The  Rocky  View  of
News, Current Events
& Comment
Whatever the evil (poison) is, it must be presented in a mix of something good, or good for you.
Rat poison is like this, 99.5% of the ingredients are tasty and nutritious for the rat
(otherwise, they wouldn't eat it, would they?).  Only .5% (1/2 percent) is deadly.
I am reminded of Dad's special brownies.  It is the same truth.

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If you want to remain in your ignorance then take this blue pill -

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.o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o.
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t r u t h o u t | Letter
William Rivers Pitt, Author "War on Iraq"
to: Staff / Aaron Brown CNN

Subject: Flawed Report; Iraqi Warheads Found
http://truthout.com/docs_02/011803A.wrp.cnn.htm
referred by D

Thursday 16 January 2003

My name is William Rivers Pitt. I am the author of the book 'War on Iraq,' which has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and has cracked the top ten bestseller lists of the Washington Post, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle and others. I am also a writer for the publication truthout.org.

I apologize for flouting my resume at you, but I wanted to make sure that you do not dismiss this email as coming from someone not very well versed in this Iraq situation. A correspondent named (name deleted) at CNN gave me your address, so that I might pass a note through you to Mr. Aaron Brown. I am hoping he is prepared to hear what I am saying.

First things first: The warheads.

Let's be clear. These were not 'chemical warheads.' In the Iraqi arsenal, a warhead is a warhead - an empty ordnance space strapped to a missile. What matters is the payload, be it explosive or chemical or nuclear. The item placed in the warhead denotes the designation. These warheads were stone-cold empty, so by definition they are not 'chemical warheads.' They are, in fact, nothing, because they were loaded with no payload. Furthermore, the word 'warhead' is in itself misleading, as these were artillery munitions.

Second. Iraq is allowed by UN resolutions to have a variety of weapons, including the Al Samoud missile. We did not want to pull Iraq's fangs completely after the Gulf War, considering the neighborhood they live in. We allowed them to keep missiles that fly only a certain distance (150km most often). Many people will not know this, and will think the presence of these munitions will represent a breach of the UN resolution. This is not the case.

Third. Scott Ritter informed me today that these munitions were part of Iraq's declaration last December. I await further confirmation of this, and so should the journalism world.

Fourth. This is absolutely a vindication of the inspections regime. They found the stuff, and it will be destroyed, and no American soldiers or Iraqi civilians died in the process. Inspections work.

Fifth. Recall how the UNSCOM inspections were undermined by meddling from the American intelligence community. Understand that this warhead story did not come from Blix, or through the normal channels, but through a Japanese (read: close ally) inspector who contacted the news media and let rip before the facts were in hand. Why?

Your station has referred, over and over again, to these discovered warheads as 'chemical warheads.' The debate has not been centered on what the facts are behind these items - when they were made, whether they were loaded with anything, how long they have been there, whether they were declared - and instead has focused on whether the White House can use this as a pretext for war. Calling these things 'chemical warheads' is a gross exaggeration, which I have heard on CNN no less than seven times during the period I have been writing this message. Mull that.

Please, take the data I have given you and air it, for the sake of a reasoned and complete debate. I remind you that CNN's viewership increased by 500% after 9/11 and that your network made its bones on the first Gulf War. I beg you to get this data out to the American people, who desperately need facts and not overheated innuendo.

With great appreciation,

William Rivers Pitt

http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/pfv.cfm?PfvID=2745    a member URL
contributed by Larry

"One of the most admirable things about history is, that almost as a rule we get as much information out of what it does not say as we get out of what it does say. And so, one may truly and axiomatically aver this, to-wit: that history consists of two equal parts; one of these halves is statements of fact, the other half is inference, drawn from the facts. To the experienced student of history there are no difficulties about this; to him the half which is unwritten is as clearly and surely visible, by the help of scientific inference, as if it flashed and flamed in letters of fire before his eyes. When the practiced eye of the simple peasant sees the half of a frog projecting above the water, he unerringly infers the half of the frog which he does not see. To the expert student in our great science, history is a frog; half of it is submerged, but he knows it is there, and he knows the shape of it."

-‘The Secret History of Eddypus’ ……as quoted by Mark Twain

Mark Twain was up in arms about American and European Imperialism long before we were even born. At the turn of the 20th century he was writing extensively about it, and he spent the latter years of his life consistently concerned about this very thing…much as we are today.

In the dying years of the 20th century another person came along and picked up the anti-Imperialistic sword. Not that others haven’t wielded it many times before or since, but one of his writings in particular has risen above all his other works…plus most of those of his peers.

In the Internet age, this work has been spreading fast…but not fast enough for his liking…or many others. Even though it’s in its fourth edition and thirteenth printing, it’s still not a book that you will find on the shelf of many major book chains, at least not here in Canada. I ordered mine through Amazon.

When he looked at this particular "frog" and decided to write about it, he had no idea that the half of the frog he couldn’t see, wasn’t the bottom half of a frog at all. What he found was "The Grand Deception", and he’s been fighting a war against it ever since. The "simple peasant" (also from the quote above) looking at this frog, assuming what is below the surface is the other half of this frog, is most likely you…or if not you, then most people we know.

The author to whom I refer is G. Edward Griffin and his Magnum Opus "The Creature >From Jekyll Island" has come to consume virtually his entire life since the day it was published.

The ‘frog/creature’ is the Federal Reserve System that was spawned on Jekyll Island, Georgia about the same time as Mark Twain was on his anti-Imperialist crusade in Washington.

I am not going to make any attempt to do my own book review, as one has already been written that will more than suffice. I urge you to read this review carefully…and read it now before continuing further. Needless to say, you should put this book on your "must read" list…and read it sooner rather than later. You may have more luck getting it at your local bookstore in the U.S.A. But if all else fails, you can get it directly from Mr. Griffin himself at http://www.realityzone.com/, or through http://www.amazon.com/ as I did.

Along with the review (posted at the above hyperlink), I would like to paraphrase what Mr. Griffin had to say in the preface to the book…

"There was no doubt in my mind that the Federal Reserve is one of the most dangerous creatures ever to stalk our land. Furthermore, as my probing brought me into contact with more and more hard data, I came to realize that I was investigating one of the greatest "who-dunnits" of history. And to make matters worse, I discovered who did it."

