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Saudi minister warns of dollar collapse

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

The dollar could collapse if Opec officially admits considering changing the pricing of oil into alternative currencies such as the euro, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister has warned.

Prince Saud Al-Faisal was overheard ruling out a proposal from Iran and Venezuela to discuss pricing crude in a private meeting at the oil cartel’s conference.

In an embarrassing blunder at the meeting in Riyadh, ministers’ microphones were not cut off during a key closed meeting, and Prince Al-Faisal was heard saying: “My feeling is that the mere mention that the Opec countries are studying the issue of the dollar is itself going to have an impact that endangers the interests of the countries. “There will be journalists who will seize on this point and we don’t want the dollar to collapse instead of doing something good for Opec.”

After around 40 minutes press officials cut off the feed, which had been accidentally broadcast to the press room.

Prince Al-Faisal added: “This is not new. We have done this in the past: decide to study something without putting down on paper that we are going to study it so that we avoid any implication that will bring adverse effects on our countries’ finances.”

Iran and Venezuela have argued that the meeting’s final communique should voice concern about the level of the dollar, which has recently fallen to new record lows against the euro. They are pushing for oil to be denominated against a basket of currencies.

The greenback also weakened slightly against the pound, although sterling’s own recent weakness has pushed it down from $2.10 to $2.0457 during the week.

Nigerian finance minister Shamsuddeen Usman said that Opec could declare in the communique that: “While underlining our concern for the continued depreciation of the dollar and its adverse impact on our revenues, we instruct our finance ministers to study the issue exhaustively and advise us on ways to safeguard the purchasing power of our revenues, of our members’ revenues.”

Chancellor Alistair Darling will today urge his fellow finance ministers at a major G20 summit to increase investment in oil production and refinement.

http://www.thebusiness.co.uk/news-and-analysis/358346/saudi-minister-warns-of-dollar-collapse.thtml

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Son of Satan is Unhappy. Wonder Why?

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

Tony Blair is supposed to be enjoying the high life after leaving office but friends say he is miserable

On the face of it, retirement seems to agree with Tony Blair.

He is leaner and fitter than when he left Downing Street nearly five months ago. Gone is the vaguely haunted look that characterised his final, troubled days in office.

Now that he is free to pursue the millions on offer to him after life in No 10, the former Prime Minister already bears the unmistakable buffed glow of a money-maker.

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Out of office: Friends say Tony Blair is ‘in mourning’ for his Downing Street life

He has even found time for the occasional game of tennis, although not yet the lie-ins he promised himself once he was no longer running the country.

A steady stream of early-morning builders and decorators to his still-unfinished London home has put paid to that.

Not that he has any time to be idle. When not criss-crossing the Atlantic or travelling to China in recent weeks to deliver a series of highly lucrative speeches, he has been hard at work sketching the outline of his forthcoming autobiography which will net him £6 million.

Indeed, Mr Blair has quickly honed his taste for the high living to which he has always been drawn.

Friends say he has, of late, been extolling the virtues of the private Gulfstream jets that are now his preferred mode of travel - those wishing to book him on the international lecture circuit are routinely told that providing Mr Blair with his own airliner is a non-negotiable requirement.

Nor, it seems, is the Blairs’ £3.65 million home near Hyde Park proving a sufficiently comfortable base for him as he commits pen to paper with those musings about ten years in power.

Instead, he is said to have spent recent weeks holed up in the lavish £20 million Mayfair home of his friend, PR guru Matthew Freud, as he waits for the completion of his own luxurious offices nearby.

All of which is very grand. So why, given that earlier this month he commanded an astonishing £240,000 just to pay a three-hour visit to a Chinese housing development, do those closest to him say Tony Blair is “utterly miserable”?

In fact, so out-of-sorts is the former premier as he struggles to come to terms with life outside the corridors of power that one recent visitor to Tony and Cherie’s new home told me: “There is an all-pervading joylessness about the place. Tony is very low.

“Neither of them is happy. The initial sense of relief both of them felt when they left Downing Street has gone and they are having trouble adjusting. I always felt that once the money started rolling in, Cherie, in particular, would perk up, but even she is miserable.

“As soon as you walk through the front door there is a bad vibe. The house feels soulless and there is tension in the air.”

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Slimline: Tony Blair is tanned and toned since leaving office

Part of the problem, say friends, is that Cherie is using much of the downstairs of the house in Connaught Square as an office and every morning their home is invaded by her staff, who now include a chauffeur.

The friend added: “Her staff are milling about constantly. It feels more like a business than a home.”

The mood has not been helped, insiders say, by a war of attrition being waged by the two teams the Blairs have hired to oversee their separate offices.

