Of course, what this means is that American taxpayers are to be squeezed in every direction to pay to "fix" Iraq. And it is becoming increasingly obvious that the open-ended American military presence in Iraq is not welcome: In the past two weeks eight American soldiers have, tragically, been killed in Iraq.
[Some 39 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Bush declared "an end to major military operations in Iraq" May 1.-Ed]
This is not what the attack on Iraq was supposed to be about. It wasn't supposed to be about an indefinite U.S. military occupation.
"Regime change" was supposed to mean that one Saddam Hussein was overthrown the Iraqi people would run their own affairs. "Liberation" was supposed to mean that the Iraqi people would be free to form their own government and rebuild their own economy.
Yet the United States is spending tens of billions of dollars and more rebuilding Iraq. The Army's 3rd Infantry Division, scheduled to return home after its success in Iraq, will remain "indefinitely" because securing Iraq is proving more difficult than defense planners envisioned. The U.S. civilian authority controlling Iraq has cancelled plans to allow the Iraqis to form their own provisional government. American bureaucrats are even running the Iraqi media.
What are we getting ourselves into?
I see the real possibility of our government getting into an expensive, long-term entanglement in Iraq at exactly the time we are beginning to see financial troubles on the horizon.
As our nation slinks further into debt and back into deficit, we are making decisions that will literally put our children and grandchildren on the line to pay interest payments for our current policy toward Iraq.
This policy threatens the long-term health not just of our economy but domestic spending on items like education and social security. While some of us in Congress raised these concerns prior to the beginning of the war with Iraq, our questions went unanswered.
Instead of focusing on how this commitment would almost certainly drain our resources for years to come, the policy debate wrongly focused almost exclusively on whether we would have the "moral support" of our "allies" and international organizations such as NATO and the UN.
When American policymakers consider the wisdom of foreign entanglements it would be best that they first understand the long-tern implications for the people we are elected to represent.
We failed to do that with Iraq and the length, difficulty and seriousness of the long-term commitment is only now coming to be realized by those who advocated this entanglement.
Unfortunately, once a project such as this has begun it becomes extremely difficult to set the ship aright and change the course of ppolicy to better reflect the interests of our nations and its citizens. One thing is clear: winning the military battle against Saddam Hussein may well prove the easiest - and perhaps the least costly - part.
Rep. Ron Paul, M.D. represents the 14 District of Texas in
Congress. Paul, a Libertarian, is one of the few members of Congress
willing to mention politically incorrect issues in public.
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Big manufacturers championed NAFTA. Many are now asking for a taxpayer bailout because of their stupidity.
The National Association of Manufacturers is calling for taxpayers to bail out its industries because of the predictable job losses under HAFTA - which it loudly supported
"The loss of 2.3 million manufacturing jobs poses a real and present threat to the American middle class," Thomas Dammrich, president of the National Marine Manufacturers Association, told a Washington news conference June 10.
"These are among the best-paying jobs in our country and lamost all of them offer a full range of benefits, including health insurance," Dammrich said. "Every lost manufacturing job is a tragedy for someone's family."
He released a study showing the massive job losses commissioned by the Council of Manufacturing Associations. Which is funded by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). NAM has more than 200 manufacturing trade association members.
"If the U.S. manufacturing base continues to shrink at the present rate, and the critical mass is lost, the manufacturing innovation process will shift to other global centers," said the study, Securing America's Future: The Case for a Strong Manufacturing Base.
"America's industrial leadership is being squeezed between unprecedented foreign competition based on predatory trade practices that make it impossible to raise prices, rising costs due to health care costs, soaring runaway litigation and excessive regulation," said Jery Jasinowshi, president of NAM.
"The result is a dramatic decline in manufacturing cash flow that forces firms to cut back on Research and Development and capital investment and to reduce employment," Jasinowski said. "The U.S. manufacturing base is receding - and with it the all-important renovation process that is the seedbed of our industrial strength and competitive edge."
It is essential that government policymakers "hike spending on R&D activities, enact a permanent R&D tax credit, and that the government provide incentives to increase the supply of scientist and engineers," Jasinowski said.
In asking for these tax breaks and government subsides, NAM's speakers carefully avoided the issue of NAFTA shipping jobs south. But industries now huddled on the Mexican side of the southern border have no ready source of "scientists and engineers" for "R&D - thus the request for taxpayer aid.
The selfish motives for U.S. industries to head south after
NAFTA are obvious. They pay slave wages there with no such benefits
as health insurance and paid vacations. Nor are they burdened
with extensive environmental and safety regulations that saddle
American firms. For one example, a small construction company
was fined out of business because a roofer was chewing gun.
