Unspeakable grief and horror
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Know them by their fruit:
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Unspeakable grief and horror
Know them by their fruit: |
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Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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Menezes picture 'was manipulated'
Police have been accused of manipulating a photo of Jean Charles de Menezes so it could be compared to that of one of the 21/7 bomb plotters.
The image had been "stretched and sized" to form a composite image of the Brazilian and Hussain Osman to show the jury, prosecutors told the Old Bailey.
Mr de Menezes was shot dead after being wrongly identified as one of the men who targeted London's transport system.
The Metropolitan Police denies breaking health and safety laws.
Mr de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head on a train at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005, after being wrongly identified as Osman.
The Met Police said the composite picture was created to illustrate the difficulties officers would have had in differentiating between the two men.
'Serious allegation'
But Clare Montgomery QC, prosecuting, told the court it had been altered "by either stretching or resizing so the face ceases to have its correct proportions".
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Forensics consultant Michael George told the court that the police composite appeared to have a "greater definition" than the two images used to produce it.
He produced an alternative composite, which was shown to the jury, in which the two faces had different skin tones and their mouths and noses were not aligned.
Ronald Thwaites QC, defending, asked Mr George whether there had been any manipulation "of the primary features of the face".
Mr George replied: "I don't believe there has been any... but making the image brighter has changed the image."
The court heard the composite was compiled using a 2001 identity card photograph of Mr de Menezes and a photo of Osman taken by police in Rome, where he was arrested.
Immigration records
Earlier, Mr Thwaites cross-examined immigration official Paul Roach over a counterfeit stamp found in the Brazilian's passport, asking if this meant he had been in the country illegally.
Mr Roach told the court Mr de Menezes first entered the country on 13 March 2002 and was given six months' leave to remain, before extending his stay, as a student, to 30 June 2003.
The next record was of him arriving in Ireland from France on 23 April 2005 but there was no notification of when he returned to the UK.
The court heard how as a person entering Britain from Ireland, he would have had an automatic three-month leave to remain which at the earliest would have run out on 23 July, the day after he was killed.
A counterfeit stamp found on his passport may only have been added after he entered the UK, Mr Roach said. | |||||||
UK Police State Systemic killing Ludicrous Diversion - 7/7 London Bombings Documentary |
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Why do police kill and injure their own people?
Because you allow it!
And you pay for it!
Ha! Ha! |
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BBC — Tuesday, 16 October 2007
'Two shot' in Cameroon taxi riot
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Police have shot dead at least two motorcycle taxi-drivers at a protest against police abuses in north-west Cameroon, local residents say.
Drivers had invaded the centre of the town of Bamenda to protest at the alleged severe beating of a colleague detained at a police checkpoint.
When police tried to clear away the demonstrators' barricades, stones were thrown and police replied with gunfire.
Thousands joined the protest to demand an end to extortion, witnesses say.
A pregnant woman was also wounded in the shooting and some reports say three taxi-drivers were killed.
A 'popular upheaval'
The protests began on Tuesday morning after the detention of a driver on Monday at a checkpoint where he was reportedly stopped for not having the right papers.
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"He was thoroughly beaten until he lost consciousness and one of his eyes," one Bamenda resident, who asked not to be named, was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.
"His colleagues went to the police station to seek his release but the police used tear gas to chase them away.
"They then invaded the town, mounting roadblocks and blocking the traffic. When the security forces came out to lift the roadblocks, they threw stones at them and the police fired at them in retaliation."
An aide to the governor of North-West Province, who asked not to be named, confirmed there had been a "popular upheaval downtown" but could not confirm the deaths.
"The situation is very tense here now," the aide added, requesting anonymity.
"It seems the people want the police to pay for the killings."
A local journalist told AFP news agency that passions among drivers were high because police harassment of taxi-drivers had been growing in recent days.
The drivers are known locally as benskinners because passengers have to "bend their skin" to climb on to the motorcycles.
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UK Police State Systemic killing Ludicrous Diversion - 7/7 London Bombings Documentary |
Italy: Murder of 'God's banker' echoes war on terror says author
Rome, 28 Sept. (AKI) — By Alison Dickens
The mysterious death of Italian banker Roberto Calvi at the height of the Cold War presents parallels with the modern day 'war on terror' the author of a new book on the Calvi case, Rome based journalist Philip Willan, told Adnkronos International (AKI).
He believes that Calvi, found hanged beneath a London bridge in 1982, was murdered, and argues that his killing "opens up a vast panorama on the true nature of recent history and how the Cold War was fought."
Unholy alliance against communism
Willan argues that Calvi played a key role in an ‘unholy alliance’ against communism in Italy involving senior political and intelligence figures, as well as shady associates and highly questionable practices.
That web of intrigue, spawned by the Cold War, raised similar dilemmas to those posed by the current battle being fought by western nations against Islamist terrorism, Willan said.
"To what extent do you form alliances with warlords and suppress civil liberties to fight a 'common enemy?'" he asked.
Using very unusual and unscrupulous tactics
The Cold War context to Calvi’s killing a quarter of a century ago involved "people in power in an emergency situation turning to organised crime and using very unusual and unscrupulous tactics to prevail, causing serious harm to Italian society in the process," Willan stated.
Calvi was chairman of the Banco Ambrosiano — then Italy’s largest private bank which went bust soon after his death — and a member of the Italian secret P2 masonic lodge.
He was known as "God's banker" because of the illicit financial dealings that connected him to the Vatican's then-bank the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR).
Calvi joined the P2 in 1975 to obtain vital political protection for the Banco Ambrosiano, Willan said.
The banker shifted money around the world to fund illegal arms purchases for anti-communist movements from South America to Poland, Willan argues in his book ‘The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi.'
In the process, Calvi became a ‘nerve centre’ for secret services and other forces combating Soviet influence in Italy, which had the largest communist party of any western nation.
British police investigation stunningly inept
Calvi was found hanged beneath Blackfriar's Bridge in the City of London on 18 June, 1982, his pockets weighed down with bricks and stones, and with over £7,000 in cash on him.
As Willan's book makes clear, the British police investigation was stunningly inept, initially dismissing Calvi as a vagrant because his expensive clothes were dirty and torn.
A hasty coroner's inquest in the UK ruled that Calvi took his own life; a second inquiry there a year later failed to establish if it was murder or suicide.
Willan’s book lays out the evidence of real-life 'Da Vinci Code'-style intrigue linking the Vatican, organised crime, top politicians, spy networks and freemasonry in the Cold War era that cost Calvi his life.
Calvi did not stumble into this web of intrigue, but willingly participated in it, Willan shows.
"I attempted to put Calvi’s death in the historical context in which it took place, " he told AKI.
Calvi pulled financial strings for elements in each of these forces.
At the time of his death was blackmailing several individuals in a last-ditch attempt to save Banco Ambrosiano from bankruptcy and keep himself out of jail, Willan argues.
"Calvi was almost certainly trying to recoup money from other P2 members, such as its head Licio Gelli," Willan told AKI.
Gelli is reportedly a suspect in the Calvi case, although this has not been confirmed or denied by the public prosecutor, Willan said.
More than Mafia hit for failing to repay laundered drug money
Willan suggests Calvi’s death was more than a Mafia hit for failing to repay laundered drug money — the argument of Italian prosecutor Luca Tescaroli in the recently concluded 18-month trial of five people suspected of involvement in Calvi's killing.
One trial suspect was completely absolved and the other four were acquitted 'for insufficient or contradictory evidence'.
The verdict at the trial — which Willan attended — backs up his thesis that Calvi did not commit suicide, Willan said.
Prosecutors are expected to appeal the trial verdict, reached in June.
"There is good reason to suspect the defendants but also a reasonable doubt. This is the conclusion I reach in my book," Willan told AKI.
The amount of time that has passed since Calvi’s death made it additionally hard to tell if witnesses were telling the truth or not, or "had good reason to obfuscate," he noted.
"A lot about the case remains mysterious to this day. But despite the verdict, we are not back at square one," he said.
The book draws on the mountain of trial evidence gathered by prosecutors over the past 25 years and interviews conducted by Willan over three years.
Freemason link to Italian government, the Vatican, US and British spies.
It concludes that although Mafia killers may well have strangled Calvi and hung his body from Blackfriars Bridge in the City of London, the decision to kill him probably came from elsewhere, starting with the freemasons, who had links to the Italian government of the day, the Vatican, US and British spies.
A recent mafia turncoat, Antonino Giuffre has given "very powerful evidence in open court" that the Banco Ambrosiano handled Mafia money, Willan said.
Giuffre's evidence was particularly convincing because members of his own Mafia family were allegedly involved in Calvi’s murder, he added.
Willan also devotes ample space to the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, former IOR head, who faced no charges in the recent Calvi murder trial.
The Vatican had a natural interest in the global war against communism. The IOR and the Banco Ambrosiano during the 1970s and early 1980s provided large sums of money to fight communism in Poland, for example.
Berlusconi
Willan wrote an earlier book, ‘Puppet Masters’ about the Cold war activities of the P2 — or ‘Propaganda Due’ — whose members included top-ranking members of Italy’s espionage networks, police and even Italy's former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"If the Ambrosiano affair had been clarified sooner, much more of Italy’s political world would have been destroyed," Willan told AKI.
"Tangentopoli ('Bribesville' in Italian) might have begun 10 years earlier, " Willan said.
He was referring to sweeping corruption probes by Milan magistrates in the early 1990s that led to the demise of many of the political parties that had ruled Italy in the post-war period.
