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Students at Harvard launch a campaign against Israeli General

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Halutz

A group of students and professors at Harvard University in the United States have launched a campaign against the former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, reserve General Dan Halutz.

Halutz, who resigned shortly after the war against Lebanon that he led as chief of staff, left Israel to continue studies in the Harvard Business School.

The campaign, that is organized by many, including Jewish students, describe Halutz as “Wanted War Criminal” and setup posters carrying Halutz picture saying “Wanted for War Crimes” and others saying, “General Dan Halutz was seen at HBS in May 2007.”

The posters also indicate the accusations against Halutz, including ordering Israeli war planes to carry out indiscriminate attacks against Lebanese areas killing more than a thousand civilians.

The campaign, which is organized by the Alliance for Justice in the Middle East (AJME), calls for the campus community to help them find Halutz and demanded those who see him to contact the international criminal court.

The Alliance often chases Israeli general accusing them of committing crimes against the Palestinians and demands their arrest for Human Rights abuses allegations.

Source

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More police officers to be armed with Taser stun guns

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

More police officers are to be armed with Taser stun guns under an extension of their use announced by the Home Secretary.

Currently, Tasers are used only by officers in firearms squads as a “less lethal” alternative to guns.

John Reid told the annual conference of the Police Federation of England and Wales that the weapons - which transmit a 50,000-volt shock through two “darts” on wires - should be more widely available.

“I want them to be available to other specially-trained squads - not just firearms officers - who are sent in to deal with severe violence or threats of violence,” he said.

In 2005 Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister, said the guns were “too dangerous” to be handed out to all patrolling police officers.

A trial is likely to start in September, as long as an independent review of the medical evidence on Tasers does not raise concerns. The trial would involve different “rules of engagement” for non-firearms officers, effectively widening the circumstances in which suspects can be stunned.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “A 12-month trial would extend use of Taser to specially-trained units who are not authorised firearms officers.

“They would also extend the use of Taser by authorised firearms officers where the criteria to use firearms does not apply.

“In both cases, officers will be facing violence or threats of violence, and they would need to use force to protect the public or themselves or the subject.”

Proposals to extend use of the high-voltage weapon have been sent to a special committee by the Home Office for medical assessment. The Defence Scientific Advisory Council Sub-Committee on the Medical Evaluation of Less Lethal Weapons (Domill) are expected to report back next month, the spokeswoman said.

A Police Federation spokesman said: “We support the roll-out. We think it is a vital piece of equipment for frontline officers to have.”

More than 3,000 of the devices, which temporarily disable a suspect by delivering a 50,000-volt shock, have been distributed to special firearms officers since their introduction in 2003.

No deaths or serious injuries have been attributed to Tasers in the UK.

Firearms officers have welcomed them and have increasingly used them but Amnesty International has led opposition to their use.

Its UK director Kate Allen said: “We are worried that this may be the start of a slippery slope towards a situation like that in the US, where officers are routinely armed with Tasers and use them in a wide range of situations.”

Source

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Hewitt branded ‘incompetent’ in junior doctors row

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, faced fresh calls to resign today over the fiasco surrounding the controversial online application system for junior doctors, which has left thousands without jobs.

The shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, branded the online Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) “a truly shocking piece of incompetence”, while the shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, warned Ms Hewitt not to “shirk” her responsibility for it.

Their comments came as Ms Hewitt explained to MPs why she announced yesterday that the computerised application process was being suspended for the rest of the year.

She said all initial offers under round one of the system would be made to junior doctors in the next few weeks.

She denied that MTAS had been abandoned but confirmed it will no longer be used for round two of the recruitment process. Round two will now be CV-based, with junior doctors applying to the medical deaneries that oversee local training.

The health secretary - in her third Commons statement on the issue in two months - said extra training posts would be available for those doctors who were unsuccessful in round one of MTAS.

She said: “There will therefore be further substantial opportunities for those who are not successful initially.”

Ms Hewitt added that it was currently impossible to say how many junior doctors had been allocated posts under the system, nor how many would be left without a job.

She said these figures would only be apparent when the first round of the recruitment process ended in June.

The online application process has been criticised by doctors’ group s for giving more weight to a crude personality test than to evidence of candidates’ medical ability.

Mr Lansley said that junior doctors were “being treated in a way that is appalling”. He said it was unacceptable that thousands of doctors still did not know where they would be working on August 1 - the deadline for them to be in a post.

“Even at this late stage, they do not know where they will be working on August 1. It may be anywhere from Cromer to St Albans, ” he told Ms Hewitt.

“You can’t shirk responsibility in this. You have to take responsibility for it. Will you now understand that the only way to do that is to resign.”

Mr Lansley warned that if the situation was not resolved soon, hundreds of doctors could take up posts overseas to the detriment of the NHS.

His comments came as a judicial review of the computerised application process opened in the high court.

The doctors’ pressure group, Remedy UK, which initiated the review, wants the Department of Health to put in place a “rescue package” for the thousands of junior doctors who have not got any job interviews as a result of the flawed system.

Remedy UK spokesman, Dr Matt Jameson Evans, said those doctors who had failed to find posts under MTAS should be offered temporary training posts of around six months until the flaws in the application process were resolved.

He said: “What we’re calling for is a damage limitation exercise to deal with the arbitrary nature of the selection process. We must make sure that the 10,000-15,000 junior doctors who weren’t successful are not shut out of the medical profession for life.”

A Department of Health spokesman said it could not comment on the judicial review until it was concluded.

The application system provoked outrage in March, when it emerged that hundreds of the ablest junior doctors were not selected for any interviews. Ms Hewitt adjusted the process to give everyone another chance but the system was further discredited by a security leak that may have allowed intimate personal information to become accessible on the MTAS website.

Ms Hewitt said there may have been criminal offences; a report on the leak had been passed to the police. The alleged breaches are understood to relate to how personal information about junior doctors came to be seen by reporters.

Source

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Insects ‘Are Smarter Than You Think’

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Scientists claim to have found evidence of ‘free will’ in flies.
If the researchers are right, it means the annoying bluebottle or wasp that will not leave you alone is choosing to be a pest.

Buzzing with intelligence?

The discovery could overturn basic assumptions about the difference between humans and animals.

Understanding the mechanisms involved may also lead to development of free-thinking robots, bringing science fiction to life.

Simple creatures such as insects are generally regarded as biological machines which only respond to external stimuli.

Apparently variable behaviour in such animals is usually attributed to random activity in their brains.

But an international study of fruit flies has shown that cannot be the case - the flies tested appeared to make choices.

Source

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Celestial trick of the light reveals invisible dark matter

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Ring of gravity in outer space lets scientists ‘see’ exotic material

Mark Henderson

Ring of gravity in outer space lets scientists ‘see’ exotic material A rippling halo of dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to account for much of the mass of the Universe, has been discovered around a distant cluster of galaxies.

The ring, which is 2.6 million light years across, has been detected by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, providing some of the strongest evidence yet for the existence of the enigmatic material.

Dark matter does not shine like stars, or reflect visible light like planets, so it cannot be directly seen. Nevertheless, scientists have calculated that it makes up almost a quarter of the mass of the Universe.

The ordinary matter that can be seen through telescopes – stars, galaxies and dust – can account for no more than 4 per cent of the Universe as a whole, as it does not generate sufficient gravity for the cosmos to be stable.

Models suggest that about 23 per cent of the total mass is made up of dark matter, while the remaining 73 per cent is something even odder: a dark energy that drives the Universe’s expansion.