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Despite outrage from across the country from citizens who fear they are losing their constitutional rights, the attorney general is urging Congress to make the "Patriot" Act more repressive.
Attorney General John Ashcroft told congress on June 5 he wants
the Patriot Act strengthened to allow the death
penalty for all terrorist
act that result in fatalities and to prevent suspects accused
of terrorism from being released on bond.
Three days after the Justice Department's inspector general suggested the law enforcement agencies had mistreated hundreds of immigrant detainees seized after the 9-11, 2001, attacks blamed on terrorists, Ashcroft told the House Judiciary Committee the Patriot Act had "weaknesses which terrorists could exploit."
Critics expressed concerns about whether civil liberties were being lost in the name of national security under the Patriot Act, which was rushed through Congress in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and gave the Justice Department far reaching posers to gather information and crack down on suspected terrorists.
Ashcroft admitted that officials had subjected some illegal immigrants detained after 9-11 to harsh prison conditions for long periods before the FBI cleared them of links to terrorism - a major finding of the critical report issued June 2 by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general.
Ashcroft expressed "some sympathy" for the criticisms by Fine, who found there were "significant problems" in the detention on immigration charges, of many of the 762 foreign nationals held after the 9-11 attacks.
Ashcroft said the Justice department policy, for which we do not apologize," is to fully investigate the illegal immigrants who came to the attention of authorities investigating the attacks before deporting them.
"If, God forbid, if we ever have to do this again, we hope we can clear people more quickly," Ashcroft said. "There is no interest whatsoever that the United States of America has in holding innocent people - absolutely none."
Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) Complained that Ashcroft failed to consult with Congress last year when he revised the attorney general's guidelines on FBI investigations.
The previous guidelines, adopted in the 1970s to curtail spying on political organizations, were widely interpreted as prohibiting agents from gathering information in public, political or religious settings or by monitoring the Internet.
SECRET ARRESTS
The new rules permit agents to go anywhere the public can go, including to churches and mosques without revealing their purpose and even if there is no ongoing investigation. Ashcroft claimed information from such visits "cannot be retained unless it relates to potential criminal or terrorist activity."
Especially chilling is a request to allow, for the first time, secret arrests (disappearances). The draft of "Patriot II" reads:
"The government need not disclose information about individuals detained in investigations of terrorism until...the initiation of criminal charges" - no matter how long it takes.
Ashcroft's changes would make it possible for the FBI to arrest persons in the dead of night and take them away forever - something Americans have often criticized Josef Stalin's terrorist communist regime for doing.
An American could be stripped of his citizenship if found to provide "material support" to a group designated a "terrorist organization."
Critics point out that what constitutes a "terrorist group" is often vague. If you innocently donate to a charity which gives money to nationalist or revolutionary groups you could lose your citizenship and be prosecuted.
Now, an American can forfeit citizenship only by declaring a clear intent to abandon his country.
Under Ashcroft's proposal, "intent to relinquish nationality
need not be manifested in words but can be inferred from conduct."
It is unclear which bureaucrats would do the "inferring."
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The government and universities are studying the human brain and learning you can do anything if you put your mind to it.
The federal government and universities throughout the nation are exploring the human mind to determine if the power of positive thinking can move mountains.
Scientist have long been aware that the mind is many-faceted. In double-blind studies, patients receiving a placebo, or phony pill, often do almost as well as those taking the real medication. Their minds convince them they are being treated and they respond.
Mothers exhibit uncanny sensitivity when danger threatens an absent child. Dowsers are able to determine where to drill for water hundreds of feet below in solid rock. Anecdotes abound.
About 1970, a young man said he could turn a light bulb on and off with brainpower alone. With a couple of wires attached to his head, and a little black box, he demonstrated this to about 100 people at NASA headquarters in Washington.
Now there is an ongoing $24 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program to determine what can be done with the power of thought and modern technology.
The Technology Review May 2003 issue provides an overview of what is happening in this area of research and development.
Ted Berger, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California, is attempting to map the circuitry involved in memory inside a rat's brain. The objective is to gain an understanding of how minds and machines can interact. If successful, the result could be new techniques for controlling machinery and vehicles with the power of thought and, possibly, the wireless communication of thought between people.
At Duke University in Durham, N.C., Miguel Nicoleli has a rhesus monkey learning to control a robot arm through brain signals picked up by an implanted electrode. At the University of Michigan Daryl Kipke is attempting to teach rats and monkeys how to control sex-legged robots. He hopes to have a monkey in St. Louis navigate a robot through a maze in Ann Arbor via the Internet this summer.
