Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America

I've just read an article by retired senior CIA analyst Ray McGovern in which he describes - as Naomi Wolf did in her essay Fascist America: In Ten Easy Steps - the parallels between the policies of the Bush/Cheney administration and those of Hitler's Nazi party in 1930's Germany. The article is based on a book called Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner, a young lawyer who lived in Berlin during the 1930's.

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"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater..."

Sebastian Haffner

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It seems to me that the question isn't so much to do with whether or not the US is becoming fascistic, rather it's a question of how people, journalists and so called opposing political parties are responding to the 'security' measures being undertaken in the US (and not just the US). For instance, Haffner records the "sheepish submissiveness" with which the German people reacted to measures taken for the sake of National Security following the Reichstag fire in 1933. Things like having one's "telephone tapped," one's "letters openned," one's "desk broken into." According to Haffner, none of his aquaintances "saw anything out of the ordinary" in this. Fast forward to today and you'll find that Bush has openly violated the Fourth Amendment of the US constitution which is meant to protect citizens from 'unreasonable searches and seizures'. Justified by the mantra, 'for the sake of National security', US citizens can now have their phones tapped without judicial approval, indeed, without reason, simply on Presidential whim. McGovern points out that such illegal surveillance formed a key part of Nixon's impeachment. Yet today no one seems to bat an eyelid. And Congress seems either impotent or consciously unwilling to lift a finger.

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"You don't have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep."

Ray McGovern

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Read McGovern's article here or here. Incidentally in Rums...felled!, the video on the bar to the right, it's Ray McGovern asking Rumsfeld why he lied to the world about Saddam's non-existent WMD's.

The Whisper Gets Louder

"The last nail in the coffin."

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If someone else had said the above, Alex Jones for instance, then I probably wouldn't pay so much attention. But it was Steven E Jones who said this at a recent 9/11 conference in Boston. He was refering to his analysis of egg shell like 'red chips' which, he claims, are fragments of unexploded thermite. These red chips share the same basic chemical signature of the once molten micro-spheres (both of which were found in WTC dust samples) and show a strong resemblence - a match? - to commercial themite.

Obviously this is significant. If these results are confirmed - Jones has sent samples to be independently verified, and invites others to analyse his work - then this is physical evidence of the existence of thermite at the WTC. Physical evidence. Whether or not it is the final nail in the coffin is hard to say. There's already quite a lot of nails in this particular coffin as it is. There might not be room for any more...

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[See excerpt of Jones discussing the red strips below.]

Yuletide Ghost Town

For most of my adult life I thought there probably existed around 2,000 years ago a man called Jesus Christ. And if he did exist, I thought, then it's very likely he was a truly remarkable human being, someone whose ideas were revolutionary, insightful, worthy of historic record. Where the Bible and subsequent manifestations of Christianity were concerned, I thought it probable that much mischief had been made at the expense of Christ's original intentions; that Christianity had become utterly corrupted over time by powerful groups and individuals intent on casting Christianity in a light which served their own political and social ends.

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All of this seemed plausible to me. Or at least possible. In the absence of a God the existence of Christianity has to be explained in a manner which precludes all basic theistic notions. Christianity requires a human explanation in human terms. An anthropological explanation, as Nietzsche might say. As it occurred to me last night, there's no path towards any particular religion that does not first require being indoctrinated into that religion. It's a matter of teaching rather than realisation.

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Tell me if I'm alone here, but I always believed that Christmas was a day which marked the birth of Jesus Christ. Just recently I found out that December 25th was originally a Pagan celebration and has seemingly nothing to do with Christ's supposed birth. This really bothers me. Who decides to teach these lies in a school of all places? And how come everyone else seems to know about this - even Christians? I had no idea.

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I recently saw a documentary about the origins of Christmas. It claimed that in the 3rd century AD, having tried but failed to abolish the December 25th Pagan celebration (it was enormously popular at the time), Christian leaders decided to claim it as their own by imposing a Christian meaning on it. If true that's pretty Orwellian. Unable to change history they simply re-wrote it.

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And it's hard to reconcile 'thou shalt not lie' with the act of rewriting history; that is, to reconcile it with lying. There's some kind of contradiction there.

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It does appear that the traditional Christ's-mass clebration is bullshit. And that it's been bullshit ever since it came into being 1700 years ago.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

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[Afterthought. You could also - capitalism aside - think of Christmas as a kind of annual advertisement for Christianity. A way of keeping Christianity - albeit superficially - in the public mind. We're all taught 'Christmas' in early youth, and then Christmas is simply perpetuated through repeated symbolic associations each year...People are 'conditioned' to accept Christmas - if you don't accept it you're perceived as weird - or informed...]

Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up

Jenna Orkin (part of the World Trade Center Environmental Organization who I mentioned in the recent Loose Change piece) is part of a group of residents, students and office workers, exposed to the toxic dust following 9/11, who are bringing a case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). When asked whether there might be occasions when it would be justified for the government to lie to the public by giving false reassurances Alisa Klein, an EPA lawyer, answered, "Yes." Read Orkin's piece here.

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Below Orkin talks about many of the hazzards contained in the dust following the collapse of the WTC buildings.

Michael Ruppert confronts the CIA (Coke Import Agency)

Michael Ruppert - of From the Wilderness - confronts Clinton's CIA director John Deutch about CIA drug running.

I thought I'd add a quote I came across recently. "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." No, not Alex Jones. It was in fact said by William Colby, former director of the CIA (1973-1976). Incidentally, Colby was succeeded in his post by George Bush. President Ford had become increasingly pissed off with Colby for being so open with congress about CIA operations and tactics. This openess eventually cost Colby his job. What cost Colby his life? Supposedy it was some freak canoe accident - coincidentally, not long after he said the above. Hmmm. I'm saying nothing.

[Incidentally, if you look at Colby's Wiki entry (linked in the name above) be mindful that it is known that the CIA has edited parts of it. Source: Wikipedia's own WikiScanner programme, which shows the location of computers from which entries have been edited. In this particular case, they were computers known to be used by the CIA.]

Man Shaking the Tree

Remember Move Over, God? No, didn't think so. Well, it was a link to a story about how the US has been experimenting with weather control techniques (also known as geoengineering) since the late 1940's: primarily, and unsurprisingly, for militaristic purposes. The source for that story was a 2005 radio interview with Ben Livingstone, a Naval cloud physicist. Livingstone had been involved in US geoengineering projects since the 1960's and had personally flown on 265 missions into hurricanes and was involved in various projects in Vietnam, including increasing rainfall (called 'cloud-seeding') to impede the enemy. Following Hurricane Katrina, Livingstone went on record saying he was 'most disgusted' with US authorities, knowing, as he did, that the impact of the storm could have been minimised.

Well, I've just come across a new article about this by Prof Michel Chossudovsky called Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare. It has the subtitle ‘Climatic warfare’ has been excluded from the agenda on climate change. According to US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, Chossudovsky says, US weather-modification cabilities extend to the 'triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes', and can also be used to 'generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather'. This technology has both offensive and defensive uses, and can also be used as a deterant.
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Chussodovsky also talks about the HAARP Programme, established in 1992, an array of high powered antenna's in Alsaka that transmit massive amounts of energy into the atmosphere.

"Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere [the upper layer of atmosphere], creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’."

HAARP is intended to be used, says Chossudovsky, for the 'unthinkable'. That is, 'the covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.' If that wasn't disturbing enough, Chossudovsky also points out that such technology could be used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. Just think about it: the Military Industrial Complex having the ability to covertly destroy (for instance) crops in other countries...

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HAARP is an Anglo-American project funded by Raytheon Corporation, the US Air Force, and British Aerospace Systems (BAE - the worlds third largest defence contractor).

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The very existence of this technology raises a lot of questions. Not least of which, as Chossudovsky says in his article: why isn't any of this mentioned by the media in regard to 'climate change' and 'global warming'? Could this technology hasten 'global warning'? Or halt it? And I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely sure that I trust these people to use this technology responsibly...

It's There, There

It occurs to me that NIST's assertion that it found no evidence of explosives at the WTC, twinned with its admission that it didn't test for explosives, serves as a pretty good analogy for a particuar kind of response people have to 9/11 Truth. Why don't you believe that the 9/11 Commission lied and ommitted crucial facts in their investigation? Because I've seen no evidence that they did. But have you looked? Well, no. Or, Yes, I've read newspapers, seen the TV reports...It's not that such views are without foundation. It's just that if the foundation is the mainstream press, then you've probably never even heard of WTC 7, Norman Mineta, the suspiscious put options, Atta's ISI link, etc. In other words, just because you haven't seen the evidence, doesn't mean it isn't there. And just because you don't believe that the Military Industrial Complex could do such a thing, doesn't mean they haven't.

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Someone who clearly doesn't need any convincing is former Italian president Francesco Cossiga who recently spoke out about 9/11. In Corriere della Sera, Italy's oldest and most widely read newspaper, Cossiga said that 9/11 was 'planned and realised' by the CIA and Mossad (Israel's intelligence agency), and that US and European intelligence agencies all know this. As Paul Joseph Watson states in his article, this is unlikely to be mentioned by establishment media outlets. And I don't believe it was.

NIST: Request for Correction

In April 2007 several members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (STJ), including Steven Jones, filed a petition to NIST requesting that it correct and explain some of the fallacies and errors in its WTC report. Following an inadequate reply the STJ members have re-submitted their request in a new letter. Read it here. [More information can be found at the Journal of 9/11 Studies.]

