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Saturday, July 01, 2006

Rethinking the Somme

The name Somme, as a result of 142 days of unrelenting combat, has a special place in British social and military history, as a common experience, shared by millions of Tommies, as well as soldiers from the Empire. It was as significant as Dunkirk or D-Day, and was felt to be so at the time.

The big attack was sold to the soldiers about to undertake it as the last "big push" that would finish the war. Many veterans remembered that they were actually looking forward to it.

Rethinking the Somme
Peter Caddick-Adams, BBC, June 30, 2006

From Wikipedia:

The 1916 Battle of the Somme was one of the largest battles of the First World War, with more than one million casualties. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 25-mile (40 km) front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to draw German forces away from the battle of Verdun; however, by its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun.

While Verdun would bite deep in the national consciousness of France for generations, the Somme would have the same effect on generations of Britons. The battle is best remembered there for its first day, 1 July 1916, on which the British suffered 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead — the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. As terrible as the battle was for the British Empire troops who suffered there, it naturally impacted the other nationalities as well. One German officer famously described it as "the muddy grave of the German field army". By the end of the battle, the British had learnt many lessons in modern warfare while the Germans had suffered irreplaceable losses. British official historian Sir James Edmonds stated, "It is not too much to claim that the foundations of the final victory on the Western Front were laid by the Somme offensive of 1916."


I think this battle is one of the prime examples of how wasteful the war sometimes is. There were no major brakthroughs by either side; and while it may be true that the German Army may have been critically weakened by this battle the question still remains, was the victory worth it - even for the victors.

Resurgent Russia prepares for convertible rouble

Memories of Russia's default on $40bn of domestic debt eight years ago, when people queued outside banks to withdraw roubles that were plummeting in value, have barely faded from the national psyche.

Yet, remarkably, with coffers swollen by oil selling at $70 a barrel, Russia will tomorrow lift all currency controls on the rouble and make it fully convertible. Everyone will be able to move roubles freely out of and into the country, foreign and offshore investors will be able to open rouble bank accounts, and restrictions on rouble fixed-income investments will disappear.

It is a highly political and symbolic step. Brought forward by six months from the original deadline, it comes two weeks before Russia hosts the Group of Eight summit in St Petersburg, and days after the country reached agreement to pay off, ahead of time, its remaining $22bn (€17.5bn, £12.2bn) debt to the Paris Club of creditor nations.

The move will announce "that Russia is a serious global player," says Al Breach, research director at UBS in Moscow. "It has now graduated to being a normal, if not developed, at least upwardly developing, country."

Russia is saying "it is stable, it is open, and ready for money coming in".

The lifting of currency controls is also part of a campaign to burnish the rouble's once shattered image and challenge the dollar's supremacy - an economic parallel to Moscow's efforts to counterbalanceUS dominance in foreign policy.

Senior officials including President Vladimir Putin have even called for the rouble to become a reserve currency, to the surprise of international investors.

Russia's lower house of parliament has given preliminary approval to a bill slapping instant fines - their size not yet determined - on ministers and senior officials who quote figures in dollars that could be quoted in roubles. It would also stiffen fines on businesses displaying prices in foreign currencies, as many started to do during the hyperinflation in the 1990s that followed Russia's initial liberal reforms.


Resurgent Russia prepares for convertible rouble
Neil Buckley, Financial Times, June 30 2006

I don't know how economically promising this latest initiative is but there is no reason for Russia to at least not try and float rouble. And while in general the fact that Russia can run so successfully just on mineral exports is likely to the country's detriment as it stagnates technological progress it is certainly true that those same deposits of oil and gas serve as a powerful stability fund for the country's economy.

If the US that is now very light on exports can still offer the US dollar as an international currency, the Russian rouble definitely qualifies as a candidate.

AG refuses to ok use of Hamas officials as 'bargaining chips'

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz refused a request by the Shin Bet security service and the government to place dozens of senior Hamas officials under administrative detention or hold them as "bargaining chips" under the Unlawful Combatants Law.