OTHER STUDIES
Richard Anderson at Caltech is developing electrode systems for use in brain research. John Donoghue at Brown University is developing prostheses to permit paralyzed people to interact with computers. Andrew Schartz at the University of Pittsburgh is working on neural prostheses. Harvey Wiggins with Plexon in Dallas is developing hardware and software for recording and analyzing brain signals.
The Ozark Research Institute in Fayetteville, Ark., has been studying the activities of brainwaves during remote psychic healing. The book Infinite Mind byDr. Valerie V. Hunt describes some of her work in this area at the University of California. The National Institutes of Health recently supported an investigation of psychic healing of brain tumors.
The American Society of Dowsers has been a center for individuals engaged in unsponsored research projects on dowsing phenomena. In Germany and Russia government programs have supported investigations involving dowsers. French and Egyptian dowsers recently investigated ancient Egyptian dowsing activities.
Many who deal with psychic phenomena believe the brain to be
a computer and that thought originates in the soul. They also
believe that energy, not presently recognized by scientists, makes
the power of thought possible. Modern physicists have said that,
after many years of studying nature, they have arrived at conclusions
reached thousands of years ago by theologians. Parhaps brain research
will reach a similar juncture.
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Here's a capsule overview of the shocking circumstances surrounding the murder of 34 Americans by the armed forces of Israel in a terrorist attack that few Americans know about. Tito Howard's new film, Loss of Liberty, is the must-see "last word" documentary that tells all of these details and more.
On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an American naval vessel sailing in the Mediterranean, was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the state of Israel. The attack took place in the middle of a sunny afternoon. The American flag aboard the Liberty flapped clearly in the breeze. Three unmarked Israeli aircraft, accompanied by three torpedo boats, conducted the brutal assault.
The attack began with rockets and then continued with napalm, a burning chemical that clings to human skin with grisly results. Then the torpedo boats raked the decks of the Liberty with machine-gun fire as the American sailors tried to extinguish the fires started by the Napalm. The Liberty was then torpedoed not once, but three times, but, miraculously, did not sink. Thirty-four Americans died in the incident and 171 others were injured.
When news of the attack reached the White House, President Lyndon B. Johnson alerted the commander of the Sixth Fleet to prepare for retaliatory action, assuming Egypt was responsible. Later, when the president learned the Israelis were responsible, he called of the alert.
Very little about the tragedy was mentioned in the American press. What reports there were indicated it was a "tragic mistake." In addition, media accounts underestimated the number of the dead.
Then, under the direction of Adm. John S. McCain, commander in chief of the U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, a court of inquiry was conducted by Rear Admiral I.C. Kidd. McCain and Kidd knew better, but they still announced that the attack was "a case of mistaken identity."
(McCain's cover-up for Israel's slaughter of American Navy boys forged a unique tie between the McCain family and Israel, such that, today, McCain's son, John, the Republican senator from Arizona, is Israel's favorite Republican.)
The Liberty survivors were told to "shut up." Anyone who talked was threatened with court-martial. "If anyone asks," the sailors were told, "tell them it was an accident." The survivors were dispersed worldwide so that no two men were went to the same place.
The incident was mentioned in passing in a varity of media, but the first time that the whole shocking story was told to the public on a national scale was in The Spotlight on April 26, 1976.
However, as early as within one month after the tragedy on July 15, 1967, The Washington Observer newsletter, published by individuals associated with Liberty Lobby, the Washington-based populist institution, told readers that the Israeli attack on the American vessel was indeed deliberate.
There is no question the Israelis not only intended to sink the Liberty but also to kill the entire crew so that no living witnesses could emerge to point the finger at the Israelis. The Israelis hoped to blame the Arabs for the crime - a long-standing "false flag" technique used by Israel in its numerous acts of terrorism.
Defenders of Israel demand to know why the Israelis would desire the total destruction of the Liberty and the mass murder of all aboard. The explanation is simple: The Liberty was a spy ship - said to be then the most sophisticated in the world - gathering intelligence information that would have demonstrated that, contrary to Israel's public propaganda line, Israel was seeking to escalate the 1967 Six-Day War then in progress, attempting to expand its territorial gains. It was planning an incursion into Arab territories in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and intended to invade Syria. Israel, not the Arab states, was the real aggressor in the war.
