March 5, 2002
Media compilation #52: Unraveling the Web of Lies and Deceit
Dear journalist
I hope you'll have some time for considering the following material I recommend to your kind attention.
Warm regards,
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
CONTENTS
1. Beef Stew
2. ODD 9-11 DETAILS
3. OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
SEE ALSO:
Miscellaneous Subjects #131: The Stenchy Corruption of America http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000/Archives2002/MiscelSubjects131.htm
Most of this compilation deals with the corrupting influence of Enron and other mega-greedy corporations whose executives have taken over the White House and much of America. "The American empire is built on a thousand Enrons."
9-11
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
Did NORAD Send The "Suicide" Jets? - J'Accuse!
http://www.public-action.com/911/noradsend.html
ABSOLUTE PROOF That NO PLANE Hit Pentagon, 911
http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm
CIA-Who Do They Really Work For?
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=18818
Indonesian Rainforests Pulped To Extinction
http://www.truthout.com/02.18H.Rainforests.Pulped.htm
Detoxifying Terrorism: The Bio-Chemical Threat That Doesn't Make the Headlines
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11988
Hunger and Death in Afghan Villages
http://www.theconversation.org/hungry.html
1.
From: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12192
Beef Stew
January 9, 2002
Last fall, The Wall Street Journal published a horrifying article on its front page. Under the headline THE U.S. MAY FACE MAD-COW EXPOSURE DESPITE ASSURANCES FROM GOVERNMENT, staff writer Steve Stecklow reported that the domestic cattle herd is far from safe, and that the government is doing little to test either cattle or people for signs of illness.
Yet despite Stecklow's meticulously detailed findings and the story's prominent placement in one of our most respected newspapers, it pretty much disappeared without a trace. To the extent that any attention has been paid to mad-cow disease during the past month, it was to plug a reassuring report by the Center for Risk Analysis, at the Harvard School of Public Health, that there is vanishingly little likelihood here of a British-style outbreak of mad cow.
What a difference a year makes. In late 2000 and early 2001, network television newscasts and national newsmagazines were filled with terrifying stories about what had happened in Europe, especially in Britain. Cattle in increasing numbers were coming down with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a little-understood disease that kills by punching the brain full of tiny holes.
Worse -- much worse -- was the likelihood that a similar fatal brain disease affecting humans was spreading through the consumption of contaminated beef. The illness was called a "new variant" of a rare condition named Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and thus became known, for short, as nvCJD. More than 100 people, nearly all of them from Britain, have died of nvCJD over the past five years.
For the US media, the story was made to order, featuring as it did video of wild-eyed, staggering cows, heaps of burning animal carcasses, distraught farmers, and — in a few cases — footage of twentysomething nvCJD victims trembling through the final stages of their awful disease. "I hate to be blunt, but there was a strong visual to go with it," says Boston University communications professor Tobe Berkovitz. "A typical science story doesn't get much play, because you need a visual to be aired ad infinitum or ad nauseam to make it a television news story. And video of shaking, crumbling cows gives you a visual."
There was, though, a problem with sustaining interest in mad-cow disease. First, there was the inconvenient fact that not a single case of BSE or nvCJD had ever been found in the US. Second, federal officials assured the public that steps taken several years earlier -- banning the importation of beef from Britain, and outlawing the use of beef byproducts in animal feed, thought to be the principal means by which BSE is spread -- would prevent an outbreak from ever occurring here. By spring, few mad-cow stories were making their way onto the front pages or the network newscasts, as the media turned their attention to more characteristic obsessions. No, it hasn't disappeared completely -- witness a recent episode of The West Wing in which the Bartlet administration debates how best to spin an outbreak of mad cow. But in terms of public consciousness, this is one potential crisis that has faded far into the background.
"There was a period when mad-cow disease was a very telegenic story in an ugly and disturbing sort of way," says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television. But then, he notes, "the summer of Gary occurred, and all of a sudden we had all of that time being spent in the cable and broadcast media on Gary Condit and Chandra Levy." Finally, Thompson observes, "what Gary Condit did to mad cow and some other stories, September 11 did to Gary Condit."
