Calculations in the file below are based on a worst-case scenario giving generous benefit of doubt to the government's "official" story - CLICK HERE
2009/06/30
Jet Fuel Could Never Cause Twin Tower Collapse on 9/11
This intuitive graphic gives the lay person an opportunity to “see” the awkward relationship of jet fuel volume to the total volume of a World Trade Center Tower. The conditions for melting, or even weakening the steel structure in less than 1.5 hours “looks” impossible - even to a non-physicist. If the Tower were made of dry wood the relatively tiny volume of fuel could not be expected to successfully ignite it.
To believe that this relatively tiny amount of jet fuel was responsible for melting steel to bring down a 69 million cubic foot tower is to believe a single flea could suck all the blood out of a grown elephant in just two hours. And then the "official" story wants you to believe that another flea could suck all the blood from a second elephant in the same day.
If you believe the corporate media is not telling you the truth, this is a good example to prove you are correct.
Calculations in the file below are based on a worst-case scenario giving generous benefit of doubt to the government's "official" story - CLICK HERE
Calculations in the file below are based on a worst-case scenario giving generous benefit of doubt to the government's "official" story - CLICK HERE
Virologist to make his case for lab origin of swine flu
Virologist to make his case for lab origin of swine flu
By Peter Duveen PETER’S NEW YORK, Monday, June 29, 2009
The scientist who made headlines in May by positing a laboratory origin for the swine flu that has swept the world will defend his theory in the scientific literature, Peter’s New York has learned. Dr. Adrian Gibbs, a Canberra, Australia-based virologist with more than 200 scientific publications to his credit, said that over the weekend he submitted his latest work on the swine flu to a prominent scientific journal, and is awaiting a response. Gibbs, 75, was part of a team that developed the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Adrian Gibbs on Bloomberg TV Peter Duveen photo In May of 2009, Dr. Adrian Gibbs of Canberra, Australia, shown here on Bloomberg TV, achieved notoriety for his theory that the new swine flu may have been the result of an error in the vaccine manufacturing process.
Back in April, when the first cases of swine flu were diagnosed in Mexico, Gibbs examined the genetic structure of the virus that had been posted on a public database. His analysis led him to speculate that the virus may have been the result of a laboratory error. He contacted the Geneva, Switzerland-based World Health Organization with his conjecture, and scientists there scrutinized his findings, concluding, however, that the virus was most likely a product of nature. In a series of email exchanges with Peter’s New York, Gibbs said he was not satisfied with the WHO’s critique, indicating that the basis for it was ambiguous. “The WHO stated that they had no evidence to support my suggestion,” Gibbs said. “They made a very fair statement.
However the principle reason for my conclusion remains—that none of the genes of the new virus had been sampled/found/caused epidemics since at least 2000, despite probably coming from at least two different parents on two continents, where other strains had been sampled.” Gibbs said that might have been a coincidence, but the unusual placement of the virus on what what virologists call phylogenetic trees—a sort of schematic family history of the virus--also peeked his interest. On top of that, Gibbs observed that there was a lack of evidence that pig populations in North America, from which the virus is believed to have emerged, had been infected. Only the pigs on one farm in Canada have as yet been shown to have contracted the virus.
Gibbs said he would have been more satisfied if scientists at the WHO had examined the lists of all the vaccines licensed for production in the United States and Mexico and determined that none of them harbored strains from which the swine flu could have descended. He said he had been unable to locate such lists to make the determination himself. Gibbs spells out fairly clearly how he thinks the new virus might have emerged due to a laboratory error. In manufacturing a vaccine, each of the viruses to be protected against must first be bred and then sterilized to prevent their further multiplication. When a subject is inoculated, the body reacts to the “killed” viral fragments and produces antibodies that provide protection against the live virus. Gibbs said that if the sterilization process was not carried out properly, pigs could end up being given live viruses, and instead of being protected, would contract the disease.
The live viruses would then have a chance to multiply and exchange genetic material within the infected pig in a process known as reassortment, and a new virus could emerge and spread to humans as a “swine flu.” The study of viruses is overlaid with a complex nomenclature and labyrinthine concepts and arguments in the field of genetics that are unfamiliar to the average layman. But the implications are far reaching, a fact not lost on the general public or on Gibbs. Early this year, the Deerfield, Ill. based drug firm Baxter International Inc. shipped experimental vaccines for human flu that were contaminated with the bird flu. The cocktail of influenzas, if it had not been discovered by alert laboratory specialists in the Czech Republic in February, could have been administered to subjects, after which, some experts feared, the two viruses could have undergone reassortment, producing a new virus that possessed the lethality of bird flu and the communicability of human flu.
Bird flu is a deadly disease that kills close to half its victims, but resists spread from human to human. Human flu, on the other hand, is far more benign, but is easily spread through human contact. A recombined virus with the characteristics of each of the two could conceivably wipe out almost half the world’s population. Gibbs steers clear of elaborate intrigues that some believe are behind the new flu’s emergence. “Whenever I’ve thought something has resulted from a conspiracy, it usually turns out to be from a ‘cock-up,’” he said. The importance of establishing whether or not the flu emerged from a laboratory, he emphasized, is “to try to avoid a recurrence.” He did admit, however, that there was a definite risk to the public of escaping pathogens held in government and private facilities. “There are many historical precedents that are conveniently forgotten,” said Gibbs. “The recent Baxter incident seems to have been one.” “The reappearance in 1977 of the H1N1 (virus) last seen in 1950 after a period of non-evolution,” which he speculated could represent “suspended animation in a freezer,” was another instance in which pathogens might have escaped from a laboratory. Gibbs also cited the escape of foot-and-mouth disease from a British government laboratory facility in 2007.
Asked if the resurrection of the viral agent for the deadly 1918 “Spanish” flu, which was reconstituted in 2005 by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for research purposes, was a safe proposition, he answered, “No, definitely not.” “It’s exactly the same principle as should apply to all high security labs,” said Gibbs. “If it ain’t ‘there’ it can’t get out, whereas if it is, then there is always the possibility, however remote, that it might get out.” The 1918 flu, which spread to every corner of the globe in the two years immediately following World War I, had a rate of lethality some 30 to 50 times greater than other strains of human flu. Tens of millions of people died in the pandemic worldwide.
While some aspects of his presentation have been updated, Gibbs said his basic premise remains unchanged, and has, in fact, been reinforced by recent additions to the scientific literature. And while the WHO gave the appearance of having put the final nail in the coffin of Gibbs’s theory, in a rare show of scientific honesty for a public institution, it affixed the lid rather loosely, leaving itself room to revisit Gibbs’s hypothesis once it is published. In the mid-May press conference in which the WHO addressed Gibbs’s analysis, which by that time has spread far and wide throughout the mainstream media, Assistant Director Keiji Fukuda praised the virologist who had contributed to the field for more than fifty years of professional work, calling Gibbs “a credible scientist, a credible virologist.”