Several prominent political and industrial figures who were investigated committed suicide.
The P2 was banned in 1981. When Gelli in 1977 organised a visit to Italy by the head of the Argentine navy, Admiral Emilio Massera, a list of his meetings with Italian business leaders showed that over half were P2 members, Willan said.
A secret list of 900 P2 members, uncovered in 1981 at Gelli's home in Arezzo, central Italy, included dozens of generals, members of parliament and academics.
Cabinet ministers, former prime ministers, intelligence chiefs, newspaper editors, TV executives, businessmen, bankers, and no less than 19 judges were also on the list.
'The Plan for Democratic Rebirth'
When searching Gelli's villa, the police found a document called 'The Plan for Democratic Rebirth' which called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.
© 2007 Giuseppe Marra Communications - Partita IVA 01145141006 |
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Flying Kites....
Friday, October 12, 2007
I really don't know what is going on here... The other day was Pink and today it is Pastel colors. Not a fitting time of the year for pastel colors. After all, it is the beginning of Autumn, with its golden brown, rusty red and dying green... But pastel colors have been obsessing me...ever since those pink and red taints. Maybe because it is the Eid, the feast that marks the celebration of the end of our fasting month, Ramadan. |
I remember the Eid in Baghdad, what used to be the Eid... We have a tradition for the Eid, we must wear something new. I remember young and old saving that new piece, that untouched garment, for the Eid. I remember the little boys and girls dressed in their new clothes, laughing as they rock on their swings, as they cry with joy on their merry-go-rounds... Eating "shaar al Banat" or "ghazl al Banat" as some may call it. You know, that fluffy hair-like sugar, dyed in pastel colors, that feels like cotton in your mouth, wrappped around a wooden stick and glues all over your face and leaves your tongue colored in pastel...pink, green, blue, yellow and...white. I also remember the conversations... "Baba, baba, shoof, anee helwa?" — Daddy, daddy look, am I pretty? would ask a little one raising her eyes to her dad. Showing off her new pastel colored dress and the pastel ribbons in her hair... "Mama, mama, shofee shlon atayerhom" — Mom, mom, look how I can make it fly! would shout a little one to his mother, pointing his finger to his brand new kite made of pastel colored paper... And the father would respond "Hadha shlon Jamal" — What beauty you are. Or, the mother would say "Shater, ibnee, enta shater" — Clever my son, you are clever. I can still hear their giggles, their laughs and their shouts of excitement... I can still see the joy in their shining innocent eyes, their funny faces, their tender smile... I can still feel their hugs, their wet kisses smelling of candies and their warm little heads on my shoulder, when tired from too much running around...tired from too much play. I am lucky to have such memories. I am lucky to have witnessed them. Today's children in Iraq are either too scarred or will not live to remember or... are already dead. |
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Only two days ago, 11 little ones were severly wounded by a mortar attack. Yesterday, 9 little ones were killed in a so called counter-insurgency attack by your brave boys. Today, at least 2 little ones were blasted away when a bomb placed in a toy cart exploded in their curious little faces...on the day of the Eid.
Our little ones are nothing but appetizers for you. Your anti-pasti, your hors d'oeuvres... The more, the merrier...
In the name of Liberty. In the name of Democracy. In the name of Freedom. In the name of the o' so civilized West that you are.
For 13 years, our little ones suffered, our little martyrs... Over half a million died as a result of your o' so civilized sanctions, while you were watching...
Thirteen fucking years and you watched, in silence, tasting your hors d'oeuvres in front of your TV screens.
Thirteen years of a deafening, utter silence.
Silence from the so called left and anti-war clowns. Silence from the international community. Silence from the so-called Islamic Ummah.
So silent, that the silence turned into a lullaby of agonies that you can still hear in the mass graves of our little ones. So silent, that they have slept, never to wake up again... A murderous lullaby.
The little ones who survived, experienced their final liberation in 2003.
God damn you. God damn you. That is all I can repeat for now. I will have to stop.
I need to regain my composure. Recompose what you have decomposed...
Am back...
The composed, rational, polite Arab woman... I am now wearing my satin gloves, lest your sensitivities get ruffled...
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But let me ask you something, are you as ruffled by an average of 40,000 little ones killed each year because of an occupation carried out in your name, with your money, under your "benevolent" eyes?
40,000 is the conservative estimate figure from the 2006 U.N Human rights report. The real figure for 2006 is much higher. Way higher. And am not counting the orphans in the thousands... Only yesterday, a new report warns of an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis, never seen before, since World War II... And I say, it is much worse than what this report states. Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us... You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you... Come and search for them in the rubbles of your "surgical" air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head... pleading for your attention. Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morsels of food... Well over half of our little ones are under nourished or dying from disease. Cholera, disentery, infections of all sorts.... Under nourished does not mean on a diet like your fat little kids. It means not having food to eat. It means cannot find food to eat. It means starved. Come and see, come.... See them being trafficked, raped, sold and "finally" killed by your brave boys. The "final solution." Remember that one? It was not so long ago... Except this time it is carried out by the "greatest Democracy on earth." And if you are too sensitive to such scenes, and your stomach can't take it, even though your hands and pockets contribute daily to it, come and search for them in the alley ways of Damascus, Amman or Cairo... |
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Search for them, hiding behind walls. Find them selling or begging in street corners. Look for them behaving like a 40 year old adult, fending for a whole family... Come and see... The other day, I overheard a 6 years old saying to her mother, "I want to die." Just in case one of your bullets does not get to her, you have ensured that she will finish it off herself... Come and see them stutter, hear them shout at night during their sleep and see their wet beds... This is no lost innocence. This is a raped innocence, a murdered innocence... Raped and murdered by you. I will net let you off the hook that easily. I guess you know me by now. As for the little assholes (I guess am losing my composure again) who call me a whining Arab bitch, let me not wish the same on your children... Because by God, if I did, you would strangle yourselves in grief and...remorse. An article in Haaretz states that the Holocaust is still affecting the granchildren of the survivors... and that is well over 60 years, later. How many decades, centuries would it take our surviving little ones to get over being freed by "Democracy"? |
In the meantime, the little survivors of your Holocaust, those who were born under your bombs, under your occupation, under your destruction, in your ghettoes, in your prisons, in your new Iraq, and who have known nothing else but you, their primal "caretaker", if they ever make it to adulthood, will bear witness on the day of Eid...
They, who have not known the Spring, Summer, of their lives. They who have witnessed nothing but the cold of the Winter. The coldness of Death...
They will remember, as I am doing now, the blown up cart of toys, the overflowing morgues, the rubbles of their homes, the mortars falling on their heads, the noise of explosions squatting their ears, their sisters and brothers in pieces, in front of their very eyes...
They will remember it, like some ugly melody, like some ugly lullaby...you lulled to them during their "liberated" childhood...
And those who have not and will not survive your "Liberation", will be flying high above like the pastel colored balloons of the Eid, like the kites made of pastel colored paper, like some white feather plucked from an innocent Dove...
Only to fall on the ground like dying, dried up, Autumn leaves...
Layla Anwar's blog — click here |
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Photo: Aljazzera/Gallo/Getty |
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Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Ahmadinejad's message to the world
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By Mark LeVine
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(An inaccurate translation of the Persian "bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad," which is better — but less violently and therefore less usefully — rendered in English as "erased from the page of time" or "fate").
Even Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, introduced him with an unprecedented — and to the minds of many academics, not to mention Iranians, uncouth — verbal attack, accusing him of being little more than a "petty dictator".
[Ignorance, not to mention a knee-bending pandering to the elite, sadly has become the most prominent feature of University Presidents in the waxing fascist state that now is the US, a practice now copied by many teachers of academics in Western countries - Kewe TheWE.cc]
In its critiques of Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, the mainstream US press focused most of its attention on Ahmadinejad's tendentious claim that "there are no homosexuals in Iran" (belied by an evening stroll through Tehran's famous Daneshjoo Park), and his attempt to redefine his position on the Holocaust (it happened, but more research is needed to know its true extent).
At the UN, his criticism of "widespread human rights violations" elicited the expected derisive response in light of his own government's increasingly repressive policies, while his declaration that the nuclear case against Iran "is closed" suggested, to most commentators, continued intransigence by Iran in the face of supposedly universal opposition to its nuclear programme.
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Discourteous treatment'
Few commentators considered how Ahmadinejad's words were heard outside of the US media circus.
And those who did, such as Timothy Rutton of the LA Times, focused purely on the reaction in the Muslim world, arguing that, as a "totalitarian demagogue", Ahmadinejad gained legitimacy because of the discourteous treatment by Columbia's president.
Rutton wrote: "Bollinger's denunciation was icing on the cake, because the constituency the Iranian leader cares about is scattered across an Islamic world that values hospitality and its courtesies as core social virtues."
"To that audience, Bollinger looked stunningly ill-mannered; Ahmadinejad dignified and restrained."
Underlying Rutton's argument is the still-widespread belief, whose roots lie deep in Europe and America's histories as imperial powers, that Muslims and the other formerly colonised peoples value "honour", "pride" and "hospitality" far more than they do issues of substance.
Indeed, they remain incapable of making well-reasoned and documented criticisms of a West, and the United States in particular, that remains by definition technologically, politically, and morally superior to the developing world.
'Poverty and deprivation'
It's no wonder, then, that almost no one in the American media focused on the substantive claims of Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN.
Chief among them were his argument regarding the "alarming situation of poverty and deprivation".
"Let me draw your attention to some data issued by the United Nations," he said, before calling to the attention of the world's leaders the fact that close to one billion people live on less than $1-a-day and that there is a rapidly increasing gap between the world's rich and poor.