But if mad-cow disease is, understandably, not as pressing an issue as the hunt for Osama bin Laden, it remains, as the Wall Street Journal article suggests, an important, ongoing story. If mad cow -- and, more crucially, nvCJD -- breaks out into the US population at some point during the next several years, the media's chronically short attention span in covering this complicated scientific and medical story will surely stand out as one of their principal failures of 2001.
MAD-COW DISEASE, "classic" (that is, non-nv) CJD, and a similar illness in sheep called scrapie are all known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or TSEs. All of them occur naturally, and scientists believe that mammals, humans included, contract TSEs at the rate of one per million in population. Although the exact cause of TSEs is poorly understood, it is thought by many scientists to be related to the presence of "prions" -- proteins that somehow take on a different and deadly shape, and that force other proteins to follow their lead. This process has been compared to "ice-nine," the substance in Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle that destroys the earth by changing all the water so that it turns solid at room temperature.
Among the best and most thorough treatments of mad-cow disease was an article written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1998 by science journalist Ellen Ruppel Shell. She argues that if BSE arises in cattle naturally at the rate of one in a million, then there would be 100 with BSE among the nation's 100 million head of cattle at any given time. And if any of those cattle somehow entered the food chain -- say, in high-protein animal feed that is later fed back to cattle -- then BSE can spread far beyond those 100 head. Humans are exposed by eating contaminated beef -- a danger heightened by such practices as slaughtering cattle with pressure guns, which blast highly infectious brain and spinal tissue into the edible parts of the animal carcass.
Shell focuses especially heavily on animal-rendering plants, "a series of altogether unsavory places where dead cats and dogs, road kill, the occasional circus animal, and the diseased carcasses of farm animals are mixed into a ghastly, belching stew." Yum. Among the products made by these plants is the aforementioned high-protein animal feed, which turns cows into cannibals by feeding them byproducts of other cows -- including, potentially, cows with BSE. Complicating this considerably is the fact that other animals dumped into the stew may also have TSEs -- especially road kill such as elk and deer, which, in the Western United States, are experiencing an epidemic of a TSE known as chronic wasting disease. Finally, to save on energy costs, rendering plants in recent decades have perfected a system of low-temperature cooking. The problem is that sustained exposure to high temperatures is absolutely essential for killing TSEs.
But if feeding cows to cows is now illegal, well, why should we worry? As it turns out, it's not nearly that simple. It is still perfectly legal to feed cow byproducts to pigs and chickens, which are not thought to harbor TSEs. And it's perfectly legal to toss those same pigs and chickens into the rending vats to manufacture feed that can then be fed back to cows. Also, as the Journal article reports, 13 percent of rending plants do not comply with the new regulations against putting beef byproducts into feed intended for cows -- and the federal government itself admits that "scores of shipments of animal byproducts for use in animal feed came into the U.S. in recent years from countries that now have mad-cow disease in their cattle herds, a potentially serious source of contamination."
There is still, though, the simple fact that no cases of BSE or nvCJD have ever been diagnosed in the US. Right? Well, maybe. Some mad-cow specialists say the problem is that the United States has not been inspecting cattle in anywhere near the numbers or with the rigor that British and European authorities now do, meaning that cases of BSE could be slipping by. As for the lack of any human cases, there is at least some reason to believe that there are, in fact, tens of thousands of cases -- many of them sitting right in front of us when we visit the nursing home.
In the 1990s, researchers at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh studied autopsy results of people who had died of Alzheimer's disease. Although their sample sizes were small, the results were chilling: somewhere between eight and 13 percent were found to have actually had CJD rather than Alzheimer's. That's far more than the 250 or so cases that would be statistically expected of "classic," or naturally occurring, CJD, meaning that a more likely explanation would be the consumption of contaminated meat.
That would also fit with the decades-long incubation period for CJD and nvCJD. According to the Web site of the Alzheimer's Association, approximately four million Americans have Alzheimer's -- about 10 percent of those who are 65 or older, and nearly half of those who are 85 or older. As Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber wrote in their book Mad Cow U.S.A.: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (Common Courage, 1997), "If the true number of CJD cases in the United States turns out to be 40,000 instead of 250, the implications for human health would be severe. It could mean that a deadly infectious dementia akin to Britain's problem has already entered the U.S. population. And since CJD has an invisible latency period of up to 40 years in humans, 40,000 cases could be just the beginning of something much larger." (A downloadable version of Mad Cow U.S.A. is available for free on the Web site of the Center for Democracy and Technology.)
