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License Plate Software Stirs Privacy Concerns

By KEN BELSON | The New York Times | February 26, 2010

THE notion of roving cameras snapping pictures of license plates conjures up television shows like Fox’s counterterrorism series, “24.”

It’s not just fantasy, though. Americans are already watched by a variety of security agencies using electronic surveillance technology, and in this post-9/11 world, there seems to be no turning back.

Privacy advocates, though, are not altogether comfortable with license plate numbers being electronically recorded by commercial operations.

While their views on the gathering this data may vary, privacy groups uniformly agree that the real issue is what happens to the photos after they are taken: how long they are stored and by whom; how secure the data is and whether it might be shared with third parties. Are the photographed license plate numbers matched against other lists, like credit scores or addresses?

“It’s a huge Pandora’s box,” Jack Gillis, a spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America, said. “There are possibilities for tremendous violations if it is used to find out where people are at a given time. Until the access to this technology can be controlled, it has scary potential.”

MVTRAC, whose database of delinquent borrowers is offered on a subscription basis to auto repossession outfits, said that it stores plate numbers recorded by users for years — and uses a high level of encryption to protect the data.

Still, with automatic license plate recognition technology now in private hands, its potential uses are magnified. As with other data streams, like records of cellphone calls or toll transponder payments, the accumulated data can be subpoenaed as evidence in court. MVTRAC and others say that repo men see personal information only when they find a wanted car, the same as they would in the faxes and e-mails they receive from auto lenders.

But invariably, technology finds other applications, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties advocacy group. You can imagine a scenario, he said, where someone spots a car with an attractive driver, types the license plate number into a computer program and finds the owner’s name. Many companies say their data is encrypted, he said, but “you have to ask, ‘who has the key?’ ”

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

‘NYT’ Op-Ed congratulates Obama for laying off Israel ’cause solving I/P won’t solve anything

By Jeffrey Blankfort | February 28, 2010

Has the NY Times response to the complaints about Ethan Bronner led it to be even more forceful in pushing its pro-Israel agenda including getting the US to attack Iran? Apparently so. In today’s op-eds, they’ve imported the thoughts of a British Jewish professor, Efraim Karsh, (another Bernard Lewis, and a Nakba denier) who uses his abbreviated paternalistic version of Islamic history to conclude that the Arabs countries will not object to the US attacking Iran. And, in passing, he welcomes Washington’s less “imperious” attempts at bringing Israel to the bargaining table:

So, if the Muslim bloc is just as fractious as any other group of seemingly aligned nations, what does it mean for United States policy in the Islamic world?

For one, it should give us more impetus to take a harder line with Iran. Just as the Muslim governments couldn’t muster the minimum sense of commonality for holding an all-Islamic sports tournament, so they would be unlikely to rush to Iran’s aid in the event of sanctions, or even a military strike.

Beyond the customary lip service about Western imperialism and “Crusaderism,” most other Muslim countries would be quietly relieved to see the extremist regime checked. It’s worth noting that the two dominant Arab states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been at the forefront of recent international efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

As for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the idea that bringing peace between the two parties will bring about a flowering of cooperation in the region and take away one of Al Qaeda’s primary gripes against the West totally misreads history and present-day politics. Muslim states threaten Israel’s existence not so much out of concern for the Palestinians, but rather as part of a holy war to prevent the loss of a part of the House of Islam.

In these circumstances, one can only welcome the latest changes in the Obama administration’s Middle Eastern policy, which combine a tougher stance on Iran’s nuclear subterfuge with a less imperious approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Honduras Palm Oil Plantations: Sustainable Development Facade

By Tamar Sharabi | Upside Down World | February 28, 2010

Johnny Rivas is a vocal member of the Unified Movement of Aguan Farmers (MUCA), an organization that claims over 3,500 families demanding the redistribution of land in the North Coast of Honduras. For over five years Rivas has fought for land rights in Aguan, known as the ‘capital of agrarian reform.’ MUCA formed in 2001 in order to reclaim lands that Rivas says “were transferred to corrupt businessmen under fraudulent terms.” Rivas has recently been a target of constant death threats for his participation in the movement.