In answer to a reporter’s question about whether Gibbs’s theory had been refuted, Fukuda said: “I think that it is fair to say that in the world of science, nothing is ever totally excluded, nothing is ever ended.” On the issue of whether Gibbs’s theory may actually prove true or not, he said: “We feel very comfortable based on the analyses which have been done, based on the rigor in which it has been looked at, that we are not dealing with a laboratory-created virus. However, I do not expect that the debate itself will stop.” The world awaits Gibbs’s response.
Source:
http://www.petersnewyork.com/GIBBS.html
Ron Paul Teaches Class on the Unconstitutional Federal Reserve.
Excepts of Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) from the documentary "FIAT EMPIRE - Why the Federal Reserve Violates the U.S. Constitution." Dr. Paul discusses the origins, operations and results of the Federal Reserve System and fiat currency on the U.S. and global economy.
The entire film, Fiat Empire, can be accessed at http://www.FiatEmpire.com or directly at Google Video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc...
"This Telly Award-winning documentary on the Federal Reserve System was inspired by the well-known book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin, and features presidential candidate, RON PAUL.
To order a high-quality DVD or VHS tape (by mail) with up to 160-minutes of additional interviews, go to http://www.FiatEmpire.com/screener. To get instant downloads in a range of qualities, go to http://www.mecfilms.com/mid/ppv/ppvho... and select from the "Documentaries" menu.
Find out why some feel the Federal Reserve System is a "bunch of organized crooks" and others feel its practices "are in violation of the U.S. Constitution." Discover why experts agree the Fed is a banking cartel that benefits mainly bankers, their clients in need of easy money and a Congress that would rather increase the National Debt than raise taxes.
Produced by William L. Van Alen, Jr., the 1-hour documentary is a co-production between Matrixx Productions and Cornerstone Entertainment and features interviews by, not only G. Edward Griffin, but Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas); MOVIEGUIDE Founder, Ted Baehr; and constitutional attorney, Edwin Vieira (4 degrees from Harvard). FIAT EMPIRE was written and directed by James Jaeger and narrated by Kris Chandler. Associate producers are Ted Pollard, author and former Commissioner of Radnor Township and James E. Ewart, well-known author of MONEY.
Use a DVD for personal screenings and a VHS tape for free public and private screenings.
For more information on FIAT EMPIRE visit http://www.FiatEmpire.com or the mirror site at http://www.mecfilms.com/fiat. For various political, economic, sociological, media-related and philosophical essays by James Jaeger and others, visit UNIVERSAL ISSUES at http://www.mecfilms.com/universe.
For new films and updates on Matrixx Entertainment's activities, visit http://www.mecfilms.com/update.htm
Bush v. Gore Decision Caused Justice Souter to Cry
Author Jeffrey Rosen talks with Rachel Maddow about Supreme Court Justice David Souter's impending retirement from the bench, and his disillusionment over the Court's Bush v. Gore decision, which stopped the Florida vote recount in the 2000 presidential election.
From "The Rachel Maddow Show," May 1, 2009.
9/11 Families Statement on Court's Denial to Bankrupt Terrorism
MARKET WATCH press release Jun 29, 2009, 2:24 p.m. EST In Response to the Supreme Court's Denial of The 9/11 Families' Petition for Writ of Certiorari. On Behalf of The 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism --(In Re: Thomas E. Burnett, Sr., et al. v. Al Baraka Investment & Development Corp., et al., Case No. 03-CV-9849 (GBD); In Re: Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 03 MDL 1570)
WASHINGTON, June 29, 2009 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The following is a statement on behalf of the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism:
We are deeply disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court has denied our petition for writ of certiorari, thus deciding not to hear our appeal of a lower court's decision to dismiss our charges against five Saudi defendants we allege provided material support for the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The High Court's decision only further denies us our day in court, while enabling members of the ruling family to evade accountability. We respect the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of legal matters in our system of government; nevertheless, we find this result a travesty of justice and a betrayal of the 9/11 families and others whose lives are impacted by terrorism.
In a sad day for justice, the Saudi ruling class' interests have been advanced at the expense of the rights granted to civil litigants under our Constitution and the laws designed by Congress to deter terrorism such as the Anti-Terrorism Act, 18 USC 2331 et seq. We believe the High Court's decision sets a dangerous precedent that those who provide support to terrorism atrocities will now see themselves as beyond the reach of U.S. laws. The High Court's decision allows fundamental questions of law to go unresolved, and lets stand a decision by the Second Circuit that the Department of Justice itself believes to be wrong, potentially affording terrorism sponsors undeserved protection from accountability in ongoing and future cases. We will continue to do everything within our rights to stop the material support pipeline fueling al Qaeda and to press our remaining claims in the case.
SOURCE 9/11 Families/Burnett v. Al Baraka
Copyright (C) 2009 PR Newswire. All rights reserved
2009/06/29
EPA gags their own dissenting scientist in deepening Cap and Trade Fraud
EPA gags their own dissenting scientist in deepening Cap and Trade Fraud
HEAT OF THE MOMENT EPA's own research expert 'shut up' on climate change Government analyst silenced after he critiques CO2 findings
Posted: June 24, 2009 11:05 pm Eastern
HEAT OF THE MOMENT EPA's own research expert 'shut up' on climate change Government analyst silenced after he critiques CO2 findings
Posted: June 24, 2009 11:05 pm Eastern
By Chelsea Schilling © 2009 WorldNetDaily
Alan Carlin, senior operations research analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, or NCEE, submitted his research on the agency's greenhouse gases endangerment findings and offered a fundamental critique on the EPA's approach to combating CO2 emissions. But officials refused to share his conclusion in an open internal discussion, claiming his research would have "a very negative impact on our office."
His study was barred from circulation within the EPA and was never disclosed to the public for political reasons, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, a group that has accessed four internal e-mails on the subject.
CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman told WND, "His boss basically told him, 'No, I'm not going to send your study further up. It's going to stay within this bureau.'"
A March 12 e-mail to Carlin warned him not to have "any direct communication with anyone outside NCEE on endangerment."
Carlin, a researcher who earned his doctorate in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree in physics from California Institute of Technology, informed officials that two-thirds of his references were from peer-reviewed publications and defended his inclusion of new research on the topic.
"It is also my view that the critical attribute of good science is its correspondence to observable data rather than where it appears in the technical literature," he wrote. "I believe my comments are valid, significant and contain references to significant new research … They are significant because they present information critical to justification (or lack thereof) for the proposed [greenhouse gas] endangerment finding."
