Friday, July 15, 2005

USA: PLAMEGATE

OP/ED News: Rove Lied To FBI

Looks like Karl Rove did break the law, the same federal law that got Martha Stewart sentenced to six months in prison.

It now appears that Rove, President Bush’s chief of staff, may have lied to the FBI in October 2003—a federal crime—when he was questioned by federal agents investigating who was responsible for leaking information about a covert CIA operative to the media.

LONDON: ATTACKS

Prison planet: Documents and explosives, a few simple questions

Following the "revelation" that the so called London Bombers left personal documents at the scenes of the attacks, plus a car load of explosives at Luton Station, there are a few unanswered questions that need addressing.

1. Why would suicide bombers carry personal documents?
2. How is it that paper documents can survive bomb blasts that rip apart steel and people?
3. Why were two of the men's papers found in two or three different locations?
4. If you were going to use four bombs in four locations, blowing yourself up in the process, why would you leave extra bombs in your hire car for the police to find?
5. The bombers have been described as four "nice lads", "normal kids who played basketball and kicked a ball around" , one was the son of a fish n chip shop owner, one was a primary teacher. Their immediate family of one of the bombers, the 22 year old sports science graduate, have been quoted as saying they "could not comprehend why he had become a mass murderer."

HOW DID THESE NICE YOUNG LADS GET THEIR HANDS ON MILITARY GRADE HIGH EXPLOSIVES AND IF THEIR HOUSES WERE FULL OF THEM, ENOUGH TO WARRANT THE EVACUATION OF 600 PEOPLE FROM THE AREA THEN WOULDN'T THEIR FAMILIES HAVE NOTICED?






LONDON: ATTACKS

Prison Planet: London Stagecoach Employee Says Bus Bombing Suspicious

We received an e mail from an employee of Stagecoach, the company responsible for the majority of London buses.

Our contact works a route roughly one mile from the site of the bus bombing last Thursday.

The bus driver pointed out that the number 30 bus was the only one to be re-routed after the initial bombs went off in the London Underground, every other bus carried on its normal journey, but for some reason this bus was diverted.

The driver notes the following about CCTV maintainence.

"CCTV gets maintained at least 2 or 3 times a week and can digitally store upto 2 whole weeks worth of footage. this is done by a private contractor....So when I heard that the CCTV wasn't working on a vehicle that's no more than 2 years old since last June.....I'm sorry that's rubbish, I work for the company I know different."

Also a point of interest....last saturday a contractor came to inspect the CCTV on the buses at the depot, According to my supervisor the person spent more than 20 hours over that weekend, 20 hours to see if the CCTV is working? Also that person who came was not a regular contractor, for security reasons the same few people always come to the depot to carry out work, this time it was different

Thursday, July 14, 2005

USA: CORPORATISTAN

BBC: Worldcom's ex-boss gets 25 years

Former Worldcom boss Bernard Ebbers wept openly as he was sentenced to 25 years in jail for his part in the scandal that brought down the firm.


Bernie Ebbers
Bernie Ebbers leaves the Manhattan court after sentencing

LONDON: ATTACKS

Rense: The London Bombs, The Rogue Network And Iran
by Webster G. Tarpley

Last week's London explosions carry the characteristic features of a state-sponsored, false flag, synthetic terror provocation by networks within the British intelligence services MI-5, MI-6, the Home Office, and the Metropolitan Police Special Branch who are favorable to a wider Anglo-American aggressive war in the Middle East, featuring especially an early pre-emptive attack on Iran, with a separate option on North Korea also included.


LONDON: ATTACKS

Propaganda Matrix: London Patsies: A Replay Of The Pristine 9/11 Passport

The cover stories are flying thick and fast as British investigators try to put some kind of cap on the London attacks.

It turns out, if you believe the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, that actual IDs of bombers were found in separate piles of rubble at the sites of the blasts.

These IDs must have been engraved deeply in three-foot-thick steel.

Remember the 9/11 hijacker passport that floated out of the crashing jetliner on 9/11 and landed intact on a New York street?


LONDON: ATTACKS

Prison Planet: New Developments In London Underground Exercise Story

Due to the bombardment of e mails that Peter Power and Visor Consultants are receiving on the issue of the London Underground exercises, Power has been forced to issue a standard e mail response to all inquiries, which forms the basis of his only response to the 'exercise' firestorm that has gripped the Internet since this website first highlighted the matter on Saturday.

Prison Planet: How the Government Staged the London Bombings in Ten Easy Steps

PR WATCH

MOVE KURDISTAN FORWARD

"The Kurdistan Regional Government has hired Republican lobby firm
Russo Marsh & Rogers to get 'free media' to promote the interests of
the Kurds in the post-Saddam Hussein Iraq," reports O'Dwyer's. One
goal of the Kurdish leaders is "the return of Kirkuk," an oil-rich
northern Iraqi city populated by Kurdish and Turkmen people.
O'Dwyer's notes that the head of RM&R, Sal Russo, is no stranger to
international politics, having "worked on the campaign of Violetta
Chamorro in Nicaragua." The Kurdish contract was announced as Move
America Forward, a group RM&R helped found and whose "chief
strategist" is Russo, is going to Iraq. Move America Forward's
"Truth Tour" is bringing conservative talk radio hosts to Iraq, to
"report the good news on Operation Iraqi Freedom you're not hearing
from the old line news media."
SOURCE: O'Dwyer's PR Daily (sub. req'd.), July 5, 2005

USA: IRAN/CONTRA

LA Times: Pentagon Hires Shredder Expert

In 1987, Robert L. Earl told a grand jury that he had destroyed and stolen national security documents while working for Lt. Col. Oliver L. North during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Now, he sits in one of the most coveted offices in the Pentagon as chief of staff to Gordon R. England, acting deputy secretary of Defense. Earl has clearance to review the kinds of classified documents he once destroyed.