Mazuz insisted that the arrests be carried out under ordinary criminal warrants that would require legal proceedings against the Hamas officials under the Prevention of Terror Ordinance. They will probably be charged with membership in or leadership of a terrorist organization.

The detainees will be brought before a judge for a remand hearing within the next 96 hours, and legal proceedings against them will be carried out in military courts in the territories.

The detention of Hamas parliamentarians in the early hours of Thursday morning had been planned several weeks ago and received approval from Mazuz on Wednesday. The same day, Shin Bet Director Yuval Diskin presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with the list of Hamas officials slated for detention.

The Group of Eight industrialized countries said Thursday that the Hamas arrests raised "particular concerns."

A Justice Ministry spokesperson said that the change in policy towards ministers and parliamentarians who are members of Hamas was carried out with the approval of and in coordination with the judiciary, and that Israel intends on arresting more Hamas officials.

"We are talking about people suspected of criminal violations such as membership in terror organizations, affiliation with terrorist leadership, and other violations," the spokesperson said.

"The criminal proceedings will follow accepted legal standards. The suspects will be entitled to legal defense, and the arrest and investigation will be subject to judicial oversight. If a charge against a suspect is found to be baseless, he will be released," the spokesperson added.

AG refuses to ok use of Hamas officials as 'bargaining chips'
Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, Haaretz, June 30, 2006

Does this have anything to do with Corporal Gilad Shalit who was only abducted last Sunday?

Frankly, I think if anything this massive assault endangers his life. There is nothing wrong with an operation to free him - but it is very doubtful the security forces expected him to be at any of the locations where they arrested high-level Hamas members.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Guardian finds Afghan witnesses US couldn't

The US government said it could not find the men that Guantánamo detainee Abdullah Mujahid believes could help set him free. The Guardian found them in three days.

Two years ago the US military invited Mr Mujahid, a former Afghan police commander accused of plotting against the United States, to prove his innocence before a special military tribunal. As was his right, Mr Mujahid called four witnesses from Afghanistan.

But months later the tribunal president returned with bad news: the witnesses could not be found. Mr Mujahid's hopes sank and he was returned to the wire-mesh cell where he remains today.
The Guardian searched for Mr Mujahid's witnesses and found them within three days. One was working for President Hamid Karzai. Another was teaching at a leading American college. The third was living in Kabul. The fourth, it turned out, was dead. Each witness said he had never been approached by the Americans to testify in Mr Mujahid's hearing.

Guardian finds Afghan witnesses US couldn't
Declan Walsh, The Guardian, June 30, 2006

No surprise there, sad as it is.

Lecturer backed on talk about 9/11

A University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer should have the right to speak in class about his theory that the U.S. government was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, several students and staffers said in spot interviews this morning.

The interviews also revealed a surprising level of skepticism about the government.

"There's a lot that goes on, we never hear things that are covered up," said Susi Irwin, a classified staffer at UW-Madison enjoying a break with her colleagues on the Union Terrace. "As open as this country is, there are a lot of things we don't know."

And one heavily tattooed man, studying and too busy to chat, said in response to the lecturer's theory: "Wouldn't be surprised."

Kevin Barrett, a UW-Madison lecturer scheduled to teach an introductory class on Islam this fall, said on a Milwaukee radio talk show Wednesday that the United States helped bring down the World Trade Center towers to justify the war in Iraq. State Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, said Barrett should be fired.

Lecturer backed on talk about 9/11
Aaron Nathans, The Capital Times, June 30, 2006

It is noteworthy how people doubting the official line on the events of 9/11 are really not difficult to find any longer. I am always surprised how many strangers have started a conversation on this matter with me on their own accord, without my bringing up the topic. I still remember times, very recent in absolute terms, when 9/11 skeptics were often viewed as a tiny, insignificant minority. I don't think there is any denying now that this is no longer the case with tens of millions of Americans opining that those events were never properly investigated and a new independent investigation is necessary. Some my ask why so little action has so far materialized out of this mass disagreement. I don't know an answer here - though can point at some factors, such as social isolation, that may be to blame.