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One of the requests for correction concerns NIST's open admission that it did not test for thermite residues in its investigation of the WTC collapses. It's standard practise, in fact its law, that following any building collapse or fire that the site be tested for thermite residues. If thermite residues are found then this shows that explosives were used in the collapse or fire. This is clearly important where arson or foul play is suspected: the existence of thermite residues go along way towards proving that a crime has been committed; thermite isn't the kind of substance you'd usually find lying around by accident. And yet NIST did not think it necessary to perform such tests in its 9/11 investigation. This becomes problematic because NIST says that it has found 'no evidence that explosives were used' in the WTC attacks: but then if NIST did not test for explosives, it's hardly surprising that they found no evidence of any. You see the problem. 'Officially', explosives were not used. But that's because 'officially', no one tested for them. See no evil. Hear no evil.

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9/11 Presentations

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Two new presentations. One by Steven Jones. The other by Richard Gage, member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. These lectures combined present the overwhelming body of evidence supporting the claim that explosives were used to bring down the three WTC buildings on 9/11.

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Professor Steven Jones : 9/11 Symposium November 2007

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AIA Architect Richard Gage: 9/11 Symposium November 2007 [Pt.1]

AIA Architect Richard Gage: 9/11 Symposium November 2007 [Pt.2]

FASCIST AMERICA: In Ten Easy Steps

Fascist America is a thought provoking essay by Naomi Wolf in which she identifies the basic blueprint for fascism and asks how far the Bush/Cheney administration has gone towards implememnting this blueprint in the US.

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Fascist America: In ten easy steps

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Interestingly I heard Wolf being interviewed on the radio a few days ago. She said that a friend of hers who had lost relatives (I think it was relatives) in the Holocaust had been telling her for some time about how fascistic the US is becoming, but Wolf thought this was an extreme reaction. But when Wolf looked into it she was surprised by what she found. Wolf said that she was escpecially struck by similarities between changes in German politics in the early 30's and changes in US politics today. Then as now, people are expected to surrender civil liberties for the sake of National Security. Then as now, people are told that this is necessay because of a marginalised, exaggerated and much fabricated threat. (Then as now, a false flag stood at the summit of these changes?)

FILM: Loose Change - Final Cut

It was just over a year ago whilst flicking through some YouTube videos that I first came across the documentary Loose Change. I'd only had access to the internet for a couple of months and in that short time nothing had left me as gobsmacked as this film. I even recall watching it again as soon as it finished - I literally couldn't get my head around what I'd just witnessed. In time, after reading various studies and accounts of the events of 9/11, I came to realize that whilst many of the questions raised by Loose Change were justified and salient, many of its assertions were not. A second edition of the film didn't resolve these problems. The film nevertheless introduced me to a lot of a lot of questions which previously I'd been completely unaware.

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On 11th November 2007 Loose Change - Final Cut was released. I'm pleased to say it's a completely new film from beginning to end. More importantly, it is restrained in its assertions and based on verifiable information and eyewitness testimony. This can in no small part be due to the involvement of David Ray Griffin who acted as a script consultant and fact checker for the film.

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As I write I've seen the film twice. However over the past day the film has been removed from all free access sites (at least the ones I know of). Rather than detailing the content of the film I'd like to mention just one issue, covered by the film, which reveals just how criminal and murderous the current Bush/Cheney adminstration really is (as if you need telling).

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You will remember the vast pyroclastic clouds of dust that consumed lower Manhatten on 9/11. This dust was a highy toxic coctail containing - in regard to WTC's 1 & 2 - 200,000lb's of aesbestos, 800,000lb's of lead from around 100,000 computers, mercury from tens of thousands of fluorescent light bulbs, radio-active material from smoke detectors and large quantities of concrete and glass which was pulverised into tiny particles when the buildings came down. Jenna Orkin, a Brooklyn resident and part of the World Trade Centre Environmental Organization, described the alklinity of the air as the equivalent of drain cleaner.

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Given all these toxins it's clear that anyone caught up in the immediate aftermath of the building collapses was at great risk of serious and potentially fatal damage to their health. This risk would remain for many weeks in and around ground zero. In spite of knowing this, in the days after 9/11, rather than warning first responders, workers and New York residents of the dangers of unprotected exposure to the air, the Environmental Protection Agency, under orders from the White House, issued false reassurances to the public. All EPA press releases were sent to the White House for approval and were edited to 'add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones'. Indeed first responders and rescue workers were actively encouraged not to wear protective breathing masks for fear that this might alarm the public. A week after 9/11 Christie Whitman, head of the EPA, announced that the 'air is safe to breathe and the water is safe to drink'. This was a lie. And it was a lie told at the behest of the White House in order that Wall Street be reopenned.