At the centre of the acrimony is Martha Greene, the New York-born former restaurant owner who acts as Cherie’s manager. The energetic Miss Greene is said to be so at odds with members of Mr Blair’s office that Tony has chosen to escape to Matthew Freud’s during the day simply to keep the peace.

One source said: “Martha is bossy beyond belief. The aggravation is affecting everyone. Tony needs to get out of the house for some peace and to work.”

All this comes at a time when Blair remains, say friends, in a “period of mourning” over his lost power.

And while the fortune he is now earning has undoubtedly softened the blow - during his first lecture tour of North America last month he earned more in a week than the £183,000 he earned in a year as PM - he cannot come to terms with his new role as a “civilian”.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that Blair’s status has been reduced from that of world statesman to little more than a celebrity for hire.

Consider his highly-paid trip to the Far East last week, which was partially funded by Chen Runguang, a property tycoon worth more than £100 million.

After paying £80,000 in local income tax, Mr Blair still trousered £156,000 for addressing a group of businessmen and touring Mr Runguang’s development of luxury villas in the industrial city of Dongguan.

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Diplomat: Blair, during his time as Prime Minister, rarely had a moment’s rest

This week, Mr Blair’s image was being used to promote the development, with pictures of his visit displayed on a hoarding outside the sales office, while a slide show of his tour of the properties plays inside.

For all the financial consolations, it must surely be something of a come-down from those cosy Camp David summits with George Bush.

And then there is the fact that he was accused by the Chinese media of “gold digging” and “money sucking” and - horrors! - of boring his audience with another speech during the visit.

Certainly, he has fared better in America, where he remains popular.

Last month, he gave a series of speeches in the U.S. and Canada as friends revealed that Cherie had “put the arm on him” to earn more money.

He didn’t do badly - bringing home around £300,000 in just one week of four paid talks and a series of appearances for charity. But after being the guest of honour at a £500-a-head white tie charity dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York (fellow guests included Rupert Murdoch and mayor Michael Bloomberg), he was accused of telling the same jokes at a paid-for speech to oilmen in Calgary days later.

And when the Jewish Federation in Tampa, Florida, approached his agents, the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, to book him for its annual President’s dinner next March, it baulked at their insistence that Blair would charge £125,000 for a one-hour talk, plus, of course, the prerequisite private jet to transport him from the UK.

The trouble is that the money is desperately needed. The Blairs have £5 million of mortgages on their several properties including their London home, two flats in Bristol and his former constituency home in County Durham.

The couple were also linked last month with a £3 million estate close to Chequers, the Prime Minister’s weekend home in Buckinghamshire. They are said to have made three trips to view the Christopher Wren-designed Winslow Hall, set in 22 acres.

Friends say the Blairs initially set their hearts on the property which, despite needing at least £1 million of renovations, has its own Catholic chapel (Mr Blair is said to be preparing to convert to Catholicism, possibly later this month). But recently, the couple have “gone quiet” on the subject.

Meanwhile, their new earning power (Cherie has also signed her own £1.5 million deal to write her memoirs) does not seem to be reflected in the decor of their new London home, say visitors. One recent guest described the interior of the Georgian Connaught Square house as “unutterably naff”.

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Free time: Tony Blair has slimmed down since he left office and even finds time for the odd game of tennis

The friend told me: “Considering all the renovations they are still having done, the place is a taste-free zone.

“Cherie simply has no clue about style and decoration. The house in Islington that they had before they moved into Downing Street was a shambles, and this place is the same.

“They are having an expensive marble floor put in, but, true to form, Cherie has been telling their architect, a man called Simon, to get her discounts on everything.

“One of their few extravagances has been an enormous plasma television which dominates one wall downstairs.

“The house is lovely outside and you’d think it would be equally elegant inside, but they have brought all their old, nasty furniture down from the constituency house in Trimdon and it just doesn’t fit in.

“I felt a flush of horror come over me when Cherie showed me into the living room and there was this huge and tacky TV next to a flower-patterned sofa of the most questionable taste.

“You’d think given the money they’re earning that they could have splashed out on some decent new stuff.”

Mrs Blair has nevertheless insisted on living a life commensurate with her position as the former unofficial First Lady and has assembled her own staff, having taken with her from Downing Street two full-time female assistants. She has also headhunted her former No 10 cleaner to work for them at their new home.

And as befits her taste for the regal, she has seen fit to employ her own full-time chauffeur (friends had become used to her complaining that she was expected to drive herself around when her husband was Prime Minister).

While she continues to tout herself for speaking engagements, insiders say the lure of her husband on the lecture circuit has led to a dropping off in her own bookings.

Where once it was her controversial speaking engagements that kept the family afloat, it is now Tony who is the major breadwinner - which leaves barrister Cherie clear to stake her long-held ambition to be chosen as a High Court judge.