A Spotlight report of Nov. 21, 1977 implicated the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James J. Angleton, in having conspired with Israel in orchestrating the attack on the Liberty. An Israeli loyalist who headed the CIA's liaison with Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and who also played a key role in helping Israel develop its nuclear arsenal (in defiance of President John F. Kennedy), Angleton believed the destruction of the Liberty could be used as a "Pearl Harbor" or "Remember the Maine"-type incident to inflame American passions against the Arabs.
In 1983 a top secret report prepared in 1967 by the legal advisor to the U.S. Secretary of state, was released (without fanfare) for the first time. The report assessed claims by Israel that the attack was a mistake. The report demonstrated Israel's claims to be lies:
* The Israelis claimed that the Liberty was traveling at a high (and therefore "suspicious") speed of 28 to 30 knots. In fact, the ship was drifting along at only five knots.
* The Israelis claimed that the Liberty refused to identify itself. In fact, the only signals from the Israeli torpedo boats came after the torpedo attack was launched, with the result that 25 sailors had already died when the Liberty was hit by an Israeli torpedo.
* The Israelis claimed that the Liberty did not fly an American flag or carry identifying insignia. In fact, not only did the Liberty have a U.S. flag flying in the wind, but also after that flag was shot to pieces, another and much larger flag was hoisted by the American sailors when they realized they were under attack by ostensibly "friendly" forces from "our ally, Israel." In addition, the Liberty's name and identification numbers were clearly displayed on the hull, which had just recently been painted.
According to Liberty survivors, the Israeli aircraft
had actually circled the ship no less than 13 times for several
hours before the attack commenced. Some of the Liberty
sailors even waved to the "friendly" Israelis from the
decks of the ship, not knowing they were being targeted for annihilation.
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The terrible price of war is not limited to dollars, combat deaths and injuries but includes the horrible human suffering that persists for many years after the shooting war stops.
In the decade following Gulf War I, the rate of birth defects
among newborn Iraqi babies leaped tenfold from 11 per 100,000
births to 116 per 100,000 births. In the wake of Gulf War II,
physicians and human rights groups are anticipating further increases
in horrible deformities and sick and dying children with which
Iraq's shattered medical system will be unable to cope.
Scientists contend that the blame is to be placed on toxic elements in U.S. weapons such as depleted uranium (DU) used in U.S. missiles. While its use has yet to be defined as a "war crime," scientists say it certainly is a "crime against humanity."
Jawad Al-Ali, MD, a British-trained oncologist at the Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra has four albums filled with pictures of babies with birth defects.
He has photos of infants born without brains, with their internal organs outside their bodies, without arms and legs, without eyes, without sexual organs, without spines—the horror pictures are beyond description.
He also has photos of cancer patients. Cancer has increased dramatically in southern Iraq. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer. In 1998—seven years after Gulf War I ended—450 died of cancer. In 2001, there were 603 cancer deaths.
The wards are filled with children suffering from leukemia. Most of them die, physicians told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, because there are insufficient drugs available for their treatment. There was a notable exception: one boy whose parents could afford to buy the expensive drugs on the black market.
It defies logic for the United States to try to absolve DU of the blame when American veterans of Gulf War I and of the fighting in the Balkans share common illnesses with children in southern Iraq, Al-Ali said. Children of American vets who were exposed to DU are being born with horrible deformities.
"The cause of all these cancers and deformities remains theoretical because we can't confirm the presence of uranium in tissue or urine with the equipment we have," Al-Ali told the Post-Intelligencer. "And be cause of the sanctions, we can't get the equipment we need."
Since combat operations ended—although guerrilla fighting still claims American lives almost daily—the United States has called on the United Nations to lift the sanctions. But the destruction and turmoil in Iraq render this meaningless at the moment.
Physicians in southern Iraq have documented increases in childhood cancers and birth defects since 1990, Dr. Thomas Fasy, of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, told Associated Press. Fasy has met with Iraqi physicians.
A dialogue between Ahmed Mansour and Doug Rokke, former chief of the depleted uranium project at the Pentagon, was reported by al Jazeera. "The infections that showed up in the south of Iraq and the deformities in the newborns, do you expect these to last for 4-5 billion years?" Mansour asks.
"Absolutely," Rokke responds. "As long as individuals are being exposed to uranium, we know that the changes in the RNA and in DNA, the changes that occur genetically, are causing all of these birth defects."
"Can the insistence of the United States to use this ammunition against human beings and against Iraq be considered a new war crime?" Mansour asks.