After nearly one week of discussion, NCEE Director Al McGartland informed Carlin on March 17 that he would not include the research in the internal EPA discussion.
"Alan, I decided not to forward your comments," he wrote. "… The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. … I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
In yet another e-mail sent only minutes following the previous one, McGartland wrote, "With the endangerment findings nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate."
CEI charges that suppression of Carlin's study denied public access to important agency information, as court rulings have indicated that both "the evidence relied upon [by the agency] and the evidence discarded" must be included in the rulemaking record.
"They could come up with reasons to reject it, as I'm sure they're going to come up with reasons to reject the scientific objections that are coming in now from outside parties in the general public and from skeptical scientists," Kazman told WND. "But I'd say the real issue here is that this critique is coming from a career EPA insider, so it can't be dismissed as the work of someone in the pay of the coal-burning fossil-fuel industry. The fact that someone within the EPA was taking this approach is something that would be naturally embarrassing to the agency."
CEI also said the incident violated the EPA's commitment to transparency and scientific honesty.
Prior to taking office, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declared, "As Administrator, I will ensure EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency."
Likewise, CEI reminds the EPA of President Obama's April 27 speech to the National Academy of Sciences in which he stated, "[U]nder my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over."
In a memo to the EPA, Kazman wrote, "Because of ideology, however, it was this back seat to which Mr. Carlin's study was relegated; more precisely, it was booted out of the car entirely."
"The irony of the president and Administrator Jackson talking about EPA's new transparency and commitment to scientific integrity, that's really incredible," Kazman said.
CEI is asking the agency to make Carlin's study public, extend or reopen the comment period to allow public response to his research and publicly declare that there will be no reprisals against Carlin for his research.
Kazman said the issue is "coming to a head" because the EPA's internal commentary period just closed, and the 1,200-page Waxman-Markey climate bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions is scheduled to come to a vote Friday on the House floor.
He believes Carlin's study could have implications on how lawmakers feel about the allegedly solid research behind the climate bill – especially if objecting analysts within the agency are being silenced.
"Any right-minded administrator would have said, 'Fine, put it in and we'll give our reasons for why we reject his contentions," Kazman said. "But instead, they shut the guy up."
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Congressman: Consider science in energy tax debate
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Energy costs being bumped $2,000 per household
Al Gore ignores 'Earth Hour' Shocker! 'Global warming' just isn't happening
'Global warming' data called 'ancient astrology'
Obama's $300 billion-a-year climate-change plan
Report: Ice Age to blast Earth
Global warming dissenters dash scientific 'consensus'
2008: Coolest year of this century
Global warming debate heats up
Pelosi, Pickens plan to pick your pockets
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U.N. to raise own thermostat 5 degrees
31,000 scientists reject 'global warming' agenda
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Does 'climate change' mean 'changing data'?
Al Gore's global warming debunked – by kids!
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Chelsea Schilling is a staff writer for WorldNetDailyVideo: 9/11 Press For Truth - a Quest by the Families of the victims
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Source: CLICK HERE
The political becomes personal in 9/11: Press for Truth, which examines the World Trade Center attacks from the perspective of the families who lost loved ones.
Written and directed by Ray Nowosielski, the documentary draws partly from Paul Thompson’s website-turned-book, The Terror Timeline, and much of the commentary comes from Lorie Van Auken, Patty Casazza, and Mindy Kleinberg, three of the "Jersey Girls."
Along with Kristen Breitweiser, the 9/11 widows have become activists in its wake. As Casazza says, "We all had questions...and wanted answers." The primary one was: How could this happen? Interestingly, two of the women voted for Bush. Casazza adds, "Even though he should have been our biggest advocate, he turned into one of our biggest adversaries."
Together with eight other spouses, parents, etc., they form the Family Steering Committee and lobby for an independent commission, which comes to pass, but fails to deliver the goods.
The widows find more useful information in Thompson's timeline, which he compiled using material in the public domain (Thompson also appears in the film).
The style of 9/11: Press for Truth couldn't be more conventional--talking heads, television footage, omniscient narrator, relentless score--but the personal approach makes it a valuable addition to the rapidly-growing list of 9/11 documentaries. The point is, to quote Patti Smith, "people have the power"--people like the Jersey Girls, Paul Thompson, and all the other ordinary citizens who have kept pressure on our elected officials and the news media to dig deeper and work harder. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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Product Description
The Coverup Exposed By The 9/11 Families
"They lied, they all lied." --Patty Casazza (one of the "Jersey Girls")
"We don't know the whole story, not at all" -- Lorie Van Auken (one of the "Jersey Girls")
"9/11 was the biggest 'don't ask-don't tell" --Sally Regenhard, lost Firefighter son.
"Press for Truth" is an astonishing portrayal of the lengths our public servants will go to protect themselves from any accountability. --Scott Horton, Antiwar.com
Although independent investigations began within weeks of both Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, the same was not true of the attacks of September 11th. Most are unaware that formation of the 9/11 Commission was strongly opposed by many in Washington, including the Bush administration. It was only due to pressure from the 9/11 families, led by a particular twelve calling themselves the Family Steering Committee, that, fourteen months after the attacks, the first hearing finally began. These twelve remained active in monitoring the Commission’s investigation, providing a list of hundreds of specific, well-researched questions to the Commissioners. In the end, the 9/11 Commission Final Report failed to answer seventy percent of them.
In 9/11 PRESS FOR TRUTH, five of the most prominent members of the Family Steering Committee, including interviews with three of the "Jersey Girls," tell their story for the first time, providing the most powerful argument yet for why 9/11 still needs investigation. Adapting Paul Thompson's definitive Complete 9/11 Timeline (published by Harper-Collins as The Terror Timeline), the filmmakers stitch together rare, overlooked news clips, buried stories, and government press conferences, revealing a pattern of official lies, deception, and spin.
NO NEW TAXES! - Defeat Cap and Trade in the Senate
Comment: Partisan politics can work against your interests in matters of life, death and taxes. The "Cap and Trade" tax is a monumental hoax that falsely blames carbon emissions (CO2) for alleged increases in climate temperature. In fact, the atmosphere is cooling even as CO2 increases. The IPCC has been severely discredited and revealed to be a mostly political network rather than scientific international body of climate experts. The history of the hoax is made clear in the lucid work of meteorologist, John Coman - founder of THE WEATHER CHANNEL. CLICK HERE
Hsaive
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THE EXAMINER
Tide changing on cap and trade, fight moves to Senate
Anthony G. Martin -- 6/28/2009
In one of the closest Congressional votes since Barack Obama took office, the Cap-and-Trade energy tax bill was approved by a very thin margin, thanks to the defections of 44 Democrats who voted against the President and the House leadership.
