What Are They Hiding? Obama's Black Site Prison

Dave LIndorff
CounterPunch
Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:50 CDT

A victory for the government in a federal court in New York City Monday marks another slide deeper into Dick Cheney's "dark side" for the Obama Administration.

In a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been seeking to force the Pentagon to provide information about all captives it is holding at its huge prison facility at Bagram Airbase outside Kabul in Afghanistan, Federal District Judge Barbara Jones of the Southern District of New York has issued a summary judgement saying that the government may keep that information secret.

The lingering question is: Why does the US government so adamantly want to hide information about where captives were first taken into military custody, their citizenship, the length of their captivity, and the circumstances under which they were captured?

Says Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, "The military says that they can't release the information because it would be a threat to national security, but they provided that information for the prisoners at Guantanamo."

And of course, as our leaders informed us repeatedly, those captives at Guantanamo, who hailed from all over the globe, including Afghanistan, were allegedly "the worst of the worst"--at least until it turned out that many of them were wholly innocent of anything. had been framed and turned in for a bounty, or were mere children when picked up, like Omar Khadr, the 24-year old Canadian man who just copped a guilty plea to avoid a sham tribunal before 7 officers and potential life imprisonment, after being captured at 15, tortured at Bagram, and held for nine years at Guantanamo (on a charge of killing an American soldier in battle).

The court ruling keeping the information about the thousands of prisoners held at Bagram secret may be a victory for the government, but it is hardly a victory for America's image in the world, or for the troops battling in Afghanistan, who will be attacked all the harder by people induced to fight to the death to avoid capture and consignment to the hellhole in Bagram (now known as Parwan Prison), which has become Afghanistan's Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo rolled into one.

One of the things that concerns the ACLU is that by not even making public the circumstances under which Bagram detainees were brought into the prison, it appears likely that the administration is hiding the reality that many "probably don't deserve to be there," says the ACLU's Goodman. She explains, "There could be plenty of people sitting there who were just caught up in house sweeps in Kabul, for instance."

As well, she says that by withholding information about citizenship and about the place of initial capture, the government may be hiding the fact that it is using Bagram as it used to use Guantanamo, as a so-called "black site" for "rendering," or bringing, people captured all around the world.

Making matters worse is a string of continuing reports from people released from Bagram, including some which are very recent, that it is a site where torture is routinely applied to prisoners.

Significantly, a second part of the court's ruling was that the CIA does not have to confirm or deny whether it too is holding captives at Bagram. This is a serious blow too to America's reputation and to democratic values, since when President Obama, early in his presidency, signed an executive order outlawing torture by the military, he left some major loopholes. Most significantly, he applied that order only to persons captured during "armed conflict." Since the US doesn't consider captives in the loosely-defined "War on Terror" to be legitimate combatants, that means many of the people held at Bagram may be considered outside of the president's ban. The order also says captives in counterterror operations do not have to be reported to the Red Cross.

Goodman says, "Despite concerns that Bagram has become the new Guantánamo, the public remains in the dark when it comes to basic facts about the facility and whom our military is holding in indefinite military detention there. The public has a right to know how long the U.S. has kept people locked up in military detention and under what circumstances. The lack of transparency about these key facts is even more disturbing considering the possibility that the U.S. will continue holding and interrogating prisoners at Bagram well into the future. Unfortunately, today's ruling will allow the government to continue hiding this vital information."

When the ugly sadistic goings on at Abu Ghraib were exposed, it caused massive damage to the US, and, according to government statements at the time, ended up helping recruit more future terrorists. It seems the Obama adminstration is heading down the same road now at Bagram, with the blessing of a Judge Jones.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/217173-What-Are-They-Hiding-Obama-s-Black-Site-Prison

Liberal Hecklers Won't Let Obama Speak

Liberal Hecklers Won't Let Obama Speak

The National Review: WikiLeaks founder should have been murdered with radioactive waste

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, October 29th, 2010 -- 4:40 pm

One of the editors at The National Review, a magazine most closely identified with Bush-era neoconservative thought, sure has a potent imagination.Perhaps potent isn't quite the right word. Poisonous, on the other hand, just might be.

Writing for the magazine's website on Friday, online editor Jonah Goldberg drummed up a few fantastical scenarios in which America's spy agencies might rub out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. One of them was through the use of toxic nuclear waste.