He mentioned the continued disgraceful figures for infant mortality, schooling and related human development indicators in the developing world.
Perhaps wanting to be courteous, Ahmadinejad blamed "certain big powers" for the plight of a large share of humanity — he might have added that according to UN estimates almost half the world lives on less than $2 per day.
But he didn't need to name names; most of the developing world, including the Muslim world, share his belief that their plight is linked to a world economic system whose goal, for more than half a millennium, has been to exploit the peoples and resources of the rest of the world for the benefit of the more advanced countries of the West.
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Discourteous treatment
That is precisely why so many people in the developing world remain opposed to Western-sponsored globalisation, which for most critics, including in the Arab/Muslim world, is little more than imperialism dressed up in the rhetoric of "free markets" and "liberal democracy".
It is this much wider audience, from the favelas of Rio De Janeiro and the shanty towns of Lagos as much as the slums of Casablanca, Sadr City or Cairo, to whom Ahmadinejad was speaking.
His discourse was strikingly similar to that of his biggest ally, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, who in his speech before the assembly last year had fewer qualms (perhaps because he's neither Arab nor Muslim) about pointing fingers at whom he considers responsible for the sorry shape of so much of the world.
Hoisting Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival above his head, he exclaimed that "the hegemonic pretensions of US imperialism ... put at risk the very survival of humankind".
America, not Iran, Chavez argued, is "the greatest threat looming over our planet".
The Ahmadinejad-Chavez axis has been compared by American politicians such as Florida Republican Congressman Connie Mack to the relationship between Fidel Castro and Russia.
Such analogies are far off the mark.
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A more accurate historical comparison would be to the relationship between Egypt's Gemal Abdel Nasser and India's Jawaharlal Nehru, when both came together at the Bandung conference in 1955 to attempt to build a coherent bloc of nations that could protect its interests against those of the two major superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union.
'Human underdogs'
Writing after attending the Bandung Conference, the American novelist Richard Wright exclaimed that it was a meeting of "the despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed - in short, the underdogs of the human race".
It was this shared experience of oppression that grounded the "Bandung Spirit", which leaders such as Nasser used to develop the "pan-" ideologies (-Arab, -African, -American, -Islamic) that proved a thorn in the side of US policymakers for much of the Cold war.
The difference between Chavez and Ahmadinejad and their "Third World" predecessors, is, in a word, oil.
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'Courteous treatment' — that's how you do it, Columbia Iran and Venezuela possess the third- and seventh-largest oil reserves in the world, totaling well over 200 billion barrels — that's not much less than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia. The two countries will earn well over $80bn in revenues this year alone. As important, both countries possess non-oil sectors that are surprisingly robust, according to many estimates, for the majority of both Iran's and Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product. This provides both countries with billions of dollars to spend on foreign aid, as demonstrated by Ahmadinejad's stopover in Bolivia, where he pledged $1bn in Iranian aid and development to the poverty stricken country. US policymakers' view of the world through the "you're either with us or against us" prism divides the globe into those who support the US and Europe (and the "West" more broadly), and those who support al-Qaeda and "Islamofascism", a term which has been created precisely to ensure that Americans conflate Osama bin Laden with Ahmadinejad, and both with Hitler. But few people outside of the West buy this comparison, or the larger black-and-white world-view it reflects. |
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Instead, in Africa and Latin America, Ahmadenijad's argument that "humanity has had a deep wound on its tired body caused by impious powers for centuries" resonates far more deeply than George Bush's hollow-sounding calls for democracy and "ending tyranny".
Colonial rule
The West advises Africa to "get over" colonialism, but the pain of colonial rule is still felt by those suffering under the policies imposed by the IMF and/or the World Bank, or from the continued subsidisation of American and European agribusiness while their countries are flooded with below-market wheat, soy or corn.
It is to those people whom Ahmadinejad promised — in language that strikingly mirrors US President Bush's often religiously-hued speeches — that "the era of darkness will end" with the "dawn of the liberation of, and freedom for, all humans".
Americans may not like Ahmadinejad's or Chavez's internal politics, ideological orientations, or foreign policies.
But for most of the third world, which is tired of centuries of domination by the West, the two leaders are a breath of fresh air, who are coming not as conquerors, but as comrades.
They are free of the condescending "civilising mission" that, from Napoleon's invasion of Egypt to the US invasion of Iraq, always seem to include war, occupation, and the appropriation of strategic natural resources under foreign control as part of their mandate.
And because of this, most of the citizens of the developing world, rightly or wrongly, couldn't care less about Ahmadinejad's positions on Israel, the Holocaust, and nuclear weapons, never mind homosexuals, none of which affect them directly.
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They care only that he is sticking-it-to their old colonial or Cold war masters, and offering "respect", "friendship" and billions of dollars in aid with no strings attached.
Americans, Europeans and Israelis can fret about it all they want, but it will not change this reality.
Only a reorientation of the world economy towards real sustainability and equality will dampen his appeal, and that's not likely to happen soon.
Which means that Americans will be hearing a lot more of Ahmadinejad and leaders like him in the future.
The question is, will they be listening?
Subtitles, captions, added by TheWE.cc |
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TEHRAN — Speaking of business as unusual.
A mere two months ago, the news of a China-Kazakhstan pipeline agreement, worth US$3.5 billion, raised some eyebrows in the world press, some hinting that China's economic foreign policy may be on the verge of a new leap forward.
A clue to the fact that such anticipation may have totally understated the case was last week's signing of a mega-gas deal between Beijing and Tehran worth $100 billion.
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Billed as the "deal of century" by various commentators, this agreement is likely to increase by another $50 billion to $100 billion, bringing the total close to $200 billion, when a similar oil agreement, currently being negotiated, is inked not too far from now.
The gas deal entails the annual export of some 10 million tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas (LNG) for a 25-year period, as well as the participation, by China's state oil company, in such projects as exploration and drilling, petrochemical and gas industries, pipelines, services and the like.
The export of LNG requires special cargo ships, however, and Iran is currently investing several billion dollars adding to its small LNG-equipped fleet.
Still, per the admission of the head of the Iranian Tanker Co, Mohammad Souri, Iran needed to purchase another 87 vessels by 2010, in addition to the 10 already purchased, in order to fulfill the needs of its growing LNG market.
Iran has an estimated 26.6-trillion-cubic-meter gas reservoir, the second-largest in the world, about half of which is in offshore zones and the other half onshore.
It is perhaps too early to digest fully the various economic, political and even geostrategic implications of this stunning development, widely considered a major blow to the Bush administration's economic sanctions on Iran and particularly on Iran's energy sector, notwithstanding the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) penalizing foreign companies daring to invest more than $20 million in Iran's oil and gas industry.
While it is unclear what the scope of China's direct investment in Iran's energy sector will turn out to be, it is fairly certain that China's participation in the Yad Avaran field alone will exceed the ILSA's ceiling; this field's oil reservoir is estimated to be 17 billion barrels and is capable of producing 300 to 400 barrels per day.
And this is besides the giant South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar, alone possessing close to 8% of the world's gas reserves.
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To open a parenthesis here, until now Tehran has been complaining that Qatar has been outpacing Iran in exploiting its resource 6-1.
In fact, Iran's unhappiness over Qatar's unbalanced access to the South Pars led to a discrete warning by Iran's deputy oil minister and, soon thereafter, Qatar complied with Iran's request for a joint "technical committee" that has yet to yield any result.
For a United States increasingly pointing at China as the next biggest challenge to its Pax Americana, the Iran-China energy cooperation cannot but be interpreted as an ominous sign of emerging new trends in an area considered vital to US national interests.
But, then again, this cuts both ways, that is, the deal should, logically speaking, stimulate others who may still consider Iran untrustworthy or too radical to enter into big projects on a long term basis.
Iran's biggest foreign agreement prior to this gas agreement with China was a long-term $25 billion gas deal with Turkey, which has encountered snags, principally over the price, recently, compared with Iran's various trade agreements with Spain, Italy and others, typically with a life-span of five to seven years.
Thus some Iranian officials are hopeful that the China deal can lead to a fundamental rethinking of the risks of doing business with Iran on the part of European countries, India, Japan, and even Russia.
Concerning India, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran initially in 1993 for a 2,670-kilometer pipeline, with more than 700km traversing Pakistani territory, the Iran-China deal will undoubtedly give a greater push to New Delhi to follow Beijing's lead and thus make sure that the "peace pipeline" is finally implemented.
The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to Russia, which has as of late been dragging its feet somewhat on Iran's nuclear reactor, bandwagoning with the US and Group of Eight (G8) countries on the thorny issue of Iran's uranium-enrichment program.
The Russians must now factor in the possibility of being supplanted by China if they lose the confidence of Tehran and appear willing to trade favors with Washington over Iran. Russia's Gazprom may now finally set aside its stubborn resistance to the idea of entering major joint ventures with Iran.
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Iran appears more and more interested to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and form a powerful axis with its twin pillars, China and Russia, as a counterweight to a US power "unchained".
The SCO comprises China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
China, Russia and Iran share deep misgivings about the perception of the United States as a "benevolent hegemon" and tend to see a "rogue superpower" instead.
Even short of joining forces formally, the main outlines of such an axis can be discerned from their convergence of threat perception due to, among other things, Russia's disquiet over the post-September 11, 2001, US incursions in its traditional Caucasus-Central Asian "turf", and China's continuing unease over the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan; this is not to mention China's fixed gaze at a "new Silk Road" allowing it unfettered access to the Middle East and Eurasia, this as part and parcel of what is often billed as "the new great game" in Eurasia.