"Anybody who uses uranium munitions in war must understand
that it is a crime against God and a crime against humanity,"
Rokke responds. "When you deliberately and willfully spread
radioactive waste, ignore the health effects and refuse to clean
it up, that is a crime against God and a crime against humanity."
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Your right to read without federal intimidation is protected by librarians in at least one city as the resistance to the ill-named "USA Patriot Act" grows.
Librarians in Palo Alto, Calif, are shredding documents and deleting computer files to protect the privacy of readers as resistance to the Patriot Act grows across the United States.
A provision of the new law allows FBI agents to examine the reading habits of library users and learn what books individuals purchase from stores.
In Palo Alto, six day after a library book is returned, all records of the transaction are deleted from the computer and paper records are shredded.
FBI agents would like to examine what books an individual has checked out or purchased over long periods of time. Cutting that review time to six days is a strong protective guard for civil liberties.
Meanwhile, Police chief Lynne Johnson is supporting a resolution coming before the city council that would prohibit lawmen from aiding the FBI in Patriot Act searches, interviews or surveillance without evidence that a crime has been committed.
"We've always argued that what you read is not necessarily who you are. If you read a murder mystery, it does not mean you are plotting a murder," Neal Coonerty, who owns a bookstore in Santa Cruz, Calif., told CBS News.
"Going into bookstores, going into libraries, finding out what people are reading is not really going to make us safe from terrorism," Coonerty said.
The amount of snooping already being conducted under the Patriot Act will be part of the looming debate in Congress over "Patriot Act II," or the Domestic Security Enhancement Act (S.22), Which is pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Three states -Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont - and 112 cities, towns and counties have passed resolutions condemning the Patriot Act on grounds it gives the federal government too much snooping power. Some have refused to enforce it.
Hawaii was the first state to pass anti-Patriot provisions in its legislature in April. Alaska followed by overwhelmingly passing measures in late May.
Hawaii's law says in part "to the extent legally possible, no state resources - including law enforcement funds and educational administrative resources - may be used for unconstitutional activities."
Alaska's measure goes further than most cities and towns, recommending that police and state agencies resist efforts to "initiate, participate in, or assist or cooperate with an inquiry, investigation, surveillance or detention" if there is not "reasonable suspicion of criminal activity under Alaska state law.
It also states: "the Alaska State Legislature implores
the United States Congress to correct provisions in the USA Patriot
Act and other measures that infringe on civil liberties, and opposes
any pending and future federal legislation to the extent that
it infringes on Americans' civil rights and liberties."
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Citizens will no longer need a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Alaska.
Legislation recently signed into law by Gov. Frank Murkowski will allow Alaskans to carry concealed weapons without a permit. The governor thanked the National Rifle Association and other backers of the Second amendment for help in pushing the legislation through the legislature.
The legislation, which takes effect in 90 days, adopts the "Vermont Carry" law that does not require a citizen to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Vermont has no laws against carrying weapons, the governor said.
It is illegal to carry a firearm in Vermont while committing a crime or if one is a felon. It is also against the law to carry a firearm without permission in courthouses, banks and certain public buildings.
According to the new Alaskan law. Citizens can apply for a weapons permit in order to carry a gun in other states with concealed-carry laws or to be exempt from background checks when purchasing firearms.
"I object to government putting a precondition on that
constitutional right (to carry a weapon)," said State Rep.
Eric Croft (D), who sponsored the legislation. "I'm presumed
to be a responsible citizen until proven otherwise."
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Bilderberg's pet cause, world government, has been set back on two fronts: NATO and the UN.
Bilderberg luminaries who dream of a world government are shocked over blows laid on NATO and the UN by the U.S. government:
* The UN was forced to extend immunity from the International criminal court (ICC) to U.S. troops serving on endless UN-sponsored overseas "peace missions."
* NATO was told that the United States would not pay the lion's share of costs for building a futuristic headquarters in Brussels for sol long as Belgium claims worldwide jurisdiction to try anyone for "war crimes" committed anywhere. This warning from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, himself a Bilderberg participant when Republicans occupy the White House, has the Europeans reeling because the United states was expected to pick up 22 percent of the $352.4 million costs.
Weakening of the ICC upsets Bilderberg because the court claims jurisdiction over the entire world, including nations such as the United States that have not signed the treaty establishing the court. It is bo be the judicial branch of the evolving world government.
NATO has effectively become the world army of the United Nations. After invading Yugoslavia at the direction of President Bill Clinton, a Bilderberg member, NATO announced that it would patrol anywhere in the world at the direction of the UN Security Council.