Her well-orchestrated bid for the job, which began in an interview she gave to Lawyer magazine this week, has received something of a blow, however.

In accompanying comments, her former mentor, Michael Beloff QC, describes his one-time protege as a “reasonable” advocate.

Meanwhile, friends confirm that Mr Blair, who was appointed a Middle East envoy after leaving his job in June, is attempting to rekindle his political career by lobbying for the role of first full-time president of the EU.

He has already enlisted the support of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with whom he dined in Paris at the end of last month.

It is a position he would relish, not least because it would allow him to do battle once more with Gordon Brown. On the subject of the former Chancellor, friends say it was Cherie who was the prime mover in persuading her husband to appear in the controversial three-part BBC1 documentary, The Blair Years, which begins tomorrow night.

It features friends of Blair, including Peter Mandelson, former BBC boss John Birt and former Health Secretary Alan Milburn, who were sanctioned to speak about his former Chancellor Gordon Brown’s alleged treachery.

The programme is seen by friends of the Blairs as the first salvo in a ‘get even’ assault on his successor.

In particular, Cherie - whose memoirs will come out to coincide with next year’s Labour Conference (and a year before her husband’s tome) - is said by insiders to be “beside herself” at the thought of getting her revenge on Mr Brown in its pages.

Given their multifarious missions - the determination to make money, the desperation to reclaim their former power-broker status and that overwhelming desire for revenge - the Blairs have left themselves little time to readjust.

As a friend said: “They are both incredibly busy and I think they should have given themselves time to be a normal couple again after all the madness of the years in No 10.

“I always felt Tony was reluctant to dive straight into making money, but Cherie was having none of it. She felt it was his turn to start making some cash for them.

“But it’s not making him happy and I think it has been a mistake to turn the house into her office. The place feels tense and miserable.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=494607&in_page_id=1770

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New (and old) revelations of spying at the FBI‏

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

News outlets are abuzz with the news of the guilty plea of Nada Nadim Prouty.

Despite fraudulently acquiring her citizenship and having close familial ties to Hezbollah, Prouty was able to pass background checks for both the CIA and the FBI.

Prouty pled guilty to improperly accessing the internal computer systems, apparently to get a status-check on investigations into Hezbollah, as well as herself and her family members.

The agencies appear to be playing down the incident with anonymous sources saying that there aren’t any counter-terrorism or counter-intelligence implications - although many observers are less sanguine.

Perhaps the media will take the opportunity to revisit the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds.

Perhaps the media will be equally outraged that some of the spies in Sibel’s case are still working in senior positions at the FBI, and other spies were allowed to walk away without an investigation.

Perhaps not. I won’t hold my breath.

*****
Dodgy Background Checks?
The UK’s Independent reports:

“As a tale of incompetence by the intelligence services, the tale of Nada Nadim Prouty is hard to beat.”

What if the issue isn’t a matter of ‘incompetence’ though? As we saw in Sibel’s case, sometimes there really are ‘bad guys’ inside the agencies. It’s certainly not inconceivable that ‘bad guys’ in the agencies would recruit and promote similarly-minded folks. To the extent that might be true, it wouldn’t take very long for the bad guys to come to dominate the senior positions at the FBI.

If that sounds far-fetched, consider what Special Agent John Roberts said on the 60 Minutes show about Sibel’s case. John Roberts was head of the FBI’s Internal Affairs Department - so his words should carry some weight:

Mr. JOHN ROBERTS: I don’t know of another person in the FBI who has done the internal investigations that I have and has seen what I have and that knows what has occurred and what has been glossed over and what has, frankly, just disappeared, just vaporized, and no one disciplined for it.
[...]
Mr. ROBERTS: I think the double standard of discipline will continue no matter who comes in, no matter who tries to change. You have a certain group that will continue to protect itself. That’s just how it is.
[...]
BRADLEY: Have you found cases since 9/11 where people were involved in misconduct and were not, let alone reprimanded, but were even promoted?

Mr. ROBERTS: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
[...]
Mr. ROBERTS: Depends on who you are. If you’re in the senior executive level, it may not hurt you. You will be promoted.

Long term FBI agent Frederic Whitehurst from the FBI crime lab in Washington made a similar point, hypothetically, in an interview with Sibel and Scott Horton:

Dr Whitehurst: But right now there is not only no accountability (at the FBI), nobody audits the process, nobody can audit the process, so we don’t know how many of those people are crooks.

Think about this - and it’s not too far fetched - the FBI has (previously) been infiltrated by spies, Robert Hansen, Earl Pitt, whatever, by spies. Foreign governments have infiltrated the FBI. The FBI has had agents that have joined the mafia… Suppose that the top management of the FBI was compromised - what recourse do American citizens have? We don’t have any recourse. The safest place in the United States of America right now for a criminal is within the walls of FBI headquarters. The safest place! Nobody can touch those people! It’s terrifying.