"…this tale truly is incredible, which means, unbelievable. The magnitude by which reality deviates from the accepted myth is so great that, for most people, it simply is beyond credibility. Anyone carrying this message is immediately suspected of paranoia. Who will listen to a madman?…Furthermore, the evidence of the truth of this story is now so overpowering that I trust my reader will have no choice but to accept it, all questions of sanity aside."

"There are seven discernible threads that are woven throughout the fabric of this study. They represent the reasons for abolition of the Federal Reserve System. When stated in their purest form, without embellishment or explanation, they sound absurd to the casual observer. It is the purpose of this book however, to show that these statements are all too easy to substantiate."

"The Federal Reserve System should be abolished for the following reasons:"

- It is incapable of accomplishing its stated objectives. (Chapter 1) - It is a cartel operating against the public interest. (Chapter 3) - It is the supreme instrument of usury. (Chapter 10) - It generates our most unfair tax. (Chapter 10) - It encourages war. (Chapter 14) - It destabilizes the economy. (Chapter 23) - It is an instrument of totalitarianism. (Chapters 5 and 26)

"This is a story about limitless money and hidden global power. The good news is that it is as fascinating as any work of fiction could be…the bad news is that every detail of what follows is true."

One of the more incredible aspects of this book is the number of years it took to research and write it. It was a seven-year journey. And as he says in the preface…"From the beginning, however, it took on a life force of its own, and I became but a servant to its will." The Bibliography alone is six closely spaced pages of small type…sixty-eight entries in the first two pages alone.

I’m writing about this book, not only to urge you to read it, but to bring to your attention Mr. Griffin’s work on this subject since he wrote it. What he’s been doing is a variation on a theme of the book itself, and in some ways is a précis of the entire work.

A speech he gave in early 2002 to a group of investors in Cancun, Mexico was entitled The Grand Deception – A Second Look at the War on Terrorism. Part I is linked here, and Part II is linked here. In it, he goes into three very important turning points in American history and how the U.S. government (through subterfuge) convinced the general population that it had to go to war…whether it wanted to or not. The speech shows you how the U.S. (and British) governments (and the banks) changed American public opinion so that the citizens would agree to go to war in both World War I (the sinking of the Lusitania) and World War II (the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor). These are the Strike One and Strike Two to which I refer in the title.

Others besides G. Edward Griffin have written about how the Japanese were lured (and facilitated) into striking at Pearl Harbor. Mr. Griffin is hardly the first to have delved into the attack on Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Lusitania.

Strike Three was the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the anthrax scare that followed. If you’ve read the two parts of The Grand Deception – A Second Look at the War on Terrorism, then no further explanation is necessary…or will be provided here.

But in each of these "Three Strikes" scenarios, it was the same script used each time…aggravate, insulate, and facilitate. Aggravate the enemy into a position where it has little choice but to strike, insulate the target from any knowledge that it is in danger, and facilitate the enemy by making it as easy as possible to strike successfully for maximum effect.

Now what about Strike Four. It is the opinion of many, that the attempt to lure U.S. citizens into going into all-out war against the "evil-empire" of Islam is only one more ‘incident’ away from happening. It almost goes without saying that this incident will most likely be against American interests, and on American soil. But the ‘incident’ could show up in multiple places, and in multiple countries. The only point of controversy is whether it will be nuclear, chemical, or biological…or a combination of "all of the above". The press, CIA, FBI, plus all other levels of government and the military have been pounding away on a daily basis that it’s coming…and come it will. We’ve been given fair warning.

One of the disturbing aspects of this upcoming Strike 4 ‘event’ is the thought that it may not be "the enemy" that actually does the deed. It may be a result of "friendly fire"…not unheard of in war time...as all Canadians are aware after some of our boys were bombed by a U.S. war plane in Afghanistan, and some British combatants suffered a similar fate in Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait. Combatants’ dying from friendly fire is more common than you can imagine in conventional warfare. It happens all the time. But this time the "friendly fire" might be deliberate. Nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons leave no evidence or witnesses, so it matters not who delivers the weapon…friend or foe. It could arrive from the Pentagon (or the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta) by FedEx just as easily…as Doug Casey mentioned in one of his commentaries from a year or so ago.

But ‘the incident’ is coming one way or another. And regardless of whom the messenger is, we all know who’s going to get blamed.

There’s another possibility regarding Strike 4. This event may not happen until after King George, Kinglet Blair and their merry men have actually gone to war against Iraq (last week of February is the latest date making the rounds right now). Then whatever happens from that point on can be pointed to as a retaliatory strike by Osama or Saddam, or whomever. (For those of you who have short memories…most of the participants in 9/11 were citizens of Saudi Arabia (not Afghanistan), and I don’t see the U.S. invading Saudi Arabia…yet.)

Whenever this ‘event’ happens, it will give President Bush the opportunity to suspend the Constitution and rule by decree with the new U.S. Patriot Act, and the new ‘Homeland Security’ boys keeping the locals in line, because that’s the real reason that it was passed in the first place. Democracy will be dead in the United States. If you’ve read "The Creature", you’ll know that that’s the plan…Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan et al are just side shows to the real events which will be happening in the United States and elsewhere.

You might think I’m paranoid. Maybe you feel that I’ve taken up ingesting several varieties of mind-altering drugs. Not likely. As Edward Griffin points out in the preface to his book…"another obstacle to communication is that this tale truly is INCREDIBLE, which means UNBELIEVABLE. The MAGNITUDE by which REALITY DEVIATES FROM THE ACCEPTED MYTH IS SO GREAT that, for most people it is SIMPLY BEYOND CREDIBILITY. Anyone carrying this message is immediately suspected of paranoia. Who will listen to a madman?" Did you get that??? Read the book and the speech.

Four years ago, writing an essay on the Internet would never have crossed my mind. I had no idea how to operate a computer, didn’t own one, and owning shares in gold and silver stocks was the very last thing on my mind.

But times and circumstances change.