It is also interesting how those who would like to silence the 9/11 truth movement often resort to attempts to present this as a partisan issue. Enter Wisconsin state Rep. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater:
"Mr. Barrett is free to stand on the street corner and advocate his nutty left-wing views. However, the taxpayers and tuition-paying families shouldn't pay this man one cent to perform his voodoo in a UW classroom,'' Nass' statement read.

I am really not sure why one's analysis of a certain event - especially if one makes an attempt at examining facts on the ground and performing some sort of a forensic analysis of kinds - must be a function of one's political beliefs. Do conservatives make better detectives than socialists? Are Christians better thinkers than proponents of environmental reforms? After all, who would object to the idea that those who committed hundreds or thousands of murders ought to be located, apprehended and tried in a court of law? And that is ultimately what the 9/11 truth movement tries to see happen. And that is why it is in my opinion about as non-partisan as any movement can get.

Now Kevin Barrett is a scholar of Islam and one of the founders of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth. While he is likely far from unbiased on the issues here I am more inclined to read his generally well-worded articles than I am to listen to Rep. Nass and his ilk for what most of their pronouncements add up to is no more than ideologically-charged blather. In a word, to paraphrase Rep. Nass, I would say that he is free to stand on any street corner spewing his right-wing ignorant nonsense meanwhile we are free to ignore him and the academia definitely ought to ignore him in favor of men and women of knowledge - of whom Kevin Barrett is one. That is my opinion holds for all of us, regardless of how much we might disagree with some of Mr Barrett's ideas.

Why They Didn't Use A 757 To Hit The Pentagon, Reasons and motives

The following text is an article by the blogger named Killtown where he argues that on September 11, 2001 the Pentagon was attacked by something other than a Boeing 757 jetliner originally flying as AA Flight 77. I have not studied and analyzed the events at the Pentagon sufficiently to have an opinion as to what happened there, though, as I said already, many things about the official version of the events at the Pentagon seems far fetched and makes little sense. It is for one difficult to see how an amatuer pilot such as Hani Hanjour could have pulled off the near-impossible manuever required to hit the Pentagon flying with his engines a mere two feet off the ground.

Even if Killtown is wrong and the official version - or some variation there of - is closer to the truth somebody still has lots of explaining to do on a number of issues, such as why Flight 77 was never intercepted, let alone shot down, or why not one of those officials whose job it was to protect the Pentagon has been relieved of their duties.

This article is presented for informational purposes only. At this point I neither endorse it, nor dispute it. I find it informationally valuable. I would also like to note that no matter what happened at the Pentagon the case can still be made that the official story of the 9/11 is little more than a coverup of the true story, thus making some elements of the US government complicit in at least the coverup of a large-scale crime. And that is, at a minimum, obstruction of justice.

The original text can be found here:
Why They Didn't Use A 757 To Hit The Pentagon, Reasons and motives
(Version 1.5 - 06/14/06)


For those who say:

"Why would the government hijack a 3rd plane, Flight 77, but not crash it into the Pentagon when they took the trouble to hijack two other planes and crash them into the WTC?"

and

"Why would they want to crash a plane into their own defense headquarters?"


Here is why they didn't want to use a Boeing 757 to crash into the Pentagon:


ACCURACY!!!


What do you think would be the easiest part of the Pentagon to hit, the huge rooftop that looks like a giant "bull’s-eye" from the sky, or the side of the Pentagon that is only about seven stories tall? I’d say the roof.

user posted image

But what if you had to hit the side of the building that is not even 2x taller than a Boeing 757 and not only that, but a certain side, certain section, and certain floor of that side?