Spinning competing hypothetical scenarios based loosely around the frame of what many Americans think their spooks are capable of, he just outright says it: "[You'd] think Assange, super-whistle-blower of the international Left, would be a greasy stain on the autobahn already."

Then he adds: "Assange’s shrimp-on-the-barbie should have had Strontium-90 in it years before anyone heard his name."

That's a bold statement: Strontium-90 is a byproduct of spent nuclear fuel rods. Goldberg actually published his wish that a man who has committed no violence be poisoned with radioactive waste.

It's a frightening scenario that brings to mind images of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who defected to Britain and published books alleging a brutal campaign of violence ahead of Vladimir Putin's rise to power.

Litvinenko accused the Russian leader of ordering the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist from Chechnya and one of Putin's strongest critics. He also revealed KGB involvement in a series of apartment bombings that killed about 300 people.

They murdered him for it: or, at least that's what Litvinenko claimed on his deathbed, as he wasted away from a massive dose of the radioactive isotope polonium-212.

British investigators ultimately settled on alleging state-sponsorship of the former KGB agent's death, but which state was impossible to say. Their only lead in the case fled to Russia, which refused requests for his extradition.

But the haunting images of Litvinenko, who went from healthy and vibrant to bald and decrepit, remain as powerful as ever.

Et tu, USA?

This is not the first time a so-called conservative media outlet has indicated support for unilateral military action against a group that is by all accounts the world's most important outlet for restricted corporate and government information.

Just earlier this week, former State Department official Christian Whiton, who served under the Bush administration, penned a Fox News editorial calling for government officials to declare WikiLeaks and its employees "enemy combatants," thereby opening them up to "non-judicial actions."

When RAW STORY pointed out the plainly illegal nature of such an action, WikiLeaks spread the link on Twitter, equating the comment with a call for assassination.

In attacking WikiLeaks, Whiton seemed to be following a thread laid in August by Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter, who asserted in a Washington Post op-ed that the site should be held in violation of the US espionage act and taken down using "military assets" -- even if that means breaking international and domestic laws to kidnap founder Julian Assange from within the European Union.

Files published last week by WikiLeaks revealed an additional 15,000+ Iraqi civilian casualties had been covered up by the US military. They also show that US officials looked the other way when Iraqi soldiers were torturing and murdering prisoners, and that small stockades of weapons of mass destruction were in fact found in the country, but not enough to prove they were developing them as the Bush administration had claimed.

What Whiton, Thiessen and Goldberg don't seem to understand or accept is that WikiLeaks would not pose a threat to their favored policies and officials if such destruction had not been wrought in the first place. If the cover-up had never taken place, there would be nothing to reveal.

The revelation of such awful secrets, much like the Pentagon Papers amid the Vietnam war, is crucial to maintaining an enlightened public -- a point the US Supreme Court made abundantly clear in New York Times Co. v. United States, circa 1971.

"In seeking injunctions against these newspapers and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment," Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas wrote, taking the side of the Timeswhich had recently published the largest cache of secret military information in US history.

"In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy," they continued. "The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."

To be clear: WikiLeaks did not steal hundreds of thousands of pages of classified intelligence -- it was given to them by a whistleblower. That very same sequence of events, typically pertaining to information of less gravity and length, happens in newsrooms all across the country every week.

What Golberg and his ideological cohorts argue for is nothing short of deploying America's military and spy agencies to destroy media outlets they do not like.

Their only truly valid concern -- that the release of sensitive files could endanger the lives of US collaborators -- is seemingly nullified by the Pentagon's admission that WikiLeaks took great care to censor the names of roughly 300 or-so individuals who could have been endangered.

The site did not take that step with their Afghan war logs, published in August.

By contrast, if these same writers wanted to wear the badge of consistency, they should have called for the assassination of former Nixon aide Robert Novak after he revealed Valerie Plame's covert identity as a CIA agent -- but they did not. Plame oversaw a network of dummy companies in Iran in her work tracking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but they didn't consider her sacrifice much of a loss when it benefited the neoconservative agenda.

After the release of the Pentagon Papers, Justices Black and Douglas opined that "newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."

According to Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for leaking the Pentagon Papers, WikiLeaks has done just the same.