Indeed, what China's recent deals with both Kazakhstan (pertaining to Caspian energy) and Iran (pertaining to Persian Gulf resources) signifies is that the pundits had gotten it wrong until now: the purview of the new great game is not limited to the Central Asia-Caspian Sea basin, but rather has a broader, more integrated, purview increasingly enveloping even the Persian Gulf.
Increasingly, the image of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a sort of frontline state in a post-Cold War global lineup against US hegemony is becoming prevalent among Chinese and Russian foreign-policy thinkers.
For the moment, however, the Iran-Russia-China axis is more a tissue of think-tanks than full-fledged policy, and the mere trade interdependence of the US and China, as well as Russia's growing energy ties to the US alone, not to mention its weariness over any perceived Chinese "overstretch", militate against a grand alliance pitted against the Western superpower.
In fact, the Cold War-type alliances are highly unlikely to be replicated in the current milieu of globalization and complex interdependence; instead, what is likely to emerge in the future are issue-focused or, for the lack of a better word, issue-area alliances whereby, to give an example, the above-said axis may be inspired into existence along geostrategic considerations somewhat apart from purely economic considerations.
Hence what the SCO means on the security front and how significant it will be hinges on a complex, and complicated, set of factors that may eventually culminate in its expansion, from the current group of six, as well as greater, alliance-like, cooperation.
It is noteworthy that in Central Asia-Caucasus, the trend is toward security diversification and even multipolarism, reflected in the US and Russian bases not too far from each other.
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In this multipolar sub-order, neither the US is capable of exerting hegemony, nor is Russia's semi-hegemonic sway without competition.
In the Caspian Sea basin, for example, Kazakhstan has opted to take part in several distinct, and contrasting, security networks, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Partnership for Peace program, the Commonwealth of Independent States' Collective Security Organization, the SCO, and membership in OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe).
Kazakhstan is not, however, an exception, but seemingly indicative of an expanding new rule of the (security and strategic) game played out throughout Central Asia-Caucasus.
Economically, both Kazakhstan and Russia are members of the Central Asia Economic Cooperation Organization, and all the Central Asian states are also members of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO), which was founded by the trio of Iran, Turkey and Pakistan.
Certain economic alliances are, henceforth, taking shape, alongside the budding security arrangements, which have their own tempo, rationale and security potential.
Concerning the latter, in 1998, the ECO embarked on low security cooperation among its members on drug trafficking and this may soon be expanded to information-sharing on terrorism.
Also, Iran has also entered into low security agreements with some of its Persian Gulf neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
The SCO initially was established to deal with border disputes and is now well on its way to focusing on (Islamist) terrorism, drug trafficking and regional insecurity.
Meanwhile, the US, not to be outdone, has been sowing its own bilateral military and security arrangements with various regional countries such as Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as promoting the Guuam Group, which includes Azerbaijan and Georgia, formed alongside the BTC (Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan) pipeline as a counterweight to Russian influence.
Consequently, the overall picture that emerges before us is, as stated above, a unique multi-trend of military and security multipolarism defying the logic of Pax Americana.
In this picture, Iran represents one of the poles of attraction, seeking its own sphere of influence by, for instance, entering into a military agreement with Turkmenistan in 1994, and, simultaneously, exploring the larger option of how to coalesce with other powers in order to offset the debilitating consequences of (post-September 11) unbounded Americanization of regional politics.
A glance at Chinese security narratives, and it becomes patently obvious that Beijing shares Iran's deep worries about US unipolarism culminating in, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, unilateral militarism. Various advocates of US preeminence, such as William Kristol, openly write that the US should "work for the fall of the Communist Party oligarchy in China".
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Unhinged from the containment of Soviet power, the roots of US unilateralism, and its military manifestation of "preemption", must be located in the logic of unipolarism, thinly disguised by the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq; the latter is, in fact, as aptly put by various critics of US foreign policy, more like a coalition of the coerced and bribed than anything else.
But, realistically speaking, what are the prospects for any regional and or continental realignment leading to the erasure of US unipolarism, notwithstanding the US military and economic colossus bent on preventing, on a doctrinal level, the emergence of any challenger to its global domination now or in the future?
The strategic debates in all three countries, Russia, China and Iran, feature similar concerns and question marks.
For one thing, all three have to contend with the difficulty of sorting the disjunctions between the different sets of national interests, above all economic, ideological and strategic interests.
This aside, a pertinent question is who will win over Russia, Washington, which pursues a coupling role with Moscow vis-a-vis Beijing, or Beijing, trying to wrest away Moscow from Washington?
For now, Russia does not particularly feel compelled to choose between stark options, yet the situation may be altered in China's direction in case the present drift of US power incursions are heightened in the future.
The answer to the above question should be delegated to the future.
For now, however, the quantum leap of China into the Middle East and Caspian energy markets has become a fait accompli, no matter how disturbed its biggest trade partner, the US, over its geopolitical ramifications.
Article published in 2004
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and "Iran's Foreign Policy Since 9/11", Brown's Journal of World Affairs, co-authored with former deputy foreign minister Abbas Maleki, No 2, 2003. He teaches political science at Tehran University. |
Copyright 2004, Asia Times Online |
| Sick personSick mentally and spirituallyCalls Iran 'the centre of global terror'Look a little closer Peres |
| Iran applying for ancient Armenian church to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Photos of Iranian weapons Syria protected by Russia |
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Note the Washington Post spin
These things have been around for years
Spying on Anti-war crowds
Spying on any small group of people who get uppity
Western Fascism Waxing |
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Dragonfly or Insect Spy?
Scientists at Work on Robobugs.
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 9, 2007; Page A03
"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."
Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "
That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Others think they are, well, dragonflies — an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.
No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones.
But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying.
Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.
The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors.
The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.
"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.
But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s.
And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.
"America can be pretty sneaky," said Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles who is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington-based research institute.
Robotic fliers used by military since World War II
Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously. Defense Department documents describe nearly 100 different models in use today, some as tiny as birds, and some the size of small planes. |
All told, the nation's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 flight hours last year — a more than fourfold increase since 2003.
A recent report by the U.S.
Army Command and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules are not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could render military airspace chaotic and potentially dangerous."
But getting from bird size to bug size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.
"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley.
For one thing, the rules of aerodynamics change at very tiny scales and require wings that flap in precise ways — a huge engineering challenge.
Only recently have scientists come to understand how insects fly — a biomechanical feat that, despite the evidence before scientists' eyes, was for decades deemed "theoretically impossible."
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Just last month, researchers at Cornell University published a physics paper clarifying how dragonflies adjust the relative motions of their front and rear wings to save energy while hovering.
That kind of finding is important to roboticists because flapping fliers tend to be energy hogs, and batteries are heavy.
The CIA was among the earliest to tackle the problem.
The "insectothopter," developed by the agency's Office of Research and Development 30 years ago, looked just like a dragonfly and contained a tiny gasoline engine to make the four wings flap.
It flew but was ultimately declared a failure because it could not handle crosswinds.
Agency spokesman George Little said he could not talk about what the CIA may have done since then.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service also declined to discuss the topic.
Only the FBI offered a declarative denial. "We don't have anything like that," a spokesman said.
The Defense Department is trying, though.
In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae — the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult — and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."
The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs — camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.
Using Gandalf's beautiful contact with a moth to spin this Orwellian evil
"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality." |
A DARPA spokeswoman denied a reporter's request to interview Lal or others on the project.
The cyborg insect project has its share of doubters.
"I'll be seriously dead before that program deploys," said vice admiral Joe Dyer, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, now at iRobot in Burlington, Mass., which makes household and military robots.
By contrast, fully mechanical micro-fliers are advancing quickly.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have made a "microbat ornithopter" that flies freely and fits in the palm of one's hand. A Vanderbilt University team has made a similar device.
With their sail-like wings, neither of those would be mistaken for insects. In July, however, a Harvard University team got a truly fly-like robot airborne, its synthetic wings buzzing at 120 beats per second.
"It showed that we can manufacture the articulated, high-speed structures that you need to re-create the complex wing motions that insects produce," said team leader Robert Wood.
The fly's vanishingly thin materials were machined with lasers, then folded into three-dimensional form "like a micro-origami," he said.
Alternating electric fields make the wings flap. The whole thing weighs just 65 milligrams, or a little more than the plastic head of a push pin.
Still, it can fly only while attached to a threadlike tether that supplies power, evidence that significant hurdles remain.
In August, at the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland, Japanese researchers introduced radio-controlled fliers with four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk moths.
Feel something of 'living souls.'
Those who watch them fly, its creator wrote in the program, "feel something of 'living souls.' " |
Others, taking a tip from the CIA, are making fliers that run on chemical fuels instead of batteries.
The "entomopter," in early stages of development at the Georgia Institute of Technology and resembling a toy plane more than a bug, converts liquid fuel into a hot gas, which powers four flapping wings and ancillary equipment.
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"You can get more energy out of a drop of gasoline than out of a battery the size of a drop of gasoline," said team leader Robert Michelson.
Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments.
"They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web," said Fearing of Berkeley. "No matter how smart you are — you can put a Pentium in there — if a bird comes at you at 30 miles per hour there's nothing you can do about it."
Protesters might even nab one with a net — one of many reasons why Ehrhard, the former Air Force colonel, and other experts said they doubted that the hovering bugs spotted in Washington were spies.
So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march — and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us"?