Whitehurst makes a related point in that interview:

The Bureau has an expression: ‘Who is your juice-man back at HQ?’ Who is the guy that is supporting you?

As I documented in Sibel Edmonds’ Corrupt Boss is STILL the key to National Security, Sibel’s boss, Mike Feghali, engaged in all manner of espionage, including recruiting spies into the translation bureau and making sure that agents in the field didn’t receive translations that were directly relevant to ongoing investigations - including the 9/11 investigation. This has all been confirmed by the Inspector General’s report into Sibel’s case. Nonetheless, Feghali has been promoted and is now, currently, in charge of the entire Arabic translation desk, in charge of 300 translators, many of whom are his family and friends, and some “were openly celebrating the terrorist attacks on September 11.”

Who promoted Feghali, and why? Who are his ‘juice men’?

Why is Congress, and the media, silent on this matter?

Feghali also hired Melek Can Dickerson. Prior to joining the FBI, Dickerson worked for three different organizations - all of which were targets of FBI investigations, and she had ongoing relationships with people who were targets of FBI counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism operations.

How did the FBI miss this in their background checks?

In partnership with Feghali, Dickerson blocked translations into her friends, leaked information to them about the investigations, and engaged in all manner of other nefarious activities. Dickerson, and her husband then-USAF Major Douglas Dickerson, actually tried to recruit Sibel into the espionage network.

Again, even after this was confirmed by the FBI’s own investigation, Melek Can Dickerson was allowed to continue in her nefarious ways for another 6 months before she fled the country. Her husband, Douglas Dickerson, has since been protected by various interests withing the US Government, and has also promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and still has his Top Secret/SCI clearance - giving him access to all manner of US military secrets that he might sell to the highest bidder.

Sibel describes it thusly:

“As mentioned above and confirmed by the Congress and the FBI, Melek Can Dickerson was hired and granted Top Secret Clearance despite the fact that she lied in her job application about her previous employments that were targets of FBI investigations, that she and her husband had on going personal and business relationships with FBI targets. Ms. Dickerson maintained her position and clearance even after the FBI confirmed that she had intentionally blocked and mistranslated intelligence/information related to the individuals and organizations she had ties with, and after two FBI targets were tipped off and hastily left the United States”

Why is Congress, and the media, silent on this matter?

Of course, Sibel isn’t the only person to make claims about dodgy background investigations. Take the case of John Cole, manager for counterintelligence operations covering Pakistan, Afghanistan and India at FBI HQ. He reported that:

Several translators from (Pakistan, Afghanistan and India ), who had ties/relationship with targets of FBI investigations and were found to be significant security risks, were hired by the FBI and placed in charge of translating intelligence in languages from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. In one case, the translator’s father was among the members of a FBI target organization, and in another case, the FBI discovered that one translator had been providing FBI top secret information to a foreign intelligence service.

Cole was forced out of the FBI after 18 years for raising these questions. Apparently he didn’t have the requisite Juice Men on his side.

Back to Prouty
Returning to the recent case of Nada Nadim Prouty, according to The Independent, in 1999, Prouty was “talent spotted” at the restaurant where she’d worked since 1990. Who recruited her? Who pushed her through the recruitment process? Who were her ‘Juice-Men’? Have they been promoted? Who facilitated Prouty’s 2003 move to the CIA and then to the “CIA’s most sensitive post” where she “participated in the debriefings of high-ranking al-Qaida detainees”?

The Prouty timeline, and her penalty, is also suspicious.

According to Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, buried in the penultimate paragraph of a 3 page article:

“(The FBI) discover(ed) Prouty’s connections to Hizbullah (in) December 2005… Eventually the bureau alerted the agency and the CIA later reassigned her to a less sensitive position… about a year ago, after she first came under suspicion.”

That is, the FBI has known about this for 2 years, and it took the CIA a full 12 months to downgrade her status, and then it took a further 12 months for the investigation and to negotiate her guilty plea. Of course, Prouty wasn’t charged with espionage, but rather, as one anonymous spin doctor described it:

“She took an illegal shortcut to the American dream, then she made some inappropriate computer searches.”

Heads were exploding over at Fox News at the apparent lenience of the punishment:

JOHN GIBSON, CO-HOST: We’re all breathless about this, an illegal immigrant spy with terror ties and the punishment — that’s it for the punishment?

KENNEDY: This has got a lot of people in the intelligence industry just completely freaked out that she’s only getting six to 12 months. I spoke with the Justice Department today. They say because she is going to cooperate and because she will be a key witness, this is what they arranged for her plea deal.

So which is it? “Inappropriate computer searches” or something more serious?