The government conspirators needed to hit the exact section of the Pentagon that was hit and they needed to hit it low to the ground. A Boeing 757, even flown via remote control or computer guidance, would have been too risky for them to use because it is too big and cumbersome to chance its accuracy, especially having to fly what they wanted to hit there super fast so most witnesses on the ground wouldn't be able to see what exactly it was, and a plane that size could cause more damage than they wanted too. They needed to use something very accurate to hit the ground floors of that small section of their building, like a missile or UAV, that also wouldn't cause too much damage to the Pentagon, or hit the ground.

Can you imaging them trusting an empty remote controlled 115 ton Boeing to perfectly hit that small section low to the ground without overshooting high and flying over the low sitting Pentagon, or without bouncing off the lawn and breaking apart to expose that no passengers where on board and sending large pieces of the plane in who knows which direction? They had to use something much smaller and accurate that would be able to hit low to the ground without hitting the ground. If they made it looked like it had dive-bombed into the roof, or flew straight into the uppers floors, they wouldn't have been able to have faked this plane crash because they wouldn't have been able to have easily manufactured a somewhat realistically sized and shaped hole in the roof, or upper floors to make most people think a 757 could have made as compared to floors near the ground and they needed to have the section they hit collapse so it would help cover up the oddly shaped hole they manufactured for the crash and to help cover up the fact that no 757 crashed there.

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So that is why the crash happened directly into the first floor and why it didn’t hit the lawn, or destroy any of the cable spools out in front, why no mark was left on the 3rd story wall where a 757's tail should have hit, why there wasn't as much damage to the Pentagon as one would think a mostly fueled 757 would cause, why the oddly shaped hole looked like the plane had flown in level instead of it hitting with it's wings banking to the left as we were told, and why this aircraft made experienced air traffic controllers monitoring it think it was a "military plane" from it spiraling down and around the Pentagon dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes to specifically hit that side and 1st floor of that section instead of taking the more easier route of dive-boming it straight down into the roof after it flew over the White House area, and why the first reports of what crashed there was a helicopter.

I really doubt Hani Hanjour could fly a 115 ton Boeing 757 like an agile jetfighter when there is no evidence he ever flew a 757 before in real life or in simulation, when one of his flight instructors said he could not fly at all and that they questioned whether his pilot's license was genuine, and when his skills were so bad that he was refused to rent a Cessna the month before the attack.

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The 'Lucky' Section

It should be self evident enough that the section of the Pentagon hit was hit on purpose. The section hit was the only section in the entire Pentagon that was being retrofitted and it was being retrofitted, of all things, to help bolster it against attack. What are the odds of that? And not only that, but it was hit almost in the middle of that renovated section in which they had just installed a new sprinkler system. Hitting this section lowered the number of potential victims because this section was not yet fully repopulated and a fire truck had just been pulled out from the firehouse that was coincidentally right next the section that was hit. Another coincidence is that side was the only lawn side that didn't have a parking lot or other things built next to it that would have made it much less accessible for the rescue crews to fight the fires and rescue the injured. Another factor that was in the Pentagon's favor was hitting their own building ensured the availability of military doctors, nurses, and first aid responders for all the injured.

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So think about it, the "Arab terrorists" hit the worst section for them and the best section for the Pentagon.



Motive for Hitting the 'Lucky' Section

So what was so special for our military to take the added risk of hitting that specific section at their defense headquarters when hitting the WTC would surely be enough to cause a wave of world wide indignation for their master plan?

Check out what the head of the Pentagon announced less than 24hrs before his place of work got hit:

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QUOTE
On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said.

Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten.

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. (CBS)


Now I don’t know about you, but if I had to announce a bureaucratic nightmare that I wanted to be buried as quickly as possible from the minds of the American people, what better time to announce it than the day before every American’s mind will be distracted by a most horrible event?