The nature of both dark matter and dark energy remains elusive, though scientists suspect the former is made up of as yet unknown particles that pervade the entire Universe, but which have little effect on the ordinary particles we can see. These are sometimes known as weakly interacting massive particles, or “wimps”.

The new observations of the galaxy cluster ZwCI0023+24, which lies five billion light years away from Earth, promise to offer fresh clues to the nature of the substance.

Though the ring cannot be seen physically, its presence has been confirmed by observing how its gravity bends the light of more distant galaxies that lie behind it, as seen from Earth.

James Jee, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who led the discovery team, said: “This is the first time we have detected dark matter as having a unique structure that is different from the gas and galaxies in the cluster.

“Although the invisible matter has been found before in other galaxy clusters, it has never been detected to be so largely separated from the hot gas and the galaxies that make up galaxy clusters.

“By seeing a dark matter structure that is not traced by galaxies and hot gas, we can study how it behaves differently from normal matter.”

The discovery, which is published in the Astrophysical Journal, was made unexpectedly when Dr Jee’s team was attempting to map the distribution of dark matter within the galaxy cluster.

At first, the astronomers were convinced that they had made a mistake when a set of concentric rings, like ripples in a pond, appeared from their data.

“I was annoyed when I saw the ring because I thought it was an artefact, which would have implied a flaw in our data reduction,” Dr Jee said. “But the more I tried to remove the ring, the more it showed up. It took more than a year to convince myself that the ring was real. I’ve looked at a number of clusters and I haven’t seen anything like this.” The likely explanation for the ring comes from previous research into the same cluster, published in 2002 by Oliver Czoske, of Bonn University in Germany, which indicated that it had collided with another galaxy cluster between one billion and two billion years ago.

Computer simulations of this cosmic collision suggest that the dark matter fell towards the centre of the cluster and then rippled back out, creating the characteristic pattern.

Holland Ford, also of Johns Hopkins University, said: “By studying this collision, we are seeing how dark matter responds to gravity. Nature is doing an experiment for us that we can’t do in a lab, and it agrees with our theoretical models.”

Dr Jee said: “The collision between the two galaxy clusters created a ripple of dark matter which left distinct footprints in the shapes of the background galaxies. It’s like looking at the pebbles on the bottom of a pond with ripples on the surface.

“The pebbles’ shapes appear to change as the ripples pass over them. So, too, the background galaxies behind the ring show coherent changes in their shapes due to the presence of the dense ring.”

Points of light

— The points of light in the background of the image above are galaxies observed in visible light with the Hubble Space Telescope, in the galaxy cluster ZwCl0024+1652

— The concentric blue dusty rings show the distribution of dark matter in the galaxy cluster. Though the dark matter itself is invisible, its position has been calculated from its gravitational effect on light reaching Earth from the background galaxies

— The existence of dark matter was proposed in 1933 by the astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, whose studies of galaxy clusters found they had far more mass than could be predicted from visible light alone

— One theory about dark matter is that it is made of weakly-interacting massive particles or “Wimps”

— Billions of Wimps are thought to be passing through the body every instant, but they are almost impossible to detect

— An Anglo-American team is currently engaged in a search for Wimps in a disused salt mine 3,500ft under the cliffs of the North Yorkshire coastline

Source: Johns Hopkins University, Times database

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Administration opens door to resignation of Wolfowitz

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Steven R. Weisman

The Bush administration, shifting strategy in the face of mounting opposition to Paul D. Wolfowitz as World Bank president, opened the door Tuesday to the possibility of his voluntary resignation if the bank board ended its drive to declare him unfit to remain in office.
But the administration’s new approach — outlined in a telephone conference call between the Treasury Department in Washington and economic ministries in Japan, Canada and Europe — appeared to gain few immediate supporters, various officials said.

Indeed, bank officials said the board seemed determined on Tuesday evening to endorse the findings of a special committee that Wolfowitz broke bank rules, ethics and governance standards in arranging for, and concealing, a pay and promotion package for his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, in 2005.
      The officials said the 52-page report of the committee, released Monday evening, had emboldened Wolfowitz’s critics on the board and made it difficult for the board to avoid concluding that he could no longer lead the institution.
      Late in the day on Tuesday, Wolfowitz made a personal and impassioned appeal to the bank board at a private meeting, seeking to stave off what some said was an inevitable rebuke.
      According to a text made available by a supporter, he warned that a vote of no confidence in his leadership, tantamount to requesting his ouster, “has the potential to do greater long-term damage to the institution” than any conflict of interest he may have failed to avoid.
Declaring that he had been “held up to public ridicule” and “caricatured as a ‘boyfriend’ who used his position of power to help his ‘girlfriend,”‘ Wolfowitz said that “for the sake of the bank, and for your sake, this process has to be fair.”
      He promised to change his management approach by relying less on advisers from the Bush administration, restructuring his office, delegating more to career managers and placing “more trust in the staff,” according to the text.
      “I implore each of you to be fair in making your decision, because your decision will not only affect my life, it will affect how this institution is viewed in the United States and the world,” he said. This was an apparent reference to criticism of the bank among American conservatives and fears of Congress cutting off financing for the bank.

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A Review of Alexander Cockburn’s and Jeffrey St. Clair’s End Times

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Stephen Lendman

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are both veteran journalists and authors doing the kind of muckraking political and other investigative writing only found in the US online and in out-of-the-mainstream publications and political newsletters like the one they co-publish and edit - CounterPunch with its counterpart web site of the same name.

Cockburn is also a regular columnist with The Nation magazine, and his writings appear regularly in the New York Free Press and Los Angeles Times. He formerly wrote extensively for numerous other publications as well including the Wall Street Journal’s far right editorial page oddly in the 1980s when its late editor Bob Bartley decided to have an alternate point of view and certainly got an exceptional one the mirror opposite of the array of extremist hard right contributors he allowed regular space to all the time as does his successor today. Cockburn’s also authored, co-authored and co-edited 18 books, the latest one being “End Times - The Death of the Fourth Estate,” along with co-author St. Clair, and subject of this review.

St. Clair has authored, co-authored and co-edited 10 books including his powerful and extraordinary post-9/11 2005 expose of war profiteering - Grand Theft Pentagon - Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror. He’s also worked as an environmental organizer and activist, writes for the environmental magazine Forest Watch, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and has written for Friends of the Earth, Clean Water Action Project and his native state Hoosier Environmental Council. In addition, he’s a contributing editor of In These Times magazine and has written for The Nation, The Progressive, New Left Review and other publications.

End Times - A Collection of Essays from Cockburn and St. Clair On the Dismal State of the Dominant Print Media

“End Times - The Death of the Fourth Estate” is a collection of 50 wide-ranging essays written in recent years under six topic headings, mostly by Cockburn and St. Clair with a few by other contributors, on the dismal state of the corporate print media today. They were dominant at their zenith in the mid-1970s Pentagon Papers - Watergate era but now, the authors say, are in an inevitable state of decline agreeing with media mogul (Cockburn-labeled “WORLD-SCALE MONSTER”) Rupert Murdock’s characterization of a long twilight at best.

Even more, their current state is symptomatic of our overall societal decay with unprecedented wealth disparities, the nation in endless wars of illegal aggression, predatory corporate giants ruling the world, and our democracy on life support heading for the crematorium to be heralded on arrival in front page coverage of the nation’s leading purveyors of “news unfit to print.” This review covers the authors account of their decline at a time noted historian Gabriel Kolko calls “the most dangerous period in mankind’s entire history” when the kind of news and information we most need isn’t served up by the dominant fourth estate suppressing it in service to power. The essence and flavor of the book is covered with selected examples from it in an age of media concentration, deregulation and “in-bed-with” journalists posing as the real thing.