Palm Oil Cooperatives and Big Business

The Aguan Zone (named after its river), is located in the department of Colon and claims some of the most fertile lands in the country. It is known for its African Palm Oil plantations, which occupy over 90,000 hectares according to a Jan 2008 report by the US Embassy. Palm oil is a common ingredient in many food products and can be used as biodiesel.

In 1962 the Law of Agrarian Reform reallocated land from the hands of transnational companies back to Honduran farmers. Cooperatives formed that managed the palm oil plantations. In 1992, 1994 and 1995 many cooperatives sold their land back to wealthy business owners. In a document presented on April 30, 2009 MUCA asked for the annulment of the sale from 1994, on the grounds that the sale was illegal under the Agrarian Reform Laws. The terms of the sale stipulated that the land would remain state owned, but the farmers could continue to cultivate it. The contract expired in February 2005 and has never been renewed.

As a strategy to apply pressure on authorities to negotiate with the farmers, in May 2009 MUCA occupied a palm oil factory that belonged to Miguel Facusse, one of the largest landowners in Honduras. A new agreement was signed on June 12, 2009 with President Zelaya that guaranteed state resources to resolve the conflict. On June 23, after a follow up meeting on the same factory, a member of MUCA, Fabio Ochoa was shot 7 times.

Coup d’etat Halts Negotiations

Although President Zelaya had shown the political will to deal with the country’s agrarian problems, his term was cut short with a coup d’etat last June. Most of the farmer organizations prioritized their efforts to protesting for his constitutional return, temporarily putting their land struggle on hold. Realizing that after several months of nonviolent resistance on behalf of the nations teachers unions, workers, indigenous groups, and farmers, they were unable to reverse the coup, MUCA resumed the land recuperations in December 2009.

According to Rivas, direct land recuperation is “the only strategy farmers have to be heard.” Living in rigged plastic tents among the palm oil plantations that occupy their land, the farmers participating sometimes eat only once a day, under constant threat from the authorities.

The farmers occupied four cooperatives; La Confianza, La Aurora, San Isidro, and San Esteban Cooperative. The National Agrarian Institute

which deals with the appropriation of land has measured 9,000 hectares that are under dispute thus far.

Since December there have been dozens of confrontations between the farmers and security forces in the area. Under the de facto government

of Roberto Micheletti, military forces were used several times to illegally evict the farmers. There have been dozens of detained farmers and there are over 80 orders of arrest for people involved.

Conflict Intensifies

On the evening Feb. 11 witnesses reported that two unidentified helicopters flew over communities participating in the land recuperations. The next morning crossfire left at least four guards from the private security company dead.

Security forces also entered the community of La Concepcion, a commuinty neighboring a land recuperation. When a pastor of the local Mennonite Church saw aggressive driving almost running over children in the community, he intervened and had a firearm pointed at him.

“They came here intimidating the community, pointing out houses. If one of the farmers is killed we will know who to hold accountable,” he said.

In a formal meeting on Feb. 16 with President ‘Pepe’ Lobo, known to MUCA as ‘the son of the coup,’ Lobo promised to disarm the farmers. MUCA maintains that they are not an armed struggle, but will defend themselves against aggression from security forces. Rudy Hernandez, also a member of MUCA, maintained that “we are not a group of delinquents, we are farmers who are here to claim our land because hunger forces us to be here.”

This week Lobo presented two options to resolve the conflict: either purchase a portion of the cultivated land or farmers will be relocated to neighboring areas. Both options look for an immediate resolution to the problem but do not deal with the underlying issue of the concentration of land ownership or the illegal acquisition in the first place.

Unsustainable Investment

As the second poorest country in Central America, Honduras relies heavily on international financing.

“One of the most important things for those of us in Honduras, is the image that we give to the investor” said Facusse.

Facusse admitted to a Honduran newspaper that the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank (BID) and an unnamed German Bank have authorized loans which are currently ‘paralyzed’ due to the situation.