The final vote in the House was 219 for and 212 against. All but 8 Republicans stood firm for the American people and voted against this ghastly piece of legislation. All but 44 Democrats voted in favor of this onslaught on our money and our sources of income.
8 turncoat RINOS (Republicans-in-name-only) voted in favor of the Democrat-led battle to declare war on American jobs and income. Here are their names and phone numbers, via Michelle Malkin:
Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330 Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165 Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!) Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361 LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572 McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611 Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761 Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765
Each one of these turncoats should be voted out of office the next time they run for reelection.
The 44 Democrats who broke ranks with their Party and voted against the bill are as follows:
Altmire, Arcuri, Barrow, Berry, Boren, Bright, Carney. Childers, Costa, Costello, Dahlkemper, Davis (AL), DavisTN), DeFazio, Donnelly (IN), Edwards (TX), Ellsworth, Foster, Griffith, Herseth Sandlin, Holden, Kirkpatrick (AZ), Kissell, Kucinich, Marshall, Massa, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Minnick, Mitchell, Mollohan, Nye, Ortiz, Pomeroy, Rahall, Rodriguez, Ross, Salazar, Stark, Tanner, Taylor, Visclosky, Wilson (OH)
It would be a big mistake to assume that each of these Democrats who voted against the bill are friends of conservatives. For example, Dennis Kucinich voted against it. Kucinich is anything but a conservative. His reason for voting against the bill is that he did not think it was strong enough. Such is the case with many of the Democrats who voted no. It is essential, therefore, that you do your homework in researching the voting records of these Democrats before assuming they are to be congratulated.
The conservative 'blue dog' Democrats were split roughly 50-50 on cap and trade. According to Truth and Reason, out of the 52 so-called 'blue dog Dems, 22 voted YES on this monstrosity. Here are the names and phone numbers of these turncoat blue dogs:
Baca, Joe (CA-43) 225-6161 Bishop, Sanford (GA-02) 225-3631 Boswell, Leonard (IA-03) 225-3806 Boyd, Allen (FL-02) 225-5235 Cardoza, Dennis (CA-18) 225-6131 Chandler, Ben (KY-06) 225-4706 Cooper, Jim (TN-05) 225-4311 Cuellar, Henry (TX-28) 225-1640 Giffords, Gabrielle (AZ-08) 225-2542 Gordon, Bart (TN-06) 225-4231 Harman, Jane (CA-36) 225-8220 Hill, Baron (IN-09) 225-5315 Michaud, Mike (ME-02) 225-6306 Moore, Dennis (KS-03) 225-2865 Murphy, Patrick (PA-08) 225-4276 Peterson, Collin (MN-07) 225-2165 Sanchez, Loretta (CA-47) 225-2965 Schiff, Adam (CA-29) 225-4176 Scott, David (GA-13) 225-2939 Shuler, Heath (NC-11) 225-6401 Space, Zack (OH-18) 225-6265 Thompson, Mike (CA-01) 225-3311
Citizens believed they were getting conservative Democrats when they voted in good faith for these turncoats. Each one should be voted out of office in the next election.
The battle now turns to the Senate, where the bill is purported to have even more opposition. Some insiders claim that the bill has no chance of passing the Senate. But some Senators can be bought, just as some Representatives were in the House. For this reason citizens should bombard Senate offices with phone calls, emails, and faxes to protest this bill that will kill over a million jobs and cost households an extra $1300 to $3000 per year in energy costs.
Why bother to put forth such effort on cap and trade?
One thing is for sure, it is NOT a Republican or Democrat issue. It is a pocket book and jobs issue. And it is based upon an outright lie concerning 'climate change.'
Despite the outright lies of Al Gore, Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, and others on 'man-made carbon pollution' that supposedly leads to 'global warming,' hard science tells us otherwise. Gore and Obama claim that 'the science is settled.' Nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing settled in the environmentalist extremist wacko movement is the politics. The movement has nothing whatsoever to do with hard science.
The International Climate Science Coalition is a highly valuable source of current information on the hard science of the causes of fluctuating global temperatures. It's contributors are some of the world's most highly regarded scientists who vehemently deny Al Gore and Barack Obama's assertion that 'the science is settled.'
For anyone who cares to discover the facts, there is a wealth of information available, including studies, scientific papers, satellite data, etc. that show there is no such thing as man-made global warming. Temperature fluctuations are caused by a multiplicity of factors outside the control of human beings, such as activity on the sun.
In that particular report, Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics stated:
When you have a lot of sunspots, there is a lot more light energy coming from the Sun and that tends to warm the Earth," added Dr. Soon."When the Sun produces less sunspots, it essentially gives up less energy to the Earth's climate system." And less energy means a cooler planet. "There were very few sunspots in 2008 and by all measures, 2008 was a cold year," said Dr. Soon. And that link between temperatures on Earth and sunspot activity can be picked out many times from past history. "For example, from 1645 to 1715 there were no sunspots and it was a very, very cold period for our planet. Most call it the "Little Ice Age," said Dr. Soon. "Based on my research, I tend to be in support of a very, very strong role by the Sun's energy input as a climate driver. If you were to ask me about the role of CO2, I would say its very, very small," he added.
Indeed, the ICSC reports that satellite data indicate that 2008 temperatures were the coolest in 30 years. In addition, 2 investigative reporters from the Financial Post totally debunked a report from MIT that claimed without massive government intervention 'global warming' could be twice as bad as predicted. And then there is This Story , totally ignored by the mainstream media, that reports that 100 top scientists from around the world corrected Barack Obama's many misconceptions and misinformation about 'climate change.'
And for those inquiring minds that wish to dig deeper still into the real truth about the climate, there is this report, issued by Dr. Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute, entitled, 'Mankind Has An Insignificant Impact on the Climate of Planet Earth.'
The point is that with cap-and-trade, the Obama Administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the United Nations is attempting to shove an oppressive tax increase down the throats of Americans, forcing us to give up our choices, based upon a pack of lies concerning human impact on the climate.
This bill MUST be defeated in the Senate.
2009/06/28
Mind Reading is No Longer Science Fiction
Will "Mind Reading" be used to legalize prolonged detention and preemptive incarceration?
In May, 2009 Rachel Maddow excoriated Obama when he backed out of his promise to end the Bush practice of detaining prisoners for years with no evidence. The concept of throwing a suspect in jail to prevent a crime not yet commited is disturbing. Maddow Video: CLICK HERE
Enter "Mind-Reading" and "Mind Control". The scientists in this 60 Minutes segment are anticipating a timeline of only 5 years until the human mind can be "read" by remote sensors and without the subject's knowledge.
But not mentioned in this CBS story is the frightening realization that any mind that can be read can also be manipulated to create self-incriminating patterns detectable by remote censors to keep an otherwise innocent person in jail...."legally".