So now we know why Rumsfeld announced this outrageous news the day before the attacks, but they needed to do a little more than to just bury the story, they needed to bury the evidence and what better way to bury the evidence than to blow up the section that housed the paper trail and people trail who might have been able to figure out where all or some of that missing $2.3 trillion went:

QUOTE
- The impact area included both the Navy operations center and the office complex of the National Guard and Army Reserve. It was also the end of the fiscal year and important budget information was in the damaged area. (Arlington County After-Action Report)


- Most of those killed in the office, called Resource Services Washington, were civilian accountants, bookkeepers and budget analysts. They were at their desks when American Airlines Flight 77 struck. (South Coast Today)


Now think about it, less than 24hrs after Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (who was on the safe side of the Pentagon when it was hit) announces his agency lost track of a mind-blowing $2.3 trillion dollars, the section that housed the people and paper trail that would know where all that money went was blown up in the most bizarre events in America's history.

Again, the Pentagon benefitted from this section being hit.

What also adds to the interest is the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense who is in charge of all the Pentagon's money was Dov S. Zakheim, who not only is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as an ordained Orthodox Jewish rabbi and some say is a dual Israeli/American citizen, but who is also a member of the PNAC, along with Donald Rumsfeld, and was a contributing author of the PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that essentially talked about needing a "new Pearl Harbor" to build up American's military might exactly one year before it happened.

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Some of Zakheim's former jobs are interesting too. He was vice president of a defense contractor, System Planning Corp., which made remote control and flight termination products and was chief executive officer of SPC International Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economic consulting.


So that is why they hit that section of the Pentagon and why they didn't use a Boeing 757 to do it.


See also: Pentagon's Official Claim, Pentagon Crash Motives, Where The Pentagon Was Hit, and Rabbi Steals $2.3 Trillion!

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Man charged after videotaping police

A city man is charged with violating state wiretap laws by recording a detective on his home security camera, while the detective was investigating the man’s sons.

Michael Gannon, 49, of 26 Morgan St., was arrested Tuesday night, after he brought a video to the police station to try to file a complaint against Detective Andrew Karlis, according to Gannon’s wife, Janet Gannon, and police reports filed in Nashua District Court.

Police instead arrested Gannon, charging him with two felony counts of violating state eavesdropping and wiretap law by using an electronic device to record Karlis without the detective’s consent.

The Gannons’ son, Shawn Gannon, 18, is charged with resisting detention and disorderly conduct, and his wife also was cited for disorderly conduct, she said.

Janet Gannon said the family plans to hire a lawyer, and expects to sue the police department.The couple’s 15-year-old son also was arrested, charged as a juvenile in an unrelated robbery case, according to police reports and Janet Gannon.

The Gannons installed a video and audio recording system at their home, a four-unit building at 22-28 Morgan St., to monitor the front door and parking areas, family members told police. They installed the cameras about two years ago, buying the system at Wal-Mart, Janet Gannon told the police, according to reports filed in court. The Gannons have owned the property, which is assessed at $382,700, for the past three years, city records show.

Janet Gannon spoke with The Telegraph by phone Wednesday afternoon, before going to bail out her husband. She said they installed the system in response to crime in the neighborhood, and at their house.

...

The Gannons felt police were harassing the family, Janet Gannon said.

“There were six cops in my yard,” the first time police came, she said. “My husband was very upset. How many cops does it take to talk to a 15-year-old.”

Karlis didn’t know about the security camera until his second visit, when Michael Gannon told him to “smile” for the camera, police reported.

Janet Gannon said her husband explicitly warned officers of the camera, later adding “smile,” as a joke.

“I heard him say it,” she said. “He said, ‘Gentlemen, there’s a camera right there.’”

According to police, however, Janet Gannon told officers she didn’t remember her husband warning police about the security camera.

Police reported that Gannon “has a history of being verbally abusive” toward police, and that after his arrest, he remarked that the officers “were a bunch of corrupt (expletives).”