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According to Loose change - Final Cut, 70% of the 40,000 ground zero rescue workers have developed respitory problems, 100's have developed dust related cancers and to date over 80 have died. Many predict that this is only the beginning of a health disaster that will in time kill and cripple many more people than the initial 9/11 attack. This is manslaughter at the hands of the US government and the EPA.

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A portion of the proceeds of Loose Change - Final Cut will be donated to the Feal Good Foundation, a group devoted to supporting first responders and educating people on the catastrophic effects of the aftermath of 9/11.

FILM: Orwell Rolls In His Grave

Orwell Rolls In His Grave is a film which asks whether America has become an 'Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth'.

The film shows how a memo written in 1971 by corporate lawyer Lewis Powell - The Powell Memorandum - started the Neo-Cons and corporate elite on a mission to control and manipulate the media for their own gain. In the memo Powell said that 'consumer activists' were infecting the general population with an anti-corporate bias, a message which soon circulated around many of America's most wealthy industrialists. One of those industrialists, Mellon Scaife, following Powell's memo, paid $250,000 to set up the Heritage Foundation, the first Neo-Con group devoted to influencing and controlling the media.

The film goes on to chart how the Neo-Con's and Corporate elite have steadily come to control the mainstream media. And of course, this has not come to be without casualties: namely democracy and a free press. In 1987 under the Raegan administration - in a move that Hitler or indeed any fascist tyrant would have proud of - the 'Fairness Doctrine' was eliminated from US law, meaning that the media were no longer compelled to air opposing views. Another fascistic gem was accomplished in 1996 under the Clinton administration. Behind closed doors the rules of the airwaves were re-written in the Telecommunications Act. No longer were independent radio stations protected from corporate take overs. And lo and behold, a company called Clear Channel - with board members who funded both the Clinton and George W Bush political campaigns - went from owning a few radio stations to owning almost 1100, they also owned a further 236 stations overseas. Clear Channel soon had access to 110million American listeners and owned 47 of the top 50 listenned to radio stations in the US. There were dissenters, of course. However the three major US news networks devoted a total of only 19 minutes air-time, over 9 months, to the implimentation of Telecommunications Act. The dissenters were silenced, and they were silenced thanks to Raegan's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine: opposing views were simply and lawfully ignored.

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As the trailer says, in March 2003, as America and Britain began their hostile and criminal invasion of Iraq, a CNN/Gallop poll revealed that 69% of American's believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Are we in an Orwellian world where 'outright lies can pass for the truth'?

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[Watch the full film here.]

Joined up Journalism

'Burning Chilli Sparks Terror Fear' hails the BBC on Wedenesday 3rd October. But Osama wasn't anywhere to be seen. And by no stretch of the imagination could the culprit, a 9lb pot of burning red hot chilli peppers, be said to have links to Al-Qaeda. No. The story is in actual fact pretty drab. Some people were cooking, burning chilli's as per some recipee, some other people noticed the smell, called 999, the police came, firefighters came, both realized that the smell was the smell of people cooking chilli's, and that was that. The headline should in fact be: 'People Over-React to Cooking'. But the press is never slow to find a story that can have the word 'terror' crowbarred into the headline.


'World Troubles Affect Parenthood' hails the BBC on Monday 8th October. A YouGov survery carried out on behalf of the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) reports that the greatest fear of 70% of the UK population is 'Terrorism'. Fifteen percent are so concerned that they can't bring themselves to have children. Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the MHF, says: "The world is currently facing a number of different threats that seem to be resulting in a general level of heightened anxiety..." Well, the greatest anxiety-inducing threat is the press with their crowbars. How about you stop bombarding us with these bizarre and tedious 'terror' stories -whose purpose is neither to inform nor enlighten but to constantly scare the shit out of us - and let us get on with our lives in the plain and simple knowledge that the real 'terror' threat - aside from the one posed by the media - is actually pretty God damn miniscule. The headline should in fact be: 'Relentless Terror Stories Induce Fear'. The equation isn't complicated, is it?

BREAKING NEWS: All The Mandela's Are Dead!

I'm sad to have to announce that all the Mandela's are dead. The news was broken yesterday at a press conference with US president George W Bush. In his own inimitable words he announced:

"I thought an interesting comment was made — somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, “Now, where’s Mandela?” Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

See the announcement here.

BOOK: What Uncle Sam Really Wants - Noam Chomsky [part 1]

At the end of World War II the US had 50% of the worlds wealth and only 6.3% of the worlds population. According to Chomsky - quoting George Kennan, head of US State Department planning until 1950 - America's post World War II task was to "devise a pattern of [international] relationships which will permit [the US] to maintain this position of disparity." Crucial to this task was the need to combat and dispell the "dangerous idea that the government has direct responsibilty for the welfare of the people." US planners called this dangerous idea Communism.