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson says:

“The CIA and FBI are going to great lengths to try to tamp this story down. But you don’t blow an ops officer’s career just because she took a sneaky peek of an classified file. For Christ’s sake. She had clearances. She did something beyond read.”

So why did Prouty get off nearly scot-free? The fake marriage and immigration charges appear to be the equivalent of Bernie Kerik’s ‘Nanny problem.’ Again, who are Prouty’s ‘Juice Men’? Did she blackmail them into giving her this apparent leniency? Did she threaten to expose them all?

Prouty’s guilty plea states that if she withdraws her guilty plea, the government shall “reinstate any charges that were dismissed as part of this agreement.” What are those charges? What are they holding over her head?

How many other spies?
Scott Horton asked Sibel about the reaction within the FBI when she began to report what was happening. Sibel replied:

“After this was confirmed - because the agent I worked for, he reported this issue to the Security Division - and it came down to this issue: If (the FBI) were to admit to this case, and investigate it, criminally investigate it and refer it to counter-espionage division, it would bring into question all the other Top Secret Clearances we had granted to other translators. That means they would come down and shake up this dept and - this is the exact words:

“Who knows how many more Dickersons would fall out if they were to come and shake up the Dept?”

Heaven forbid. Apparently they’d rather tolerate multiple cases of espionage than have a PR problem. Again, I’m not sure whether espionage vulnerability is regarded as a feature or a bug.

Traduttore tradittore
In fact, compromised translators are often more dangerous than compromised agents. “Traduttore tradittore” say the Italians - “The translator is the traitor.”

In the words of DoJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine:

“The FBI’s linguists play a critical role in developing effective counterterrorism and counterintelligence information. Linguists are the first line of analysis for information collected in a language other than English.”

Compromised translators have the power to shift investigations away from targets, and given Feghali’s hiring practices, many of them were compromised. In Sibel’s case, Melek Can Dickerson simply told the agents that certain relevant phone calls between her friends were ‘not pertinent.’ The agents simply had no choice but to trust the translations. Eventually the agents suspected that something was amiss and asked Sibel to retranslate the wiretaps.

Given the enormous power of the translators, it’s not surprising that foreign interests would attempt to infiltrate the translation bureau. In fact, within the FBI, translators actually have significantly higher clearance authority than any of the actual agents. What is surprising is that the FBI doesn’t go to greater lengths to ensure the integrity of the translation unit. Again, one possibility is that various Juice Men prefer to have weaknesses in the system.

‘Illegal Alien’
I don’t know the truth behind the Prouty matter. I suspect it is much more serious than the agencies are currently trying to portray. On the other hand, I suspect that the ‘illegal alien’ (and to a lesser degree the Hezbollah connection) emphasis is merely a smokescreen for our friends on the Right.

I do know that there are more serious problems that we face - including the fact that we currently have traitors in the FBI translation department, and the Defense Department, and the State Department - and they are being protected today. And someone keeps promoting them. Sibel has been trying to bring these matters to our attention for 5 years - but neither our friends in congress, nor our friends in the media (for that matter, nor our friends in the blogosphere) appear very interested in listening to her - despite the fact that her allegations have all been confirmed.

Sibel has been trying, unsuccessfully, to get Henry Waxman to hold hearings into her case in Congress. (In ordinary circumstances, we might expect Waxman’s Government Reform Committee to hold hearings into the Prouty matter, but he wouldn’t dare do that without holding hearings into Sibel’s case.) Now Sibel is prepared to ‘tell all,’ at great personal risk, if a broadcast network will let her tell her story.

Sibel deserves our support.

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Jim Rogers Urges People to Sell U.S. Dollar Holdings

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

Aaron Pan and Paul Gordon

Investor Jim Rogers urged people to get out of the dollar and says he expects to be rid of all his U.S. currency assets by summer next year.

”If you have dollars, I urge you to get out,” Rogers said in an interview from Singapore. He is chairman of New York-based Rogers Holdings, formerly known as Beeland Interests Inc. ”That’s not a currency to own.”

The dollar fell 9.5 percent this year against a basket of six major currencies as a housing slump slowed the economy and losses stemming from subprime mortgage defaults spread among U.S. banks. Rogers, who said last month he was shifting out of all his dollar assets, plans to buy commodities, Japan’s yen, the Chinese yuan and the Swiss franc.

Interest rate futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade show a 72 percent chance that the central bank will lower its target rate for overnight loans between banks to 4.25 percent on Dec. 11, its third reduction this year.

Rogers, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1999, criticized Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke for comments on the currency before a congressional committee on Nov. 8.

”He is a total fool,” Rogers said. ”He said Americans who buy only American goods are not affected if the value of the U.S. dollar goes down. I was terrified.”