“We paid for the farm and paid well for it, those of the agrarian reform had the money but did not invest and misspent the money, for that I believe that agrarian reform is not the solution,” he added.

Marco Ramiro Lobo, a legal advisor to the National Agrarian Institute (INA), previously the legal advisor to MUCA who presented the demand against Facusse in 1994, stated that Facusse’s business interests were never for the social good of the community.

“There are grand restrictions on the workers, miserable salaries, before they were associates and now they are workers. Now they have a salary less then the minimum wage. Most of the farmers live in extreme poverty, which is what is causing this situation,” said Ramiro Lobo. “I don’t think anyone is arguing that Facusse brings investment to the area, but what we are arguing is the form in which the lands were acquired. In reality there is no sustainable development, this is a business model that looks for lucrative pay, not social investment.”

MUCA has the support of dozens of other farmer organizations in the country, including international organizations such as FIAN and Via Campesina. They are also supported by the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), an organization which grew out of the resistance movement opposed to the coup d’etat against President Manuel Zelaya.

Tamar Sharabi is an environmental engineer and freelance journalist living in Central America. She is working on media empowerment with human rights organizations and on a documentary about the Honduran coup detat. To support her work visit Give Forward .

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Environmentalism | 1 Comment

Australia censorship debate censored on Communications minister’s website

It’s all kind of ironic when you think about it

By John Ozimek • The Register • 25th February 2010

If you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet, what better approach to take than to, er, censor debate about how you’re planning to censor free speech on the internet? Brilliant.

That, according to one sharp-eyed Register reader, is the game being played by Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, whose ministerial website is currently set up so as not to show searches on embarrassing terms such as “ISP filtering”.

An increasingly common feature of interactive websites is the “search cloud”: this is a listing out of search terms on a site, often with the added feature that the most frequently appearing terms are picked out by size or weight of type.

The Minister’s official site is no exception, and visitors wishing to know what other visitors are searching on just have to take a look at the search cloud at bottom right of the landing page. Well that’s all they need to do unless they wish to find out about “ISP Filtering”, an issue that has been the cause of some controversy in Australia over the past couple of years.

Nip below the page surface and you will find a clever bit of code that sets a counter to record the frequency of any given term, ranks the most frequently occurring terms – and then sets the size of that term within the cloud according to its rank (highest ranked is largest, lower ranked are smaller).

So far so good, unless the search term happens to be “ISP Filtering”. Because the other clever thing that the code does is to exclude that particular term from the search cloud. Sorted. Or not.

In recent weeks, protests against the minister’s censor-tastic activities have reached new heights, with a DDoS attack directed both at the Australian Parliamentary website and at the site of the Communications Ministry. This action was characterised by Conroy as irresponsible – presumably on the basis that in a democracy, government attitudes should be changed by debate and there is no need for direct action.

By contrast, evidence that the debate is being skewed in this way will undoubtedly add weight to those who claim that the government is not interested in discussing issues – and the only way to make them sit up and listen is through direct action.

Meanwhile, appearing before the Environment, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee earlier this month, representatives of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), revealed that they would not be pursuing an investigation of how Wikileaks got its hands on ACMA’s list of banned URLs.

While they intend to tighten up processes, in the hope that such a thing will not happen again, they also acknowledged that the Federal Police “considered the prospects of success under their guidelines not sufficiently strong enough to push on with the prosecution”.

In addition, there were other more pressing “operational priorities”. ®

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | 7 Comments

US to spend $50 million on media in Pakistan

Pakistan Headlines Examiner | February 27, 2010

The Obama administration plans to spend nearly $50 million on Pakistani media this year to reverse anti-American sentiments and raise awareness of projects aimed at improving quality of life, confirms a Washington insider.

After the Kerry-Lugar Bill debacle, the Obama administration had struggled with the idea of ‘branding’ aid and many within the State department and the USAID had argued that identifying projects may backfire.

“By announcing that a school was built and is being maintained – partly because of the aid received from America – you can alienate people,” said someone who had proposed not ‘branding’ the aid.

The US Special Representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke believes that a substantial amount of monies spent on media- especially private TV channels will reduce tension and may even bring Pakistan-US relations back on the right path.