They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that "can knock your socks off," he said.
At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies — an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.
"Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he said.
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice said her group is investigating witness reports and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies.
If such devices are being used to spy on political activists, she said, "it would be a significant violation of people's civil rights."
For many roboticists still struggling to get off the ground, however, that concern — and their technology's potential role — seems superfluous.
"I don't want people to get paranoid, but what can I say?" Fearing said. "Cellphone cameras are already everywhere. It's not that much different."
Subheadlines inserted by TheWE.cc
© 2007 The Washington Post Company |
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Note the Washington Post spin
These things have been around for years
Spying on Anti-war crowds
Spying on any small group of people who get uppity
Western Fascism Waxing |
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The most stupid question I could ask?
Does a bug have the right to control its own body?
No!
You Sure?
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Isn't there a dignity inherent within a living creature.
Livingness, independence, existence, does this not belong to them.
Remote controlled rats — remote controlled devices inside their brains — is this not evil?
But then to some, we are a bug!
We are a rat!
Can we protest when we find this happening to us?
'But you do it,' they — think external, think off-planet — say.
'We are only experimenting.'
'We want to find out how to control you!
'Isn't this what you do?'
'Do you give those others on your planet an inherent dignity?'
'Isn't this that we do, the same exactly as your scientists, as your governments do?'
No longer in control of its body
Causing a living creature to sit immobile, unable for even its wings to move a fraction, for endless periods of time.
Isn't this a violation of a core, spiritual basis of life — to allow others their body?
Western Fascism Waxing |
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| Given nobel prize for genetically engineering unnatural animalsAnimals that will never know living life as free entitiesThat will to all intent be tortured all their lifePlaced in great painAnd then killed |
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Oxford UniversityTorture factory for animals
The story so far:
At the beginning of 2004, Oxford University claimed that the site on South Parks Rd was to be an 'Animal Hotel'.
They said that "no experiments would be carried out there and there would be no primates".
These statements were to mark the start of a series of lies and misinformation that has proven to be the norm for Oxford University.
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Oxford University later issued a statement which contradicted their initial claims, finally admitting that "the facility will be used to experiment on animals".
Oxford University believes it has no reason to inform the outside world about the nature of animal experiments carried out within its facilities.
A closer look at their research on animals at the university reveals exactly why they are so desperate to keep the lid on the new lab.
An experiment published in Nature in 2002 described how ten week old kittens had one eye sewn together and had a part of their skull removed to expose the brain.
In 2003 another published paper highlights the long-term nature of animal suffering inside Oxford University.
artificially produced brain damage.
Artificially produced brain damage
Three Rhesus Macaque monkeys with artificially produced brain damage were subjected to a variety of tests.
artificially produced brain damage
Two of the monkeys involved in this experiement had part of their brains removed ten years previously whey they were five years old.
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A leading Oxford Professor claimed that the monkeys experimented on lived "the life of Riley" and that "there was no pain or stress."
These words are from a researcher who has routinely inflicted brain damage on highly intelligent and sensitive creatures and who's own published papers describe how after on experiment the monkeys required 'intensive nursing' to keep them alive.
Oxford University has sought to impose a draconian injunction on those involved in a legal and peaceful campaign against the new animal lab on South Park Rd in order to stop them highlighting the lies told by the University.
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'Asset'
The London Times newspaper reported that police had investigated a case of cruelty against a leading professor at Oxford University.
The article stated that the professor had refused to have a monkey that was suffering put out of its misery because he described it as an 'asset'.
This intransigence persisted despite please from the university's own vet to end the animal's suffering.
It was only after a direct intervention by the Home Office that this poor creature's torment was ended. |
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US government seeking another 190 billion ( China / Japan ) dollars for US military
Will the China - Japanese nations provide the new funding? |
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Wednesday, 9 July, 2003
Defining moments: Desmond Tutu
A BBC series is asking some of the world's most influential people about the defining moments in their life.
As the Archbishop of Johannesburg, Desmond Tutu was one of the key leaders in the fight to rid South Africa of apartheid.
More recently he chaired the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which sought to heal the scars of apartheid.
I didn't know then that it would have affected me so much, but it was something that was really — it blew your mind that a white man would doff his hat.
And subsequently I discovered, of course, that this was quite consistent with his theology that every person is of significance, of infinite value, because they are created in the image of God.
And the passion with which he opposed apartheid and any other injustice is something that I sought then to emulate.
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First they came for the poor Arabs
Then they came for the blacks who spoke out..
Western Fascism Waxing
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InsideHigherEd.com — October 4, 2007
Desmond Tutu, Persona Non Grata at University of St. Thomas in Minnesota
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Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the prize for his nonviolent opposition to South Africa’s apartheid regime, was deemed unworthy of appearing at St. Thomas because of comments he made criticizing Israel — comments the university says were “hurtful” to some Jewish people.
Further, the university demoted the director of the program that invited Tutu after she wrote a letter to him and others complaining about the revocation of the invitation. (She retains a tenured faculty job.)
“There isn’t any academic freedom here when this happens,” said Marv Davidov, an adjunct faculty member who has taught courses about nonviolence for 15 years at the university. “This is cowardice.”
Tutu was invited to the university through a program called PeaceJam International, which organizes conferences for high school students on issues related to peace.
Consulted with some Jewish leaders
Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at St. Thomas, said that when administrators were informed of the invitation, they did some research about Tutu, and found that some of his comments had been controversial.
Then, the university consulted with some Jewish leaders, and concluded that Tutu had made remarks that had been “hurtful” to Jewish leaders.
Cris Toffolo, an associate professor of political science and until recently director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program, questioned the idea that anyone who makes hurtful comments should be barred from speaking.
“There are some things in the world that are just hard to talk about, but when you get past the hurt, you can get to the real issues, and explore those in a way that could move the world to a more just place,” she said.
Toffolo said she believed in the guidelines on controversial speakers distributed by the American Association of University Professors, an approach that says that controversy should never justify keeping away a speaker.
Toffolo said that she was informed that she was losing the directorship of the program she led, and received a negative evaluation, right after she spoke out against rescinding the Tutu invitation.
She said that administrators were very clear with her about the relationship between their decision on her leadership of the program, and the invitation.
(Hennes, the St. Thomas vice president, confirmed that Toffolo was removed as chair shortly after she defended the Tutu invitation, but he declined to say why she was removed, citing the confidentiality of personnel decisions.)
“It’s outrageous and it infringes on my academic freedom,” said Toffolo of the university’s decision to strip her of the program director’s position.
“This case is interesting because there are so many faculty members running afoul because of their views on Israeli policy in the occupied territories or U.S. foreign policy in terms of Israel,” she said.
“We need to be able to have serious discussions of these issues.” |
Dances out of St. Paul's Cathedral in LondonDuring an interview on BBC 1's Breakfast with Frost programmehad earlier urged England's cricketers not to tour Zimbabwe
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Zimbabwe Homeless — Demolition, clearance of homes Porta Farm images |
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Tuesday, 23 November, 2004
Tutu warns of poverty 'powder keg'
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has warned that South Africa is sitting on a "powder keg" because millions are living in "dehumanising poverty".
The Nobel Peace laureate said attempts to boost black economic ownership were only benefiting an elite minority.
And he cautioned that political "kowtowing" within the ruling ANC was hampering democracy.The archbishop was speaking at the Nelson Mandela annual lecture in Johannesburg on Tuesday.He attacked the black economic empowerment programme for further enriching already wealthy blacks.
"What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?" he asked.
He warned the system could be "building up much resentment which we may rue later."
"Gruelling, demeaning, dehumanising poverty" experienced by millions of South Africans was the biggest threat to the country's security, he said.
"We are sitting on a powder keg."
Security
The archbishop criticised politicians for debating whether to give the poor an income grant of $16 (£12) a month and said the idea should be seriously considered.
"We cannot glibly on full stomachs speak about handouts to those who often go to bed hungry," he said.
"It is cynical in the extreme to speak about handouts when people can become very rich at the stroke of a pen."
He called on ordinary citizens to "adopt" a poor family by giving them $16 to $32 a month or to pay their school fees.
While listing South Africa's successes since the end of apartheid, he warned against a tendency towards stifling political debate.
"Truth cannot suffer by being examined or challenged," he said.
"Unthinking, uncritical, kowtowing party line-toeing is fatal to a vibrant democracy," the archbishop added.
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Men who become Giants South Africa — South African political emancipation South Africa 1994 - 2006 |
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I don't think the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota will be inviting me to speak
Kewe — TheWE.cc
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Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN never shows you |
Ahmed and Asma, story of two children dying — Lest we forget |
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Friday, 17 February 2006
Tutu calls for Guantanamo closure
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has joined in the growing chorus of condemnation of America's Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
He said the detention camp was a stain on the character of the United States as a superpower and a democracy.
He also attacked Britain's 28-day detention period for terror suspects, calling it excessive and untenable.
His comments follow a UN report calling for the closure of the camp where some 500 "enemy combatants" have been held without trial for up to four years.
Speaking on the BBC's Today programme, Archbishop Tutu said he was alarmed that arguments used by the South African apartheid regime are now being used to justify anti-terror measures.
"It is disgraceful and one cannot find strong enough words to condemn what Britain and the United States and some of their allies have accepted," he said.
The respected clergyman said the rule of law had been "subverted horrendously" and he described the muted public outcry — particularly in America — as "saddening".
Archbishop Tutu also attacked Tony Blair's failed attempt to hold terrorist suspects in Britain for up to 90 days without charge.