Concurring with the court's majority, Justice Potter Stewart added: "In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government. For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the First Amendment. For without an informed and free press there cannot be an enlightened people."

To put it lightly, such an opinion is a far, far cry from that offered on today's National Review Online.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/national-review-editor-suggests-poisoning-wikileaks-founder-radioactive-waste/

Harry Reid maintains that paying income tax is voluntary in the U.S.

When you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit. Idiot Harry Reid maintains that paying income tax is voluntary in the U.S.. Harry Reid is the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate. He's obviously not very bright. But then again... he is a politician.

Expect Extensive Pat-Downs To Become The Norm

In Wake Of Cargo Plane Scare, Privacy May Be Shelved A Bit

October 29, 2010 7:15 PM

NEW YORK (CBS 2/WCBS 880) — Friday’s UPS scare is prompting increased security measures at the nation’s airports. That could include newly introduced pat-down procedures.


Traveler Staci Reidinger told CBS 2’s Jay Dow she’s not happy about the Transportation Security Administration’s use of new full-body X-ray scanners. But citing privacy concerns she said it’s better than allowing a security agent put their hands on her“It’s not my religion, but there are many religions where a woman should not be touched by someone else other than their husband, and things like that. It’s not appropriate,” Reidinger said.
New, more intrusive full-body pat-downs are now mandatory for anyone who sets off a metal detector, or refuses to walk through the X-ray scanner, which produces revealing images of the naked body.


“We would do a full-body pat-down as an alternative to that to ensure that there are no threat items on the person,” said the TSA’s Russell McCaffrey.

WCBS 880 talks with Sr. Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council about cargo security

A majority of the travelers who Dow met at LaGuardia said they’re willing to subject themselves to the TSA’s new pat-down procedure, but they do have some concerns.

“At first it caught me off guard, but then, when I really think about it, it makes sense, because people can get so creative with trying to hide things now. So, like I said, it all comes down to safety,” Bridgeport, Conn. Resident Derya Sahin said.

“It is a little bit more intimate, but I’d rather you be intimate, and me get on the plane safely, then not,” Georgia resident Precious Broussard said.

“Passengers should continue to expect an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others,” the TSA said in a statement on Friday.

The goal, according to counterterrorism experts, is to increase the protection of commercial aviation, which they said continues to be an attractive target for terrorists.

The TSA said their pat-down procedure will continue to be conducted by screeners who are the same gender as the passenger.