Rumsfeld told NATO officials, who were meeting in Brussels on June 12, he would block U.S. spending on the new headquarters there for so long as Belgium's universal-jurisdiction law is in effect. This shocked NATO officials, who had expected a kiss-and-make-up session after disagreements over the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Lawsuits under Belgian law have been brought against Gen. Tommy Franks, Former President George Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who commanded U.S. forces in Gulf War I, among others. If any of them were to come to Belgium, he would be arrested.
"By passing this law, Belgium has turned its political system into a platform for divisive, politicized lawsuits against her NATO allies," Rumsfeld told a news conference.
"It would obviously not be easy for U.S. officials or potentially coalition officials, civilian or military, to come to Belgium for meetings," Rumsfeld said. Flexing his dollar muscle, he added, "Certainly, until this matter is resolved, we will have to oppose any further spending for construction for a new NATO headquarters here in Brussels."
NATO has agreed on the design for its new headquarters, which is due to open at the end of this decade, but has not finalized the financial details of a project expected to cost more that $352.4 million. The U.S. share of the cost would be more than 22 percent.
Under threat of the United states refusing to provide troops for the 16 "peacekeeping missions," UN Security council buckled and gave America a one-year exemption. The United States provides more troops than any nation and pays one-third of the costs. The vote was 12-0, with France, Germany and Syria abstaining rather than voting no.
But UN bureaucrats were upset. In an unusually blunt statement, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed anger that U.S. officials insisted on the exemption from the ICC, the first permanent world tribunal. The 1998 Rome Statute that set up the court "was not intended to cover such a sweeping request but only a more specific request relating to a particular situation," Annan said.
"But allow me to express the hope that this does not become an annual routine," Annan said. "If that were to happen, it would undermine not only the authority of the ICC but also the authority of the council and the legitimacy of UN peacekeeping."
A U.S. official said the United States would ask for the exemption
every year that American soldiers serve overseas at the direction
of the UN. If ever denied, he said, U.S. troops would stay home.
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British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government endorsed the International Criminal court. Now Blair is being charged with war crimes before the court.
The Greek Bar Association is bringing "war crimes" charges against British Prime Minister Tony Blair before the International Criminal court (ICC) at the Hague for his support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Many commentators are saying President Bush and Iraqi officials are immune from the ICC because the UN was forced to grant immunity from prosecution to U.S. troops for one year. But the court claims jurisdiction over the entire world. No one knows for sure what could happen down the road.
There is much irony in Blair's case. He strongly supported surrendering the sovereignty of British courts to the international tribunal, chiding the United States when President Bush announced that he would not send the treaty to the Senate for ratification. In a test vote, the Senate had overwhelmingly rejected the ICC.
If Blair ignores this criminal prosecution, he would have difficulty traveling to countries that might turn him over to the court. Even if the prosecutor reviews the evidence and declines to prosecute, Britain will be roughed up politically throughout Europe.
Even in his own country, and among many of his own Labour Party, hundreds of thousands of people are convinced that the invasion of Iraq was a criminal act and the claim of ‘weapons of Mas destruction" was phony.
Meanwhile, a human rights lawyer is bringing war crimes charges against U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks in a Belgian court.
The White House is viewing all this with concern. It is the first time the new ICC is handling a high-profile case. The administration is concerned that, if the ICC convicts Blair, Bush may be next. It is natural that the first major case would involve a signatory nation before the ICC acts on its stated claim of worldwide jurisdiction regardless of who signed and who refused.
Adding to the irony is the fact that Blair gave impetus to the theory that one nation can turn a foreign visitor over to another country to be tried for an alleged crime committed instill another country.
It was Blair's government that arrested Gen Augusto Pinochet, former head of the Chilean army, while he was in Britain, when a Spanish judge wanted him for war crimes prosecution. Though the alleged war crimes had been committed in Chile, not Spain, they involved Spanish nationals. This introduced the theory that the political, diplomatic and military maters could be turned over to lawyers and courts that have no jurisdiction, authority or expertise to deal with them.
As the ICC prepares to review its first major case under its newly elected prosecutor, Harvard law professor Luis Moreno Ocampo (an Argentine), less than half the world has endorsed the court that claims global jurisdiction. Fewer than half the population of the world, has signed on to the ICC.
Whether or not the ICC, if Blair is successfully prosecuted,
dares to reach for the U.S. president, America will be affected.
If Blair is on trial, the policies of the United States will be
on trial in the court of world opinion.