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One Good Apple

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US planners realised that the greateat threat to continued US supremacy was what they called 'Third World nationalism' or 'ultranationalism'. In other words, the threat was foreign governments which were responsive to 'popular demands for the immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses'. Why was this a threat? Well, for two reasons. Firstly, the US required 'governments that favour private investment of domestic and foreign capital, production for export, and the right to bring profits out of the country.' That is, the US sought to develop or enforce relationships with foreign governments whereby Gross National Production (GNP) would be increased but not for the people of that country, rather for the benefit of US investors and a small domestic business elite (an 'economic miracle'). Incredibly this meant that as a country increased its production levels it simultaneously increased the amount of poverty and starvation amongst its people. Secondly, were any government seen to be becoming 'nationalistic' - that is, increasingly concerning itself with the welfare and living standards of the masses - the danger was that people in neighbouring countries would see this, realise it was possible in their own country, and thus demand it of their own governments. To US planners, Third World nationalism (or democracy, or good government, call it what you will) was a virus which could not be allowed to spread.

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We all know about Nicaragua...?

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In his film Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (2003) Australian journalist and documentary maker John Pilger estimates that the US has attacked and overthrown governments in 72 countries since World War II; using means such as manipulating elections, destroying popular social movements, political subversion, bombing, terror, torture, using chemical weapons, and assasinations. Indeed, the US has a school devoted to teaching predomininatly Latin American soldiers in some or all of these methods: the School of America's at Fort Benning, Georgia (recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). One of the countries that fell foul to the US and this 'school' was Nicaragua.

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In the late 70's and early 80's, Oxfam reported that in Nicaragua, under the Sandanista government, there was a 'substantial effort to address inequalities in land ownership and to extend health, educational and agricultural services to poor peasant families.' Elsewhere Oxfam described the strength of the Nicaraguan governments commitment to 'improving the condition of the people and encouraging their active participation in the development process'. In 1983, Jose Figueres - the so called 'father' of Costa Rican democracy - declared that "for the first time, Nicaragua has a government that cares for its people." How was this met in the US? George Shultz, US Secretary of State under Reagan, described the Nicaraguan Sandinista government as a 'cancer'. And thus the US set about cutting it out: it launched the contra war, and it compelled 'the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to terminate all projects and assistance' to Nicaragua. 'Because they weren't under US control,' Chomsky says, 'they had to suffer and die.' And they did suffer and they did die.

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You might wonder as to how or why the American people would stand for this? Well, according to Chomsky, there's at least two reasons. Firstly, during the 1970's, US television networks - all networks - devoted exactly one hour of coverage to Nicaragua (and this was entirely about the 1972 Managua earthquake). During this time Nicaragua was ruled by the brutal dictator Anastasio Somoza. For the US, so long as Somoza's tyranical rule was maintained, Nicaragua was of no concern. When this tyrany was threatened by Sandinistan democracy, it was then that Nicaragua became a problem. And thus, secondly, 'the attack against Nicaragua was justified by the claim that if we don't stop them there, they'll be pouring across the border at Harlington, Texas - just two days drive away...' That this claim was rediculous, implausable, absurd, didn't matter. Most Americans bought it without question. More recently this exact same rhetorical device - fight them there so we don't have to fight them here - has been used to justify atrocities in the middle east.

[To be continued.]

The North American What?

The North American Union (NAU) is a project intended to intergrate the US, Canada and Mexico into a single economic, constitutional and militarized entity - an entity comparible to the European Union (or, for that matter, the African Union, the Asian Union, the Pacific Union, etc). Many Americans aren't even aware that this project exists, never mind that it has actually been in progress for well over two years.

In Crawford, Texas in March 2005, George W Bush hosted Canadian prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican president Vicente Fox in order to establish the 'Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (or SPP). This agreement is widely seen as a front which will eventually - without any kind of congressional approval - lead to the dissolving of US Mexican/Canadian borders and the introduction of a new currency, the Amero. CNN's Lou Dobbs (one of the very few) reported the SPP agreement - not without considerable astonishment - whilst this whole affair slipped under the radar of the most American citizens.

Michel Chossudovsky, writing on Global Research, considers this North American alliance to be in part motivated by a mutually beneficial will to secure the Arctic for both militaristic and economic purposes. According to some estimates, the Arctic contains 25% of the worlds oil and gas reserves. In August of this year, a Russian mini-submarine planted a flag on the Arctic sea bed in an attempt to claim territory and, by extension, oil and gas reserves.

"That low down illusive pesky rootin' tootin' Ali Baba ter'ist!"