Gold Will Outlive Dollar Once Slaughter Comes: John Hathaway

By John Hathaway - Oct 28, 2010 9:00 PM ET Bloomberg 

The world’s monetary system is in the process of melting down. We have entered the endgame for the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, but most investors and policy makers are unaware of the implications.
The only questions are how long the denouement of the dollar reserve system will last, and how much more damage will be inflicted by new rounds of quantitative easing or more radical monetary measures to prop up the system.
Whether prolonged or sudden, the transition to a stable monetary system will become possible only when the shortcomings of the status quo become unbearable. Such a transition is, by definition, nonlinear. So central-bank soothsaying based on the extrapolation of historical data and the repetition of conventional wisdom offers no guidance on what lies ahead.
It’s amazing that there is no intelligent discourse among policy leaders on the subject of monetary rot and its implications for the future economic and political landscape. Until there is fundamental monetary reform on an international scale, most economic forecasts aren’t worth the paper on which they are written.
Telltale signs of future trouble aren’t hard to spot. Only a few months ago, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and a chorus of other high-ranking Fed officials were talking about exit strategies from the U.S. central bank’s bloated balance sheet and the financial system’s unprecedented excess liquidity. Now, those same officials are talking about pumping more money into the system to stimulate growth.
Risky Targets
And they’re not alone: Six months ago, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund,Olivier Blanchard, suggested that raising inflation targets to 4 percent from 2 percent wouldn’t be too risky.
This sort of talk must grate on the nerves of our trading partners, China, India, Russia and others, who have accumulated pyramids of non-yielding Treasury debt. No haven there. Return- free risk may be a better way to put it. And bickering among central bankers over currency manipulation and rising trade tensions doesn’t exactly reinforce one’s confidence in a scenario of sustained economic growth and a return to prosperity.
The prospects for an orderly unwinding of the extreme posture of global monetary policy are zero. Bernanke, Jean- Claude Trichet and Mervyn King, his counterparts in Europe and the U.K. respectively, are huddling en masse upon the most precarious perch in the history of monetary affairs. These alleged guardians of monetary stability, in their attempts to shore up the system, have simply created the incinerator for paper money. We are past the point of no return. Quantitative easing may well become a way of life.
No Freak Occurrence
The consensus investment view seems to be that the credit crisis of 2008 was a freak occurrence, unlikely to repeat. That is wishful thinking. Monetary policy has painted itself into a corner. Based on our present course, there will be more bubbles and more meltdowns.
Financial markets and institutions sense trouble, as reflected in the flight to supposedly safe assets such as Treasuries and corporate-debt instruments with paltry yields, as well as the reluctance to lend by commercial banks. We are stuck in an epic liquidity trap. The irony is, if global central banks succeed in creating inflation, the value of these safe assets will be destroyed. It is a slaughter waiting to happen.
In the pedantic mentality of central bankers, their playbook creates just the right amount of inflation. As inflation accelerates, consumers will spend to get rid of their dollars of diminishing value and spur the economy. Once consumers start spending, it will be time to raise interest rates because a solid foundation for prosperity will have been established, they say.
Slender Thread
But whatever the playbook promises, the capacity of financial markets to overshoot can’t be overestimated. The belief among policy makers and financial markets in the possibility of this sort of fine-tuning is preposterous, but it is the slender thread on which remaining investment and business confidence rests.
The breakdown of the monetary system will be chaotic. When inflation commences, it will be highly disruptive. The damage to fixed-income assets will seem instantaneous. Foreign-exchange markets will become dysfunctional. The economy will become even more fragile and unpredictable.
Gold is an imperfect, but comparatively reliable, market gauge for the extent of current and future monetary destruction. The recent acceleration in the dollar price of the metal to $1,381, a record high in nominal terms, coincided with talk of a new round of quantitative easing and highly visible discord among major nations on trade and currency-valuation issues.
Naysayers’ Bubble
Naysayers point to gold’s price and see a bubble, without understanding that the only acceleration that is taking place is in the rate of decline of paper currency. The Fed is organizing an attack on the dollar’s value, believing that this is the most expedient way to defuse deflationary market forces. The man in the street is unaware, a perfect setup. Inflation can only be successful when the public doesn’t see it coming.
The sudden torrent of commentary on gold isn’t the sign of a bubble. Anti-gold pundits provide a great service to those who grasp this historical moment: They facilitate the advantageous positioning of the one asset most likely to be left standing when the dust settles.
(John Hathaway is a managing director of Tocqueville Asset Management LP in New York. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: John Hathaway at JHathaway@Tocqueville.com
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-29/gold-will-outlive-dollar-once-slaughter-comes-commentary-by-john-hathaway.html

High (Paranoia) Alert in U.S. After "Suspicious" Package Found in UK

Jeanne Meserve, Susan Candiotti, Caroline Paterson, Per Nyberg
CNN
Fri, 29 Oct 2010 12:12 CDT

Planes were moved out of an abundance of caution, TSA says.

At least two U.S. airports were on high alert Friday after investigators found a suspicious package on a plane in the United Kingdom the night before, a law enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the investigation said.

The suspicious package, which contained a"manipulated" toner cartridge, tested negative for explosive material, the source said, but it led to heightened inspection of arriving cargo flights in Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a UPS truck in New York.

Police also were investigating a suspicious package at the distribution center of an airport in East Midlands, in the United Kingdom, an airport spokesman said. Authorities said they could not immediately connect that investigation to the ones unfolding in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.

Authorities seemed most focused on inspecting cargo planes.

Investigators were examining two UPS planes that landed at Philadelphia International Airport and another at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, said Mike Mongeot, a UPS spokesman.

Authorities are focusing on flights coming from Yemen into the United States, according to the source.

The Transportation and Security Administration said authorities were acting "out of an abundance of caution."

"The planes were moved to a remote location where they are being met by law enforcement officials and swept," the administration said in a statement.

UPS said it is cooperating with authorities, and its shipment is being removed from the aircraft.

In Philadelphia, three people aboard one plane were removed from the plane and scanned with negative results, the Philadelphia Fire Department said. The type of material that may be involved is not known, officials said.

In Newark, investigators were examining another UPS plane, said Mike Mangot, a UPS spokesman.