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Notable War Criminals, Alleged and Others
Approximately 80 Serbs, Muslims and Croats have been indicted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, including Slobodan Milosevic, Milan Milutinovic, Gen. Radislave Krstic, Dusko Tadic, Milan Martic, Djordje Djukie, Radovan Karadzic, Momcilo Krajisnik, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
Others facing potential charges by international courts in Belgium and the Netherlands include: George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, Henry Kissinger, Ariel Sharon, Robert McNamara, Elliot Abrams, Richard Hollbroke, Madeline Albright et al.
There are scores more in at least four continents: Europe,
Asia, North America and Africa. An international Tribunal sitting
in Tanzania has convicted eight Rwandans of genocide. Also in
Africa, Charles Taylor (Liberia) and Sam Bockarie (Sierra Leone)
are wanted.
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In a stunning about-face, a dental expert now warns of the many dangers of fluoride in your drinking water.
Hardy Limeback, B.S., Ph.D. in biochemistry, D.D.S., and head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry at the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Association for Dental research, now opposes the use of fluoride in drinking water or toothpaste.
Asked by The Tribune of Mesa, Ariz., why he had reversed a pro-fluoride position he had embraced for decades, Limeback responded:
“It’s been building up for a couple of years. But certainly the crowning blow was the realization that we have been dumping contaminated fluoride into our water reservoirs for half a century. The vast majority of all fluoride additives come from Tampa Bay, Fla., Smokestack scrubbers.
“The additives are a toxic by product of the super-phosphate fertilizer industry. Tragically, that means we’re not just dumping toxic fluoride into our drinking water. We’re also exposing innocent, unsuspecting people to deadly elements: lead, arsenic and radium, all of them carcinogenic. Because of the cumulative properties of toxins, the detrimental effects on human health are catastrophic.”
A new study at the University of Toronto supports Limeback’s argument: “Residents of cities that fluoridate have doubled the fluoride in their hip bones vis-à-vis the balance of the population. Worse, we discovered that it is actually altering the architecture of human bones.” Skeletal fluorosis is a debilitating condition that occurs when fluoride accumulates in the bones, making them extremely weak and brittle.
“Mottled and brittle teeth” are the earliest symptoms, Limeback said. “In Canada we are now spending more money treating dental fluorosis than we do treating cavities. That includes my own practice.”
He cited a “proof-positive” comparison of two Canadian cities.
“Here in Toronto we have been fluoridating for 36 years,” Limeback said. “Yet Vancouver, which has never fluoridated, has a cavity rate lower than Toronto’s.”
Cavity rates are low, he said, across the industrialized world, including Europe which is 98 percent fluoride-free.
The Tribune pointed out that “the Centers for Disease Control ran a puff piece all across America saying the stuff was better than sliced bread.
“Unfortunately,” Limeback replied, “the CDC is basing its position on data that is 50 years old and questionable at best. Absolutely no one has done research on fluorosilicates, which is the junk they’re dumping into the drinking water. On the other hand, the evidence against systemic fluoride intake continues to pour in.”
Lime back recently apologized to faculty and students at the
University of Toronto Department of dentistry. “I told them
I had unintentionally misled my collegues and by students. For
the past 15 years, I had refused to study the toxicology information
that is readily available to anyone. Poisoning our children was
the furthest thing from my mind.”
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A leading grassroots group is denouncing the government’s plan to inoculate Americans en masse prior to or in the event of terrorists releasing the smallpox virus in the United States.
Responding to the Bush administration’s signal that it will release the smallpox vaccine for mass use because of fear terrorists will successfully use the smallpox virus as a weapon against Americans, the National vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is warning that widespread use of the highly reactive live virus vaccine in the absence of real disease has the potential to compromise public trust in the integrity of government-led mass vaccination programs.
NVIC endorses the June recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which recommended confining pre-attack smallpox vaccination to 20,000 or fewer emergency health care “first responders” investigating and responding to a suspected case of smallpox.
“We believe the administration should re-examine its strategy for dealing with fears that the smallpox virus may be used by terrorists in a widespread and successful attack on the U.S. population. Reintroduction of the live vaccinia virus into the human population in the absence of the eradicated smallpox disease is a very serious decision that has ramifications for not just the U.S. but for populations around the world,” said Barbara Loe fisher, NVIC co-founder and present.