The book came out at a time public distrust for traditional print and electronic news is increasing as growing numbers of people, hungry for real information, are turning to alternate sources including a new, vibrant world of them online like CounterPunch the authors say gets around three million daily hits, 300,000 page views, and 100,000 unique visitors including 15,000 regular US military readers stationed around the world, a sign many thousands more of them visit other sites like CounterPunch and pass on what they learn to others. A hopeful, but not certain, indication of a growing trend too powerful to stop. More on that at the end.

The Fourth Estate “tremble for Power,” the authors state, acting instead as “Accomplices in the great and ongoing Cover-up of Everything that Really Matters” that destroys their reliability to deliver real news and information. Still, as End Times contributor Ken Silverstein (co-founder with Alex Cockburn of CounterPunch in 1993) writes, there were moments when broadsheet papers like the Washington Post (New York Times and others) did what their readers want and expect - their job reporting the news and enough of it in depth from investigative work unimaginable today in an age of lies, cover-up and “journalism” being just another profit center. Silverstein cites late fall 1974 as the Washington Post’s time of “supreme triumph” post-Watergate after reporters Woodward and Bernstein took credit toppling Richard Nixon who did a pretty good job doing it to himself the way George Bush is trying to match today.

From its brief time of triumph forward, it’s been all downhill since with the corporate media now concentrated and dominant and little more than our national thought-control police gatekeepers daily serving up a full plate of pap and propaganda suppressing real news “fit to print” but hardly ever is or at least where it’s easy to find. That’s the dismal state of the prominent print press today End Times writes about drawing lots of blood dissecting it, example by example, showing it’s doing what 1920s intellectual writer and dean of journalists in his day, Walter Lippmann, called the “manufacture of (public) consent” in a nominally democratic state where it can’t be done by force.

“Manufacturing Consent” was the title used by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky for their landmark 1988 book explaining the dominant media’s “propaganda model” to program the public mind to go along with whatever agenda best serves the power structure. It was also the subject noted author, academic and social critic Michael Parenti chose for his 1986 book “Inventing Reality” explaining how they “set(ting) the agenda, defining what it is we must believe or disbelieve, accept or reject (by) defining the scope of respectable political discourse, channeling public attention in directions that are essentially supportive of the existing political-economic system.” In other words, the idea is to make us submissive good citizens willing to go along with whatever agenda the supreme rulers of the universe wish even if their interests harm ours.

Today, prominent broadsheets like the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times (along with publications they own) have a virtual stranglehold on mass print communication along with major publishers of large-scale circulation magazines like Time and US News and World Report. They’re able to use their reach and influence (even ebbing) to destroy the free marketplace of ideas vital to a healthy democracy now on life support at best in large measure from the damage these papers and magazines inflict on the body politic.

The Washington Post’s Fall from Grace

Ken Silverstein explained “The Fall of the Washington Post” when Katherine Graham ran the paper and in 1974 signaled Watergate-type exposes and similar reporting no longer were welcome in the press she felt “should….be rather careful about its role.” She called for a return to basics with journalists behaving more deferentially to the powerful figures they covered. And so they have with assistant managing editor Bob Woodward of Watergate fame now fawning over George Bush in books like Bush at War and Plan of Attack, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan in Maestro, and others best ignored.

Cockburn and St. Clair continue the saga in Woodward at Court saying first off “It’s been a devastating fall for what are conventionally regarded as the nation’s two premier newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post.” The Times saw its “star reporter” Judith Miller fall from grace, and the Post faced the challenge of dealing with its famed staffer’s multiple conflicts of interests including his formerly concealed (to the public and his bosses) role in the outing of Joe Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame when she worked at CIA.

In an embarrassing climb-down, Woodward had to testify in a two-hour deposition to Special Council Patrick Fitzgerald whom he denounced on TV the night before Lewis Libby’s indictment in the case as “a junkyard dog of a prosecutor” in his post-Watergate role as chief flatterer of George Bush and other powerful Washington figures. Cockburn and St. Clair speculated whether Woodward’s high level (unrevealed) source for the Plame leak was Dick Cheney ending their article referring to Woodward going “From Nixon’s nemesis to Cheney’s savior,” but the same can be said for the kind of empire-supportive “journalism” found all through the dominant press, especially on issues like war and peace.

The “Dogs of War”

The authors devote a whole section to it called “The Dogs of War.” In it we learn how easily journalists are corrupted so news can be managed to deliver only favorable accounts of some of the most appalling events. Even more stunning is the authors citing a 1977 Rolling Stone Carl Bernstein story estimating more than 400 journalists were allied in some way with the CIA between 1956 and 1972 leaving readers to wonder how many do it now in the age of George Bush when anything goes and the law of the land is just an artifact.

Joe Trento’s “Secret History of the CIA,” published in 2001 and cited in “End Times,” gave us an idea of its extent earlier naming big names involved in a CIA operation code-named “Mockingbird,” not too subtlety picked using a bird known to mimic the calls of other birds. Noted syndicated columnist through the 1970s Joseph Alsop was one of them along with his brother Stewart. Other notables “willing to promote the views of the CIA” included Ben Bradlee (Newsweek and Washington Post), James “Scotty” Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time magazine), and Walter Pincus (Washington Post), among others.

The section also includes St. Clair’s article How to Sell a War. It makes powerful reading, and he’s right observing it’ll be remembered for how it was sold, not how it was waged. It will also be remembered for portraying an illegal lost cause as a noble undertaking. St. Clair explains it was a propaganda war, designed by PR experts, promoted by spin doctors, all aimed at us as the target audience ingesting it like mother’s milk - at least most of us long enough to get the war machine rolling and be too far along to be recalled - until eventually and inevitably it is because the best-laid plans turned to mush.

In charge were people like ad maven Charlotte Beers appointed Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (aka pre-war propaganda) for her known business skills as “a grand diva of spin.” Fortune magazine featured her among the most powerful women in America in 1997 for her achievements advertising the merits of Uncle Ben’s Rice and Head and Shoulders shampoo. The Bush administration naturally thought she could sell America to the Muslim world in her Brand America campaign as well as she could peddle over-the-counter products to gullible consumers. She fleeced the taxpayers a whopping $500 million trying, stayed on from October, 2001 till just before the March, 2003 “shock and awe” assault began mistakenly thinking the war was won before the real fireworks began.

St. Clair explained tens of millions more went into prepping the public on Saddam’s danger to the free world and why he had to be removed before “the smoking gun” we saw turned out “to be a mushroom-shaped cloud” according to National Security Advisor at the time Condoleezza Rice. Topping the threat-sellers was Washington heavy-hitting hired gun and “Beltway fixer” John Rendon, head of the Rendon Group. He’s been around Washington for years and earlier got the Bush administration’s assignment to sell the Afghanistan bombing, following up with a host of PR schemes on Saddam and Iraq, pre and post-March, 2003. He flopped convincing the UN and NATO pre-war but had no trouble duping the US public long enough to convince them blowing up Iraq was the best way to save it and end up being be safer at home.

St. Clair also reviews the role of other players in the scheme to sell war and occupation including the one played by PR firm Hill & Knowlton’s Victoria Clark in her role at DOD as PR assistant secretary to Donald Rumsfeld and other assorted players in the media like writer and accomplished liar Laurie Mylroie, the Post’s Charles Krauthammer, Max Boot, and the lead role played out daily on the New York Times’ front pages mainly by now discredited and fired Judith Miller.