This rapidly advancing development could well explain why Obama preserved the Bush precedent of Prolonged Detention for a few years until the "regime" will be able to assign guilt to anyone thay wish to destroy.
CBS) This story was first published on Jan. 4, 2009. It was updated on June 26, 2009.
_____________________________________________________________
How often have you wondered what your spouse is really thinking? Or your boss? Or the guy sitting across from you on the bus? We all take as a given that we'll never really know for sure. The content of our thoughts is our own - private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. Until now, that is.
As 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl first reported in January, neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.
The technology that is transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. It makes it possible to see what's going on inside the brain while people are thinking.
"You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl.
He calls it "thought identification."
Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts.
They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about ten objects - five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and five of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each.
"The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked.
"Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained.
He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places.
When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said.
"We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's…incredible, just incredible," he added.
"Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked.
"Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.
60 Minutes asked if his team was up for a challenge: would they take associate producer Meghan Frank, whose brain had never been scanned before, and see if the computer could identify her thoughts? Just and Mitchell agreed to give it a try and see if they could do it in almost real time.
Just said nobody had ever done an instant analysis like this.
Inside the scanner, Meghan was shown a series of ten items and asked to think for a few seconds about each one.
"If it all comes out right, when she's thinking 'hammer,' the computer will know she's thinking 'hammer'?" Stahl asked.
"Right," Mitchell replied.
Within minutes, the computer, unaware of what pictures Meghan had been shown and working only from her brain activity patterns as read out by the scanner, was ready to tell us, in its own voice, what it believed was the first object Meghan had been thinking about.
The computer correctly analyzed the first three words - knife, hammer, and window, and aced the rest as well.
According to Just, this is just the beginning.
"Who knows what you're gonna be able to read," Stahl commented. "A little scary, actually."
"Well, that's our research program for the next five years," Just said. "To see what, you know - we're not satisfied with "hammer."
And neither are neuroscientists 4,000 miles away in Berlin at the Bernstein Center. John Dylan-Haynes is hard at work there using the scanner not just to identify objects people are thinking about, but to read their intentions.
Subjects were asked to make a simple decision - whether to add or subtract two numbers they would be shown later on. Haynes found he could read directly from the activity in a small part of the brain that controls intentions what they had decided to do.
"This is a kind of blown up version of the brain activity happening here. And you can see that if a person is planning to add or to subtract, the pattern of brain activity is different in these two cases," Haynes explained.
"I always tell my students that there is no science fiction anymore. All the science fiction I read in high school, we're doing," Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, told Stahl.
To Wolpe, the ability to read our thoughts and intentions this way is revolutionary. "Throughout history, we could never actually coerce someone to reveal information. Torture doesn't work that well, persuasion doesn't work that well. The right to keep one's thoughts locked up in their brain is amongst the most fundamental rights of being human."
"You're saying that if someone can read my intentions, we have to talk about who might in the future be able to do that?" Stahl asked.
"Absolutely," he replied. "Whether we're going to let the state do it or whether we're going to let me do it. I have two teenage daughters. I come home one day and my car is dented and both of them say they didn't do it. Am I going to be allowed to drag them off to the local brain imaging lie detection company and get them put in a scanner? We don't know."
But before we've even started the debate, there are two companies already offering lie detection services using brain scans, one with the catchy name "No Lie MRI." But our experts cautioned that the technique is still unproven.
In the meantime, Haynes is working on something he thinks may be even more effective: reading out from your brain exactly where you've been. Haynes showed Stahl an experiment he created out of a video game.
He had Stahl navigate through a series of rooms in different virtual reality houses.
"Now I would put you in a scanner and I would show you some of these scenes that you've seen and some scenes that you haven't seen," he told her.
Stahl recognized the bar. "And right at this moment, we would be able to tell from your brain activity that you've already seen this environment before," Haynes explained.
"And so, this is a potential tool…for the police…in the case of break-ins?" Stahl asked.
"You might be able to tell if someone's been in an al Qaeda training camp before," Haynes replied.
Haynes said while U.S. national security agencies had not been in touch with him, the Germans had.
"So there are people who are considering these kinds of possibilities," Stahl commented.
And some are using them. In India last summer, a woman was convicted of murder after an EEG of her brain allegedly revealed that she was familiar with the circumstances surrounding the poisoning of her ex-fiancé.
"Can you through our legal system be forced to take one of these tests?" Stahl asked Paul Root Wolpe.
"It's a great question. And the legal system hasn't decided on this yet," he said.
"But we do have a Fifth Amendment. We don't have to incriminate ourselves," Stahl pointed out.
"Well here's where it gets very interesting, because the Fifth Amendment only prevents the courts from forcing us to testify against ourselves. But you can force me to give DNA or a hair sample or blood even if that would incriminate me. So here's the million dollar question: if you can brain image me and get information directly from my brain, is that testimony? Or is that like DNA, blood, semen and other things that you could take from me?" Wolpe asked.
"There will be a Supreme Court case about this," he predicted.
For now, it's impossible to force someone to have his or her brain scanned, because the subject has to lie still and cooperate, but that could change.
"There are some other technologies that are being developed that may be able to be used covertly and even remotely. So, for example, they're trying to develop now a beam of light that would be projected onto your forehead. It would go a couple of millimeters into your frontal cortex, and then receptors would get the reflection of that light. And there's some studies that suggest that we could use that as a lie detection device," Wolpe said.
He said we wouldn't know if our brains were being scanned. "If you were sitting there in the airport and being questioned, they could beam that on your forehead without your knowledge. We can't do that yet, but they're working on it."
Scary as that is, imagine a world where companies could read our minds too.
Light beams may be a bit far off, but fMRI scanning is already being used to try to figure out what we want to buy and how to sell it to us. It's a new field called "neuromarketing." One of its pioneers is neuroscientist Gemma Calvert, co-founder of a London company called Neurosense.
Asked if she has a lot of clients, Calvert told Stahl, "Yes, such as Unilever, Intel, McDonald's, Proctor & Gamble, MTV or Viacom."
And she says it's a growing field. "What we've seen is a sort of snowballing effect over the last few years. I think there are about 92 neuromarketing agencies worldwide."
But some experts question whether it's ethical to scan the brain for commercial purposes, and say neuromarketers may be promising more than they can really deliver.
"If you image my brain, and you say, 'Ah-ha! Paul craves chocolate chip cookies,' and I say, 'No, I don't,' now are you going to believe the brain over me? You can only do that if you have proven that that part of the brain lighting up means in all cases that that person desires chocolate chip cookies. And what a lot of people are doing is they're just imaging the brain, and then they're declaring what that means, and they're never proving that it actually translates into behavior," Wolpe said.