Senator John Kerry, the main architect of Kerry-Lugar bill also supports the idea of claiming credit for all “the good work being done to improve infrastructure, energy and education,” said a source in Senator’s office.

Reuters today reported that the Obama administration has sent lawmakers a plan for funding water, energy and other projects. Report said the US intends to spend $1.45 billion of [funds] earmarked for the Kerry-Lugar bill in fiscal 2010.

The trust deficit had surged after a well intended aid package focused to uplift Pakistan’s civilian society was trashed by a section of Pakistani media. Interviews with diplomatic sources in Washington, D.C. and media coverage of the KLB debacle had demonstrated growing frustration of the Obama administration.

Although American officials publicly praise military operations in South Waziristan, in private they sing a different tune; their assessment of ”alignment” is rather pessimistic. Stories leaked to media consistently allege that al-Qaeda leadership is still enjoying safe haven in Pakistan.

Pakistan-U.S. relations have not been this tenuous before, and the Obama administration is frustrated with the outcome of the Kerry-Lugar bill. “No one had anticipated such negativity,” said an American official who did not want to be identified. “We thought Pakistanis [would] celebrate the passage of this bill. This is what we were told by representatives of the Pakistani government.”

Pakistani government representatives from President Zardari to Foreign Minister Qureshi and Ambassador Hussain Haqqani further down the chain had assured the Americans that Pakistanis would be jubilant; KLB was supposed to heal all wounds, rectify all wrongs and erase memories of the past from the consciousness of the masses.

The Obama administration has shared their plan to sponsor high impact projects and communicate the value of these projects using local media.

Voice of America, a radio and TV platform that speaks for the government of the US already has a tie-up with Geo TV and now they have aligned with Express TV as well.

The Obama administration plans to help Pakistan’s democratic government meet budget shortfalls and deliver services to a population increasingly angry about economic and security troubles. As the funding builds the capacity of the government to provide basic services, the US sponsored Pakistani media will raise awareness and build a brand for America, our sources have confirmed.

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Israeli troops storm and encircle Aqsa Mosque

PIC – 28/02/2010

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Sunday stormed the courtyards of the Aqsa Mosque and cordoned off its premises where dozens of Palestinian worshipers are still maintaining a vigil and refusing to leave for fear of attacks by Israeli extremists.

Eyewitnesses said that more than 200 Israeli policemen have encircled the Aqsa Mosque since the early morning hours and demanded the worshipers come out, while the Palestinians inside the mosque used the amplifiers of the Mosque to urge fellow citizens to head to the Old City of occupied Jerusalem to defend it against Israeli violations.

Many unruly Israeli settlers were allowed by policemen to walk around in the Mosque courtyards.

12 Palestinian citizens including an elderly woman outside reportedly suffered tear gas suffocation as they were trying to reach the Aqsa Mosque.

Meanwhile, the neighborhoods of the Old City of Jerusalem saw clashes between young Palestinian men and Israeli troops. Numbers of protesters were reportedly rounded up.

Other Palestinian citizens living in the neighborhoods near the gates of the Aqsa Mosque complained that the IOF troops stormed and ransacked their homes, and used the roofs to observe the movement of people.

For his part, Hamas spokesman Yousuf Farahat on Sunday appealed to all Muslim scholars and leaders to urgently move to defend Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque against Israeli crimes.

In a press release, Farahat noted that the feeble official Arab stand is the umbrella under which the Israeli occupation is working and setting schemes to Judaize the whole city of Jerusalem.

In a related context, the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) announced the launch of a 30-month project to fully change the Arab landmarks and sites in the holy city.

Al-Jazeera website said that Israel claims that this project is intended for developing the infrastructure of the city, but in fact it is aimed to obliterate its Arab identity and turn it into a Jewish religious area.

For its part, the Israeli Maariv newspaper warned that the winds of war are blowing from the north and castigated the Israeli premier for his failure to control the angry protests against his decision to seize the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil city.

It opined that if there had been negotiations with Syria, the Iranian president would not have visited Damascus and the danger of war would have subsided.