Bernanke said the only effect of a weaker dollar on a typical American with their wealth in dollars, buying consumer goods in dollars, would be ”their buying powers, it makes imported goods more expensive.”

Rogers said that’s not right.

”If you only buy American products and the dollar goes down, the price of oil goes up, copper goes up, wheat goes up,” he said. ”That affects you. He doesn’t understand the economy as far as I can see.”

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High School Physics Prooves Towers were Demolished

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

When I talk to people about the building collapses on 9/11/2001, most people have never even heard about the destruction of World Trade Center Building No. 7, the 47 story steel office tower that fell into its own footprint at 5:20 on the evening of 9/11. But even people who know about building 7 will indicate that they don’t feel competent to have an opinion about the plausibility of the official explanation for the twin towers collapse. They will say things like “I’m not a structural engineer.” or “I’m no architect.”

I contend that you don’t have to be a structural engineer or architect to see that the official story, to the extent that there is one, is strictly impossible. Even knowledge of basic High School physics is enough to prove that the official explanation can not be squared with the rapidity of collapse or the plumes of concrete dust observed on 9/11.

9/11 Commission Report Fails High School Physics Test

Newton’s law of gravity tells us exactly what to expect from falling bodies. A falling object experiences a constant acceleration of 32ft/sec^2. We can calculate that the time it would take for an object to fall from the top of one of the 1350ft WTC towers is 9.2 seconds without accounting for air resistance. When air resistance is included, for example, for a brick falling from that height, we would expect it to take about 12 sec. This is very close to the approximately 10 seconds it took for the towers to fall as reported in the official Kean-Hammilton-Zelikow report or the 10 to 13 seconds as independently measured from observation of various videos of the collapses. The bottom line is that the towers fell at essentially free fall speed.

Another fundamental law of physics is the conservation of energy and it applies to falling bodies as well. An object, as it falls, converts its gravitational potential energy (due to height above ground) into kinetic energy (speed). If that object has to use some of its energy for something else, like pushing air out of the way, then there will be less energy available as kinetic energy so it will take a bit longer to reach the ground. As we’ve seen in the example of a brick falling from the top of the tower, even just the energy required to move air out of the way is enough to slow the free fall time from 9.2 seconds to 12 seconds.

In the “official” explanation of the collapse, the so-called “pancake theory”, the floor above gives way and crashes into the floor below it, which gives way and together they fall on the next floor below, and so on. The falling floor must use a considerable amount of its energy to break loose the floor below. In addition, to account for the observed dust plumes, the crashing together of the floors has to crush the concrete floor slabs into a fine powder and that takes a very substantial amount of energy as well. Additional energy is then required to eject those tons of crushed concrete at high speed in all directions because that’s what was observed on 9/11. All of this energy must be subtracted from the original potential energy of the falling floor, which means there is much less energy available as kinetic energy(speed) so the floors must be falling much slower than they would otherwise.

How much slower? You don’t have to be an engineer to realize that the energy required to crush the concrete into fine powder and blow it out of the buildings at high speed is many times more energy than what is required just to move air out of the way. If the energy required to move air out of the way of a falling brick could increase the fall time from 9.2 sec. to 12 sec, the requirement to not only move air, but also crush concrete, and eject tons of crushed concrete dust laterally at high speed, should have increased the fall time considerably.

The fact that the buildings were observed to fall at essentially free fall speed, means that all of the gravitational potential energy of the building was in fact converted to the kinetic energy of falling. The fall speed accounts for all of the gravitational potential energy available. There is no gravitational energy available to break steel, crush concrete, eject dust or do anything else but just fall.

The Conservation of Energy Law forces us to conclude that there had to be some additional source of energy. Some source of energy to pulverize the concrete and send it in all directions at high speed as a fine powder. Some additional energy to knock out the heavy steel beams that had supported the building for 40 years so that the top of the building could free fall unimpeded to the ground in just over 10 seconds.

What was the source of the additional energy? Since the 9/11 commission neglected to investigate the mater, that has been left to your imagination, but large quantities of high grade explosives fit the bill.

Peace, Matt.
http://9eleven.info

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Sufferers sue ‘happy pill’ firm for £30million

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

By MARTIN DELGADO

Lawyers representing patients who insist the bestselling drug is addictive have issued the first of 600 High Court writs against the company, each seeking compensation of up to £50,000.

Since first prescribed in Britain in 1990, Seroxat has been linked to at least 50 suicides of adults and children.

GSK, which makes up to £1billion a year from the drug, is already embroiled in lawsuits with American users, and has been accused of failing to act on warnings that it could have serious side-effects, including mood swings and personality changes.

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Mark Harvey, of law firm Hugh James, claims Seroxat is “defective” under the 1987 Consumer Protection Act.

He said: “When patients took the drug, not only was there no warning of withdrawal problems, there was also a statement on the data sheet until about 2003 which said you cannot be addicted to Seroxat.