Cockburn devoted a chapter to her deservedly. He titled it well - Judith Miller: Weapon of Mass Destruction. Indeed she was and then some, and it’s arguable that without this now disgraced former Times’ reporter (or someone else in her shoes) there might not have been an Iraq war. Miller was part of the scheme from the get-go serving up a daily serving of propaganda in what media critic Norman Solomon calls “the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA” - the Times’ front page.

Miller introduced us to Khidir Hamza, Saddam’s self-proclaimed bomb-maker, later outed as a fraud. She kept at it daily using as her key source leading Iraqi exile and known fraudster/schemer Ahmed Chalabi. She also was little more than a Bush administration/ Pentagon stenographer/cheerleader transmitting their lies and deceptions to the public effectively enough to sell a war based on administration lies and hers that never should have happened with many in the Washington power structure now wishing it hadn’t.

Cockburn writes about her: “With Miller we sink to the level of straight press handout. Lay all Judith Miller….stories end to end, from late 2001 to June, 2003, and you get a desolate picture of a reporter with an agenda, both manipulating and being manipulated by US government officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah’s Ark of scam-artists.” And he added most of what she wrote was “garbage, garbage that powered the Bush administration’s propaganda drive toward invasion….She knew what she was doing.” One thing she didn’t or left out was Ben Franklin’s take on wars that “There’s no such thing as a good war and there is no such thing as a bad peace.” Case close, and well said about a woman who disgracefully won a Pulizer Prize for her reporting Cockburn and others demand be thunderously withdrawn to complete a full defrocking.

The killing fields for unembedded independent journalists in Iraq was covered as well. It’s been notorious (the worst in the world by far) with over 130 “wrongful deaths” reported since March, 2003 including those deliberately targeted for elimination by US or other forces to silence them. In times of war, the first casualty is always truth with corporate media “embeds” obliging to keep it that way, and the Pentagon ready to target anyone reporting what Washington wants suppressed. It was covered in Christopher Reed’s contribution titled Have Journalists Been Deliberately Murdered by the US Military along with examples by Cockburn and St. Clair in their essays. Reed mentions Britain’s Independent Television News (ITN) senior unembedded war correspondent Terry Lloyd killed near Basra on the third day of the war. A court of law ruled on his case calling it “Unlawful homicide” at the hands of US Marines, but his deliberate targeting is only one among many others.

Al-Jazeera was first targeted in November, 2001 when a US missile destroyed its Kabul offices in Afghanistan. It was no accident. The Pentagon repeatedly harasses the Arab news channel in Iraq as well, occasionally closed it down, and in 2003 attacked its Baghdad offices by air killing one of its correspondents and injuring another. One other example of willful murder was veteran camerman Mazen Dana targeted by a US tank in broad daylight while he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Still another time, a US tank, with no provocation, fired point blank at the Palestine Hotel housing most unembedded international journalists killing reporters from Reuters and the Spanish network Telecino.

Thankfully, in spite of clear dangers to their safety, independent unembedded journalists (like Alex’s brother Patrick Cockburn) are getting out real news on the war so others like Reed, A. Cockburn and St. Clair can help spread it to many others here at home and around the world. None of it shows up though in the “newspaper of record” the authors devote a whole section to with examples below.

The Long Ugly Record of the New York Times

The New York Times calls itself the “newspaper of record” reporting “All the News That’s fit to Print.” A more accurate label would be the closest thing in the commercial media to an official ministry of information and propaganda. Former longtime NYT journalist John Hess said it this way: “(I) never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare…rent…or utility increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t get me started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?”

Cockburn had plenty to say about the Times as well, and reflected in his Rosenthal’s Times essay on AM Rosenthal’s passing in May, 2006 saying he “saved” the Times as Executive Editor in the 1970s enhancing its coverage at the same time “sow(ing) the seeds for the Times’ present difficulties” fostering the likes of Judith Miller and the rest of the paper’s staff who knew what the boss wanted and dared not deliver under Rosenthal through the mid-1980s and for his successors thereafter.

The Times wanted war in Iraq and served up generous helpings of lies to get it with Michael Gordon helping Miller report phony stories like the aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment one that was pure baloney and lots of others in a daily drumbeat of scare-talk misinformation. When everything began unravelling, the best the Times could do was offer “a few strangled croaks” in an 1100 word editorial climb-down never even mentioning the lead role Miller played making the case for war that disgraced the Times and got her fired.

The Times is also notorious for rewriting history when their fraudulent “first draft” of it unravels. They did it last September claiming “the ‘possibility’ that Saddam Hussein ‘might’ develop ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and pass them to terrorists was the prime reason Mr. Bush gave in 2003 for ordering the invasion of Iraq.” Miller’s reports of clear evidence he had them pre-war is now only a “possibility” according to Times-speak. This kind of revisionism is standard practice at the NYT and one more example of its shameless deference to power.

Earlier, Cockburn and St. Clair reported an egregious example in what they called “one of the greatest humiliations of a national newspaper in the history of journalism.” It was about the Times’ key role framing Wen Ho Lee beginning March 6, 1999 in the James Risen/Jeff Gerth Breach at Los Alamos story claiming an unnamed lab scientist gave the Chinese People’s Republic stolen nuclear secrets. It got Lee arrested, fired and held without bail in solitary confinement for 278 days ending when he pleaded guilty to the watered-down charge of improperly downloading Restricted Data with Judge James A. Parker apologizing for the government’s “abuse of power” the Times could never admit responsibility for.

Then there’s the Cockburn - St. Clair piece on NYT Kid Glove Journalism on the NSA’s Illegal Spying without warrants violating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requiring them. The Times held off reporting the story for a year staying mute in deference to the Bush administration’s request, then leaving out a full account of it when it finally did.

Endless examples could be given of the Times’ betrayal of the public trust in service to power. A striking one goes back to the 1945 writing of science reporter William Laurence on the Manhattan Project, who along with his Times assignment was also on the War Department payroll as a PR consultant/cheerleader-propagandist writing press releases on the atomic weapons program. His job was to mislead the public initially covering-up what actually happened at the first atomic bomb Alamogordo, NM test. From there, it was to sell the program, lie about the Hiroshima/Nagasaki horror on the ground, and then deny what historian-attorney Jonathan M. Weisgall later called the “silent nuclear terror of radioactivity and radiation” and that radiation sickness killed people. He was such a good liar, he won a Pulitzer Prize for it and got to fly on the plane that bombed Nagasaki, later describing it in the Times with religious awe. But the Times duplicity didn’t end there.

Beverly Ann Deepe Keever, in her 2004 book “News Zero,” documented the central role the Times played for years thereafter creating false and misleading perceptions about the nature and dangers of nuclear power in any form and the deadly effects of radiation. More than any other source, the Times willfully and deceitfully misled the public, opinion leaders, production workers, uranium miners, US servicemen exposed to radiation, Pacific islanders exposed to tests, and everyone living near nuclear test sites or where nuclear materials are produced, processed or used. To this day, little has changed at the Times in how it reports on this vital issue it’s complicit in keeping its readers in the dark about.

More examples of Times duplicity involve the paper’s one-sided support for all things business because it’s a major player itself in the corporate giant community. So it showed strong support for NAFTA even though it was clear before it passed it would cause hundreds of thousands of job losses in its three signatory countries including many high-paying US ones.