"Ninety days for a South African is an awful deja-vu because we had in South Africa in the bad old days a 90-day detention law," he said.
Under apartheid, as at Guantanamo, people were held for "unconscionably long periods" and then released, he said.
"Are you able to restore to those people the time when their freedom was denied them? If you have evidence for goodness sake produce it in a court of law," he said.
"People with power have an incredible capacity for wanting to be able to retain that power and don't like scrutiny."
International pressure
Archbishop Tutu's comments add to the mounting international pressure on US President Bush to close the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said on Thursday that America must close the camp "as soon as is possible".
His comments backed a UN report recommending that the US try the approximately 500 inmates, or free them "without further delay".
A senior British minister has also called for the camp to be closed.
Speaking on the BBC television Question Time programme on Thursday, Peter Hain said he would prefer to see Guantanamo Bay close.
He also indicated that the UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed with him.
The US has dismissed most of the findings of the UN report which include allegations of torture.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan on Thursday rejected the call to close the camp, saying the military treated all detainees humanely.
"These are dangerous terrorists that we're talking about," he said.
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First they came for the poor Arabs
Then they came for the blacks who spoke out..
Western Fascism Waxing
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School Guards Break Child's Arm And Arrest Her For Dropping Cake
Police and security violence continues unabated
Steve Watson Infowars.net Friday, Sept 28, 2007 School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up. The incident occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale and was caught on a cell phone camera by another pupil who was then also assaulted by the security guards. Watch video of the incident here and here. The girl, Pleajhai Mervin, told Fox News LA that she was bumped while queuing for lunch and dropped the cake. After being ordered to clean it up and then re-clean the spot three times, she attempted to leave the area out of embarrassment but was jumped on by security who forced her onto a table, breaking her wrist in the process. Pleajhai also says that the security guard in the picture yelled "hold still nappy-head" at her, which at the time she did not know was a racist comment. |
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In an even more shocking development the security guards later had the mother of the girl arrested after she sought out an attorney and demanded that the guard be arrested, telling her that if she wanted the guard detained then she herself would also be charged with battery after she allegedly pushed the guard and an assistant principal of the school.
She has also been suspended from her job at another school in the county.
The school expelled Pleajhai for five days before then having her arrested for battery and for littering (the dropping of the cake).
Then they had the pupil who captured the video arrested along with his sister who was merely present at the scene.
A walkout is planned for this morning by some students, after which the protesters will call for the firing of the main security guard involved.
The incident serves as another unbelievable case in the wave of police brutality sweeping the country.
In recent days we have covered multiple incidents of this nature and have compiled them into a page which will no doubt be added to in the months to come.
Commentators have linked the increased cases of brutality with a post 9/11 mentality in America where civil liberties have been totally diminished and the anointed "authorities" simply consider themselves above the law.
Former Reagan government official Paul Craig Roberts, for instance, has succinctly described the mentality as having turned "an epidemic of US police brutality into a pandemic".
The media reports linked above clearly sympathize with the girl and her mother but only because the girl "fully complied with the guards' orders".
What on earth have things come to when children are being physically assaulted and arrested in schools by huge fat thugs 5 times their size for "not complying with orders"?
Police and security officials are being trained that it's OK to beat, torture and taser anyone should they not answer their questions or comply with their every order.
The "security" and well being of citizens is no longer the concern of these moronic hired beefbrains who revel in their false positions of power.
Ask yourself, why is the security guy pictured above wearing shades indoors?
Because it is part of the gang mentality of these idiots who think its cool to put the fear of life into small kids and then break their bones if they fail to cower like mice when picked upon.
We have been covering the rise of the police state mentality in tandem with the erosion of liberty for some time now.
The incident narrated above represents a stark evolution.
Watch the following clip from around ten years ago which was featured in Alex Jones' 2004 Film Martial Law: Rise of the Police State, where police assault and break the arms of peaceful protestors.
The difference now is that the police and security guards are breaking the arms of children and tasering students for merely asking questions or for dropping birthday cake.
Click here to view the clip of Martial Law: Rise of the Police State
Two weeks ago PrisonPlanet.com featured a story on a young 20 year old motorist who caught a St. George Police Sergeant named Kenline stating that he had the power to invent charges that would put the young man behind bars.
Click here to view videos on police brutality, a collection of stories by PrisonPlanet.com
PRISON PLANET.com © 2002-2007 Alex Jones |
Epidemic Of Police Brutality & Harassment Sweeps America & UK
An epidemic of violence and harassment is sweeping the country.
Police are being trained that the general public are the enemy and that they can engage in outright brutality without recourse.
Taser deaths are skyrocketing because the police have been ordered to use "pain compliance", otherwise known as torture, to subdue and oppress the citizenry.
Police are also increasingly completely unaware of the laws they are supposed to enforce and have resolved to invent offences out of thin air as an excuse to harass people.
To view the videos on police brutality, click here
PRISON PLANET.com Copyright © 2002-2007 Alex Jones All rights reserved. |
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First they came for the poor Arabs
Then they came for the blacks who spoke out
Then they came for the children...
Western Fascism Waxing
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Paraphrased from a report of two youth institutions: Oakley and Columbia Training Schools.
Youth Institutions, 'Youth Camps,' Paramilitary Abuse
Naked, Dark, cells smelling of urine and feces
On the day of our arrival we observed a 13-year-old boy sitting in a restraint chair. Reportedly, he was placed in the restraint chair to prevent self-mutilation.
No staff approached him, and he was not allowed to attend school or receive programming, counseling, or medication.
This boy had been severely sexually and physically abused by family members and had been in several psychiatric hospitals prior to being sent to the Institution.
Just before our arrival, he had been locked naked in his empty cell. His cell smelled of urine, and we observed torn pieces of toilet paper on the concrete floor that he had been using as a pillow.
Girls in the SIU (Special Intervention Unit for youth with behavioral and disciplinary problems, and youth who are suicidal) are punished for acting out or for being suicidal by being placed in a cell called the “dark room.”
The “dark room” is a locked, windowless isolation cell with lighting controlled by staff.
When the lights are turned out, as the girls reported they are when the room is in use, the room is completely dark.
The room is stripped of everything but a drain in the floor which serves as a toilet.
Most girls are stripped naked when placed in the “dark room.” According to staff, the reason girls must remove
their clothing before being placed in the darkroom, is that there is metal grating on the ceiling and the cell door which could be used for hanging attempts by suicidal girls.
Such suicidal hazards should be remedied rather than requiring suicidal children to strip naked.
One girl told us that the weekend prior to our visit, she was placed naked in the “dark room” from Friday until Monday
morning.
She stated that she was allowed out of the cell once a day to take a shower, but received all her meals inside of the cell.
Another girl told us that in July 2002, she was placed in the “dark room” with the lights off for three days with little access to water as her requests for water were largely ignored.
During our visit to the girls’ SIU there were 14 girls present. Nine of the girls had been locked in bare cells for more than a week; one girl had been locked in a bare cell for 114 days.
The conditions we observed in the SIU are particularly inhumane.
The cells are extremely hot with inadequate ventilation. Some girls are naked in a dark room where they must urinate and defecate in a hole that they cannot flush.
Punched and slapped as punishment for being re-committed
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First they came for the poor Arabs
Then they came for the blacks who spoke out
Then they came for the children
Then they came with the drugs...
Western Fascism Waxing
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Dark Alliance — The Story Behind the Crack Explosion The "Good Guys" Who Can Do No Wrong
Profoundest suspicions of white malfeasance were true |
Awful decision to allow brain-killing mercury to be injected into young children Children — Thimerosal, Autism, Mercury |
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Then they came for the blacks who spoke out Archbishop Desmond Tutu The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota |
Israel, chemical weapons and phosphorous bombs New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces Undetectable poison-needle gun for 'clean' assassinations |
ESTIMATED NUCLEAR WARHEADS, STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests — 217 in the atmosphere.
The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests — 219 in the atmosphere.
France, 210 tests, 50 in the atmosphere.
The United Kingdom, 45 tests — 21 in the atmosphere.
China, 45 tests — 23 in the atmosphere.
India and Pakistan — 13 tests underground.
Israel — possible 1 test atmosphere South Africa 1979.
North Korea — 1 test underground, October 2006.
“The United states had drawn up a battle plan for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and the United States has been involved in planning potential nuclear use scenarios for Iran.”“The United States is now involved in a massive program to overhaul its nuclear arsenal. In fact they're working to replace every nuclear warhead and all of the existing delivery systems in the arsenal to ensure prompt precision global strike capabilities.”Jackie Cabasso — Western States Legal Foundation |
Western Elite militarismWestern Elite Terror StatesWestern Elite War Crimes
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'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.cc
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 Archives only for We The People Radio Network |
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Listen to PNAC radio
Matt Conner, Jon Roberts, Matt Dayton — and the rest of those lovable PNAC's We The People Radio Network
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9/11
By all accounts, the unprecedented events of September 11th, 2001 changed the way our country functions, and in turn, the world.
It is therefore critical that conscientious Americans, as well as people around the globe, understand these events in detail.
Unfortunately the official reports, including The 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST WTC Report, written by those working under the direction of the Bush Administration, have been proven to be elaborate cover-ups.
Film: 9/11 Revisited
September 11th Revisited is perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center.
This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television.
Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.
This film provides stunning evidence that explosives were used in the complete demolition of the WTC Twin Towers and WTC Building 7.
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For Film: 9/11 Revisited
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
An excellent documentary about the families of the victims of 9/11 and their fight to uncover and expose the truth about what happened that day.