"You know it's very interesting. When you show someone a brain scan, people just believe it. It just reeks of credibility," Stahl commented.
"Absolutely. Absolutely," John Dylan-Haynes agreed.
"And you telling me, 'That's the area where people add and subtract,' I thought, 'Well, of course. He knows,'" Stahl said.
"But I could have told you anything," he pointed out.
So as brain imaging continues to advance and find its way into the courts, the market, and who knows what other aspects of our lives, one message is: be cautious. Another is to get ready. Back at Carnegie Mellon, Just and Mitchell have already uncovered the signatures in our brains for kindness, hypocrisy, and love.
"It's breathtaking," Stahl said. "And kind of eerie."
"Well, you know, I think the reason people have that reaction is because it reveals the essence of what it means to be a person. All of those kinds of things that define us as human beings are brain patterns," Just replied.
"We don't wanna know that… it all boils down to, I don't know, molecules and things like that," Stahl said.
"But we are, you know, we are biological creatures. You know, our limbs we accept are, you know, muscles and bone. And our brain is a biological thinking machine," he replied.
"Do you think one day, who knows how far into the future, there'll be a machine that'll be able to read very complex thought like 'I hate so-and-so'? Or you know, 'I love the ballet because…'?" Stahl asked.
"Definitely. Definitely," Just said. "And not in 20 years. I think in three, five years."
"In three years?" Stahl asked.
"Well, five," Just replied with a smile.
# # # # #
Enter "Mind-Reading" and "Mind Control". The scientists in this 60 Minutes segment are anticipating a timeline of only 5 years until the human mind can be "read" by remote sensors and without the subject's knowledge.
But not mentioned in this CBS story is the frightening realization that any mind that can be read can also be manipulated to create self-incriminating patterns detectable by remote censors to keep an otherwise innocent person in jail...."legally".
This rapidly advancing development could well explain why Obama preserved the Bush precedent of Prolonged Detention for a few years until the "regime" will be able to assign guilt to anyone thay wish to destroy.
CBS) This story was first published on Jan. 4, 2009. It was updated on June 26, 2009.
_____________________________________________________________
How often have you wondered what your spouse is really thinking? Or your boss? Or the guy sitting across from you on the bus? We all take as a given that we'll never really know for sure. The content of our thoughts is our own - private, secret, and unknowable by anyone else. Until now, that is.
As 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl first reported in January, neuroscience research into how we think and what we're thinking is advancing at a stunning rate, making it possible for the first time in human history to peer directly into the brain to read out the physical make-up of our thoughts, some would say to read our minds.
The technology that is transforming what once was science fiction into just plain science is a specialized use of MRI scanning called "functional MRI," fMRI for short. It makes it possible to see what's going on inside the brain while people are thinking.
"You know, every time I walk into that scanner room and I see the person's brain appear on the screen, when I see those patterns, it is just incredible, unthinkable," neuroscientist Marcel Just told Stahl.
He calls it "thought identification."
Whatever you want to call it, what Just and his colleague Tom Mitchell at Carnegie Mellon University have done is combine fMRI's ability to look at the brain in action with computer science's new power to sort through massive amounts of data. The goal: to see if they could identify exactly what happens in the brain when people think specific thoughts.
They did an experiment where they asked subjects to think about ten objects - five of them tools like screwdriver and hammer, and five of them dwellings, like igloo and castle. They then recorded and analyzed the activity in the subjects' brains for each.
"The computer found the place in the brain where that person was thinking 'screwdriver'?" Stahl asked.
"Screwdriver isn't one place in the brain. It's many places in the brain. When you think of a screwdriver, you think about how you hold it, how you twist it, what it looks like, what you use it for," Just explained.
He told Stahl each of those functions are in different places.
When we think "screwdriver" or "igloo" for example, Just says neurons start firing at varying levels of intensity in different areas throughout the brain. "And we found that we could identify which object they were thinking about from their brain activation patterns," he said.
"We're identifying the thought that's occurring. It's…incredible, just incredible," he added.
"Are you saying that if you think of a hammer, that your brain is identical to my brain when I think of a hammer?" Stahl asked.
"Not identical. We have idiosyncrasies. Maybe I've had a bad experience with a hammer and you haven't, but it's close enough to identify each other's thoughts. So, you know, that was never known before," Just explained.
60 Minutes asked if his team was up for a challenge: would they take associate producer Meghan Frank, whose brain had never been scanned before, and see if the computer could identify her thoughts? Just and Mitchell agreed to give it a try and see if they could do it in almost real time.
Just said nobody had ever done an instant analysis like this.
Inside the scanner, Meghan was shown a series of ten items and asked to think for a few seconds about each one.
"If it all comes out right, when she's thinking 'hammer,' the computer will know she's thinking 'hammer'?" Stahl asked.
"Right," Mitchell replied.
Within minutes, the computer, unaware of what pictures Meghan had been shown and working only from her brain activity patterns as read out by the scanner, was ready to tell us, in its own voice, what it believed was the first object Meghan had been thinking about.
The computer correctly analyzed the first three words - knife, hammer, and window, and aced the rest as well.
According to Just, this is just the beginning.
"Who knows what you're gonna be able to read," Stahl commented. "A little scary, actually."
"Well, that's our research program for the next five years," Just said. "To see what, you know - we're not satisfied with "hammer."
And neither are neuroscientists 4,000 miles away in Berlin at the Bernstein Center. John Dylan-Haynes is hard at work there using the scanner not just to identify objects people are thinking about, but to read their intentions.
Subjects were asked to make a simple decision - whether to add or subtract two numbers they would be shown later on. Haynes found he could read directly from the activity in a small part of the brain that controls intentions what they had decided to do.
"This is a kind of blown up version of the brain activity happening here. And you can see that if a person is planning to add or to subtract, the pattern of brain activity is different in these two cases," Haynes explained.
"I always tell my students that there is no science fiction anymore. All the science fiction I read in high school, we're doing," Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, told Stahl.
To Wolpe, the ability to read our thoughts and intentions this way is revolutionary. "Throughout history, we could never actually coerce someone to reveal information. Torture doesn't work that well, persuasion doesn't work that well. The right to keep one's thoughts locked up in their brain is amongst the most fundamental rights of being human."
"You're saying that if someone can read my intentions, we have to talk about who might in the future be able to do that?" Stahl asked.
"Absolutely," he replied. "Whether we're going to let the state do it or whether we're going to let me do it. I have two teenage daughters. I come home one day and my car is dented and both of them say they didn't do it. Am I going to be allowed to drag them off to the local brain imaging lie detection company and get them put in a scanner? We don't know."