"The last known sighting of Bin Laden by anyone other than his very close entourage was in late 2001 as he prepared to flee from his stronghold in the caves of Tora Bora," says BBC security correspondant Frank Gardner in his September peice Trimmed Bin Laden in media-savvy war, following Bin Laden's recent video release.
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WANTED - Alive!
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But just think about this for a moment. This is quite literally the most wanted man on Earth - perhaps even the most wanted man in human history. There's a bounty of $50 million on him, 'Dead or Alive'. Both US and British forces - along with the other armed minions - have been in Afghanistan looking for him for almost six years. For this was the reason Why we went to war in Afghanistan - to catch Bin Laden; to catch the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks. And yet: not only have we not found him, but the last known independent sighting of him was almost six years ago. This seems incredible, not only because of all the resources at the finger-tips of British and US forces, but because this means that the so called 'war' in Afghanistan has been one complete and utter failure: Bin Laden has neither been caught nor his existence even verified after almost six years of trying.
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Gardner goes on, "Now this latest video message, released just before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, will dispel the growing rumours that he has been dead for some time and remind both his followers and his enemies that the man with a $50m bounty on his head is still at large."

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Not so fast, Frank. I don't think the video dispells anything. As I said previously, 'since when does something as easily manipulated and fabricated as a video 'prove' anything?' Sure, I'm not saying it definately isn't Bin Laden - ...well... - but equally I'm not going to believe it is Bin Laden simply because the likes of the BBC tells me it is. Especially when the figure in the video looks so unconvincingly like Bin Laden.

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You may be interested to know that the bounty for Bin Laden doubled on 13th Jul 2007, to $50 million. Sure, that's because we want to catch Bin Laden, obviously. And yet this increase comes in spite of the fact that the CIA group devoted to Bin Laden's capture - Alec unit - was disbanded more than a year earlier. (In fact, in late 2005). Why would the group dedicated to Bin Laden's capture be disbanded? Well, according to CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, "the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus." (How the fuck does that work?) And furthermore: if the CIA is no longer concerned enough with Bin Laden to have a dedicated unit looking for him, then why are we even still in Afghanistan? I think it's highly plausible that Alec unit was disbanded because the CIA knows that Bin Laden is already dead, and the reason no one has seen Bin Laden or even heard confirmed reports of his whereabouts for almost six years is because he's been dead for almost six years.

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9/11 Mastermind

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We were all told over and over again that Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. We were told that he led and orchestrated the 19 men who hijacked four commercial airliners on 9/11. On 23rd September 2001 the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in a televised interview on NBC, said that, "in the near future we'll be able to put out a paper, a document, that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [Bin Laden] to this attack." When was this 'paper' published? It wasn't. The very next day, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Powell's words had been misinterpreted, and that the evidence would in fact be published after it 'declassifies' - ie. after 50 years. To date, the US government has shown the world not a shred of evidence that connects Bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks.

On this side of the pond, on the 4th October 2001, Tony Blair published a document entitled Responsibility for the Terrorist Atrocities in the United States, on the basis of which Britain went to 'war' in Afghanistan. Incredibly this document openly admitted that it did not 'purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in a court of law'. So this document was literally good enough to go to war, but not good enough to go court; and conceivably, not good enough even to charge Bin Laden with the 9/11 attacks. And after reading it, it's easy to see why. At best this document is flimsy: it gives no sources or proper citatation, features which would be a requirement of even the most basic academic paper. And at worst - to use the words of Stan Goff, former US Special Forces Master Seargeant - it's 'a bullshit story from beginning to end'. As Goff further states, of the 70 so called points of evidence against Bin Laden, only nine refer to 9/11, and each of these nine points are nothing more than 'conjecture'. And conjecture proves nothing. And yet we're told that HMG (Her Majesty's Government) is 'confident of its conclusions'. Confident? We invaded Afghanistan because the government was 'confident'? WMD's anyone?

In February 2002, Dale Watson, head of the FBI, told a US Senate select committee that, "The evidence linking Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden to the attacks of September 11 is clear and irrefutable." While the truth is that we have seen No evidence - clear, irrefutable or otherwise -that shows that Osama Bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11. None. Not a shred. And in spite of this, the majority view is that Bin Laden did, in fact, mastermind and carry out the 9/11 attacks. I believed this myself for almost five years. Why? Because the press repeatedly, remorselessly, said he did. And I naively believed them.

Stop! Press! - Quite literally...

This story is common knowledge amongst some. For others it will - and should - come as a thought provoking surprise.

If Bin Laden was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, there would invariably be evidence of some sort to this effect. Indeed it would be naive to beleive that Bin Laden masterminded the 9/11 attacks without first seeing or knowing of the existence of such evidence. Otherwise all we have is speculation, unfounded accusation, conjecture as opposed to knowledge. And indeed this is the case with Bin Laden: we have seen No evidence that Bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. We have simply been told he was, over and over and over again. All of which is not to say that Bin Laden wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, or that there isn't in existence some evidence that clearly implicates Bin Laden. We can quite easily conceive that the US authorities hold such evidence but, for whatever reason, are with-holding it. Can't we?