“Unfortunately many people are havingdifficulties as they try to withdraw from the drug, and there are a few who have not been able to stop taking it.”

Earlier this year the BBC’s Panorama programme alleged that GSK had covered up fears about Seroxat’s safety, which the firm strongly denied.

The drug was banned for under-18s in 2003 amid concerns that it contributed to suicide among adolescents with depression, and adult patients have reported that, when they stop taking it, they feel aggressive, reckless and violent towards themselves.

Four years ago a man arrested for armed robbery was cleared after medical experts concluded that his behaviour could have been altered by severe withdrawal symptoms from Seroxat.

GlaxoSmithKline said: “Seroxat has benefited millions of people worldwide.

“We believe the product is not defective and that there is therefore no merit in this litigation.”

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9/11 Group Plot Anti-Giuliani Ad Campaign

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

9/11 Firefighters and Family Members Plot Anti-Giuliani Ad Campaign

By TAHMAN BRADLEY

A group of 9/11 firefighters and victims’ family members with eyes on derailing Republican Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign is close to a decision on forming an entity that would run issue ads in key early nominating states.

“TV made him a hero, and we’ll use TV to take him down,” New York Fire Chief Jim Riches told ABC News.

The final decision about the formation of an outside entity will happen sometime within the next few weeks after the group finalizes its plans at a meeting scheduled for after Thanksgiving. So far, though, under Riches’ leadership, the group has sought legal guidance and help from political consultants.

If the group decides to move forward, it would set up a 527 committee — or something similar to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which in 2004 helped sink Democratic Sen. John Kerry’s White House bid.

This Monday, the firefighters and family members are holding a meeting at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire hoping to spread the word about what they say is Giuliani’s “egregious” use of 9/11 for political gain.

The group also is considering additional trips to early presidential primary states Iowa, Florida and South Carolina.

Riches, who lost his firefighter son Jimmy in the World Trade Center’s north tower, said, “We don’t want him running on 9/11 or the bodies of all these dead people or my dead son saying that he did a great job that day.”

He and other members of the anti-Giuliani group claim 9/11 first responders were given bad radios and that that prevented them from hearing evacuation orders when the World Trade Center buildings were about to collapse. They also contend Giuliani rushed cleanup work and misled people about air quality at Ground Zero, where recovery workers, including Riches, say they contracted illnesses.

Asked to comment for this story, the Giuliani campaign referred ABC News to a statement from Lee Ielpi, another firefighter whose son died on Sept. 11.

“I understand the emotion surrounding Sept. 11, but we cannot lose sight of the fact that it was the terrorists who attacked New York City,” the statement said. “On that day and the days following, New Yorkers and the rest of the country were fortunate to have the steady and strong leadership of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”

Like Ielpi, there are numerous firefighters and 9/11 family members who don’t agree with the criticism leveled against Giuliani for his handling of the terrorist attack. They instead laud Giuliani for his leadership and resolve during the crisis. The Giuliani campaign has a team of “First Responders for Rudy” across the country who vouch for the mayor.

Claims that Giuliani has exploited and misled people about his 9/11 record are not new. A major union representing firefighters, The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), released a 13-minute film this summer focusing on what it describes as “failures” by Giuliani before, during and after 9/11. Chief Riches was featured in the union’s video.

The IAFF has had ties to the Democratic Party. It has endorsed Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd’s 2008 presidential campaign and supported Sen. Kerry in 2004.

Comments Giuliani made back in August, in which he told reporters in Cincinnati that he was at Ground Zero “as often, if not more, than most of the workers,” infuriated some 9/11 recovery workers. On that issue, Riches told ABC News Giuliani “was at Yankee Stadium more than he was down at Ground Zero.” Giuliani later admitted he could have better articulated what he meant.

It is unclear what effect, if any, Riches and his group will have on the widely held perception that Giuliani is a hero of 9/11. But an issue ad campaign like the one they are contemplating would target what is believed to be one of Giuliani’s greatest strengths — that he is a proven leader who is strong on national security.

As a 527 entity, the group would be able to raise millions dollars from both low-dollar and large donors, seemingly enough money to run numerous ads.

The criticism of Giuliani doesn’t seem to have changed his standing in the Republican presidential contest or his image overall. He’s still widely admired by much of the country. Despite holding liberal views on abortion, guns and gay rights, polls still show the former mayor atop the GOP presidential field.

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NIST encryption standard may have NSA backdoor

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

By Ryan Paul

According to security experts, an algorithm for generating random numbers that is included in an official standard documented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could potentially include a backdoor planted by the NSA.