But before we've even started the debate, there are two companies already offering lie detection services using brain scans, one with the catchy name "No Lie MRI." But our experts cautioned that the technique is still unproven.
In the meantime, Haynes is working on something he thinks may be even more effective: reading out from your brain exactly where you've been. Haynes showed Stahl an experiment he created out of a video game.
He had Stahl navigate through a series of rooms in different virtual reality houses.
"Now I would put you in a scanner and I would show you some of these scenes that you've seen and some scenes that you haven't seen," he told her.
Stahl recognized the bar. "And right at this moment, we would be able to tell from your brain activity that you've already seen this environment before," Haynes explained.
"And so, this is a potential tool…for the police…in the case of break-ins?" Stahl asked.
"You might be able to tell if someone's been in an al Qaeda training camp before," Haynes replied.
Haynes said while U.S. national security agencies had not been in touch with him, the Germans had.
"So there are people who are considering these kinds of possibilities," Stahl commented.
And some are using them. In India last summer, a woman was convicted of murder after an EEG of her brain allegedly revealed that she was familiar with the circumstances surrounding the poisoning of her ex-fiancé.
"Can you through our legal system be forced to take one of these tests?" Stahl asked Paul Root Wolpe.
"It's a great question. And the legal system hasn't decided on this yet," he said.
"But we do have a Fifth Amendment. We don't have to incriminate ourselves," Stahl pointed out.
"Well here's where it gets very interesting, because the Fifth Amendment only prevents the courts from forcing us to testify against ourselves. But you can force me to give DNA or a hair sample or blood even if that would incriminate me. So here's the million dollar question: if you can brain image me and get information directly from my brain, is that testimony? Or is that like DNA, blood, semen and other things that you could take from me?" Wolpe asked.
"There will be a Supreme Court case about this," he predicted.
For now, it's impossible to force someone to have his or her brain scanned, because the subject has to lie still and cooperate, but that could change.
"There are some other technologies that are being developed that may be able to be used covertly and even remotely. So, for example, they're trying to develop now a beam of light that would be projected onto your forehead. It would go a couple of millimeters into your frontal cortex, and then receptors would get the reflection of that light. And there's some studies that suggest that we could use that as a lie detection device," Wolpe said.
He said we wouldn't know if our brains were being scanned. "If you were sitting there in the airport and being questioned, they could beam that on your forehead without your knowledge. We can't do that yet, but they're working on it."
Scary as that is, imagine a world where companies could read our minds too.
Light beams may be a bit far off, but fMRI scanning is already being used to try to figure out what we want to buy and how to sell it to us. It's a new field called "neuromarketing." One of its pioneers is neuroscientist Gemma Calvert, co-founder of a London company called Neurosense.
Asked if she has a lot of clients, Calvert told Stahl, "Yes, such as Unilever, Intel, McDonald's, Proctor & Gamble, MTV or Viacom."
And she says it's a growing field. "What we've seen is a sort of snowballing effect over the last few years. I think there are about 92 neuromarketing agencies worldwide."
But some experts question whether it's ethical to scan the brain for commercial purposes, and say neuromarketers may be promising more than they can really deliver.
"If you image my brain, and you say, 'Ah-ha! Paul craves chocolate chip cookies,' and I say, 'No, I don't,' now are you going to believe the brain over me? You can only do that if you have proven that that part of the brain lighting up means in all cases that that person desires chocolate chip cookies. And what a lot of people are doing is they're just imaging the brain, and then they're declaring what that means, and they're never proving that it actually translates into behavior," Wolpe said.
"You know it's very interesting. When you show someone a brain scan, people just believe it. It just reeks of credibility," Stahl commented.
"Absolutely. Absolutely," John Dylan-Haynes agreed.
"And you telling me, 'That's the area where people add and subtract,' I thought, 'Well, of course. He knows,'" Stahl said.
"But I could have told you anything," he pointed out.
So as brain imaging continues to advance and find its way into the courts, the market, and who knows what other aspects of our lives, one message is: be cautious. Another is to get ready. Back at Carnegie Mellon, Just and Mitchell have already uncovered the signatures in our brains for kindness, hypocrisy, and love.
"It's breathtaking," Stahl said. "And kind of eerie."
"Well, you know, I think the reason people have that reaction is because it reveals the essence of what it means to be a person. All of those kinds of things that define us as human beings are brain patterns," Just replied.
"We don't wanna know that… it all boils down to, I don't know, molecules and things like that," Stahl said.
"But we are, you know, we are biological creatures. You know, our limbs we accept are, you know, muscles and bone. And our brain is a biological thinking machine," he replied.
"Do you think one day, who knows how far into the future, there'll be a machine that'll be able to read very complex thought like 'I hate so-and-so'? Or you know, 'I love the ballet because…'?" Stahl asked.
"Definitely. Definitely," Just said. "And not in 20 years. I think in three, five years."
"In three years?" Stahl asked.
"Well, five," Just replied with a smile.
# # # # #
Congress Still Owes Us a 9/11 Investigation from 2002
SALON
Putting "Today" before tomorrow's security
Some Democratic senators are sabotaging plans for a 9/11 independent commission so that they can preen on TV.
Joe Conason - June 22, 2002
Within the past two weeks, Congress has quietly set aside legislation that would establish an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. That important bill, already approved by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and supported by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle -- along with most of his fellow Democrats and a handful of prominent Republicans, notably including Arizona's John McCain -- is dead, at least for the moment.
The critical probe will thus remain under the purview of the special House-Senate Joint Committee on Intelligence, whose deliberations are being held almost entirely behind closed doors.
It doesn't matter that the families of those murdered in the Sept. 11 assaults want an independent investigation. It doesn't matter that many intelligence and security experts believe an independent investigation is the wisest course for the country. It doesn't matter that the limited scope of the congressional investigation will fail to address important concerns such as transportation security and immigration, among others. It also doesn't matter that the congressional intelligence committees themselves, having failed to exercise adequate oversight in years past, are part of the problem that needs to be examined.
What apparently does matter is that certain members of Congress maintain control over the investigation -- and as a result, enjoy a vastly increased amount of face time in the national media.
That isn't the only motivation behind congressional resistance to an outside, nonpartisan investigation, of course. The Bush administration wants no part of such a probe, fearing public embarrassments even worse than it has already suffered. Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have warned portentously that an independent commission would hobble the war on terrorism, and settled only grudgingly for a congressional investigation. Their Republican allies in the House leadership have vowed to kill any legislation establishing an independent investigation.
But there was, until recently, a chance that the Senate would approve the independent commission bill sponsored by McCain and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. -- and bring public pressure on House Republicans to go along. Now that chance has passed, thanks to backroom opposition from Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to a well-placed source in the Senate. Particularly opposed were Sens. Bob Graham of Florida, Evan Bayh of Indiana, Dianne Feinstein of California and John Edwards of North Carolina, Vanity Fair and the "Today" show.