Man charged after videotaping police
Andrew Wolfe, Nashua Telegraph, June 29, 2006

No more Rodney King videotapes, it seems.

Random vulnerabilities - or deliberate vote fraud?

Vote fraud is nothing new. More likely than not, as soon as there was the first show of hands, someone got an idea of fixing the results in the way that they saw advantageous.

Of course, all societies that run elections have some safeguards to prevent candidates from winning fraudulently. Like any other safeguards, they are not bullet-proof.

The following is an excerpt from a June 26 USA Today report on a recent analysis of the vote counting equipment in the US:
Most of the electronic voting machines widely adopted since the disputed 2000 presidential election "pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections," a report out Tuesday concludes.

There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study by the Brennan Center for Justice says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities.

The study, which took more than a year to complete, examined optical scanners and touch-screen machines with and without paper trails. Together, the three systems account for 80% of the voting machines that will be used in this November's election.

While there have been no documented cases of these voting machines being hacked, Lawrence Norden, who chaired the task force and heads the Brennan Center's voting-technology assessment project, says there have been similar software attacks on computerized gambling slot machines.

"It is unrealistic to think this isn't something to worry about" in terms of future elections, he says.

The report comes during primary season amid growing concerns about potential errors and tampering. Lawsuits have been filed in at least six states to block the purchase or use of computerized machines.

Election officials in California and Pennsylvania recently issued urgent warnings to local polling supervisors about potential software problems in touch-screen voting machines after a test in Utah uncovered vulnerabilities in machines made by Diebold Election Systems.

North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold did not return calls for comment. The company, a major manufacturer of e-voting machines, said earlier this month that security flaws cited in its machines were theoretical and would be addressed this year.


Analysis finds e-voting machines vulnerable
Andrea Stone, USA TODAY, June 26, 2006

There is one detail here that Diebold is understandably in no rush to discuss: the fact that a vulnerability has been exploited may be hard to detect, and in some cases unknowable. The same goes for the data set that could be illegally modified - thus, in this case, changing the tally of the votes cast on a particular machine or group of machines. The only way to guard against that - short of eradicating all chances that the data would be corrupted, whether intentionally or otherwise -is establishing a log, on paper, electronic or both that would keep track of what votes the voters have cast.

Immediately after the election of 2004 I had a feeling it may have been fraudulent, even so much so as to give the man who lost it another four years in the White House. A much more indepth article by Robert F. Kennedy (Was the 2004 Election Stolen?, Rollingstone.com, June 1, 2006) suggests as much providing a multitude of data to support that conclusion.

It is certainly true that any individual aspect of how the election is setup - administratively, technically, legally - can be explained away as some sort of inaptitude or inefficiency. However, to my taste there is a method to this madness and there is a pattern to this incompetence. These failures are too systematic to my taste, and too well tuned to achieving predetermined results regardless of how the populace chooses to vote.

Seven Dipshits In A Warehouse

Just when you thought the predictability of the latest triumph in the war on terror couldn't get any more ludicrous - you're reminded that the Neo-Cons like to keep the propaganda simple and straightforward, never deviating from well-honed tactics.

In Friday's article on the Sears Tower arrests I predicted that, "One of the repeating elements to emerge from every major terror sting or forged terror alert is the use of retarded individuals as patsies, informants and go-betweens."

"Don't be surprised to learn of a connection to a retarded individual over the next few days."

So it follows that yesterday it emerged from a New York Daily News report that the alleged ringleader of the plot Batiste "needs psychiatric help," according to his own mother.

The Daily Show's John Stewart classified the Miami terror cell that were about to "wage a ground war against America," according to Gonzales as "seven dipshits in a warehouse," following a farcical press conference in which Gonzales was cornered into admitting that they had no links to any Al-Qaeda members and had no weapons or explosives to carry out any acts of terrorism.

Today, lawyers for the defendants outlined an argument that the government had used entrapment to essentially imagine into existence a deadly Al-Qaeda terror cell that had never existed in the first place.