Earlier it was late on major stories like the 1980s Savings and Loan scandal and then tepid reporting how excess banking deregulation and concessions to Wall Street caused it. It was the same covering the 1991 Bank of Credit and Commerce (BCCI) $20 billion + heist scandal, and since March, 2003 it failed to report on the misuse of multi-billions of taxpayer dollars by the likes of Halliburton, Bechtel, the entire defense establishment, and other war profiteers benefitting hugely from the scheme in Afghanistan and Iraq. But readers of this review can get the whole ugly story told stunningly in St. Clair’s 2005 book “Grand Theft Pentagon” that shows how profitable wars are and why we fight so many of them.

Such is the state of the leading newspaper on the planet today saying a lot about how bad the rest of the dominant media are. Cockburn explained part of the problem in his essay on the Post’s Katherine Graham titled She Needed Fewer (political) Friends. They dined at her Georgetown home and turned out in force for her July, 2001 funeral because she was one of them. Long before it corrupted Graham’s Post, it was how business was done at the Times best remembered during James “Scotty” Reston’s prime years, the most influential, widely-read journalist of his time. He walked easily in the halls of power, befriended its denizens, and tainted his objectivity by giving them free reign to do almost anything without fear they’d be held to account for it by him.

Today, fourth estate elites’ values are the same as the figures they cover because they’d paid so well for their work. It stands to reason they want to protect their high salaries and prominent positions by never biting the powerful hands feeding them. They, and their younger up-and-coming aspirants, have what Cockburn calls a built-in “compass in their heads” to know what to do and how to please the boss. Any divergence could mean “swift and disastrous retribution” with reassignment to the Siberia of obit writing or an invitation to find another line of work in an age when it’s hard telling the difference between prostitution and so-called journalism corporate media-style.

More Examples of the Fourth Estate’s Fall from Grace

The authors’ book is wide-ranging and full of examples of fourth estate betraying the public trust precipitating its fall from grace. Rare exceptions aside, the dominant media never report what the authors published in their stunning 1998 book “Whiteout” about the CIA’s long history of involvement in and profiting hugely from drugs trafficking. In his essay What You Can’t Say, Cockburn explained the book “protrayed Uncle Sam’s true face (that CIA was) Not a rogue agency but one always following the dictates of government, murdering, torturing, poisoning, drugging its own subjects, approving acts of monstrous cruelty” developed by Nazis recruited to America post-war.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Gary Webb said it too and got mainstream space in Knight Ridder’s flagship San Jose Mercury News doing it for his 1996 Dark Alliance 20,000 word three-part series later expanded into his 550 page 1999 book with the same title. It involved CIA, the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, and the distribution of crack cocaine in Los Angeles at the time. It got him national attention, and what the authors call “one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist’s competence in living memory” by his colleagues at the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, LA Times, American Journalism Review with even the “progressive” Nation magazine piling on (dis)courtesy of its contributor David Corn who poses as a liberal but often doesn’t act like one. It cost Webb his career and marriage and finally his life in an apparent suicide in December, 2004 the result of his depression because his career was ruined.

The authors also wrote about The History of “Black Paranoia” that’s easily justified from the long history of white on black abuse. One example was the 600 poor black men recruited in 1932 in Macon County, Alabama for a US Public Health Service study for which they used as guinea pigs. Four hundred were infected with syphillis, were lied to and told they were being treated for bad blood, and only got an aspirin-iron supplement so researchers could monitor the natural progression of the disease. After penicillin was available as a cure in 1943, the study subjects never got it and 100 of them died from neglect with an overdose of racism. The authors quote Dr. Vanessa Gamble, associate professor of history of medicine at University of Wisconsin, Madison, saying these kinds of experiments go back over 100 years usually “done by whites on slaves and free blacks” than on poor whites.

Then there’s the ugly history of snooping on blacks most notoriously done by the FBI against Martin Luther King and the infamous COINTELPRO program begun in 1956. J. Edgar Hoover said it was to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize (meaning assassinate)” black organizations like the Black Panthers the FBI wanted to destroy and pretty much did.

The Nixon foray on drugs and later Reagan-Bush-Clinton one and now GW Bush all out war on them is really a war on blacks mainly. It led to the US having the largest prison population in the world at over 2.2 million with over 1000 new prisoners put in cages each week in a burgeoning prison-industrial complex that’s now big business exceeding $40 billion annually and rising with blacks being the main source of revenue for it. Blacks account for half the prison population, over half of them are there for non-violent offenses, and half of those are drug-related. While inside, these and other prisoners are exploited by private contractors as de facto chattel making them the cheapest, easiest source of near-free labor this side of slavery and one more reason why “black paranoia” is real.

Other examples show it, too, with contributor Ishmael Reed writing on How the (white-controlled) Media Use Blacks to Chastise Blacks letting them say and write the kinds of things they can more easily get away with without being called racists. A lot of it is blaming the victim the way Reagan administration officials did it to impoverished single black mothers demonizing them as “welfare queens” to help justify Reagan’s assault on essential social services he saw no need for.

Add to it the way elections are now held with voter roles cleansed of blacks along with their being intimidated the way they were in Florida with many prevented from getting to the polls, others turned away after arriving, and still more legitimate black voters obstructed with long lines, too few voting machines and precincts closing early to keep black people from voting “the wrong way.” The fourth estate turned a blind eye, but St. Clair wrote about it in his essay What You Didn’t Read About the Black Vote in Florida. He used the characterization Edward Herman chose for his 1984 book “Demonstration Elections” saying the process “demonstrated how rotten the whole system is” throughout the country.

Then there’s torture the authors say is As American as Apple Pie that goes on routinely in the home-based US Gulag Prison System this reviewer wrote about in an early 2006 essay by that name calling it a crime against humanity and shame of the nation. The fourth estate never reports it and was embarrassed when they had to after the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib scandals broke, but quickly backed off once the heat died down.

CounterPunch’s Side of the Story

The final part of the book includes some of its most interesting parts that only can be touched on here. One is Cockburn’s essay on The Great Communicator who needs no identifying except to point out what a dreadful job of it he did except for hard core true believers hanging on every word the way they do for GW Bush like it’s gospel. In Reagan’s case, Cockburn wrote some classic lines saying “Truth for him, was what he happened to be saying at the time. He went one better than George Washington in that he couldn’t tell a lie and he couldn’t tell the truth, since he couldn’t tell the difference between the two.”

Mark Hertsgaard wrote how deferentially the press treated Reagan in his 1989 book “On Bended Knee” explaining they never tried laying a glove on him till the Iran-Contra scandal broke in 1986 and then did its best to go easy. All this was for “an awful president, never as popular as the press pretended, presiding over a carnival of corruption and greed” only the Bush administration has exceeded, so far. But when he died in June, 2004, the media practically defied him for endless days of turgid eulogies suppressing his callous indifference for the needy and scorched earth legacy he left behind in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and other parts of the world where he won’t be easily forgiven if ever.

Gore, Clinton and Kerry are then deservedly taken to the wood shed in a trio of essays. Gore is portrayed as an erstwhile opium-laced marijuana and coke user selling himself otherwise in 2000 when the authors wrote about him as a tough-on-crime law and order hard-liner supporting the death penalty that’s far from the image he’s now covets as a friend of the earth. Clinton, on the other hand, back then wanted an office in Harlem to shed his image as a moral reprobate and war criminal but keep the false part of it as a man of the people “feeling our pain.”