This truth (and it is the truth) is spelled out quite clearly in Griffin’s book. The aggravate, insulate, and facilitate scenario is now in its final phase, and this time the United States Constitution is the target. But, as I said earlier, it will probably not be the only target this time. The first three strikes all involved subterfuge at the highest levels of the British and American governments and military (and the financial system, and elitists that really runs the show). This one is too. I urge you to read the Griffin’s book and his speech. As I stated earlier…the speech is a précis of the book.

For you who don’t know me, I’m a three year member of GATA (The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee) and I’m as prepared as I’m ever going to be for whatever’s coming down the pipe. I’ve watched "the gold cartel" (part of the "The Creature") do its thing for the last number of years in both the silver and gold markets. But with the contents of "The Creature From Jekyll Island" and Edward Griffin’s Cancun speech "The Grand Deception – A Second Look at the War on Terrorism" overlaid on everything, I’m not entirely comforted by my little treasure chest of gold and silver shares.

G. Edward Griffin is not the only person throughout American history who has spoken up about the evils of banking, fiat currency, the Federal Reserve System and freedom.

Thomas Jefferson (quoting Benjamin Franklin) said… "Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."

In a letter to John W. Eppes in 1813, Thomas Jefferson had this to say… "The unlimited emission of bank paper has banished all (Great Britain’s) specie, and is now, by a depreciation acknowledged by her own statesmen, carrying her rapidly to bankruptcy, as it did in France, as it did us, and will do us again, and every country permitting paper to be circulated, other than that by public authority."

Thomas Jefferson (rightly or wrongly) was also quoted as saying the following… "The end of democracy, and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations."

Henry Ford was reported to have said: "It’s well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."

And of course, lest we forget, we have the words of Alan Greenspan when he was a disciple of Ayn Rand…long before he was converted to the "Dark Side of the Force" and joined "The Empire"…the Federal Reserve System and its handlers. His essay "Gold and Economic Freedom" which appeared in Ayn Rand’s 1966 book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, is still looked upon by honest money proponents as Mr. Greenspan’s true colours. As recently as two years ago, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) asked Sir Alan if he would autograph a copy of this essay. While he was doing it, Ron asked Alan if there was anything that he would change after all these years, to which Sir Alan replied…"Not a word."

In his essay, Mr. Greenspan had these closing comments…."In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves."

"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard."

(statism: economic control and planning by a highly centralized government)

All emphasis and underlining are mine. The entire essay is hyperlinked here.

The Chinese and Russians opening their gold market, and the Islamic nations…led initially by Malaysia…rushing to embrace the Gold Dinar and the Silver Dirham are one of the more visible (and alarming) symptoms that we are very close to total economic and financial collapse in the west.

Bill Buckler of "The Privateer" has this to say in the preamble of every weekly gold commentary. These words (in the following five very short paragraphs) should be cast in stone for all time.

"In any discussion of the future of Gold, or of the price of Gold, the first thing that must be realized is that Gold is a political metal. In the true meaning of the word, its price is "governed".

This is so for the very simple reason that Gold in its historical role as a currency is fundamentally incompatible with the modern worldwide financial system.

Up until August 15, 1971, there has never in history been an era when no paper currency was linked to Gold. The history of money is replete with instances of coin clipping, printing, debt defaults, and the other attendant ills of currency debasement. In all other eras of history, people could always escape to other currencies, whose Gold backing remained intact. But since 1971, there is no escape because no paper currency has any link to Gold.

All of the economic, monetary, and financial upheaval of the past 30 years is a direct result of this fact.

The global paper currency system is very young. It depends for its continued functioning on the belief that the debt upon which it is based will, someday, be repaid. The one thing, above all others, that could shake that faith, and therefore the foundations of the modern financial system itself, is a rise (especially a sharp rise) in the U.S. Dollar price of Gold."

Amen to that.

I believe that we are less than six weeks away from what (sector), one of the brightest lights on the USAGold Forum, says is the T* (T-Star) date. Sometime before (or very very shortly after) the United States, Great Britain and Israel go to war against Iraq et al…the economic, financial, and political fallout will commence. Tossed on this bonfire will be the US$, the U.S. stock markets, the housing bubble, commodity prices, and most importantly…the price of gold, silver, and other precious metals will be released from the stranglehold that the elitists have held them in since Robert Rubin showed up at the White House in 1995 with Larry Summer’s "Gibson’s Paradox" in his briefcase. The "powers that be" have to have something to point to as a reason why this is all happening, and this will be it.

And as Jim Puplava at http://www.financialsense.com/ says at the end of Part V of his "Perfect Financial Storm" series; "There will come a day without warning, at a time when nobody expects, when that ‘rogue wave’ will appear. It will be a day when events overwhelm the financial markets…when the house of paper will fall…when our financial institutions will be put to the supreme test…when the mettle of a man is tested…when faith in our institutions will be called into question. It will only be on that day, and in that hour, that we will know if the Holy Grail of finance truly exits."

I’m hoping and praying for the best…but expecting the worst. Although I can’t read Mr. Griffin’s mind, I’m sure that we would be both be eternally grateful if we were not only wrong…but wrong at the top of our voices…but I doubt that we are.

God help us all.

I’m going to go back to an essay…that I wrote last August…for my closing remarks, which are quite extensive. The essay was entitled "(War) Drums". In most respects, this essay I’m writing now is a follow up to that one. If you have the time, I urge you to read the first half of it, as it fleshes out this essay more completely. And what I had to say in the latter part of that essay (appended below…with additional comments) is just as applicable today (if not more so) than it was back then….

…..Is it a fight over who controls oil in the Middle East and the U.S. wants to make their move before things get entirely out of their control over there? It’s as good a reason as any, and I kind of like that one personally. The "powers that be" aren’t stupid. The world is running out of resources, especially petroleum products, and the U.S. and Britain may want to steal their share from the rightful owners to prevent these oil fields from falling into "enemy hands".