In New York, the bomb squad responded to a report of a suspected explosive device inside a package aboard a UPS truck, the deputy police commissioner, Paul Browne, said.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, police were investigating a reported suspicious package at the East Midlands Airport, an airport spokesman, Russell Craig said. The investigation caused minimal disruption and only affected the freight distribution area, he said. 

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/217121-High-Paranoia-Alert-in-U-S-After-Suspicious-Package-Found-in-UK

Visualize Karl Rove's Election Theft Subpoena

By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman


Election woes got you down?
Imagine the look of contempt on Karl Rove's face this past Sunday as he swaggered toward his star turn on CBS's Face the Nation only to be served with our subpoena sanctioned by the Secretary of the State of Ohio.
The federal subpoena orders Rove to testify in deposition. Our attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, intends to ask Mr. Rove about his role in the theft if the 2004 election, and to discuss his orchestration of tens of millions of corporate/billionaire dollars in the one coming up on November 2, 2010.
As co-counsel and plaintiff in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, we have fought for six years to win justice and full disclosure in an election that Rove stole for George W. Bush.
In the course of this civil rights federal suit, we have seen the illegal destruction of hundreds of thousands of paper and electronic ballots that were supposedly protected by federal law.
We have seen 56 of 88 Ohio counties destroy most of their poll records, making a full recount of the 2004 vote an impossibility. Some of this destruction was done in defiance of federal law and a federal court order, for which no one has been prosecuted.
We have also seen the very mysterious and disturbing death of Michael Connell, Rove's former chief computer guru. Rove used Connell to establish the electronic tools and architectural framework through which the vote count manipulations that shifted the election from John Kerry to Bush were accomplished.
An experienced professional pilot, Connell died improbably in a fiery crash at his home airport in Canton in December, 2008. Connell had been deposed the day before the November 2008 election. Attorney Arnebeck was in the process of preparing for another round of questioning when Connell's life was ended.
Our subpoena is aimed at letting Rove explain all he did to give himself, Bush, and Dick Cheney another term in the White House.
But there is much more. With the US Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision, the floodgates have opened to an unprecedented wave of cash coming from corporations and billionaire donors such as the Koch Brothers. By many accounts at least $150 million in corporate/billionaire lucre is being laundered through Rove's American Crossroads.
Under Rove's orchestration, this money is being used to wipe Democrats out of Congress and to take control of the apportionment process at the state level throughout the country.
"Rove is the de facto head of a coordinated Republican national campaign in which Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Commerce is a senior partner, while the Republican National Committee has been relegated to junior partner status," says Arnebeck.
"Rove has filled the airwaves with high-priced attack ads funded by the mega-corporations and billionaires that stand to benefit most from another assault on the public trust and treasury.
"He and the Koch Brothers have also funneled large bundles of cash to a Tea Party astroturf organization meant to give the Republican campaign a grassroots veneer.
"From the fiasco of Florida 2000 through the theft of Ohio 2004 to the present, there has been no significant federal reform of the electoral process or curtailment of the use of easily manipulated electronic voting machines," adds Arnebeck. "With the added tsunami of cash from Citizens United , Rove's role as the principal perpetrator of a racketeering conspiracy, as defined by the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act, has been vastly enhanced."
"Our lawsuit stemming from the widespread 'irregularities' that defined the 2004 election has never been settled," concludes Arnebeck. "With the approval of the out-going Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, we have served Mr. Rove with a legally binding requirement that he answer a few questions."
Stay tuned.

Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-counsel and plaintiff in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit, and have co-authored four books on election protection at www.freepress.org , where donations to this lawsuit can be made via the CICJ election protection at the on-line store, where the Fitrakis Files also appear. Harvey Wasserman's History of the US is at www.harveywasserman.com .
http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Visualize-Karl-Rove-s-Elec-by-Harvey-Wasserman-101026-784.html

'US troops beheaded Iraqi detainee'

Mon Oct 25, 2010 11:31PM presstv.ir

American forces decapitated an Iraqi last year on the order of their higher-up, show recently-exposed US military documents.

The troops operated under the command of an unnamed US major, who had been involved in the rape of an Iraqi female, showed one such document posted on the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. 

The incident took place after the victim, the brother of the raped female, reportedly killed a military official in reprisal for the indecent assault. 