USA: CORPORATISTAN

Washington Post: Business Pushes Its Own Brand Of Justice

Setting up a potential clash with religious conservatives, the national business lobby for the first time is marshaling its forces to persuade the White House to pick an industry-friendly Supreme Court nominee.

Usually, corporations duck Supreme Court fights. This time, with vital interests at stake, business advocates are raising millions of dollars, plotting major lobbying campaigns, and quietly working to influence the president as he ponders a replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.



Sandra Day O'Connor often ruled on the side of business.
Sandra Day O'Connor often ruled on the side of business. (Rick Bowmer - AP)

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

IRAQ: US CASUALITIES

Costal Post: Number Of Iraq Casualties Is Double Official Figures, Says Puerto Rican Government

Official US. government reports on soldiers under US command killed in Iraq are so fragmented that they account for less than half of the total number, according to information uncovered as part of an inquiry by the Government of Puerto Rico regarding the total number of Puerto Rican war casualties.

Monday, July 11, 2005

LONDON: ATTACK

Rense: Lest We Forget - These Were Blair's Bombs

In all the coverage of last week's bombing of London, a basic truth is struggling to be heard. It is this: no one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life", which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled.

Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target". A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded it instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

IRAQ

The Times: Allawi: this is the start of civil war

IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved. “The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”

AFGHANISTAN

Courier-Journal: Afghan alarms

News from Iraq is so disturbing that it is easy to overlook the increasingly grim reports about Afghanistan.
But that would be a mistake.
Violence is increasing rapidly in Afghanistan, and the Taliban and other radicals are getting stronger. According to a report last week in The New York Times, Afghans are increasingly fearful for their future and uncertain about America's commitment to their welfare.

LONDON: ATTACK

Guardian: This terror will continue until we take Arab grievances seriously

It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible today as they were four years ago when they attacked America. It is simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday's bombings, but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It's time for a rethink.

LONDON: ATTACK

Salon: "The time of revenge has come"
by Juan Cole

Blowback from Bush and Blair's incompetently pursued war on terror has hit London. When will the U.S. figure out how to fight smart?

Credit for the horrific bombings of the London Underground and a double-decker bus on Thursday morning was immediately taken on a radical Muslim Web site by a "secret group" of Qaida al-Jihad in Europe. By Thursday afternoon, as the casualty toll rose above 40 dead and 700 wounded, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw was saying, "It has the hallmarks of an al-Qaida-related attack." Although U.S. President George W. Bush maintains that al-Qaida strikes out at the industrialized democracies because of hatred for Western values, the statement said nothing of the sort. The attack, the terrorists proclaimed, was an act of sacred revenge for British "massacres" in "Afghanistan and Iraq," and a punishment of the United Kingdom for its "Zionism" (i.e., support of Israel). If they really are responsible, who is this group and what do they want?

TERROR

New Statesman: Paymasters Of Carnage
by John Pilger

In the orgy of summit coverage something has been overlooked: the two men at the heart of it, telling us how the world should be run, are the men responsible for Fallujah and Abu Ghraib.
Over the past two weeks, the contrast between two related "global" events has been salutary. The first was the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul; the second the G8 meeting in Scotland and the Make Poverty History campaign. Reading the papers and watching television in Britain, you would know nothing about the Istanbul meetings, which produced the most searing evidence to date of the greatest political scandal of modern times: the attack on a defenceless Iraq by America and Britain.

LONDON: ATTACK

Heise: Politiker fordern mehr Überwachung zur Verhinderung von Terror

Größerer Schutz durch biometrische Ausweise, Überwachungskameras, Sensoren zur Sprengstofferkennung, Gen-Datei oder Speicherung der Verbindungsdaten?

Der Anschlag in London hat zu den üblichen Verurteilungen und Gesten der Einheit im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus sowie zu den erwartbaren Forderungen nach erhöhten Sicherheitsmaßnahmen und neuen Gesetzen geführt. Gerechtfertigt werden schon beschlossene Antiterror-Maßnahmen, beispielsweise in Deutschland oder Großbritannien die Einführung der Ausweise mit biometrischen Merkmalen. Aber die Bomben in London lehren vermutlich gerade, dass die meisten Sicherheits- und Überwachungsmaßnahmen entschlossene und einigermaßen intelligente Terroristen, auch wenn sie mit wenig ausgeklügelten Strategien und relativ primitiven Mitteln vorgehen, nicht daran hindern können, Anschläge im öffentlichen Raum von Städten auszuführen. Um das Risiko wirklich zu minimieren, wäre schon ein Überwachungsapparat Orwellscher Dimension oder ein Repressionsregime notwendig, wie man es etwa in Nordkorea findet.

LONDON: ATTACK

MSNB: Islamic group claims London attack

"But MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said. "

Sunday, July 10, 2005

LONDON: ATTACK

Prison Planet: London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

Click here for a clip of this dialogue. Click here for a longer clip where the comments can be heard in their full context.

BBC: Tube bombs 'almost simultaneous'

Scotland Yard said the attacks took place within 50 seconds of each other. It was previously thought they had taken place over a longer time period.

BBC: PM 'to reject bomb inquiry calls'

Tony Blair is expected to reject demands for an inquiry into the London bombings in a statement to MPs.

Independent: Police hunt 'mercenary' terror gang recruited by al-Qa'ida

Police and intelligence agents areinvestigating the theory that a gang of white "mercenary terrorists" was hired by al-Qa'ida to carry out last week's devastating attacks on London.
The Independent on Sunday can reveal today that investigations into the bombings of three Tube trains and a bus, which left at least 49 people dead, are focusing on the possibility that criminal gangs were paid to mount the worst atrocities in British history.