###

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | 15 Comments

IRAN HAS BEEN CAPABLE OF HAVING A ‘NUCLEAR WEAPON WITHIN SIX MONTHS’ FOR YEARS NOW – BUT, LIKE ‘TOMORROW’, IT NEVER COMES.

By Damian Lataan | February 28, 2010

Other periods of time have been mentioned over the three decades since the Iranian people kicked out the Shah as to how long it would take the Iranians to build a nuclear weapon, but six months seems to a very popular nominal figure. Never mind, of course, that there has not been a skerrick of evidence to even suggest that the Iranians are doing anything more than building nuclear reactors for generating electricity or creating medical isotopes for medical purposes. But that hasn’t stopped the propagandists who seem to insist that Iran is still only six months away from having a nuclear weapon.

If I started the list of claims that Iran would have a weapon within six months from back in 1980 when the Shah went, you’d still be reading it in, well… six months time! So, I’ll cut short the list and start it off with some of the earlier claims of this century.

Back in August 2003, the LA Times reported that Iran could have a ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. More than two years later in September 2005, Israel claimed Iran would have ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. Then, nearly three years later in June 2008 we were told again that Iran would have a ‘nuclear weapon in six months’. A year later, in July 2009, Ha’aretz reported that ‘Germany believes Iran could have a nuclear bomb in six months’.

Now, in the very latest statement dated 23 February 2010, made by so-called ‘Iran weapons expert’, David Albright, Iran, in his expert opinion, is now only… wait for it; six months away from having a nuclear weapon. This is the very same David Albright that was telling us more than a year ago in February 2009; “In as quickly as a few months, Iran would be able to have enough weapons-grade uranium for nuclear weapons”. It’s also the very same David Albright who told the CBS ’60 Minutes’ show way, way back in January 1999 that Saddam Hussein was “within a few months to a year of having a nuclear weapon”.

Albright? Not very! He’s the original boy that cried ‘Wolf!’ Unfortunately, the media will continue to echo his and similar cries and there will be those that believe them. Eventually the West, led by Israel and the US, will attack Iran based on these lies, but the worst of it is; hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dead later, the rest of world will go along with it without a murmur.

February 28, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Honduran newspaper discovers murder after 3 days

By Belen Fernandez |Pulse Media | February 27, 2010

A headline in this morning’s edition of the Honduran daily La Tribuna, fervent defender of last year’s coup d’état against President Mel Zelaya, announces the search for the “gang member” that killed the daughter of veteran union organizer and anti-coup resistance figure Pedro Brizuela. The murder of Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodríguez, which took place on February 24 in the Céleo González neighborhood in the northern city of San Pedro Sula, had not prompted any prior coverage in the mainstream Honduran press despite the papers’ usual predilection for homicide photographs.

Honduran journalistic traditions had also been disrupted in July 2009 by the murder during a demonstration at the Tegucigalpa airport of anti-coup teenager Isis Obed Murillo, whose picture appeared in the daily La Prensa only after his blood had been removed via the Photoshop program. La Tribuna refrains from erasing the pool of blood surrounding Brizuela Rodríguez’ body on her living room floor, or from explaining how it is that members of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) are “hot on the trail” of the alleged gang member when the only identifying information provided by witnesses is that he is short.

During a conversation in San Pedro Sula last August, Pedro Brizuela dismissed his daughter’s concern regarding his potential martyrdom on behalf of the resistance and reasoned that he was already old, anyway. As it turns out, Brizuela Rodríguez’ concern was only slightly misplaced, and she was shot at age 36 upon answering the door at her home—a scene witnessed by her two sons, ages 2 and 8. La Tribuna concludes:

The femicide [of Brizuela Rodríguez] has caused consternation among civil and trade union organizations, due to her father’s decades-long involvement in these sorts of activities.”