(For a more complete picture of the history of the Middle East, I’d like to recommend David Fromkin’s classic novel "A Peace to End All Peace"…the story of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Middle East…http://www.henryholt.com/)

Since Saddam is not going to oblige everyone by invading another country like Hitler did with Czechoslovakia or Poland; or as Japan did to Manchuria or Pearl Harbor...that would provide the necessary moral outrage, and/or the political or military justification...it appears that the USA is prepared to precipitate a crisis themselves. They are manufacturing an "enemy of the state". When the events of 9/11 and Afghanistan didn't give them as much "bang for the buck" that they had hoped for (the trans-Afghanistan pipeline idea was a bust), all of a sudden this ‘new enemy’ has cropped up. This is right out of their playbook in "The Creature".

The U.S. has been trying to implicate Saddam in what happened on 9/11 since the day it occurred, with no results worth mentioning. That attempt has intensified since the war in Afghanistan faded from the TV screens at CNN and CNBC. But evidence or no evidence, they're going into Iraq anyway. (So far the inspectors haven’t found a thing, but that won’t stop the USA et al from coming up with whatever justification is necessary…no matter how thin)

But these foreign affairs problems that the United States seem to acquire by sticking its nose into the political, economic and financial affairs of every nation on earth; whether it wants it or not, or needs it or not, has given rise to a ground-swell of anti-Americanism all around the world. As a government official in Washington put it earlier this year...."The problem with American foreign policy, is that our State Department is creating terrorists faster than our military can kill them." (Remember the Aggravate part of the plan?)

So the US and its ‘ally’ Britain…with Israel and the Zionists urging them on at every opportunity…are about to start a localized war which they all know could turn into a major regional conflagration within days or even hours, which might go nuclear as well. They might be counting on that very thing actually. Samuel P. Huntington’s epic essay "The Clash of Civilizations" might be worth brushing up on at this point.

Will this pending conflagration continue to be unprovoked as it is now? Or will another ‘triggering event’ be needed to fan the flames? Will it be a ‘natural’ event by the ‘enemy’, or will it be a ‘set-up’ event...like some historians say Pearl Harbor was that got America into war with Japan…or the sinking of the Lusitania, which Winston Churchill had a hand in…that got the USA involved in WWI in Europe?

Is it a worldwide plot to collapse the banking system and take over? Or is the so-called New World Order just going to bring down ‘The West’ and its financial system? Are they trying to precipitate a worldwide economic and financial crisis where they can ‘suggest’ introducing a ‘world currency’ and a ‘world government’ that would solve all the world’s ‘problems’? Or is it just a second-string president trying to finish the job in Iraq that his second-string father left behind?

Or is it just ‘the boys’ who are trying to save themselves from the last 15 years of corporate, financial and government malfeasance that they have imposed on their own citizens, as well as the citizens of the rest of the world?

Is it one of the above...none of the above...or a little of each? The purpose of this essay is not to give a definitive answer, but play an international game of "Let's Make a Deal" without Monty Hall around, and with just a couple of more doors to chose from. You pick...because I'm not 100% sure. I’m just bringing all this up to alert the reader that while our attention is being diverted by this ‘nuke Saddam’ frenzy in the Middle East, the real power game will be happening somewhere else, by someone else.

But I can tell you this. The United States is "marching off to war" in one hell of a hurry and I just have to ask…WHY????

Whatever it is, the real and highly justifiable concerns of the average U.S. citizen on this matter (that their government purports to represent), will be tossed on this "bonfire of the vanities" on an unprecedented national and international scale. This will certainly engulf the entire planet when all the "Kondratieff chickens" come home to roost after this is over.

I leave you with the words of a long since departed leader, Julius Caesar, in a similar circumstance that led to "The Fall of the Roman Empire". To give credit where credit is due, I stole this shamelessly from a post by Barnacle Bob on Gold Eagle. But since it's not his quote, I'm sure he won't mind.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch, and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." Caesar

These were not the only words of wisdom from "Barnacle Bob". This above quote was immediately followed by what the Supreme Court had to say in Miranda vs. Arizona, 384

U.S. 436 (1966) (USSC+). It speaks right to the heart of what is wrong with government and corporate America today.

"Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that, in the administration of the criminal law, the end justifies the means…would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face."

All thoughts of these have been cast aside and long forgotten in the past fifteen years of corporate and government financial malfeasance…but now the war drums that sound for Iraq grow louder by the day. Words such as these, in those previous two quotes, will come back to haunt the good citizens of our neighbour to the south in the months and years ahead.

After the events of 9/11, some of America’s freedom quietly disappeared. The next ‘event’ on U.S. soil will see a huge chunk of the rest of America’s freedoms go the same route.

If Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Andrew Jackson were alive today, they would be appalled. As the old saying goes…"those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." It’s hard to believe that all these problems we have today boil down to the fact that the politicians and central bankers of the world could not bide by the constraints that were imposed upon them by the gold standard.

The world that emerges from what’s coming down the pipe will not be as safe or as certain as the one we have now; and whatever form it takes, we aren’t going to like it one bit.

My biggest fear is that the same hands (that are attempting to stoke this patriotic bonfire to an incandescent white heat) may entice her citizens to turn this conflagration into a funeral pyre for the Constitution of the United States.

However, before they get sweet talked into giving this Great Document the old "heave ho", they should consider the words of that great American patriot, Patrick Henry…

"THE CONSTITUTION IS NOT AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO RESTRAIN THE PEOPLE. BUT RATHER IT IS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE PEOPLE TO RESTRAIN THEIR GOVERNMENT."

But any way you slice it or dice it, the western world’s economies and their associated financial systems are on their last legs. You and I know that they can’t keep the old apple cart up and going around the track forever, because sooner or later something is going to blow up in their faces. The ‘Powers That Be’ elitists of the New World Order know it too. It will all end badly, and you can start counting the days as of right now.

Ed Steer Edmonton, Alberta Canada e-mail: edsteer48@hotmail.com

P.S. Another wonderful, but even larger book on this subject, is the two-volume novel Crashmaker written by Victor Sperandeo (Trader Vic) and Alvaro Almeida. It is a fictional account of the same thing, and is a marvelous read…and three times as long as "The Creature". James Turk of the "Freemarket GOLD & MONEY Report" has a wonderful book review hyperlinked here. I urge you to check that out as well.