To enable the May incident in the city of Haditha of the western Iraq province of Al Anbar, the major said he was undertaking the transfer of two prisoners, including the victim. 

WikiLeaks has released around 400,000 documents on the 2003-present US-led invasion of Iraq. The founder of the website, Julian Assange, has hailed the disclosure as one "about the truth" behind the war. 

The site has also exposed documents on the similar US-led war in Afghanistan and is expected to disclose additional related details. 

The following is the body of the original document . 

___ DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EVENT: ON 25MAY09, MAJOR ___ (SWAT CDR) AND COL (___) TOLD -___ LEADERSHIP THAT THEY WERE GOING TO DELIVER TWO DETAINEES TO ___ IN THE NORTH BECAUSE THERE WAS MORE INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE ON THE TWO DETAINEES IN ___ THAN IN HADITHAH. WHILE ___ NORTH, MAJ ___ HIS CONVOY TO PULL OVER AND TRANSFER THE TWO DETAINEES TO HIS UNCLE AND FOUR BROTHERS. ACCORDING TO COL , ___ IP FOUND ONE OF THE DETAINEES DECAPITATED AND THE OTHER WAS RELEASED BY MAJ ' ___ MEMBERS. MAJ ___ CURRENTLY IN IP CUSTODY.
OVER A YEAR AGO MAJ ___ RELIEVED AS HADITHAH SWAT CDR DUE TO HIS ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT IN THE RAPING OF A FEMALE LOCAL NATIONAL. THE BEHEADED DETAINEE IS REPORTED TO BE THE BROTHER OF THE RAPED FEMALE WHO ALLEGEDLY KILLED MAJ ' ___ IN RETALIATION FOR THE RAPING OF HIS ___. 

HN/MMA


http://www.presstv.ir/detail/148265.html

9/11: The Media Ignores Evidence of WTC Explosives

By Rob Lonaker - BlackListedNews.com Contributing Writer  

                

Persuasive evidence exists (see Christopher Ketcham’s “High-Fivers and Art Student Spies”) that Israeli intelligence was aware of the 9/11 plot well in advance. Not only were Israeli agents found to be tracking alleged Muslim plotters, there was “intense political pressure apparently … brought to bear” to release the five Israeli spies caughtfilming the event, without any acknowledgment of foreknowledge on their part. 

Congress never investigated the incident. Nor was there an investigation of the Israeli art students, trained in military intelligence, who allegedly “attempted to form friendships with [New York] federal employees, photograph their offices, tap their phone lines and infiltrate their databases” in 2001, as reported by Nathan Guttman of Ha`aretz.  

None of these issues was mentioned in the official 9/11 Commission report.  

There was also a great deal of pressure on the media not to discuss these events: 

A former ABC News employee high up in the network newsroom told [Ketcham] that when ABC News ran its June 2002 exposé on the celebratory New Jersey Israelis, "Enormous pressure was brought to bear by pro-Israeli organizations"—and this pressure began months before the piece was even close to airing.  

Fox News reports by Carl Cameron were also fiercely opposed by Jewish activists.  

The attack against Cameron and Fox News was spearheaded by a pro-Israel lobby group called the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), which operated in tandem with the two most highly visible powerhouse Israel lobbyists, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (itself currently embroiled in a spy scandal connected to the Defense Department and Israeli Embassy). "CAMERA peppered the *** out of us." … 

According to a source at Fox News Channel, the president of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, telephoned executives at Fox News' parent, News Corp., to demand a sit-down in the wake of the Cameron reportage. The source said that Foxman told the News Corp. executives, "Look, you guys have generally been pretty fair to Israel. What are you doing putting this stuff out there? You're killing us." The Fox News source continued, "As good old boys will do over coffee in Manhattan, it was like, well, what can we do about this? Finally, Fox News said, 'Stop the e-mailing. Stop slamming us. Stop being in our face, and we'll stop being in your face—by way of taking our story down off the web. We will not retract it; we will not disavow it; we stand by it. But we will at least take it off the web.'" Following this meeting, within four days of the posting of Cameron's series on Fox News.com, the transcripts disappeared, replaced by the message, "This story no longer exists."[Ketcham] 

But what if Israeli involvement extended beyond espionage and advance warning, to ensuring the event would have maximum impact, or even to planning the operation? It is not unreasonable to inquire whether Israel and its operatives in the US may have at least taken steps to ensure that the attack would result in enough destruction and loss of life to create the political impetus for a war against Israel’s enemies, secure in the knowledge that public discussion of these issues could be suppressed. 