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For Film: 9/11 Press for Truth
— Click Here
Film: 9/11 Mysteries
90 minutes of pure demolition evidence and analysis, laced with staggering witness testimonials.
Moving from “the myth” through “the analysis” and into “the players,” careful deconstruction of the official story set right alongside clean, clear science.
The 9/11 picture is not one of politics or nationalism or loyalty, but one of strict and simple physics. How do you get a 10-second 110-story pancake collapse?
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'Oh! You don't believe the 9-11 official version,' they say.
'You mean where they want you to accept the buildings were not blown up from below.
'Plane fuel! Substance never burns higher then a gas stove! That it caused the inner core steel to melt!
'Steel melting!
'Concrete vaporizing!
'
'No! I don't believe that conspiracy theory.
'Cheney! Bush! Rudy Giuliani! HA! HA!
'Tower 7 that never had a plane hit — just came tumbling down!
'You believe that, eh!
'Ever think it had to be blown up because the plane scheduled to fly into it was off getting shot down.
'Thermite in Tower 7's walls, you see — incriminating evidence — impossible to get out without people watching!
Had to be blown up!
'Next you'll be saying Obama is not a Wall Street Illuminati banker stooge?
'Take your pick: The partner in a comedy team who feeds lines to the other comedians.
'Him who allows himself to be used.
'Oh! I can't really blame you, Television it turns minds to pulp.
'Turn off the television. It's the only way.'
'Turn off the television?'
'Get rid of it really. I mean what else is there to do!'
'Get rid of the television?'
'Don't forget all radio garbage is propaganda, even the songs.
'Then those five minute propaganda hits they send you every hour!
'The ones they refer to as News
'Get rid of all the propaganda from your brain, the only way to do it.'
'Stop being hooked on those Hollywood movies — even those that make you think they are making you think'
'All paid performers to make your brain dead.
'You turn the brainwashing off, you'll begin to become yourself.
'It really is the only way!'
'Oh!'
Kewe — TheWE.cc
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BBC — Sunday, 3 June 2007
Putin warns Europe in missile row
Moscow may target weapons at Europe if the US builds planned missile defence facilities in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
Russia has not pointed missiles towards Europe since the end of the Cold War.
Last week, Russia said it had tested a ballistic missile to maintain "strategic balance" in the world.
The US wants to expand its missile defences into Eastern Europe. It says the system is not aimed at Russia but Moscow says its security is threatened.
'Not our fault'
Mr Putin made the comments in an interview published in Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera ahead of the G8 meeting which starts in Germany on Wednesday.
He repeated warnings that the US defence shield could lead to a new arms race but said it would the fault of the Americans if this happened.
He said the US had "altered the strategic balance" by unilaterally pulling out of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2002.
"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Mr Putin said.
"It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles."
US President George W Bush is due to meet Mr Putin at the three-day G8 summit in the German resort of Heiligendamm.
Washington wants to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic to counter what it describes as a potential threat from "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.
Last Tuesday, Russia tested an RS-24 missile that successfully struck its target 5,500km (3,400 miles) away.
It was designed to evade missile defence systems, Russia's defence ministry said. | ||||||||||
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BBC — Sunday, 3 June 2007
Gorbachev criticises US 'empire'
The former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has blamed the US for the current state of relations between Russia and the West.
In a BBC interview, Mr Gorbachev said that the Russians were ready to be constructive, but America was trying to squeeze them out of global diplomacy.
He added that the Iraq War had undermined Tony Blair's credibility.
Mr Gorbachev accused America of "empire-building", which he said the UK should have warned it away from.
'New empire'
Moscow and the West have been in dispute over Iraq, America's plans for a missile defence system and civil rights within Russia itself.
Britain's extradition request for a Russian man in connection with the murder of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko has also caused tension.
In an interview with Radio Four's The World This Weekend, Mr Gorbachev said relations between Russia and the West were in a bad state.
"Well, it's worse than I expected," he said through a translator.
"We lost 15 years after the end of the Cold War, but the West I think and particularly the United States, our American friends, were dizzy with their success, with the success of their game that they were playing, a new empire.
"I don't understand why you, the British, did not tell them, 'Don't think about empire, we know about empires, we know that all empires break up in the end, so why start again to create a new mess.'"
He added that the war with Iraq had damaged Britain's relationship with Russia after a promising start.
"Tony Blair and Putin established a very good relationship and that made it possible to advance our relationship," he said.
"But then Iraq happened and Tony found himself in the embrace of that military monster, of that war situation, and he lost a lot of his credibility in the world and in Europe." | ||||||||||||||
Published on Friday, March 2, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
US to Develop New Hydrogen Bomb
by Ralph Vartabedian
The Energy Department will announce today a contract to develop the nation's first new hydrogen bomb in two decades, involving a collaboration between three national weapons laboratories, The Times has learned.
The new bomb will include design features from all three labs, though Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area appears to have taken the lead position in the project. The Los Alamos and Sandia labs in New Mexico will also be part of the project.
Teams of scientists in California and New Mexico have been working since last year to develop the new bomb, using the world's most powerful supercomputers.
Take note of the words used folks — TheWE.cc
The weapon is known as the reliable replacement warhead and is intended to replace aging warheads now deployed on missiles aboard Trident submarines.
The contract decision was made by the Nuclear Weapons Council, which consists of officials from the Defense Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Energy Department. Plans were underway Thursday to announce the award this afternoon.
The nuclear administration will issue the contract and run the program.
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The cost of the development is secret, though outside experts said it would cost billions of dollars — perhaps tens of billions — to develop the bomb, build factories to restart high-volume weapons production and then assemble the weapons.
If Livermore does become the lead laboratory, confidence in the facility is likely to be bolstered, and political suggestions that its role in weapons development is unnecessary could be quelled.
A lead role by Los Alamos would help extract that facility from deep political problems growing out of security breaches.
The program is not expected to create a surge in employment at any of the labs
The program marks the first time the military has fielded a nuclear weapon design without an underground test. The last time scientists set off a hydrogen bomb was in 1991 under the Nevada desert.
President Clinton ordered a testing moratorium, and it has been continued by President Bush.
Note the words — how you are being persuaded to accept — TheWE.cc
Since the reason for building the new bomb is to maintain confidence in the nation's nuclear deterrent, experts say, the Nuclear Weapons Council will want the most conservative design, which gives Livermore the upper hand.
The design details are secret, but Livermore's version utilizes major components that had been tested — though not produced — for a Navy bomb about two decades ago.
By contrast, Los Alamos selected a design that involved an atomic trigger and a thermonuclear component that had been tested individually.
However, the two elements were never tested together, said Philip Coyle, who serves on scientific advisory committees and formerly was deputy director at Livermore.
Spin to keep you asleep — TheWE.cc
The Los Alamos design is said to contain highly attractive features, including innovative mechanisms that would prevent terrorists from detonating the bomb should they gain access to it, experts said.
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Those use controls were cited by military officials as a key factor in developing the weapon.
Proponents of the effort say that the nation's existing nuclear stockpile is getting old and that doubts will eventually grow about weapons reliability.
They say the new bomb will not have a greater nuclear yield and could not perform any new military missions beyond those of existing weapons.
So far, those arguments have attracted bipartisan support, including from Democrats who have long played a leading role in nuclear arms issues.
Critics say the existing stockpile is perfectly reliable and can be maintained for decades.
The new bomb will undermine U.S. efforts to stop nuclear proliferation, they say.
In addition, a recent study showed that plutonium components in existing weapons were aging much more slowly than expected.
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Hiroshima, Nagasaki — George Weller report |
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Why do they do it?
Because you pay for it |
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BBC — Tuesday, 21 August 2007
UK Typhoons shadow Russian bomber
Two new RAF Typhoon jets shadowed a Russian bomber heading for Britain, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The jets were scrambled on Friday 17 August to identify the Russian aircraft, which turned back before it reached UK skies.
The MoD said: "RAF Typhoons from Numbers 3(F) and XI Squadrons launched to shadow a Russian Bear-H aircraft over the North Atlantic Ocean."
The BBC's Gordon Corera said the incident was not a security threat.
Active standby
He said a similar incident occurred in July, but that this represented a new, more provocative Russian foreign policy.
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has recently resumed the Soviet-era practice of sending bomber aircraft on long-range flights.
Britain's £67m Typhoons were only put on active standby in July.
Typhoons, the RAF's newest fast jet aircraft - which are based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire — cover the UK Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) commitment together with Tornado F3 aircraft based at RAF Leeming and RAF Leuchars.
Over the next nine months, the Typhoons will progressively replace Tornado F3s, the aircraft which have performed this duty for many years.
The Typhoon was designed during the Cold War, when European leaders looked to the Soviet Union as their main threat from the air.
The RAF has ordered 144 Typhoons, which can accelerate from standing to take-off in under seven seconds.
They were developed by companies in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. |
New study from Pilots for 9/11 Truth: No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon
Thu Jun 21, 3:01 AM ET
Pilots for 9/11 Truth obtained black box data from the government under the Freedom of Information Act for AA Flight 77, which The 9/11 Report claims hit the Pentagon.
Analysis of the data contradicts the official account in direction, approach, and altitude.
The plane was too high to hit lamp posts and would have flown over the Pentagon, not impacted with its ground floor.
This result confirms and strengthens the previous findings of Scholars for 9/11 Truth that no Boeing 757 hit the buillding.
Madison, WI (PRWEB) June 21, 2007 - A study of the black box data provided by the government to Pilots for 9/11 Truth has confirmed the previous findings of Scholars for 9/11 Truth that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon on 9/11.