Seven Dipshits In A Warehouse
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, June 27 2006

While, as I said earlier, it is wrong to assume the "Miami seven" are entirely harmless it seems equally wrong to view them as an organization capable of any serious action. And the question remains, of course, as to to what degree they were even organized and brought into being by the same government informant who eventually led to their arrest.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Blink 182 Star Latest Celebrity To Question 9/11

Blink 182 star Tom DeLonge has followed in the footsteps of Charlie Sheen by becoming the latest celebrity to publicly doubt the official version of events behind 9/11 and voice his belief that the attacks were an inside job.

DeLonge is the lead singer in Blink 182, a southern Californian punk/pop quartet that has had two US Billboard number one selling albums and whose 1999 album Enema of the State went platinum five times over.

During a hosting spot on a San Diego’s KAVA-FM radio station, DeLonge talked with Professor James Fetzer about evidence of 9/11 inside involvement.

"We do know that the buildings came down in a fashion extremely similar to a controlled demolition of a building - we do know that expertise that is needed to fly those gigantic planes into that exact location could never have been achieved by someone that just learned how to fly a small plane, said DeLonge."

Discussing the failure of NORAD to enact standard operating procedure and intercept the planes and Norman Mineta's testimony about Cheney's orders 'still standing' - DeLonge stated, "Cheney knew that the planes are coming in and he capped the order to leave it alone so it could hit."

"It's so weird how our own government did it to us, 9/11 was not perpetrated by a bunch of people that just learned how to fly planes," said DeLonge.

...

While clearly not in the same league as Charlie Sheen's courageous high-profile public stance, DeLonge should be commended for using his notoriety as a platform for exploring the truth.

Celebrities questioning 9/11 do not give the truth movement credibility, that has already been obtained through the research of people such as Professor Jones, Morgan Reynolds and Andreas von Bülow. Celebrities give the truth movement a more vocal platform and a means of reaching a sector of society that might usually be off-limits via the normal reaches of the alternative truth community.

Blink 182 Star Latest Celebrity To Question 9/11
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet.com, June 28 2006

Senator considers suit over Bush law challenge

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter, said yesterday that he is "seriously considering" filing legislation to give Congress legal standing to sue President Bush over his use of signing statements to reserve the right to bypass laws.

Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, made his comments after a Judiciary Committee hearing on signing statements, which are official documents that Bush has used to challenge the constitutionality of more than 750 laws when signing legislation .

Bush has issued more signing statements than all previous presidents combined. But he has never vetoed a bill, depriving Congress of any chance to override his judgment. If Congress had the power to sue Bush, Specter said, the Supreme Court could determine whether the president's objections are valid under the Constitution.

"There is a sense that the president has taken the signing statements far beyond the customary purviews," Specter said at the hearing. He added that "there's a real issue here as to whether the president may, in effect, cherry-pick the provisions he likes, excluding the provisions he doesn't like. . . . The president has the option under the Constitution to veto or not."

But a lawyer for the administration, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michelle Boardman, testified that Bush has shown Congress respect by using signing statements instead of vetoes when he has concerns about parts of bills.

"Respect for the legislative branch is not shown through [making a] veto," Boardman argued. "Respect for the legislative branch, when we have a well-crafted bill, the majority of which is constitutional, is shown when the president chooses to construe a particular statement in keeping with the Constitution, as opposed to defeating an entire bill that would serve the nation."

Senator considers suit over Bush law challenge
Charlie Savage, The Boston Globe, June 28, 2006

Ms Boardman's novel assessment of what constitutes respect notwithstanding, I think Senator Specter would be well advised to introduce a bill outlawing signing statements altogether instead of considering whether or not to try and sue the President over this or that signing statement. The President has a choice as to whether to accept a bill as law of the land or reject it using his veto power. If the veto is overridden by the Congress the bill still becomes law. End of story.

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