El Heraldo had demonstrated similar consternation over popular activity in a July 31 article explaining that anti-coup Honduran teacher Roger Vallejo Soriano had “ended up with a head wound”—which promptly killed him—due to the fact that he had “abandoned his classroom in order to go out and protest in the streets.” Brizuela Rodríguez receives more lenient treatment at the hands of La Tribuna, and instead of being blamed for her own demise is cast as the victim of her father’s past, with any other blame for the crime absorbed by the term “femicide,” as gender-related targeting by gangs is less easy to pin on the current administration of Pepe Lobo.

Lobo, an impending beneficiary of the “greater engagement with the countries of the Western Hemisphere” promised by the U.S. State Department, will rendezvous in Guatemala with Hillary Clinton at the beginning of March. As for why Clinton’s Latin America tour includes both Guatemala and Costa Rica but not Honduras, this question was posed by an attendee at yesterday’s press briefing by Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela, who confirmed the geographical proximity between Central American nations:

QUESTION: And the flight time between Costa Rica and Guatemala and Honduras –

ANSWER: Yeah. Right. Right. Guatemala.

Valenzuela’s discourse does not become any less enigmatic as the briefing progresses, and he proclaims with the regard to the U.S. position on the recent Honduran crisis:

So we see the outcome in Honduras is a very successful case of standing for a very fundamental principle and that is that you cannot tolerate a coup d’état in a country. This sets a terrible precedent. And in that sense, we join the unanimity of the hemisphere in this regard. But at the same time, a solution had to be found to Honduras.”

As is clear from the lack of a U.S. response to the slew of politically-motivated murders that have occurred in the first month of Lobo’s presidential term, these are to be considered part of the Honduran solution and compatible with Clinton’s call for “principled pragmatism” in condemnation of human rights abuses.

February 27, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Mainstream Media Questions Inaccuracies in 9/11 Story

The Washington Times publishes story questioning official account.

By Tim King* | Salem-News.com | February 24, 2010

The mainstream press is showing interest in a taboo, however glaring subject; the inconsistencies in the Bush White House 9/11 account.

As The Washington Post reports today, “A lingering technical question about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks still haunts some, and it has political implications: How did 200,000 tons of steel disintegrate and drop in 11 seconds? A thousand architects and engineers want to know, and are calling on Congress to order a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center.”

The problems with the official federal stories are endless and according to some of the world’s top minds, the suggested account is impossible[1].

When we first began to write about these seemingly pressing questions, our Web Designer Matt Lintz caught the U.S. Air Force attempting to hack into Salem-News.com[2].

One person who has never let the matter fade away is Richard Gage. He’s a San Francisco architect and founder of the nonprofit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Gage told The Washington Times, “In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially, exploded outwards.”

The federal government wants you to believe that fires brought the buildings to the ground, yet in all recorded history, no fire has ever toppled a skyscraper. They burn to the framework but they don’t fall down.
Even if it was possible, the World Trade Towers were the least likely candidates. The steel core design of these buildings would not have come down, even if the building collapsed.

Even when you get past that, perhaps finding ways to justify the impossible “official” circumstances, how on earth could any logical explanation account for Building 7?

This is curious, I would suggest that half of all living Americans still don’t realize that a third building also came down that day, and it wasn’t hit by an airplane. But it did contain a lot of records that certain members of the financial industry didn’t miss. Then there are the billions of dollars in missing gold evacuated just before Building 7 pancaked to the ground.

The words of Gage are reflected all over the nation in universities and engineering firms. The Trade Tower buildings were specifically designed to withstand the impact of a jet liner, specifically. Jet fuel is similar to diesel and it doesn’t burn very hot. Firefighters, talking on radios, talked about how the aircraft crash fire in one building were going to easily be extinguisher by a few firefighters.

One of our writers, Jeff Gates, suggested that the only country that benefited from the ensuing wars is Israel.

“For instance, a skilled game theorist could foresee that, in response to a 911-type mass murder, “the mark” (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With phony intelligence fixed around a preset goal, a game theory algorithm could anticipate that those forces might well be redirected to invade Iraq-not to avenge 911 but to pursue the expansionist goals of Greater Israel[3].