  Copyright 1999, 2002 Le Metropole Cafe. All rights reserved.

School to Use Eye Scanner for Lunch Fees
Wed Jan 8, 8:10 PM ET  --  Technology
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030109/ap_on_hi_te/britain_retina_check_2
contributed by Jan

If you can be the one to train the children of a generation, then you are the one to shape the future.  Oh, if only we can get them when they are young, then they are ours.  It happens with each generation - if they do not learn or know how things were before them, and their learning is limited to only the new ways, then they eagerly accept the "new" ways - without question.  It is all about control, not security.

LONDON - A new high school said Wednesday its students will be charged for their lunches with a retina scanning device to prevent poor children who eat for free from being ridiculed in the cafeteria.

Dr. Ed Yates, headmaster of the Venerable Bede school, said the advanced eye-recognition software will be in place when the institution opens its doors to 900 students in September in Sunderland, western England.

He said the school is concerned that if students are forced to pay for their lunches in cash the poor ones who receive food for free could be stigmatized. So officials have decided to make the entire school "cashless."

The retina scanning device also will be used in the library when students take out and return books, Yates said.

He assured parents the low-intensity light of the retina scanning devices will be safe for all students.

"We think we are the first (school) in the country to use this," he said of the device. "But this is not a James Bond school for spies. ... This is not science fiction. This is technology that exists."
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SPICE OF LIFE  -  fluoride
"Fluoride" --  Warning: Keep out of the reach of children under 6 years of age.

If you accidentally swallow more than used for brushing, seek professional assistance or contact a Poison Control Center immediately.

By: Spice Williams-Crosby

 This is the type of warning that I've noticed on the back of most toothpastes lately. This concerns me since I know enough about the body's biochemistry to know that whatever I put into my mouth is going to be absorbed into my body through my mouth's mucosal cells, whether I actually swallow something or not. Then I started to wonder what the common ingredient was in these top brand toothpastes that called for such a warning. I did some research and was surprised to find out that the culprit was the very stuff that we've all grown up to trust, that "dentist-recommended" product called fluoride. Wow, have we, once again, been given a bill of goods. I'm so tired of it. Wouldn't it be nice if mega-enterprise made billions of dollars by helping people instead of slowly killing them? Maybe one day, but for now, who knows, perhaps it's a world conspiracy to keep overpopulation down.

Fluoride may, and I emphasize "may," offer some protection from tooth decay, but at what price? I mean, would it be appropriate for us to put varnish on our skin to protect us from the sun? Let's face the facts. Fluoride is a binary compound of fluorine, which is a highly corrosive and poisonous element used in a wide variety of industrial compounds. The misinformation about how great it is may continue, but the reality is that fluoride is an acute toxin with a rating slightly higher than lead, and is one of the most bone seeking elements known to mankind. In fact, the US Public Health Service has stated that fluoride makes our bones more brittle and our dental enamel more porous. No wonder why great minds like microbiologist Professor Albert Schatz (winner of the Nobel Prize and the man who discovered Streptomycin, the cure for tuberculosis and numerous other bacterial infections) has been quoted as saying, "Fluoridation is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated, and it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has."

According to an article that appeared in the 1998 April-May issue of Nexus Magazine (some 50 years after United States authorities began adding fluoride to public water supplies to reduce cavities in children's teeth), there are quite a few declassified government documents suddenly turning up that are revealing a surprising connection between the use of fluoride and the dawning of the nuclear age.

Today, two-thirds of US public drinking water is fluoridated, yet many municipalities still resist the practice, disbelieving the government's assurances of safety. And who can blame them? I mean, after reading what fluoride is, how could anybody think it was a good idea to add it to the water we drink? What is wrong with us? Nature designed drinking water to help us clean out our system, to help us flush it out, not pollute it! Ever since the US prevailed by building the world's first atomic bomb, our nation's public health leaders have maintained that low doses of fluoride are safe for people and good for children's teeth. Well, I think it's a bunch of baloney and I think we should now be reexamining the facts in light of the hundreds of once-secret WWII-era documents that are starting to come forth, including declassified papers of the Manhattan Project — the ultra-secret US Military program that produced the atomic bomb. According to these documents, fluoride was the key chemical in atomic bomb production, and millions of tons were essential for the manufacture of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War. And as one of the most toxic chemicals known to the environment, it shouldn't surprise you that fluoride emerged as the leading chemical health hazard of the US atomic bomb program, both for workers, local farmers, and for nearby communities.

What's also scary is that the US Government's conflict of interest and its motive to prove fluoride safe in the furious debate over water fluoridation since the 1950's has only recently been made clear to the general public, let alone civilian researchers, health professionals and journalists. These declassified documents resonate with a growing body of scientific evidence and a chorus of questions about the health effects of fluoride in the environment. Human exposure to fluoride has mushroomed since WWII, due not only to fluoridated water and toothpaste, but to environmental pollution by major industries, from aluminum to pesticides, where fluoride is a critical industrial chemical as well as a waste by-product. Fluoride is everywhere!— the environment, food, water, you name it.

Open your eyes, people! The impact can be seen literally in the smiles of our children. Large numbers (up to eighty percent in some cities) of young Americans now have dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of excessive fluoride exposure, resulting in whitish flecks or spots, particularly on the front teeth, or dark spots or stripes in more severe cases. It's a nightmare. And even less known to the public is the damage fluoride does to the bones, and how scientists are finally beginning to link the increase of stress fractures among young people in this country with the increase of water fluoridation over the years.

I don't think I'm overreacting when esteemed voices over the years, like the ones below, have warned the American public that water fluoridation has dangerous long-term consequences to health:

1- "I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long-range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable." — Dr. Charles Gordon Heyd, Past President of the American Medical Association

2- "The American Medical Association is NOT prepared to state that no harm will be done to any person by water fluoridation. The AMA has not carried out any research work, either long-term or short term, regarding the possibility of any side effects." — Dr. Flanagan, Assistant Director of Enviromental Health, American Medical Association.

3- "Fluoride may be destroying our bones, our teeth, and overall health… it doesn't need to be added to our water and we may be taking unnecessary risks by doing so." — Dr. Hardy Limeback, a le Canadian fluoride authority, former fluoride advocate and long-standing consultant to the Canadian Dental Association. Now a Professor of Dentistry at the University of Toronto.