The answer to this question is quite simply and unambiguously, 'No'. When asked why Bin Laden was not charged with the 9/11 attacks on his Most Wanted page, Rex Tomb, the FBI's chief of Investigative Publicity, revealed to the Muckraker report that, "The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11." Read that sentence again. And again, bearing in mind that Tomb said this in June of last year. That is, over four and a half years after the 9/11 attacks. If you've never come across this before, your thinking might go something like, "Hold on, if the FBI has no hard evidence that Bin Laden was behind 9/11, then..." And yes, I completely agree.

As Muckraker rightly says: 'This should be headline news worldwide'. Why it wasn't is a question we should all be asking ourselves.

FILM: A Selection Related to 9/11

1. Improbable Collapse: The Demolition of Our Republic

"This is serious. There are some very important questions here that are unanswered," says Steven E Jones, author of the scientific paper, “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?” This film offers analysis and criticism of the myths, omissions and lies behind the science of the official federal accounts of 9/11. See film homepage for more information.

2. William Rodriguez: 9/11 Hero

William Rodriguez was a maintenace worker at the WTC for almost 20 years. On 9/11, whilst on sub-level one of the North Tower, he heard and felt a massive explosion from below. Moments later, he heard the impact of - what he later found out was - the plane, way up above. In spite of explaining this in his testimony to the 9/11 Commision - testimony which was unusually given behind closed doors - it was explained away by simply being ignored in the final report. Watch this film to hear William Rodriguez account of his experiences before, on and after 9/11.

3. 9/11: Should the Truth be Revealed or Concealed? David Ray Griffin

A lecture given by David Ray Griffin in which he addresses some of the fallacies in the official federal 9/11 reports and calls for a new international or European investigation into the events of 9/11.

FILM: Zeitgeist - The Movie

Written and Directed by...who is it written and dirceted by?...Zeitgeist (watch it here or here) is a three part documentary concerned with the interlinking themes of the origins of Christianity, the Federal Reserve Bank and 9/11. Presently, I'm exclusively concerned with the first part (because I've just seen the film and have never ancountered any of the ideas expounded in it before).

"The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the sun."
Thomas Paine 1739 - 1809

This quote underlies the principle theme of Part I: that Christianity is a lie, a myth, used, abused and fabricated by those in power - originally the Romans, in 325AD, under Emperor Constantine - to control and manipulate the masses into living lives of slavery. And the origin of the Christian myth? Two-fold: ancient Egypt and astrology.

The film claims that the story of Christ is almost entirely predicated by and upon the story of the Egyptian Sun God Horus at around 3,000BC (though many other religions supposedly share a great number of the following attributes). Horus, meaning 'sun' or 'light', was born on December 25th, born of the virgin Meri, accompanied by a star in the East followed by 3 Kings who came and adorned the new born son. Horus had 12 disciples, performed miracles, healed the sick, walked on water, was simultaneously known as the Truth, the Light, the Shephard, the Lamb of God. Horus, after being betrayed, was crucified, was dead for three days then resurected. I don't even need to ask if this sounds familiar. Though I would ask how much of this is verified or verifiable? Right now I have no idea.

And the astrological claims of this film - if true - are quite staggering. The basic claim is that the story of Christ - namely, The Bible - is a mythical literization of astrological phenomena. For instance, the 'son' of God supposedly derives from the 'sun' of God: bringer of light, the light of the world. The 12 disciples of the 'sun' derive from the 12 constellations of the zodiac which the sun travels through. Watch the film to find out more...(here's a clip).

[It suddenly occurs to me that it's Sunday: Sun-day...!? The day of worship. The day of the worship of God and the Sun of God? Sun-day - just a thought.]

Loose Change - Final Cut (Trailer)

The trailer for the film which is being unveiled in New York on 10th September.

Back in Black

From the Independent: 'American intelligence sources told ABC News that the video message was authentic, recently produced and proves that the al-Qai'da leader is still alive.'

Hmmm. To begin with...are these the same intelligence sources that had bullet proof evidence of the existence of Saddam's non-existent WMD's? And since when does something as easily manipulated and fabricated as a video 'prove' anything? ('Gollum, Gollum.') And let's be frank here - what the fuck is going on with Bin Laden's beard?

All of which is to say nothing of the timing of this new release. Time after time Bin Laden (the CIA trained former US military asset) pops up at the very moment when his presence would benefit the Bush/Cheney administration. There was the video released on 29th October 2004 (see still, right), just days before the 2004 US presidential election (an uncanny piece of luck for a president seeking re-election on what was predominantly an anti-terror card). On 23rd May 2006 - as reported on Prison Planet - a Zogby poll revealed that 45% of Americans wanted a new investigation into the 9/11 murders. The very next day Bin Laden emerges with a new audio message threatening further attacks (which duly saturates the mainstream media). And just hours after the recent Zogby poll - and just days before the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 murders - this new video appears - as if by magic. Shazam!