Enforcing that thought, our writer Maidhc Ó Cathail wrote, “The day after 9/11, Benjamin Netanyahu let slip that the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans was ‘very good’ for Israel. In particular, the mass murder was very good for an emerging sector of the Israeli economy. In Laboratory for a Fortressed World, Naomi Klein detailed the post-9/11 “explosion of Israel’s homeland security sector.”[4]

Another Salem-News.com writer, Dr. Alan Sabrosky, wrote about the connection between 9/11 and Israel in the article, Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: The Road to 9/11 and Beyond, “Second, only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel’s Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the ‘who benefits’ principle: Mossad.”[5]

The answers remain tangled up. Many Americans believe questioning the government over this is unpatriotic, then they turn around and burn effigies of Obama at tea bagger parties. I say it is highly unpatriotic and even disingenuous, to not question facts about the integrity of this nation.

I won’t even start on Shanksville and the Pentagon; those stories are packed with more holes and in your face inconsistencies than there is time for in this report, but I have written about the Pentagon in particular, at great length[6].

The tragedy of September 11th 2001 is so far reaching that we could never truly describe it. The event was the reasoning to launch two very costly, ongoing wars. The very notion of Arab terrorists selecting the day that is synonymous with emergency response in the U.S. is as hard to believe as the “terrorists” passports recovered so conveniently on the sidewalks in New York that day.

The Washington Times cites how Gage, a member of the American Institute of Architects, managed to persuade more than a thousand of his peers to sign a new petition requesting a formal inquiry.

“The official Federal Emergency Management [Agency] and National Institute of Standards and Technology reports provide insufficient, contradictory and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers’ destruction. We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials.”

Gage says technical issues surrounding the collapse of the towers have prompted years of debate, rebuttal and ridicule.

The article cites how he is particularly disturbed by the fall of the 47-story skyscraper, Building 7. This engineer says, like the other two buildings, tower 7 fell in “pure free-fall acceleration.”

He also talked about how more than a hundred first-responders observed flashes and explosions during the fall of the towers.

Even more disturbing evidence Gage says, are “multi-ton steel sections ejected laterally 600 ft. at 60 mph”. He also talked about the “mid-air pulverization of 90,000 tons of concrete & metal decking.”

Firefighters and Trade Tower employees en mass reported explosions before the buildings came down. They also talked about building closures in the weeks preceding 9/11, and men carrying large amounts of equipment into the elevator shafts.

Most experts agree that the buildings could only have come down the way they did if they were imploded. Experts who perform this type of work, common in places like Las Vegas, at least before the nation’s economic downturn, place the main explosives in the elevator shafts, but also in many other strategic locations in a building’s structure.

If you watch the World Trade Towers fall in slow motion, it is easy to observe what appear to be a series of planned explosions, running essentially the length of each building.

Gage says evidence of “advanced explosive nano-thermitic composite material” was found in the World Trade Center dust. Of course Rudy Gulliani, mayor of New York at the time, had all of the building evidence shipped away from the state almost immediately.

There is a long list of federal investigators who say they were not allowed to do their jobs or complete the investigation. Tie this to the revelations in 9/11 Commissioner John Farmer’s book: “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11″, where the author builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version is almost entirely untrue, according to our writer Gordon Duff, and you just might be lifting a corner of the dirtiest rug that ever was used to suppress truth[7].

Gage says the group’s petition at ae911truth.org is already on its way to members of Congress.

He Told The Washington Times, “Government officials will be notified that ‘Misprision of Treason,’ U.S. Code 18 (Sec. 2382), is a serious federal offense, which requires those with evidence of treason to act.”

“The implications are enormous and may have profound impact on the forthcoming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed trial.”

For me, the biggest story here is that a mainstream member of the press published this article, I am amazed and encouraged. It is hard to suggest that we have perhaps been had in the biggest and worst way possible, but honesty is the only thing that matters.