Their angry protests in the party caucus have forced Daschle to back away from the independent commission bill he endorsed only a month ago. Knowing that he cannot depend on 50 votes, even with the support of principled Republicans like McCain and Iowa's Charles Grassley, the majority leader has lapsed into silence on the subject. He now plans to wield the independent commission as a threat in negotiations over intelligence reform with the White House and the Republicans.
A clue to how badly this stalemate serves the public was momentarily visible on May 19, when Feinstein and House Republican leader Dick Armey appeared together on CNN's "Late Edition." "We're in the middle of a war on terror. We need to be together. We don't need to get into some kind of open fire fight either between parties or between individuals," said the California Democrat, parroting the White House line against an independent commission. Besides, she added, an independent commission "wouldn't work."
Armey eagerly agreed, praising Feinstein's seriousness and patriotism. "It should be handled professionally, it should be handled carefully, and it should be handled quietly." Ah yes, very quietly -- just the way the Republicans handled accusations of Chinese espionage during the Clinton years. That Armey should prefer a coverup is no surprise; that Democrats would go along with him is a disgrace.
For Feinstein to claim that an independent commission "wouldn't work" is to suggest that the congressional committee is working well. But it has been plagued by leaks, poor cooperation from intelligence agencies, and staffing that worked so badly the director was abruptly fired. Graham is widely regarded in Washington as a well-meaning tool of the intelligence community, and there are few members who have sufficient experience, skills and stature for this demanding job. His Republican colleague Richard Shelby is believed to be pursuing a petty feud with CIA Director George Tenet. And those aren't the only reasons that the committee's work lacks weight.
It would be ridiculous to argue that such senators as Bayh or Edwards are more qualified to probe this massive intelligence fiasco than the veteran experts who served on the Hart-Rudman Commission. Yet Bayh has insisted that "the intelligence committees are the best place to handle this. They have a track record of handling discreet information in a confidential way. The expertise is there and I think that's the best place for the job to be done."
As for Edwards, always mindful of his presidential ambitions, the North Carolina freshman sensation has tried to straddle the issue. He told Katie Couric on "Today" recently, "I think there'll be substantial support for the possibility of an independent commission and that may be something that makes sense." He clearly wants the congressional investigation to take precedence, however, and he has indicated that no other panel ought to be appointed until his committee's report is completed. The painful truth is that Edwards knows little about this subject, but loves the attention that it brings him as a member of the joint committee.
This is not an ideological question, and shouldn't be a partisan issue. Politicians of both parties are as much a part of the problem as the agencies they failed to oversee. Who watches the watchdog? Not these toothless hounds and puppies. They ought to wrap up their effort as soon as possible and stop obstructing what the nation needs most: a wide-ranging, transparent, professional and unbiased investigation of the danger we now confront.
SOURCE: http://dir.salon.com/story/news/col/cona/2002/06/22/commission/index.html?x
# # #
2009/06/27
Recalling the truck-load of explosives on 9/11
On the day of the 9-11 attacks, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked what the attacks would mean for US-Israeli relations. His quick reply was: "It's very good.......Well, it's not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy (for Israel)"
The Five Dancing Israelis
Arrested On 9-11
As the world watched in disbelief Mossad operatives were seen dancing with joy.
A Mossad surveillance team made quite a public spectacle of themselves on 9-11.
The New York Times reported Thursday that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers prior to the attack on Tuesday, and were seen congratulating one another afterwards. (1)
Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery.
"They were like happy, you know ... They didn't look shocked to me" said a witness.
[T]hey were seen by New Jersey residents on Sept. 11 making fun of the World Trade Center ruins and going to extreme lengths to photograph themselves in front of the wreckage.
Witnesses saw them jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact (5). Later on, other witnesses saw them celebrating on a roof in Weehawken, and still more witnesses later saw them celebrating with high fives in a Jersey City parking lot. "It looked like they're hooked in with this. It looked like they knew what was going to happen when they were at Liberty State Park."
One anonymous phone call to the authorities actually led them to close down all of New York's bridges and tunnels. The mystery caller told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that a group of Palestinians were mixing a bomb inside of a white van headed for the Holland Tunnel. Here's the transcript from NBC News:
Dispatcher: Jersey City police.
Caller: Yes, we have a white van, 2 or 3 guys in there, they look like Palestinians and going around a building.
Caller: There's a minivan heading toward the Holland tunnel, I see the guy by Newark Airport mixing some junk and he has those sheikh uniform.
Dispatcher: He has what?
Caller: He's dressed like an Arab.
(*Writer's note: Why would this mystery caller specifically say that these "Arabs" were Palestinians? How would he know that? Palestinians usually dress in western style clothes, not "sheikh uniforms")
Based on that phone call, police then issued a "Be-on-the-Lookout" alert for a white mini-van heading for the city's bridges and tunnels from New Jersey.
White, 2000 Chevrolet van with 'Urban Moving Systems' sign on back seen at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ, at the time of first impact of jetliner into World Trade Center Three individuals with van were seen celebrating after initial impact and subsequent explosion. FBI Newark Field Office requests that, if the van is located, hold for prints and detain individuals. (9)
When a van fitting that exact description was stopped just before crossing into New York, the suspicious "middle-easterners" were apprehended. Imagine the surprise of the police officers when these terror suspects turned out to be Israelis!
According to ABC's 20/20, when the van belonging to the cheering Israelis was stopped by the police, the driver of the van, Sivan Kurzberg, told the officers:
"We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem." (10)
Why did he feel that Palestinians were a problem for the NYPD?
The police and FBI field agents became very suspicious when they found maps of the city with certain places highlighted, box cutters (the same items that the hijackers supposedly used), $4700 cash stuffed in a sock, and foreign passports. Police also told the Bergen Record that bomb sniffing dogs were brought to the van and that they reacted as if they had smelled explosives. (11)
The FBI seized and developed their photos, one of which shows Sivan Kurzberg flicking a cigarette lighter in front of the smouldering ruins in an apparently celebratory gesture.
The Jerusalem Post later reported that a white van with a bomb was stopped as it approached the George Washington Bridge, but the ethnicity of the suspects was not revealed. Here's what the Jerusalem Post reported on September 12, 2001:
- JERUSALEM POST - 9/12/2001: American security services overnight stopped a car bomb on the George Washington Bridge. The van, packed with explosives, was stopped on an approach ramp to the bridge. Authorities suspect the terrorists intended to blow up the main crossing between New Jersey and New York, Army Radio reported. "...two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives was discovered around the George Washington Bridge ... The FBI ... says enough explosives were in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge."
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