Then there’s John Kerry the authors give twice the space to as the former president and vice-president combined. It’s to tell the story of a 1966 Skull and Bones elite secret society Yale grad who joined the Navy and shot up the world from his Swift boat patrol in Vietnam. In the process, he earned Silver and Bronze Stars, three Purple Hearts, and former CNO (chief naval officer, Vietnam) Admiral Elmo (Bud) Zumwalt’s opprobrium for being a loose cannon killing too many civilian non-combatants and assaulting other non-military targets. He was so zealous and out-of-control the admiral “virtually (had) to straightjacket him” to hold him back saying Kerry even then had large ambitions his Vietnam service would haunt him pursuing if he tried doing it on a national stage.

The book ranges over much more from Billy Graham the anti-semite and supporter of mass-killing in Vietnam if the Paris peace talks failed, to the press’ endorsing and covering up the Delta Force slaughter at Waco, to all the pro-war news fit to buy from willing fourth estate players and PR pros like the Lincoln Group hired to plant phony stories in Iraqi newspapers and at US-controlled al-Arabiya TV about Pentagon military successes in the country the public there could plainly see was pure baloney. Lincoln also had a near open-ended $100 million PsyOps contract to improve its creativity and foreign public opinion about the US, especially the military needing all the burnishing it can get.

The final section also covered The Row Over the (powerful) Israeli Lobby the press can’t admit exists with Cockburn saying it’s been a fixed part of the scene for over six decades and questioning its existence is like doubting there’s a Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor or White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. Part of the Lobby’s job is suppressing real news about Palestine Cockburn says he first wrote about in 1973 and continued thereafter exposing wanton Israeli acts of daily killings including targeted assassinations, land confiscations, home demolitions, torture, illegal settlement building on occupied lands and a host of other endless human degradations to ethnically cleanse all parts of Palestine Israelis want for themselves. Try finding news on that in “The Newspaper of Record” that’s only possible if a publication named the Times operates on another planet and does there what journalists should be paid here to do - their job.

There’s lots more this review can’t include, so it will end will a final well-deserved jab at a worthy recipient before some final personal comments. It’s Cockburn’s article called Murdoch’s Game about the venomous king of media moguls the author calls (as mentioned above) a “WORLD-SCALE MONSTER.” He writes what distinguished Australian-raised journalist Bruce Page did about him in his chronicle called “The Murdock Archigelago.” It has material in it Murdock supporters wouldn’t want repeated in polite company about “one of the world’s leading villains (and) global pirate” they support no doubt because of his rampages in the mediasphere putting world leaders on notice what he expects from them and what he’s prepared to offer in return.

The essence of Page’s book is that Murdock’s core thesis is wanting to privatize “a state propaganda service, manipulated without scruple and with no regard for truth” in return for “vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief, and monopoly” market control as free as possible from competitors having too much of what Rupert wants for himself. The problem is he usually gets his way mostly in places that matter most with the biggest markets and greatest profit potential in a business where reporting accurate news is off the table and partnering with governments assuring a growing revenue stream is all that counts. Cockburn sums up Murdock’s Game in the essay’s lead-in quote from Othello: “I have done the state some service, and they know ‘t.”

Some Final Thoughts of Hope for What’s Ahead

At the top of this review, this writer noted the public’s hunger for real news and information turning for it to progressive publications and online web sites providing it to growing audiences disillusioned with what they’re not getting in the mainstream. Do you blame them? The above material offers plenty of examples making the case.

But as alternative news sources gain prominence and influence, the battle lines are forming to preserve and keep them free from state or corporate control. It’s the battle for Net Neutrality pitting us, the public, against telecom, broadcast and cable giants, and what’s at stake is the last media frontier of a free and open internet that’s the best hope to revive a flagging democracy now on life support at best. The demise of HR 5252 in the Senate (the so-called “Anti-Net Neutrality Bill) in the 109th Congress means it’s up to the current 110th Congress to settle the issue by either keeping the internet free and open or allowing it to be exploited by corporate predators for commercial gain and allow them to control its content to suppress material like this review.

Those concerned enough better do more than just hope for a favorable outcome from a corrupted Congress unpredictable on which way it’ll go on an issue that can turn either way but is picking up positive tailwind with Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards voicing support for Net Neutrality in a recent Howard University speech. He now joins others in the field like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson plus Al Gore who may jump in later as well.

This is what’s needed and more as freedoms don’t protect themselves and the power lined up against them is formidable. The commercial giants are outspending public interest advocates 500 - 1, but concerned citizens fought back flooding the 109th Congress with over one million letters (and did it again to the 110th with over 1.6 million) and took to the streets in 25 cities delivering “Save the Internet” petitions to their senators last summer demanding they oppose the corporate attempt to gut Net Neutrality and instead enact a free and open internet information commons. This issue can be won, but only by lots more letters, emails, phone calls and innovative action from an aroused and mobilized public unwilling to let business or government take away what already belongs to us and that we can’t afford to lose. Stay closely tuned.

Stephen Lendman is a regular RINF contributor, lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sj.lendman.blogspot.com and listen each week to the Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.

Have Your Say: A Review of Alexander Cockburn’s and Jeffrey St. Clair’s End Times
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There’s a War Going On (But It’s Under the Radar)

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

The Alaska Intel ReportThursday

Bill Adams

There is a war going on folks.
No missiles, no bombs, no bullets, but a war none the less.
This is a war against democracy, a war against free speech.

Ever since Ron Pauls amazing showing the other night on the Republican debate, people have been pouring into the polls, forums, and other places on the net to demonstrate their support for Congressman Paul and the ideas he has put forth, and to share their thoughts about the debate.

At first, the ‘Big Money Media’ like ABC and Yahoo made an attempt to accomadate this feedback by giving us a place to post our comments about their articles.
It would seem that as soon as it became clear that there was a ground swell of support for Mr. Paul they went into ‘bury’ mode.

First they trotted our their talking heads to try to explain it all away by claiming that a few Paul supporters were bombing the sites with repeated messages and this was not a true representation of the ‘people’. However, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of how websites work knows, most sites deposit cookies to prevent repeated votes in addition to other measures that can be implemented to insure fair accounting. However they chose not to address the security issue. (I wonder why)

Finally in desperation, realizing that there was no way to stem the tide, they started blocking favorable comments for Mr. Paul. When that didn’t work, they finally started removing and shutting down these forums and comment sections of their websites.

This naked attempt to silence the voice of the American people and control what is said about the candidates by the media elites, is nothing less then outrageous.

Below is a partial collection of ‘comments’ from FMNN and it represents hundreds of more from forums all over the net.

“ABC News Silences Posters … As of yesterday, I can no longer view comments on stories at ABC News. I had joined members of the Digg community yesterday in commenting on an ABC News story about Ron Paul. In order to do this, I created a user ID on the ABCNEWS.COM website. Today I went to read the news on ABC’s web site, and wanted to comment on another article that I thought was interesting. When I added my comments and tried to post, I was asked to log in to the ABC News site, so I did. The news article re-appeared, but now without any comments section at all. Not only can I not post comments on ABC News, but I can not read comments on ABC News stories while I am logged in. As soon as I log out of the web site, I am able to read posted comments. ABC has effectively silenced me as a contributor to their discussions for my actions on the Ron Paul story that I posted about yesterday.”
RandomblingsFromRich

1. 5/10/2007 - 16:34:16PM
BY: A. Magnus
“Yahoo news took down their bulletin boards a while back because it was becoming impossible for the Freepers and the army psyops guys to manufacture any credible semblance for Bushevik support among the posters. When the overwhelming volume of posts became anti-Bush and anti-war, Yahoo took the boards down just like ABC just did.”