Israeli Espionage – Part 1 of 4

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEOecRtBU7U

Israeli Espionage – Part 2 of 4

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17SSuuZDkA

Israeli Espionage – Part 3 of 4

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VclAeKYYvBc

Israeli Espionage – Part 4 of 4

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVRsmodmCTE

Also, this video from CoreofCorruption.com which was released just over a year ago, details the information regarding four alleged “art students” who had free access to the Trade Towers, including construction passes, in the immediate weeks preceding 9/11:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA9MvV-SrCo

References:

[1] Apr-07-2006 : Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon – Tim King Salem-News.com

[2] Apr-16-2006: U.S. Air Force Hackers Caught in Their Tracks by Salem-News.com – Tim King Salem-News.com

[3]Oct-20-2009: How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare – Jeff Gates Salem-News.com

[4] Jan-20-2010: The Merchants of Fear: Israel’s Profiting from Homeland Insecurity – Maidhc Ó Cathail Sabbah.biz

[5] Sep-10-2009: Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: The Road to 9/11 and Beyond – Alan Sabrosky Sabbah.biz

[6] Mar-21-2006: What Really Hit The Pentagon? – Tim King Salem-News.com

[7] Sep-11-2009: The 9/11 Commission Rejects own Report as Based on Government Lies – Gordon Duff Salem-News.com

* Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com’s Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Serving the community in very real terms, Salem-News.com is the nation’s only truly independent high traffic news Website. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

Source: Salem-news.com

February 27, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | 1 Comment

Michael Heart: WE WILL NOT GO DOWN (Song for Gaza)

Message from Michael

Dear friends,

I have been overwhelmed by the warmth and the friendship you have all given me in response to my song for Gaza, “We Will Not Go Down”. I am doing my best to go through your numerous messages, emails and comments, and ask you to kindly bear with me until I am able to do so. Please forgive me if I am not able to respond to each and everyone of you; but please also know that I really appreciate your messages.

My original intention to donate proceeds from the sale of the MP3 to charity has been complicated by technical matters; therefore, I have decided to make the song available free of charge (for personal, individual use only – all rights reserved). I would like to request that after downloading the song from this page, you kindly donate directly to a charity or an organization dedicated to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people. Worthy of note is UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), which has been helping Palestinian refugees since their dispossession in 1949. Please click here to donate through them: http://www.un.org/unrwa/

Thank you for your continued encouragement of my work as a musician, for your purchases of my CD (available here), and for spreading the song, the video and the message as you have been doing. I am grateful for every demonstration of support I have received from you, and for every thought and prayer that has gone to the people of Gaza.

Sincerely,

Michael Heart

February 27, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Leave a comment

US soldiers kill Iraqi tribal chief’s son

Dawn Media | February 27, 2010

AQUBA: US soldiers killed an Iraqi tribal chief’s son and wounded his wife in what the Americans on Saturday called a tragic accident, although local accounts of the incident differed.

US troops were travelling through the district of Kanaan, northeast of Baghdad, late on Thursday when Zhaheri tribe chief Thaher Zaihud al-Zhaheri’s son, Ahmed, walked outside the family’s front door and was shot dead, the tribal leader said.

Further gunfire wounded Zhaheri’s wife in the leg.

According to the US military, American soldiers were conducting a reconnaissance patrol ahead of a combined operation with Iraqi security forces when the “tragic accident” occurred.

“Villagers responded to what they thought were intruders and began firing in the darkness, which caused other residents to come out of their homes and also fire their rifles,” a statement said.

“Thinking they were under attack, the US soldiers returned fire to protect themselves. Regrettably, as a result of this gunfire exchange, a young man was killed and a woman was wounded.”

The statement said an investigation had been launched.

According to Zhaheri, however, there was no shooting prior to the family hearing a noise near their home and they thought there might be thieves in their village, Saisabanah.

“Ahmed went outside and when he opened the door and walked outside, the Americans shot and killed him,” he told AFP.

“They continued shooting at our house and one bullet hit my wife’s leg.” Zhaheri’s account of the incident was repeated by an Iraqi military officer in Diyala’s provincial security operations centre.

Saisabanah is a village of around 10 houses, and families there are known to have fought US forces since the 2003 invasion.

Zhaheri’s wife Sabiha Nahath Saud, 56, was in stable condition, according to Ahmed Alwan, a doctor at the main hospital in Baquba, Diyala’s provincial capital.

February 27, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

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