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, whose Web site contains an extensive archive of mad-cow information, says that at a minimum the federal government should launch a program of quick, inexpensive tests of both cattle and Alzheimer's-disease patients to determine whether we may have a hidden mad-cow crisis that warrants further study and action.
"It's not a question of 'Do we have mad cow in this country?' Of course we do," says Cummins. "Every livestock-grazing country in the world has always had it at low levels. The question is 'How much do we have, and how quickly is it magnifying?'"
The conventional wisdom is that we have little to fear from mad-cow disease, and of course the conventional wisdom may be right. Lloyd deMause, editor of the Journal of Psychohistory, says it's not unusual for societies to develop a cultural fear of poisoning at the end of a long period of prosperity -- it's a natural reaction to feelings of guilt over having experienced such good fortune. Seen in this light, last year's media obsession with mad-cow disease -- an illness never detected in this country -- is similar to panicky news stories over West Nile virus, a rare, rather mild, flu-like illness, and this fall's outburst of fear over anthrax, which, after all, killed just a tiny handful of people.
"Why poison? This is pre-verbal," deMause says. "It goes way back to when you were still drinking milk from the mommy's breast or from the bottle." (It's this same dark, guilt-ridden fear of the forces around us, deMause says, that explains what he considers to be our overreaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11. "I'd be glad to shoot bin Laden in the cross hairs myself. I'm not a pacifist," he says. "But it seems to me that we're going to go back and finish the job in Iraq and do all sorts of other horrible things that we should not do.")
But even if fear of mad-cow disease somehow taps into our more primal cultural obsessions, there is the fact of mad-cow disease that must still be contended with. And the fact is that the seeming dearth of mad-cow cases in this country may be the entirely predictable result of our failure to look.
Michael Greger, a Jamaica Plain physician who is a nationally recognized expert on mad-cow disease (he's listed in the acknowledgments of Mad Cow U.S.A.), blasts the US Department of Agriculture for what he calls a "'don't look, don't find' program of surveillance," adding: "Every week in Europe they test 10 times as many cattle than we have tested in a decade. Europe has tested five million at this point. If the US had as high an incidence as Europe, the current USDA testing program would not detect it. It is irresponsible to assert that we have no mad-cow disease in the United States when we simply haven't looked hard enough to tell."
As for what the future holds, Greger replies that "no one knows what the risk of eating American beef is. And by the time we know for sure, it may be too late. I counsel my patients to err on the side of caution and stop eating beef. Better safe than sorry."
For obvious reasons, mad-cow disease remains a big story in Britain. Last September, London's Guardian newspaper published a harrowing two-part series on the small village of Queniborough, where five young adults had died of nvCJD over a period of several years. The reporter, Kevin Toolis, noted that all the victims may have gotten sick because of such antiquated butchering practices as mixing brains and meat. His description of the long, agonizing death of Stacey Robinson was particularly horrifying.
"The howling went on for five months, night and day, from the autumn of 1997 to the spring of 1998, a low, growling, demonic yowl that escaped her lips as if it came from deep within the earth; the cry of the damned," Toolis wrote. "It could be heard halfway along the ward in Leicester's Royal Infirmary as Stacey plunged into madness. She soon lost the power to walk, to eat, to clean herself, to use the bathroom. She turned aggressive, kicking, swearing and assaulting her nurses. She battered her forearm against the bed until it was black and blue. She held her hand under a scalding tap and felt no pain. In the end, the doctors turned her ordinary city hospital room into a padded cell."
Mad-cow disease could be much ado about nothing; it could also turn out to be a scourge for the ages. To date, only 100 or so people in Britain (and just a handful in other countries) have died of nvCJD, even though some 60 million may have been exposed to BSE-contaminated beef. But because of the decades-long latency period, those who have died so far may merely represent the bleeding edge. According to some estimates, the worst-case scenario is that some 100,000 Britons could die the way Stacey Robinson did.