2. 5/10/2007 - 17:57:0PM
BY: Noel Gibeson
“Exact same thing happened to me. ABC News does not want our comments and that is why they are playing games on their website by not posting comments. We must continue to use alternative media. Here is what I tried to post on the statist ABC News website:

“Congressman Ron Paul is a fine gentleman who believes that politicians should actually follow the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land. Such behavior - following the Constitution - would be news to most current members of Congress and the Executive branches of government. Perhaps we should listen to what Ron Paul has to say.”

Hardly the ravings of some political hot head !

It’s time to fight back folks !
The zombies in front of their TVs watching ‘24 Hours’ aren’t going to.
The idiots in the malls working on their 5 credit card to buy that Chinese junk they don’t need, aren’t going to.
The folks sitting around reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal damn sure aren’t going to.

The Internet is the last bastion of democracy in this country, and if you want to keep a ‘free Internet’ then it’s time to roll your sleeves up and get in this fight !

It’s time to get ‘creative’ and start pushing these school yard bully’s back where they belong, because if we don’t … (Censored!)

http://alaskaintel.blogspot.com/

Bill is a member of the post war ‘baby boom’ after WWII, and came of age during the civil rights struggle of the 50’s and 60’s, and the Vietnam War soon thereafter. The assassination of Jack Kennedy made a huge impact on him and his doubts about the ‘official’ explanation launched him into a lifelong search for the truth which has taken him down many paths, from Zen Buddhism to a two year study of the Koran at the Islamic Center in Wash. DC . In 1984 this self proclaimed ‘intellectual atheist’ had what could only be described as profound ‘Damascus Road’ experience which was to change his spiritual life forever. With the advent of the internet, his search really went into high gear, and after 911, it accelerated even more. Now living in rural Alaska with his best friend ‘Buddy’ (his red nosed pit-bull) he has traded a career as a computer consultant for simpler way of life and when he’s not hunting, fishing, or chopping firewood for the wood stove, he continues this search, peeling back the layers of the onion and shining in the light of the truth and watching the enemy squirm.

Have Your Say: There’s a War Going On (But It’s Under the Radar)
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New World Order elites: Bildeberg Group to Meet in Istanbul

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Open letter to Turkish Prime Minister

Timuçin Leflef

Communique sent to the Turkish Prime Minister re Bilderberg 2007 8th May 2007

Dear Prime Minister,

I am a Turkish filmmaker living in Ireland. It has come to my attention that the Bilderberg Group are holding their next meeting in Istanbul this year, between May 31 and June 3rd.(1) I have known about this group since 1993 and have been following their activities over the past 14 years. According to many sources, since its inception in 1954 by former Nazi S.S. Officer Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, the Bilderberg Group have been covertly continuing the Nazi policy of creating a New World Order (a global totalitarian dictatorship). (2)

Likely to attend this year’s meeting are Paul Wolfowitz, Dr. Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld:

o As U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz was one of the major architects of the Iraqi War (3) and is still a member of PNAC (Project for a New American Century). PNAC is a neo-conservative think-tank which called for a “catalyzing event” for their policies “like a New Pearl Harbour” exactly a year before 9/11.(4) Mr. Wolfowitz is currently being questioned on charges of corruption and has been asked to resign as head of the World Bank.

o As member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, Dr. Henry Kissinger is also likely to attend. According to many sources, Dr. Kissinger is a mass murderer who implemented and defended the decision to run 600 illegal bombing missions in Cambodia (”Operation Menu”), causing the deaths of over 500,000 Cambodians between 1969 and 1973. Under the U.S. constitution, this secret bombing campaign was illegal without U.S. Congressional approval. (5)

Two months after striking a peace accord with North Vietnam in October 1972, he authorised 129 B-52 bombers to bomb North Vietnam for 11 days in a “demonstration bombing” as a public relations exercise to appease South Vietnam (called “The Christmas Bombing”).

Former U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia David Newsom, and a Senior CIA Officer both confirm that on December 5th 1975, Dr. Kissinger, along with President Ford, held a meeting in Indonesia with President Suharto. Transcripts of this meeting prove that he gave the greenlight to the subsequent Indonesian Invasion of East Timor. This lead to the massacre of over 100,000 Timoreans and violated the U.S. law on arms trade. (6)

Recently, a French judge subpoened Dr. Kissinger about U.S. involvement with mass-killings in Chile, Operation Condor and General Augusto Pinochet. He still hasn’t attended the hearing and has been evading the subpoena ever since.(7)

o Bilderberg member Donald Rumsfeld is also another PNAC member and was the main architect of the Iraqi War. As he is a regular Bilderberg attendee, there is a possibility that he may attend this year’s meeting in Istanbul.(8)

My main concerns and therefore my questions to you are:

(a) Why are war-mongers the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld being allowed to hold a secret meeting in Turkey this year, without the Turkish people’s knowledge or approval?

(b) Why are the Turkish newspapers not discussing this event which will be taking place in Istanbul?

(c) It is obvious that a secret meeting of elite minds and warmongers like these is likely to result in the manufacture of another war for profit. I would therefore like to know whether they will be holding this meeting to plan the next stages of an upcoming war with Iran? Will they be using Turkey as a chess-piece in this next war? Also, as Dr. Kissinger wrote the book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” and admits that he is not averse to using nuclear weapons in a war situation, will they be involving us in a nuclear one?

One journalist who has been invited to this year’s meeting is Mr. Cengiz Çandar. However, in my opinion, he will be providing a complete whitewash on this year’s event. Being a former lecturer at the Istanbul Bilgi (American) University (9), and a good friend of Paul Wolfowitz during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, it is obvious in my opinion that Mr. Çandar has been invited to attend the conferences due to his loyalty to Bilderberg, and will most definitely be writing pro-Bilderberg articles. (10) Therefore, it is my belief not to trust him to make an accurate appraisal of this year’s meeting and I ask that independent Turkish journalists attend this year, so that the Turkish people know exactly what is taking place in their own country.

I am completely appalled by the total lack of discussion in Turkish newspapers about the upcoming Bilderberg meeting, by the huge level of secrecy and denial surrounding it, the total lack of transparency of these meetings, and by the high level of ignorance Turkish people are showing about the Bilderberg Group. A secret meeting is being held by the world’s most influential warmongers, right under our noses! This is an outrage.

As a Turkish citizen, I am deeply offended that my own government would allow this secret meeting to take place on Turkish soil without our knowledge or approval. I therefore ask you that there be complete journalistic transparency at the upcoming Bilderberg meeting in Istanbul this year. If the Bilderberg Group have nothing to hide, then we must be allowed a full transcript of their meeting. Therefore, the Independent Turkish Press must attend the meeting this year. If this is not possible, I ask that you, as a servant of the Turkish people, not allow the upcoming Bilderberg meeting to take place in Turkey.

As a public servant, I expect your reply within 10 working days of receiving this Open Letter.