4- "The evidence against the safety of this public health policy keeps mounting; it is too compelling to ignore." — Dr. Phyllis Mullenix, Children's Hospital, Boston.

5- "By 1983, I was thoroughly convinced that fluoridation caused more harm than good. I expressed the opinion that some of these children with dental fluorosis could, just possibly, have suffered harm to their bones." — Dr. Colquhoun, former Principal Dental Officer for Auckland New Zealand.

6- " Based on data from the National Academy of Sciences, current levels of fluoride exposure in drinking water may cause arthritis in a substantial portion of the population long before they reach old age." — Dr. Robert Carton, former EPA scientist.

7- "EPA should act immediately to protect the public, not just on the cancer data, but on the evidence of bone fractures, arthritis, mutagenicity and other effects." — Dr. William Marcus, Senior Toxicologist at EPA.

My research further tells me that much of the proof of fluoride's alleged safety in low doses rests on the postwar work done at the University of Rochester in anticipation of lawsuits against the bomb program for human injury. The University of Rochester's classified fluoride studies, code-name "Program F", were started during the war and continued up until the early 1950's. Program F was not about children's teeth. It grew directly out of litigation against the bomb program, and its main purpose was to furnish scientific ammunition which the government and its nuclear contractors could use to defeat lawsuits for human injury. It was quite clear that the bomb program required human studies of fluoride's effects, just as it needed human studies of plutonium's effects. So what happened? In May of 1945, Newburgh, New York quietly fluoridated its water, and over the next 10 years, its residents were secretly studied by the New York State Health Department. Nice, huh? And what's so ridiculous is that the study was conducted by potential law suit defendants who were obviously bias to begin with. Who, in their right mind, given all the facts, would knowingly believe anything they said anyway? Even recent Newburg Mayor, Audrey Carey (she held office from 1992-1999), was quoted after learning about these experiments, "I'm shocked… beyond words. It reminds me of the Tuskegee experiment that was done on syphilis patients down in Alabama." Carey was appalled that any kind of experimentation could be done to people without their knowledge and consent. And so am I.

So, then, you ask, "How much fluoride is too much?" Well, if you do ask me, any amount is too much! 50 years ago, when fluoride was first recommended for municipal water supplies, there were no other sources of fluoride in a person's diet. The "optimum" dose of 1 PPM (parts per million) was proposed because if a person drank four 8 oz glasses of water, they would be receiving about 1 mg of fluoride. Now, however, because fluoride can be found in just about everything you eat or drink, if your son or daughter has only one soft drink, a glass of milk, and a bowl of processed cereal (and no other food the entire day), he or she will more than likely be receiving 230% of the recommended "optimal" dose. That's equivalent to a pill a little bigger than an aspirin. This, to me, is pretty frightening, and I guess to a lot of other citizens, too.

The following is a list of 52 cities rejecting fluoridation since 1990. I say, good for them!
 

I guess I could go on and on, but enough said for now. Help yourself! You can start by buying toothpastes without fluoride in them! They're out there, believe me. I leave you with one more thought. Thousands of years ago, before toothpastes and fluoride, before refined sugars and foods, what prevented all the cavities then? Maybe it was regular cleaning, good nutrition and NO junk foods or drugs. And the next time the government, as well intended as it may or may not be, wants to experiment on my loved ones and me, I'd really appreciate them asking me first.

* If you have any questions and/or would like a revised, autographed edition of Spice's booklet entitled "Diet For A New Age," you may correspond and/or send $14.95 (which includes postage and handling) along with your address to: Spice Williams, 15445 Ventura Blvd., Suite 115, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403. Her Web Site Address is www.spice-of-life.com.

 Natural Muscle is distributed each month to select locations throughout the USA. Check with your local Health Food store or Gym for your copy. For your convenience, you can have NATURAL MUSCLE  delivered to your home for only $24.95. E-mail us at Totalh@aol.com .
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Talking Dog For Sale
contributed by Dale

In Tennessee, a guy sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog for Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the  backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black mutt just sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the mutt replies.

  "So, what's your story?"

The mutt looks up and says, "Well, I discovered this gift pretty  young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.

I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't  getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in.

I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

The owner says, "Ten dollars."

The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him, so cheap?"

The owner replies, "He's such a liar. He's never done any of that.

TEA TREE OIL - what a relief

Back around 1996 I was invited to spend a little time in a community shower in the graybar motel (if you do not know what that is you need to ask) and was awarded a case of foot fungus.  For the first 4 years I was frequently applying every over the counter foot fungus product and still had to scratch my feet and even using a cinder block at the foot of the bed as a scratching block.  It felt SO GOOD.  The scratching would continue for days till the feet were cut open and complicating the situation.

During this time, a doctor friend suggested iodine or bismuth to which I chose iodine and made a foot bath of it.  I got it “strong” by the gallon and diluted it.  This helped, but had the side effect of drying the skin and if I did not dilute it enough I learned what a burn it could be.  Ouch.

Eventually, the iodine bath was discontinued and wearing sandals year round became the norm.  Now the feet quit itching except the small toes sometimes, because they still experienced covering by the straps.  Exposure to air and ultraviolet light controls or kills fungus.

I did of course desire to wear full cover shoes especially when going places more formal.  So, finally some clerks at an office supply store asked if it was not cold (winter time) wearing sandals and I explained that I had the fungus.  One of the clerks mentioned how their brother got a fungus at the graybar motel and used tea tree oil and found relief.

I have been using the tea tree oil for about a month now and this past week I started wearing full cover shoes 5 days in a row, without complaining.

I still am using the tea tree oil and do not know if I will have to use it the rest of my life or if it will cure me of the fungus.  Only time will tell, but at least I have brought it under control – if not working towards cure.

I say it also works on that under the nail fungus too.

DO NOT buy it from the expensive health food stores type places, for as you must know, they are often a rip-off.  They will even sell you “essence” of oils which is like waving the oil of the bottle.  I get it at USA Drug, for about 8.50 for 1 ounce.