CLIP
Dan Kennedy is Media Editor at Boston Phoenix and can be reached at dkennedy@phx.com
2.
ODD 9-11 DETAILS
There are now 12 Congressional Committees planning to investigate 9- 11, and how it was allowed to occur. Bush & Cheney have taken the unprecedented step of urging the Senate to "limit" inquiries into 9- 11. Read the below reports and you may understand "why" Bush and Cheney don't want this in the light of day. [Also, Canadian Television Program SCALDS mainstream US media for completely ignoring the below disturbing reports.]
It is CRITICAL THAT YOU SPREAD THIS INFORMATION OUT AND DEMAND THAT WORLD MEDIA AND THE CONGRESS FULLY INVESTIGATE THIS. Cheney has spoken of a list of 40 to 50 nations where US military strikes may occur. If another major terrorist strike occurs in the US, we may very well lose our civil rights completely. As this begins to come out there may be some desperate people in our government that will do desperate things. We must act now, while we still have freedom to act. For a freely emailed Activist Kit, reply to findtruth40@hotmail.com with "Send Kit" in the subject line.
Does all this sound too bizarre? I'm sure pre-war Germans had the same skepticism in the 30's. After seeing the "Superbowl-Neuremburg Rally" on Sunday, any conscious person should begin to be worried.
We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation. --Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002
What do we know of 9-11 that should be investigated?
Pre 9-11 Intelligence Breakdowns: - Reportedly the Bush Administration forced the FBI to "back off" on their investigations of terrorism in the Middle East. FBI Deputy Director O'Neill (killed in WTC on 9-11) reportedly resigned not long before 9-11 over this investigative obstruction, claiming that the main obstruction was the interests of American Oil Companies. (Source: Recently released French Book, "Bin Laden, La Verite Interdite" (Bin Laden, the Forbidden Truth)
- US Oil interests were well represented within the negotiating team, that apparently was the source of the threat to "bury Afghanistan in a carpet of bombs" unless they played ball in creating a major oil pipeline through Afghanistan. This threat was reportedly made several months before 9-11. (Bush's family has a strong oil background. So do some of his top aides.
- U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was until the end of last year president of Halliburton, a company that provides services for the oil industry;
- National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice was between 1991 and 2000 manager for Chevron;
- Ministers of Commerce and Energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham worked for Tom Brown, another oil giant. [ BBC interview on the above issue: - The Bush Administration forced the FBI to back off of the Bin Laden investigation months before 9- 11. Source: BBC transcript BUSH ? BIN LADEN HIDDEN AGENDA! http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/16455 27.stm]
- CIA Station Chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden only 7 weeks before 9- 11 took place, yet they did not try to apprehend him, only met with him. - The CIA station chief in Dubai met with Bin Laden 7 weeks before 9-11, and at a time when Bin Laden was supposedly "wanted" by the CIA. http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,584444,00.html· (English) (German Trans.) http://www.orf.at/orfon/011031-44569/index.html
- US government agent claims the CIA has been dealing with Bin Laden since 1987, and he suggests in his interview that the terrorist acts of late may well have been planned and paid for by the CIA with US taxpayers money to enable the Bush Administration to "legitimately" bomb Afghanistan into submission.
An interview with Michael Springman exposes the CIA's links with the terrorist attacks on September 11 [Michael Springman worked for the US government for 20 years with the foreign service and consulate. He just went public with the story of his involvement in a large scale CIA operation that brought hundreds of people from the middle east to the US, issued them passports and trained them to be terrorists. Hear the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) interview here. http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewNote.cfm?REF=1267]
- Insider Trading profits off the 9-11 terror don't lead to Osama Bin Laden, but to AB Brown Trust, until recently chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA.