Yours sincerely,

Timuçin Leflef

A very concerned Turkish Citizen

admin@lightfilms.com

Sources:

(1) Washington’da ‘delik iktidar’, 03.04.2007 / Cengiz Çandar / Yorum http://www.referansgazetesi.com/haber.aspx?HBR_KOD=63588&ForArsiv=1

- Bilderberg History: http://www.bilderberg.org/bildhist.htm

- Bernhard History: http://www.bilderberg.org/bernhard.htm

(3) “The puppet who cleared the way for Iraq’s destruction”, Paul Wolfowitz must bear a large part of the responsibility that is usually laid at the door of his superior alone. Andrew Cockburn - Thursday April 26, 2007 - The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2065440,00.html

(4) Wikipedia, “Project for a New American Century” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

(5) “The Trials of Henry Kissinger”, Eugene Jarecki, 80 mins., documentary, BBC, 2002. Please watch on Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2815881561030958784&q=The+Trials+of+Henry+Kissinger

- “The Trial of Henry Kissinger”, Christopher Hitchens, Verso (May 2001), 160 pages

(6) The National Security Archive, East Timor Revisited”FORD, KISSINGER AND THE INDONESIAN INVASION, 1975-76 ” Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia’s Invasion of East Timor, 1975: New Documents Detail Conversations with Suharto National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62 Edited by William Burr and Michael L. Evans December 6, 2001 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

(7) The Latest Kissinger Outrage. Why is a proven liar and wanted man in charge of the 9/11 investigation? By Christopher Hitchens Posted Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2002, at 6:36 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/?id=2074678,

Wikipedia, Henry Kissinger:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger#_note-1

(8) Wikipedia, Bilderberg:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bilderberg_attendees

(9) Bilgi Universite American Universitesi’dir:
http://hurarsiv.hurriyet.com.tr/goster/haber.aspx?id=5475643

Bilderberg.Org, “Bilgi Universitesi Bilderberg ile bagali!”
https://secure.gn.apc.org/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2028

(10) Washington’da ‘delik iktidar’, 03.04.2007 / Cengiz Çandar / Yorum
http://www.referansgazetesi.com/haber.aspx?HBR_KOD=63588&ForArsiv=1

(11) http://www.bilderberg.org

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Unmanned plane to boost coastal surveillance

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

An unmanned surveillance plane will begin patrols of northern Australian waters later this year in a multi-million dollar Federal Government trial.

It is hoped the plane, fitted with radars and surveillance sensors, will be able to detect illegal vessels and increase border protection.

The Director-General of Border Customs Protection, Nigel Perry, says the plane will begin patrolling waters in August for a 10-week trial.

“It’ll launch from Weipa airport and the way we are managing the trial program is that we will have some pre-planned flights around the Gulf of Carpentaria, around the Torres Strait and around the eastern side of Cape York,” Mr Perry said

“We’ll look at the sort of data we get back from those trials and what level of data it collected.”

ABC

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White House Pushed Ashcroft on Wiretaps

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

LAURIE KELLMAN

(AP) Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey waits to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was so questionable that a top Justice Department official refused for a time to reauthorize it, sparking a battle with top White House officials at the bedside of an ailing attorney general, a Senate panel was told Tuesday.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that he refused to recertify the program because Attorney General John Ashcroft had reservations about its legality just before falling ill with pancreatitis in March 2004.

Comey, the acting attorney general during Ashcroft’s absence, said then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card responded by trying to get Ashcroft to sign the recertification from his bed at George Washington University Hospital.

During that dramatic meeting, also attended by Comey, Ashcroft lifted his head off the pillow and appeared reluctant to sign the document, pointing out that Comey held the powers of the office.

Gonzales and Card then left the hospital room, Comey said.

“I was angry,” Comey told the panel. “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general.”

The hospital room confrontation had been previously reported, but this was the first time Comey has spoken about it publicly.

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Big Brother Enters The Womb

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Government targets 16-week embryos

Unborn babies are to be the youngest members of society targeted as part of the government’s family review. Embryos will be identified when their mothers are 16 weeks into pregnancy as potential victims or criminals and efforts will be made to give extra support to their parents.

Women whose children are most likely to be born into a deprived family will be offered help from health visitors and social workers until their child reaches the age of two.

The scheme was first launched in America where supporters say it leads to better language development and lower chances of abuse or neglect.

Kate Billingham, the project’s director of the project said she thought labelling children so early in life was a positive step. ‘I myself think labelling and stigmatising are used as ways of not giving people the help they want and their children can benefit from.’

http://www.raisingkids.co.uk/todaysnews07/news_160507_02.asp

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White House Censors Civil Liberties Report

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Larisa Alexandrovna

We are fighting the war on terror, so, not only are civil liberties any longer relevant but neither is any report on civil liberties being violated relevant. After all, if you do not know that you have no rights, you won’t complain all that much, see? From ACLU:

“Washington, DC - The American Civil Liberties Union today ridiculed White House censoring of a report submitted by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to exclude previously released information. The White House made more than 200 redactions to the public report, sometimes deleting entire sections. These edits resulted in former White House Counsel Lanny J. Davis’s resignation.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“This administration has taken a see-no-evil, speak-no-evil posture. Attempting to keep well-known civil liberties violations secret is nothing short of childish. We clearly see what the administration is trying to hide when White House staff made 200 redactions and edits to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s report. The board is a toothless entity that blindly and obediently advances the Bush agenda by endorsing its most egregious civil liberties violations. For the administration to take it one step further by censoring the PCLOB’s report is shameless.

“Representatives Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Tom Udall (D-NM), have introduced legislation which would take the civil liberties board out from under the president’s control and would give it subpoena powers. We strongly support that necessary move to ensure that the board has true oversight powers - and can be a watch dog, not a lap dog.”

Make no mistake, this is a direct assault on freedom of the press, on freedom of expression, on the Bill of Rights in general. Maybe Congress should meet with Lanny J. Davis and ask about those 200 redactions?

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Detainee details claim of torture at Guantanamo

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

In a transcript, American says he was so upset by his treatment that he tried suicide twice

NANCY A. YOUSSEF

A Pakistani citizen who grew up in suburban Baltimore, where his father still lives, told a U.S. military hearing last month that he was tortured at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after he was transferred there from secret CIA custody, according to a transcript released by the Pentagon Tuesday.

Majid Khan, who denied he had ever been a member of al-Qaida, said he was so upset by his treatment at Guantanamo that he twice tried to commit suicide by gnawing through arteries in his arm, according to the transcript.

Khan’s April 15 hearing to determine whether he should be held as an enemy combatant — the last for 14 so-called high-value detainees who were transferred to Guantanamo last September — provided the most detailed allegations yet of mistreatment at Guantanamo.

During the hearing, U.S. officials accused Khan, who graduated in 1999 from Owings Mills High School outside Baltimore, of belonging to al-Qaida. They cited testimony from a witness who said Khan had discussed fighting in Afghanistan during a dinner at his family’s home and had told him he wanted to kill Pakistani President Pervez Musharaff in a suicide attack.

During the 2 1/2 -hour hearing, Khan denied those allegations and presented written statements from the witness denying the conversations took place.

He also said he’d begun several hunger strikes after he was transferred to Guantanamo in an effort to push U.S. authorities to either release him or send him back to Pakistan.

He said prison officials shaved his head twice, confiscated a photo of his daughter and engaged in a variety of forms of “mental torture” by limiting his exposure to sunlight and providing sub-par soap and deodorant.

Among the allegations against Khan was that he worked with al-Qaida operatives to move people across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and planned to attack U.S. water reservoirs and gas stations.

Officials also charged that he planned to use his U.S. travel documents to help an al-Qaida operative enter the United States. Khan denied that was his plan, but he was vague about what he intended to do with the documents and denied al-Qaida membership.

“To be al-Qaida, a person needs to be trained in Afghanistan and needs to take an oath in front of Osama bin Laden,” Khan said. “I have never been to Afghanistan and I have never met (bin Laden). I cannot possibly be a member of al-Qaida.”

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