"We have had four lines of proof that no Boeing 757 hit the building," said James Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
"This new study by Pilots drives another nail into a coffin of lies told the American people by The 9/11 Commission":
The new society, an international organization of pilots and aviation professionals, petitioned the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) under the Freedom of Information Act and obtained its 2002 report on American Airlines Flight 77.
A Boeing 757 that, according to the official account, hit the ground floor of the Pentagon after it skimmed over the lawn at 500 mph plus, taking out a series of lamp posts in the process.
The pilots not only obtained the flight data but created a computer animation to demonstrate what it told them.
According to the report issued by Pilots for 9/11 Truth ( http://pilotsfor911truth.org/ ), there are major differences between the official account and the flight data:
a. The NTSB Flight Path Animation approach path and altitude does not support official events.
b. All Altitude data shows the aircraft at least 300 feet too high to have struck the light poles.
c. The rate of descent data is in direct conflict with the aircraft being able to impact the light poles and be captured in the Dept of Defense "5 Frames" video of an object traveling nearly parallel with the Pentagon lawn.
d. The record of data stops at least one second prior to official impact time.
e. If data trends are continued, the aircraft altitude would have been at least 100 feet too high to have hit the Pentagon.
As Robert Balsamo, co-founder of Pilots for 9/11 Truth, observes:
"The information in the NSTB documents does not support, and in some instances factually contradicts, the official government position that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001."
The study was signed by fifteen professional pilots with extensive military and commercial carrier experience.
They have made their animation, "Pandora's Box: Chapter 2," available to the public at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648624627192508186
According to James H. Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth ( http://911scholars.org ), this result fits into the broader picture of what happened at the Pentagon that day.
"We have developed four lines of argument that prove — conclusively, in my judgment — that no Boeing 757 hit the building.
The most important evidence to the contrary has been the numerous eyewitness reports of a large commercial carrier coming toward the building.
If the NTSB data is correct, then the Pilot's study shows that a large aircraft headed toward the building but did not impact with it. It swerved off and flew above the Pentagon."
Fetzer, who retired last June after 35 years of teaching courses in logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning, expressed pleasure over the Pilot's results, which, he said, has neatly resolved the most pressing issue that remained about the Pentagon.
He added,
"We have previously developed several lines of argument, each of which proves that no Boeing 757 hit the building."
(1) The hit point at the Pentagon was too small to accommodate a 100-ton airliner with a 125-foot wingspan and a tail that stands 44 feet above the ground; the kind and quantity of debris was wrong for a Boeing 757: there were no wings, no fuselage, no seats, no bodies, no luggage, no tail!
Not even the engines were recovered, and they are practically indestructible.
(2) Of an estimate 84 videotapes of the crash, the three that have been released by the Pentagon do not show a Boeing 757 hitting the building, as even Bill O'Reilly admitted when one was shown on "The Factor".
At 155 feet, the plane was more than twice as long as the 77-foot Pentagon is high and should have been visible.
There are indications of a much smaller plane, but not a Boeing 757.
(3) Indeed, the aerodynamics of flight would have made the official trajectory — flying more than 500 mph barely above ground level — physically impossible, because of the accumulation of a massive pocket of compressed gas (air) beneath the fuselage; and if it had come it at an angle instead, it would have created a massive crater; but there is no crater and the official trajectory is impossible.
(4) Flying low enough to impact with the ground floor would have meant that the enormous engines were plowing the ground and creating massive furrows; but there are no massive furrows.
The smooth, unblemished surface of the Pentagon lawn thus stands as a "smoking gun" proving the official trajectory cannot be sustained.
Members of Scholars have contributed to a new book that analyses the government's official account, according to which 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial airliners, outfoxed the most sophisticated air-defense system in the world, and committed these atrocities under the control of a man in a cave in Afghanistan.
Entitled, THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY (2007), it includes photographs of the hit point before and after the upper floors collapsed, the crucial frame from the released videos, and views of the clear, smooth, and unblemished lawn.
"Don't be taken in by photos showing damage to the second floor or those taken after the upper floors collapsed, which happened 20-30 minutes later," Fetzer said.
"In fact, debris begins to show up on the completely clean lawn in short order, which might have been dropped from a C-130 that was circling above the Pentagon or placed there by men in suits who were photographed carrying debris with them."
The most striking is a piece from the fuselage of a commercial airliner, which is frequently adduced as evidence.
James Hanson, a newspaper reporter who earned his law degree from the University of Michigan College of Law, has traced that debris to an American Airlines 757 that crashed in a rain forest above Cali, Columbia in 1995.
"It was the kind of slow-speed crash that would have torn off paneling in this fashion, with no fires, leaving them largely intact."
Fetzer has been so impressed with his research he has invited Hanson to submit his study to Scholars for consideration for publication on its web site, http://911scholars.org .
"The Pentagon has become a kind of litmus test for rationality in the study of 9/11," Fetzer said.
"Those who persist in maintaining that a Boeing 757 hit the building are either unfamiliar with the evidence or cognitively impaired.
Unless," he added, "they want to mislead the American people. The evidence is beyond clear and compelling. It places this issue 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. No Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon."
Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. |
Co-Founder pilotsfor911truth.org |
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Why do they do it?
Because you pay for it |
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BBC — Friday, 26 October 2007
Putin gives stark missile warning
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Russian President Vladimir Putin says US plans for a missile shield could precipitate a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s.
Mr Putin was speaking after a summit with EU leaders in Portugal.
The US said there was no comparison "in any way, shape or form".
Russia has long opposed US plans to build missile bases in European states once in the Soviet sphere of influence.
The Cuba crisis saw the US and Soviet Union go to the brink of nuclear war.
The 1962 stand-off was triggered when US spy planes discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba, within striking distance of the American mainland.
Moscow's decision to deploy these weapons in Cuba was at the time seen as a response to the build-up of powerful US missiles in Europe.
Tensions were only defused when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the bases in return for guarantees that Washington would not attack communist Cuba.
'Similar situation'
US President George W Bush has said there is a "real and urgent" need for a missile shield in Europe as a defence against possible attack by Iran and countries in the Middle East.
His defence secretary suggested this week that the development of the bases in countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland could be slowed while Russian concerns were addressed.
[Bush immediately asserted the need for missile defence in Europe. He also attacked the US Congress for reducing funding to missile shield systems
The missile shield system would see among other threats to Russia, a radar site set up in the Czech Republic and a missile interceptor base in Poland. Inserted by TheWE.cc]
President Putin said the threat to Russia's borders was akin to that faced by the US during the Cuban crisis.
"I would remind you how relations were developing in an analogous situation in the middle of the 1960s," he said.
"Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets in Cuba provoked the Cuban missile crisis," he said.
"For us, technologically, the situation is very similar."
He added that current tensions had not reached the pitch attained during the Cuban crisis.
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"It's not the same and we're not enemies. I can call President Bush my friend. But we've put forward solutions and we haven't yet received any answer."
US state department spokesman Sean McCormack said there were "clear historical differences" with the Cuban crisis.
"I don't think that they are historically analogous in any way, shape or form."
... The Kremlin also opposes the stance pursued by several EU members on Kosovo and Iran.
Russia opposes independence for the Serbian province of Kosovo and has also criticised recent moves to impose sanctions on Iran.
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BBC — Tuesday, 21 August 2007
UK Typhoons shadow Russian bomber
Two new RAF Typhoon jets shadowed a Russian bomber heading for Britain, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The jets were scrambled on Friday 17 August to identify the Russian aircraft, which turned back before it reached UK skies.
The MoD said: "RAF Typhoons from Numbers 3(F) and XI Squadrons launched to shadow a Russian Bear-H aircraft over the North Atlantic Ocean."
The BBC's Gordon Corera said the incident was not a security threat.
Active standby
He said a similar incident occurred in July, but that this represented a new, more provocative Russian foreign policy.
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has recently resumed the Soviet-era practice of sending bomber aircraft on long-range flights.
Britain's £67m Typhoons were only put on active standby in July.
Typhoons, the RAF's newest fast jet aircraft - which are based at RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire — cover the UK Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) commitment together with Tornado F3 aircraft based at RAF Leeming and RAF Leuchars.
Over the next nine months, the Typhoons will progressively replace Tornado F3s, the aircraft which have performed this duty for many years.
The Typhoon was designed during the Cold War, when European leaders looked to the Soviet Union as their main threat from the air.
The RAF has ordered 144 Typhoons, which can accelerate from standing to take-off in under seven seconds.
They were developed by companies in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy. |
Gustave Doré's illustration for Paradise Lost by John Milton |
The Dark Side Initiates — Click here Dark path initiates depend on the denial The five-percent manipulator class is composed of those on the dark path |
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Agent Orange Dioxin — Vietnam Cleft palate, Canoe footed, Clawed fingers continue in births I didn't know what it was then, but it was white |
UVC in the 10 to 290 nanometer band UVB, 290 to 320 nanometers UVA, 320 to 400 nanometers |
Remnants of knowledge would be retained with those on higher ground. A few people here, a few there. Translations of discussions with The WE |
The Negative Return Economy — a discourse on America’s black budget Fascinating and lucrative Black Budget? What Black Budget? |
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Unspeakable grief and horror
...and the circus of deception killing continues... | |||
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| Kewe Archives | TheWE.cc | State of the Planet |
Making the image brighter has changed the image
The biggest defining moment in my life was when I saw Trevor Huddleston and I was maybe nine or so.
Gorbachev interview