Sadly, many who understand that the mainstream media and our political elites cannot be trusted to provide the truth on historical events are remarkably credulous when it comes to 9/11. Belief in the official account of 9/11 is common even among many who know of other egregious cases where truth has been concealed, as in Israel's role in events like the destruction of the USS Liberty and the critical role of the Israel Lobby in promoting the Iraq war within the Bush administration. The general public has been quick to swallow the government’s story, though it fails to explain how, among other things, the two skyscrapers hit by aircraft were rapidly and explosively destroyed in ways inconsistent with gravity-based collapse.   

The official story is still synchronously parroted by the media, permitting no mainstream journalist since 9/11 to report on any of the many glaring contradictions in the account.  

Obfuscating Science 

Since 2009, newly released evidence and physical analysis increasingly indicate that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Center twin towers and WTC 7.  But you won't learn of it through the mainstream media.  Whoever they are, the perpetrators of 9/11 have it in their best interest to keep the public distracted and unaware of basic principles of physics.  

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), its hand forced by a recent Freedom of Information Act suit, reluctantly released this video of firefighters describing three explosions that occurred after the second plane hit, but before either tower "collapsed," and that destroyed the WTC tower lobby where the men stood. Hundreds of other emergency responders and survivors, all of whom were interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, and all of whom were inexplicably excluded from its report, witnessed explosions. 

Physics instructor David Chandler’s YouTube videos discuss compelling evidence of explosives being used to demolish the towers.  One video deals with sound evidence for explosions.  Others cover sequential explosions that eject debris and accelerate down the walls of the North Tower, as if by a detonation sequence (also seen here).  These explosive ejections are nearly cloaked by a descending canopy of falling concrete and steel, though the canopy lags slightly, giving cameras a view of the ejections. 

Chandler also demonstrates that the North Tower top block (the part above the plane impact) fell at around 64 percent of the acceleration of gravity, necessarily implying that no more than about 36 percent of the top block’s weight, and therefore its potential energy, was available to crush the bottom block, i.e., the remainder of the building.  This does not appear to have been sufficient energy to lead to collapse of the entire building, even if part of its steel structure were weakened by fire.     

Chandler further shows how debris fragments projected from the south tower suddenly change direction in midair, requiring momentum-changing forces likely resulting from explosions in the fragments themselves.   

Such explosions may be explained by prior placement of nanothermite or another suitable explosive in the towers, possibly mixed in paint or fireproofing or embedded in ceiling tiles. Nine scientists reported finding nanothermite (an explosive agent) in the tower dust collected from multiple locations in Manhattan (see also here).  

Professional engineer Jon Cole shows in videos (part 1 and part 2) how a gravity-driven collapse would have produced a deceleration, or "jolt," in the North Tower top block's descent when it hit the bottom block.  That didn't happen. Chandler explains it further. 

At minimum, a proper investigation is warranted, as is called for by more than 1300 professional architects and engineers.  

Pardon Us for Asking 

Our government and media tell us that questioning 9/11 is inappropriate because it insults the families and memories of those killed in the attacks.  Such a preposterous position has never been adopted by any law enforcement agency for a crime for which there has never been either a thorough or a forensic investigation.  Why should the crimes of 9/11 be the exception?

How scornfully must 9/11's masterminds laugh at us for believing that merely asking questions in an effort to solve the murders of nearly 3,000 people should be off-limits because it may hurt some family members' feelings?  The willingness of Americans to feel guilty for wanting answers to the largest mass murder on American soil reminds one of the "White guilt," imposed through relentless cultural assault by Jewish intellectual movements, that prompts White Europeans and Americans to greet gleefully their displacement through mass immigration and multiculturalism.   

Why might the media disallow any public questioning of the many unanswered aspects of 9/11?   

Could it be because Israeli special operations units may have carried out the attack? 

Former Director of Studies at the U.S. Army War College and Marine veteran Alan Sabrosky, PhD, thinks so.  So does investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn (interview here). 

If enough people try to connect the dots, perhaps 9/11's real killers can be brought to justice and another such attack prevented.  