The following text if from the web site of “wellbeing” and is presented here for information purposes only.  I am not promoting their product.
 

http://www.wellbeing-uk.com/teatreerange.html

WHAT IS TEA TREE OIL?

Tea Tree Oil is an essential oil extracted from the leaves of the Melaleuca Alternifolia, a species of Tea Tree. The Tea Tree Oil is extracted using a chemical free process called steam distillation which is a particularly pure form of extraction. It is important when buying any Tea Tree product to ensure that it uses oil derived only from the Melaleuca Alternifolia species because this is the one for which all the scientific data applies. All products marketed as Tea Tree Oil are not necessarily the genuine article.

Although first discovered in 1925 the current renewal of interest in Tea Tree Oil did not begin until the sixties when people began to question widespread use of chemical pollutants and the side effects caused by some prescribed drugs. The result of this was that natural products including Tea Tree Oil became fashionable again.

There is now a large and growing body of clinical evidence to support the anecdotal claims made over fifty years of the therapeutic virtues of Tea Tree Oil.
 

THE THERAPEUTIC VALUE OF TEA TREE OIL

Tea Tree Oil has a number of remarkable properties which make it a powerful healing substance. It is a strong organic solvent, which can actually dissolve the lumps of white blood cells that make up pus and this allows the blood stream to clean them away. It can also penetrate the skin and reach otherwise inaccessible sites of infection such as under the fingernails. The oil is also an effective antiseptic and kills bacteria quickly, even the most stubborn ones. Finally, Tea Tree Oil is an effective fungicide which means it kills the organisms that cause tinea, ringworm and candida.

GENERAL USAGE OF TEA TREE OIL

Tea Tree Oil may help to rid animals of fleas and humans of head and body lice. It can reduce the inflammation, irritation and reaction caused by insect bites and is effective in the control of dandruff and other scalp problems. It is also useful in the treatment of burns because its solvent and penetrating properties can help reduce pain and inflammation and its proven anti-microbial activity can lessen the possibility of infection.

 Tea Tree Oil is an excellent solvent and it has been observed that the action of the oil is enhanced by the presence of blood, pus or organic debris. It has a proven action against methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and as such has been recommended to be used when cleaning hospital areas that may be infected with this virulent bacterium.

The powerful anti-fungal action confirms its efficacy for the treatment of Candida Albicans.

THE IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY
Many producers have seen the opportunity to make easy money out of the quickly growing Tea Tree market by selling cheap, low quality and sometimes contaminated oil to users who often do not understand what they are buying.

"The dissident does not operate in the realm of power. He is not seeking power. Dissidence is politics outside the sphere of power. He offers his own skin because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen regardless of the cost."
-Vaclav Havel
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This would be a rather appropriate article for some recent emails I have received and responded.  I think checking the web to find Project for the New American Century  and the link ( http://www.olayangroup.com )at the end of the article would help shed credibility on the matter.

?FPRIVATEZNet | Iraq
America's Bid For Global Dominance
by John Pilger; The New Statesman; December 12, 2002

The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world's resources, it said, was "some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the "new Pearl Harbor", described as "the opportunity of ages". The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and "think-tanks" were established to avenge the American "defeat" in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a "peace dividend" following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

One of George W Bush's "thinkers" is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about "total war", I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America's "war on terror". "No stages," he said. "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now."

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan's education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism. The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America's Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.

As for Iraq's alleged "weapons of mass destruction", these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification," it says, "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'", which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war. Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states "if necessary". Under cover of propaganda about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".

In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution. You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: "the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position".

"Our position" is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair's "Iraq dossier" and Jack Straw's inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to "explain"). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.

This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere ventriloquists' dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how "bad" Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America's international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

With thanks to Norm Dixon and Chris Floyd
-------------------------------------------------------------
This communication and any files transmitted with it may be confidential or priviledged.
Disclosure, distribution or copying of this communication may be prohibited.
Website :   http://www.olayangroup.com
Offices: Athens-London-New York-Riyadh-Al Khobar-Jeddah

If you are promoting the idea of warring with Iraq or Laden or others, consider the wisdom of history.

If any question why we died Tell them because our fathers lied.
 -- Kipling
 

A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.
 -- Cicero

All wars are economic in origin.
 -- Bernard Baruc

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Civil Disobedience Is Not Our Problem

"civil disobedience. . . is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.  Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have  obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to  war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . Our  problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of  poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is  that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all  the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem."
     -----Howard Zinn, "Failure to Quit", p. 45
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Does a MASTER PLAN to rule the world exist?
http://www.maxexchange.com/illuminati/index.htm

YES!  It has been known and published in various forms since the Bavarian government circulated their famous report on the activities and plans of a secret organization called the Illuminati in the 1780's. It has to have been generations old in planning. George Washington spoke of a secret society called the "Illuminati" and this is what he had to say about this invisible power behind the throne which seeks to over-throw all forms of government so that they might inherit the earth:
"Reverend Sir: It was not my intention to doubt that the doctrine of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am . . ." (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941, Vol. 20)

In 1953 the California Senate Investigating Committee reported: "So-called modern Communism is apparently the same hypocritical and deadly conspiracy to destroy civilization that was founded by the secret order of the Illuminati in Bavaria on May 1, 1776, and that raised its hoary head in our colonies here as the critical period before the adoption of our Federal Constitution . . .

Since the official and highly organized founding of the Syndicate occurred in Europe in 1776, our isolated and founding nation was thus spared the main thrust of its tentacles until after our revolution occurred and our Constitution adopted."