- [Someone with considerable financial resources, and foreknowledge of the terrorist event, put stock options "against" the airlines that were to explode that week of 9-11. - INSIDER TRADING PROFITS from 9- 11 were reported by the US media when they thought it was Arab terrorists . . . but then the story mysteriously died. Then the UK Independent revealed that it leads to a firm chaired by the 3rd highest man in the CIA (and stranger still is that $2.5 million of the "winnings" are still unclaimed (see below for URL to entire story). http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP110A.html . Info confirmed by Independent Newspaper in UK: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=99402]
[Standard FAA and DOD "intercept and shoot down procedures" were violated on 9-11 (see FAA and DOD procedures on "intercepts").] It is a FACT that standard intercept procedures for dealing with these kinds of situations ARE TOTALLY ESTABLISHED, IN FORCE and ON- LINE in these United States 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Regarding rules governing IFR requirements, see FAA Order 7400.2E - 'Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters,' Effective Date: December 7, 2000 Chapter 14-1-2. Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIR/air1401.html
14-1-2FAA
- Guide to Basic Flight Information and Air Traffic Control (ATC) Procedures,' Chapter 5- 6-4 "Interception Signals" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html
5-6-4
- FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-2-5 "Emergency Situations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1002.html
10-2-5
- FAA Order 7110.65M 'Air Traffic Control' (Includes Change 3 Effective: July 12, 2001), Chapter 10-1-1 "Emergency Determinations" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1001.html
10-1-1
- FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 4, Section 5, "Air Defense Liaison Officers (ADLO's)" Full text posted at: http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch4/mil0405.html
Section%205
- FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date: November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2, effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 7, Section 1-2, "Escort of Hijacked Aircraft: Requests for Service" Full text posted at: http://faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/mil0701.html
7-1-2
- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1 June 2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects," 4. Policy (page 1) PDF available at: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf - Backup at: http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf
For a clear and detailed description of flight plans, fixes, and Air Traffic Control, see: 'Direct-To Requirements' by Gregory Dennis and Emina Torlak at: http://sdg.lcs.mit.edu/atc/D2Requirements.htm
Absolutely NO executive-level input of ANY KIND is required for standard intercepts to be scrambled.
WHY DID BUSH'S STAFF NOT FOLLOW NORMAL PROCEDURES IN THE CASE OF A NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON 9-11? DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?
The UK Independent Newspaper has questioned how Bush, who claimed in two public appearances to have seen the first plane hit the first tower on television the morning of 9-11, before the 2nd tower got hit? The significance of this is that no one in the world saw that first tower get hit, at that time, on television. They also question why Bush continued to sit with elementary school students after the 2nd tower was hit and he was informed, "America is under attack." Standard procedure for such a situation is to whisk the President away, if not for his safety, for the safety of the students. Unless he knew something more than we did that morning. The Independent asks, "what television station was HE watching?"
Is it Outrageous to Consider that Elements of a Nations' Government Could Committ Terror on It's Own People for Political Reasons?
- ABC News.com's May/2001 story resurfaces about how the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have in the past ACTUALLY DESIGNED a plan to committ domestic terror on Americans to whip them into a war hysteria, to support war efforts by the govt. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/jointchiefs_010501.html
[The National Security Archive has a PDF version of the Operation Northwoods plan, which author James Bamford says "may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government." It can be found at the following URL:] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/
After 9-11 Oddities:
Anthrax sent to top Democrat Daschle and to the U.S. media (NBC & The National Inquirer) had the effect of "uniting the nation behind the Bush Administration's war effort," and literally shutting down Congress in many ways.
Oddities exist when the anthrax issue is looked at closely: - New Science Journal says Anthrax sent to Daschle is NOT Russian or Iraqi, but likely US military strain.
- San Francisco Chronicle reports, the anthrax strain produced in US University is destroyed on ok of FBI (they had studied this for years, some at university question the timing of the destruction of those anthrax spores . . . right now of all times (?))
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09/MN153227.DTL
Terror Anthrax Linked to Type Made by U.S. The powder used in the anthrax attacks is virtually indistinguishable from that produced by the United States military, according to federal scientists. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/03/national/03POWD.html
After 9-11 Administration Damage Control Efforts:
Fire Engineering Magazine assails the incredible speed that the evidence in the WTC collapse is being destroyed. Never in the history of fire investigations has evidence been destroyed this fast before exhaustive investigations can be completed. ["We must try to find out why the twin towers fell" By James Quintiere,Baltimore Sun 1/3/01 http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal- op.towers03jan03.story -WTC "INVESTIGATION"?: A CALL TO ACTION from Fire Engineering Magazine] - - Bush Admin. declares they will "seal the records of presidents beginning with Father Bush/Reagans (an act never before done in US presidential history)."