Rob Lonaker (email him) is a pseudonym of a lawyer and scientist.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/index.php?news_id=11250

CBS, CNN capture video of Ohio attorney subpoena served on Karl Rove

COLUMBUS, Ohio (CGE) - A federal subpoena, issued by Ohio attorney Cliff Arnebeck and sanctioned by the Office of Ohio Secretary of State, was served last Sunday in Washington to Karl Rove on his way to an appearance on the CBS news program Face the Nation.

CNN, CBS capture video of subpoena servicing to Karl Rove

The process service for the subpoena reported that CBS and CNN camera men "captured video" of the event.

Backstage at CBS this Sunday, Karl Rove was subpoenaed over his role in Ohio 2004 election fraud. CNN and CBS reportedly filmed the event but have to date censored the entire story. Approved by Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner the probe addresses trashing records and hiring of the Bush campaign's IT whiz as the network administrator for Ohio's official vote reporting. Major media outlets continue to bury this shocker!

In an article written by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman and published at OpEdNews.com, the federal subpoena orders Rove to testify in deposition about his role in the alleged theft of the 2004 election, and to discuss his orchestration of tens of millions of corporate/billionaire dollars in this year's General Elections on November 2.

Contacted Wednesday to comment, Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney with a long history of involvement in election related cases, notably as plaintiff attorney in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal lawsuit that Fitrakis and Wasserman have used to try to question Rove on an election they say the Republican campaign expert stole for George W. Bush in 2004, said of his role in the 2010 election cycle, "Rove has asked for all this money on behalf of the Republican candidates’ campaigns. Under Citizens United that still constitutes a gift to those campaigns and is still subject to limits and prohibitions of campaign finance laws. Camouflaging the gifts by running them through nice sounding non-profit corporations is nothing but the latest form of money-laundering.”

Responding to a question on the involvement of the Office of Ohio Secretary of State and the Secretary herself, Media Relations Coordinator Kevin Kidder issued CGE this statement: "Because we are a defendant in that lawsuit I can’t really talk about the specifics of the case. Sorry I can’t be of more help."

In a telephone conversation, Arenbeck confirmed that top officials in both the offices of Secretary of State and Attorney General who were familiar with the case approved him issuing the subpoena to Rove.

Arnebeck says Rove will now likely contact his attorney, Bob Luskin, who will file a motion in federal court in Washington, D.C. to quash the subpoena. A hearing date will be assigned at which the parties will make their arguments, Arnebeck said.

Under Rove's orchestration, Arnebeck said, the money raised as a result of the US Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, which allowed corporations to funnel unlimited amounts of funds into political races, is being used to "wipe Democrats out of Congress and to take control of the apportionment process at the state level throughout the country."

He argues that Rove is the de facto head of a coordinated Republican national campaign in which Tom Donahue of the Chamber of Commerce is a senior partner, while the Republican National Committee, under leader Michael Steele, has been relegated to junior partner status.

Sudden, mysterious death of Republican computer Guru Connell recalled

In a hearing conducted shortly before the presidential election in 2008 that garnered little attention from national or local media, Arnebeck deposed Michael Connell, Rove's former chief computer guru, whose long history working for the Bush family, and subsequently in Ohio as a contractor with Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell during the 2004 election, is well documented.

Fitrakis and Wasserman write that Rove used Connell to establish the electronic tools and architectural framework through which the vote count manipulations that shifted the election from John Kerry to Bush were accomplished.

Arnebeck was in the process of deposing Connell a second time when the Ohio-based computer expert and experienced professional pilot died in a fiery plane crash while landing at his home airport in Canton in December, 2008. For conspiracy theorists, the fact that Connell had been deposed the day before the November 2008 election only adds to the mystery of circumstances surrounding his sudden death, and whether Rove can be tied to it in any way.

Rove affidavit details

According to an affidavit of the process server, Brad Bokoski, the civil case subpoena (Case Number: 2:06-CV-00745) was served on Rove at 10 a.m. on October 24, 2010 at 2020 M Street, Washington D.C. Bokoski said service took place "on the sidewalk in front of the address and was captured on video by CBS and CNN camera men."

http://www.examiner.com/government-in-columbus/cbs-cnn-capture-video-of-ohio-attorney-subpoena-served-on-karl-rove