In a recent blog entry, cryptographer Bruce Schneier describes research that was presented by his colleagues Niels Ferguson and Dan Shumow at the CRYPTO 2007 conference this past August. The security researchers have raised concerns about a potential backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG algorithm, which is documented in NIST’s 800-90 publication about deterministic random bit generators. Dual_EC_DRBG, which is based on elliptic curves, is said to be significantly slower to compute than the other algorithms in the standard and was supposedly only included at all because it has the strong support of the NSA.

Dual_EC_DRBG uses a seemingly arbitrary series of specific fixed numbers which are published in the standard to define the elliptic curve used for the algorithm. The origin of those numbers has not been revealed or explained but it is possible to use other numbers instead. The researchers realized that the fixed set of numbers used in Dual_EC_DRBG could have a mathematical relationship to a secret second set of numbers, which could then be used as a master key to decrypt content.

“[W]e have no way of knowing whether the NSA knows the secret numbers that break Dual_EC-DRBG,” wrote Schneier. “We have no way of knowing whether an NSA employee working on his own came up with the constants—and has the secret numbers. We don’t know if someone from NIST, or someone in the ANSI working group, has them. Maybe nobody does.”

Schneier also explains that the algorithm’s susceptibility to decryption via a secret number set presents broader risks. The party which holds the master key would be able to decrypt content that uses Dual_EC-DRBG, but if the key was leaked or if others managed to figure it out independently, all implementations of the algorithm that use the fixed numbers specified in 800-90 could be compromised.

“Even if no one knows the secret numbers, the fact that the backdoor is present makes Dual_EC_DRBG very fragile. If someone were to solve just one instance of the algorithm’s elliptic-curve problem, he would effectively have the keys to the kingdom,” wrote Schneier. “He could then use it for whatever nefarious purpose he wanted. Or he could publish his result, and render every implementation of the random-number generator completely insecure.”

Although the researchers present compelling evidence to support their argument that a master key could potentially exist, there is no evidence yet that such a key was intentionally formulated by the NSA and included as a backdoor. The NSA’s support for the algorithm does seem somewhat suspicious, particularly in light of its relative weaknesses compared to the others in the standard. Schneier recommends that developers avoid using Dual_EC-DRBG and notes that “both NIST and the NSA have some explaining to do.”

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Ruling Blocks Challenge to Wiretapping

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

A federal appeals court said today that secrecy laws forced it to exclude critical evidence about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program from being used by an Islamic charity in a lawsuit even though the mere existence of the program could no longer be considered a “state secret.”

The complex ruling was a victory for the Bush administration and signaled trouble for civil rights groups that are trying to show that the eavesdropping program was unconstitutional and to hold telecommunications companies liable for carrying it out.

The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a charity in Oregon, had perhaps the best evidence of anyone that it had been a target of the wiretapping program, based on a top secret document mistakenly given to the group in 2004.

But the ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco, found that evidence about the document could not be introduced in court because it fell under the “state secrets” privilege invoked by the government. The court, reversing a lower court ruling, said the trial judge had made “a commendable effort to thread the needle” but that its final ruling in allowing the evidence was flawed.

However, the appeals court split off from its ruling a separate claim made by more than 40 groups against the telecommunications companies, and it has yet to rule on whether those lawsuits were covered by the state secrets privilege as well.

A lawyer for the group leading that part of the lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in an interview that he was heartened by the appeals court’s clear rejection of the government’s claim everything involved in the eavesdropping program should be considered a state secret. That could bode well for the remaining piece of the case, said the lawyer, Kevin Bankston.

Indeed, the appeals court spent most of its 27-page ruling explaining why the eavesdropping program should not be considered a state secret. It listed numerous public statements, including those by President Bush, former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, about details of the program. And it said: “In light of extensive government disclosures” about the Terrorist Surveillance Program, “the government is hard-pressed to sustain its claim that the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret.”

The judges on the panel were M. Margaret McKeown, Michael Daly Hawkins and Harry Pregerson. Judges McKeown and Hawkins were nominated by President Bill Clinton, which Judge Pregerson was a nominee of President Jimmy Carter.

In presenting the charity case before the lower court, its lawyers had also argued that warrantless eavesdropping of telephone conversations between its directors and lawyers violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to issue top secret surveillance warrants authorized by a judge, The Associated Press reported.

Today, the appeals court did keep the charity’s lawsuit alive, if barely, by sending the lawsuit back to a trial court in Portland, Ore., to determine if that law governing the wiretapping of suspected terrorists trumps the state secrets law.

The appeals court said that “the F.I.S.A. issue remains central to Al-Haramain’s ability to proceed with this lawsuit.”

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Defend the Constitution? They’ll drug you for it

Sunday, November 18th, 2007

U.S. Government Considers US Constitution “Terrorist Literature”

The U.S. Government now officially considers people who “make numerous references to the Constitution” to be “potential terrorists”

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