- "It is not a stretch to wonder if this White House is up to something that it doesn't want known 12 years from now or anytimethereafter. [A direct quote from the piece carried by Scripps Howard News Service, 11/5/2001. Re: Bush's sealing of presidential records for the first time in U.S. history]
- Bush & Cheney urge Senate Leader to "limit" inquiries into 9-11: Senate perplexed by this. Don't go there: Bush Asks Daschle to Limit Sept. 11 Probes Date: Wednesday, January 30 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle Tuesday to limit the congressional investigation into the events of September 11, congressional and White House sources told CNN.
The request was made at a private meeting with congressional leaders Tuesday morning. Sources said Bush initiated the conversation. He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry that some lawmakers have proposed, the sources said.
Tuesday's discussion followed a rare call to Daschle from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request.
"The vice president expressed the concern that a review of what happened on September 11 would take resources and personnel away from the effort in the war on terrorism," Daschle told reporters.
But, Daschle said, he has not agreed to limit the investigation. "I acknowledged that concern, and it is for that reason that the Intelligence Committee is going to begin this effort, trying to limit the scope and the overall review of what happened," said Daschle, D- South Dakota. "But clearly, I think the American people are entitled to know what happened and why," he said.
CLIP
"OUR LIVES BEGIN TO END THE DAY WE BECOME SILENT ABOUT THINGS THAT MATTER."
- Martin Luther King
“We may be witnessing the Nazification of our nation.”
-Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate in literature, January, 2002
See also:
9/11 Investigation Petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/11601TFS/petition.html
http://www.emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-3.htm
3.
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,651634,00.html
OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
Terry Jones Sunday
February 17, 2002
The Observer
To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today. The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards' bandstand, the Government should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused to do so -- or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt -- we could have told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and who weren't, because they don't go around wearing identity badges, we would have been free to send in the bombers.
It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop bombs -- preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, so to speak. I hope you follow the argument.
Having bombed Dublin and, perhaps, a few IRA training bogs in Tipperary, we could not have afforded to be complacent. We would have had to turn our attention to those states which had supported and funded the IRA terrorists through all these years. The main provider of funds was, of course, the USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in America? It's a big place and it's by no means certain that a small country like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job. It's going to cost the US billions to bomb Iraq and a lot of that is empty countryside. America, on the other hand, provides a bewildering number of targets.
Should we have bombed Washington, where the policies were formed? Or should we have concentrated on places where Irishmen are known to lurk, like New York, Boston and Philadelphia? We could have bombed any police station and fire station in most major urban centres, secure in the knowledge that we would be taking out significant numbers of IRA sympathisers. On St Patrick's Day, we could have bombed Fifth Avenue and scored a bull's-eye.
In those American cities we couldn't afford to bomb, we could have rounded up American citizens with Irish names, put bags over their heads and flown them in chains to Guernsey or Rockall, where we could have given them food packets marked 'My Kind of Meal' and exposed them to the elements with a clear conscience.
The same goes for Australia. There are thousands of people in Sydney and Melbourne alone who have actively supported Irish republicanism by sending money and good wishes back to people in the Republic, many of whom are known to be IRA members and sympathisers. A well-placed bomb or two Down Under could have taken out the ringleaders and left the world a safer place. Of course, it goes without saying that we would also have had to bomb various parts of London such as Camden Town, Lewisham and bits of Hammersmith and we should certainly have had to obliterate, if not the whole of Liverpool, at least the Scotland Road area.
And that would be it really, as far as exterminating the IRA and its supporters. Easy. The War on Terrorism provides a solution so uncomplicated, so straightforward and so gloriously simple that it baffles me why it has taken a man with the brains of George W. Bush to think of it.
So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let's make the world a safer place.