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Reports of Bin Laden's death have abounded since 9/11 (largely ignored and/or rarely cited by the mainstream media). A 26th December 2001 report in the Egyptian paper al-Wafd cites a Taliban leader who claims he attended Bin Laden's funeral 10 days earlier. Bin Laden's supposed will, said to have been written in late 2001, was published in October 2002 in an Arab magazine. And Bin Laden's poor health was well known: in 2001 Bin Laden was suffering from (amongst other things) kidney problems, problems severe enough to require dialysis (note the pale complexion of Bin Laden 'C', above, consistent with kidney problems). Dialysis wouldn't have been an easy prospect whilst Bin Laden was on the run - if indeed he was - in the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001. Furthermore, Pakistan's President Musharraf (amongst others, including Dale Watson, the FBI's then counter-terrorism chief) said at the time that they believed Bin Laden to be almost certainly dead...

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One thing is certain: if the person in the new video really is Bin Laden, then America's most wanted has developed some bizarre new beard complex.

Move over, God

"Why does it always rain on me?" asked Fran Healy of pedestrian Scot rockers Travis. Well, now we know - it's because of the government...



Click here.

At the Turn of the Tide

A new Zogby poll, funded through donations to 911truth.org, reveals that 51% of Americans want a new and independent (ie non federal) investigation into the murders which took place on 11th September 2001.

Of those polled 67% berate the 9/11 Omission Commission - directed by arch neo-con Philip Zelikow - for failing to investigate or even mention the [trivial?] collapse of the absolutely fucking massive 47-story World Trade Centre 7, which 'collapsed' (read: committed suicide) at the break-neck speed of just over six and a half seconds at 5:20pm on 9/11. Interestingly, Philip Zelikow - charged with directing the infamous 9/11 investigation, and thereby charged with investigating the competence of both Bush and National Security Advisor Condi Rice - served under Bush in 2000-2001, served along side Condi Rice in Papa Bush's National Security Council, AND co-authored a book with Rice about, amongst other things, "molding" the meanings of historical events. However you'd be a terrorist, a traitor and a member of Al Qaeda if you think that these blatant, obscene and in-your-face conflicts of interest in any way bring Zelikow's impartiality into question...

The poll also reveals that over 30% of Americans want the immediate impeachment of Bush and/or Cheney. Happy days.

Anna Politkovskaya: Ten Arrests after Ten Months

It's ten months since Anna Politkovskaya - special correspondant for the Russian liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, relentless critic of Vladimir Putin's Russia, and referred to as "Russia's lost moral conscience" - was shot dead close to her apartment in Moscow. Today, Russian authorities announced that they have evidence the killing was carried out by a Moscow criminal gang led by an ethnic Chechen crime boss. They have arrested ten people, including Lt Col Pavel Ryaguzov, an FSB (Federal Security Service) officer.

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To many readers of Politkovskaya's work, it will come as no surprise to hear Yuri Chaika, Russia's Prosecutor General, say that, "[sic] the evidence pointed to a conspiracy planned outside Russia." He went on to say, according to the BBC, "The individuals interested in eliminating Politkovskaya can only be ones living beyond Russia's borders." But why 'can only'? I suppose one reason might be that no one in Russia would dare point the finger at the motherland - not unless they wanted that finger broken off. Politkovskaya dared and was killed. Litvinenko dared and was killed.

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Chaika also said - again, according to the BBC - "Above all, people and structures interested in destabilising the country, changing its constitutional order, in stoking a crisis in Russia...could gain from this crime," ludicrously implying that the Kremlin itself would have nothing to gain from silencing Politkovskaya. Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia, published in English translation in 2004, tells a story of a corrupt and brutal army, where private's are treated like expendable dogs, where the relatives of dead soldiers are utterly ignored by the state, 'where beating the shit out of someone is the basic method of training...Incidentally, this is how Putin described the way he would deal with enemies within Russia when he first ascended his Kremlin throne.' And yet, in spite of this, and in spite Politkovskaya's assertion that Putin is a 'power-hungry product of his own history and unable to prevent himself from stifling civil liberties at every turn', we're told that Putin's Russia would have nothing to gain from Politkovskaya's murder? This simply makes no sense.

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According to the BBC, Dmitry Muratov, chief editor of the Novaya Gazeta, said that the investigations findings were "very convincing and professional." In the Guardian, Vyacheslav Izmailov, a friend of Politkovskaya's and a columnist of the Novaya Gazeta, said that whilst few details of the arrests had been made public, he believed that the trail 'appeared' to lead to Chechnya. However the naming amongst those arrested of an FSB officer seems to me to be a curious kind of admission in the current climate.

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Alexander Litvinenko was investigating Anna Politkovskaya's murder when he was poisoned in London last November.