NVIC points to the following risk factors associated with the government’s mass release of the live vaccinia virus into the human population before there is a confirmed smallpox virus release by terrorists:
* The live vaccinia virus vaccine for smallpox is estimated to cause very serious complications requiring the administration of vaccinia immune globulin (VIG) in one in 4,000 persons who get vaccinated according to the Working Group on Civilian Biodefense. If 280 million Americans were vaccinated pre-attack, there cold be a minimum of 70,000 persons risking injury of death with the vaccine and requiring emergency VIG therapy;
* The live vaccinia virus vaccine for smallpox can be spread to a family member or friend who comes into close contact with a recently vaccinated person;
* Being exposed to the live vaccinia virus is especially dangerous for children and adults who have a history of immune system problems such as eczema, cancer, HIV and other health conditions. The Number of children and adults in America suffering from immune system dysfunction is far larger that it was when the smallpox vaccine was being used on a mass basis 40 years ago. Perhaps as many as 50 million Americans would be at risk for injury or death if they are exposed to the live vaccinia virus either directly by getting vaccinated or by coming into contact with someone who has been recently vaccinated;
* Recently vaccinated Americans who travel to other countries can transmit the live vaccinia virus in those countries;
* In addition to the more serious vaccinia virus vaccine complications such as encephalitis (brain inflammation), progressive vaccinia (also known as vaccinia gangrenosa) leading to death after the internal organs, tissue and bones disintegrate; eczema vaccinatum which resembles third degree burns; and generalized vaccinia which can result in smallpox-like lesions that cover the body, almost all who get vaccinated will suffer some kind of reaction including high fever, fatigue, irritability, and swollen lymph glands. Approximately half of all smallpox vaccine complications are for”autoinoculation” where the recently vaccinated person touches or scratches the lesion at the vaccination site and spreads the live vaccinia virus to the eye, nose, mouth, and genitalia where more lesions form. The CDC reports that autoinoculation occurs in 1 in 1,890 first time vaccinations.
*There have been case reports of progressive or generalized vaccinia infection in persons with genital herpes and active acne. There are many more millions of Americans suffering from genital herpes today than three or four decades ago;
* Among those at highest risk for serious complications after exposure to the vaccinia virus are children under the age of one year. The CEC reports that about on in 2,500 infant vaccinations result in generalized vaccinia infection and about one 24,000 result in brain inflammation;
* Children today receive two to three times as many doses of multiple vaccines in early childhood as did children who received smallpox vaccine in past generations. The smallpox vaccine was never tested for safety or efficacy in controlled human clinical trials prior to mass use in the 19th and 20th centuries and there is no information on how the vaccine will interact with the many other vaccines routinely given to American children or impact on their long term health. Those genetically or otherwise biologically vulnerable to vaccine induced neuroimmune dysfunction will be at special risk;
* Vaccinia virus has been reported to cause fetal infection after primary vaccination of the mother and usually results in stillbirth or death of the infant soon after delivery;
* Vaccinia virus infection can be mistaken for smallpox disease. In the past, doctors sometimes confused chicken pox with smallpox and there are other diseases which can mimic smallpox infection such as eczema vaccinatum or disseminated vaccinia virus infection (from the vaccine); contact dermatitis, drug reactions and human monkeypox infection;
* The 30-year old vaccinia virus vaccine stocks, which have been diliuted to prepare enough smallpox vaccine for all Americans, were originally created using calf vesicle fluid containing “some microbial contaminants,” according to the Working Group on Civilian Biodefense. The vaccine also contains antibiotics and phenol (.24 percent), a compound obtained by distillation of coal tar;
* If terrorists have the technology and means to culture, maintain, transport and deliver the smallpox virus to large numbers of Americans after evading American security and defense systems, there is no guarantee they would not use a weaponized, genetically engineered smallpox virus. In this case, the old smallpox vaccine that will be used in pre-attack mass vaccination campaigns may not work or may have limited effectiveness. In addition, there is no guarantee that once the U.S. population has been subjected to the side effects of the smallpox vaccine, that terrorists will not use an entirely different weaponized microorganism such as anthrax, encephalitis virus or ebola.
“It is appropriate for the CDC to be calling for informed consent and a voluntary vaccination program, rather than forced vaccination, in the event the administration does release the smallpox vaccine for use by the general public before an actual bioterrorism attack occurs,” said Fisher.
“But the fact remains that the child or adult, who dies,
is permanently disfigured or brain injured because he or she came
into contact with a recently vaccinated person, will not have
had the opportunity to give their informed consent,” said
Fisher. “This kind of pre-event mass vaccination policy has
the potential side effect of causing fear and distrust of government-promoted
vaccination programs in general. The terrorists will have caused
the injuries and deaths of Americans and not even had to open
fire.”
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