Just three years after the Communists seized Russia, there was printed in the Illustrated Sunday Herald dated Feb. 8, 1920, the following statement by Winston Churchill about the Illuminati: "From the days of Sparticus - Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela-Kuhn, Rosa Luxembourg and Emma Goldman, this world-wide conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy for the French Revolution. It has been the main-spring of every subversive movement in the 19th Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." (A. Ralph Epperson, "The New World Order")

In January 1789 the Marquis de Luchet, horrified by the impending onslaught by the Illuminati, published the following before the fall of the Bastile to warn the people:

"Deluded people; You must understand that there exists a conspiracy in favor of despotism and against liberty, incapacity against talent, of vice against virtue, of ignorance against light! It is formed in the depths of the most impenetrable darkness, a society is to rule the world, to appropriate the authority of sovereigns, to usurp their place . . . Every species of error which afflicts the earth, every half-baked idea, every invention serves to fit the doctrines of the Illuminati . . . I see that all great fundamentals which society has made good use of to retain the allegiance of man - such as religion and law - will be without power to destroy an organization which has made itself a cult, and put itself above all human legislation. Finally, I see the release of calamities who end will be lost in the night of ages, activities devours the entrails of the globe and escapes into the air with a violent and devastating explosion."

The founder of the Illuminati, Adam Weishaupt had this to say, "The most wonderful thing of all is that the distinguished Lutheran and Calvinist theologians who belong to our order really believe that they see in it the true and genuine sense of Christian religion. O mortal man, is there nothing you cannot be made to believe."
He went on to write, "The true purpose of the order was to rule the world. To achieve this it was necessary for the order to destroy all religions, overthrow all governments and abolish private property . . . The strength of our order lies in its concealment, let it never appear in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation."

Myron Fagan recorded his exposé on the Illuminati and Council on Foreign Relations in the late 1960's on three LP Records. We present his lecture in six parts representing each side of those Records.

The Great Global Social Security Giveaway?
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2003/tst010603.htm
By Ron Paul - U.S. Representative from Texas
contributed by Larry

As we ring in the new year, dark clouds are gathering over our already dangerously fragile Social Security system. In December, the press reported on a looming
deal between the administration and the government of Mexico which would make hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens eligible for U.S. Social Security
benefits. The centerpiece of the agreement would be a so-called "totalization," which would mean that even if a Mexican citizen did not work in the United States long
enough to qualify for Social Security, the number of years worked in Mexico would be added to bring up the total and thus make the Mexican worker eligible for
cash transfers from the United States.

Worse still, thousands of foreigners who would qualify for U.S. Social Security benefits actually came to the United States and worked here illegally. Under
"totalization," a foreigner who came to the United States illegally could work fewer than the required number of years, return to Mexico for the rest of his working
years, and collect full U.S. Social Security benefits while living in Mexico. That is an insult to the millions of Americans who pay their entire working lives into the
system and now face the possibility that there may be nothing left when it is their turn to retire.

The proposed agreement is nothing more than a financial reward to those who have willingly and knowingly violated our own immigration laws. Talk about an
incentive for illegal immigration! How many more would break the law to come to this country if promised U.S. government paychecks for life? Is creating a global
welfare state on the back of the American taxpayer a good idea? The program also establishes a very disturbing precedent of U.S. foreign aid to individual citizens
rather than to states.

Estimates of what this deal with the Mexican government would cost top one billion dollars per year. As the system braces for a steep increase in those who will be
drawing from the Social Security trust fund, it makes no sense to expand it into a global welfare system. Social Security was designed to provide support for retired
American citizens who worked in the United States. We should be shoring up the system for those Americans who have paid in for decades, not expanding it to
cover foreigners who have not.

Supporters of the Social Security to Mexico deal may attempt to downplay the effect the agreement would have on the system, but actions speak louder than words:
According to several press reports, the State Department and the Social Security Administration are already negotiating to build a new building in Mexico City to
handle the expected rush of applicants for this new program!

It is uncertain whether the administration will seek Congressional approval for this agreement. Let’s hope that such a substantive move- with such serious financial
and legal implications- will not be made by Executive Order.

In the 107th Congress, I introduced the Social Security Preservation Act (H.R. 219), which would ensure that all money in the Social Security trust fund is spent
solely on Social Security. As Congress continues to demonstrate an inability to control spending that threatens the Social Security trust fund, the need for this
legislation has never been greater. That is why I intend to re-introduce this legislation in the 108th Congress, which opens this month. Social Security should be limited
to United States citizens and nationals who have paid into the system. It should not be a global giveaway.

Police Dragnets for DNA Tests Draw Criticism
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/national/04DNA.html?ex=1042952400&en=04aaab5b170f5bbe&ei=5004&partner=UNTD

page 2 of the article is at this link
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/04/national/04DNA.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5004&en=04aaab5b170f5bbe&ex=1042952400&partner=UNTD
contributed by Bill

BATON ROUGE, La., Jan. 3 — Recently, the police asked Shannon F. Kohler if they could swab the inside of his mouth to analyze his DNA. It was a request they made of 800 men in southern Louisiana as they searched for the serial killer who has slain four young women, leaving behind genetic material in each case.

It was his choice, Mr. Kohler said the officers told him, but if he refused, they would get a court order and that would get in the newspapers and then everyone would know he was not cooperating. The approach was heavy-handed and foolish, he said, especially since he has feet much bigger than the prints left by the killer and had phone bills that show he was at home when the murders took place.

The questions Mr. Kohler is raising about DNA testing are also being asked by lawyers and other experts around the country who say the growing use of DNA dragnets like the one here, already one of the largest in American history, is troubling.

The tests, supposedly voluntary, can still be coercive, critics say, not only harassing innocent people but also potentially violating suspects' constitutional protections against compelled self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure. Future prosecutions could be undermined, some legal scholars, defense lawyers and even some prosecutors say. Some question whether the dragnets' limited success justifies the effort and expense. And even those who endorse the idea of DNA sweeps argue over whether — and why — the government should keep on file the genetic profiles of those who are proved to be innocent.

The tests trouble some for the very reason that police find them attractive: they offer the most incontrovertible proof of identity.

The idea for a DNA dragnet — sampling people who are not suspects but merely live or work near a crime scene — emerged in Britain. In 1987, the police tested 4,000 men in Leicestershire before the rapist and killer of two girls was caught after he got another man to take the DNA test for him. One of the first dragnets in which DNA actually identified a killer was in Wales; a neighbor of a slain rape victim was caught in a DNA sweep of 2,000 men.

By 1998, dragnets had taken hold in northern Germany, where 16,400 people were tested — believed to be the most yet — before a mechanic was matched to a rape-murder.

In the United States, mass screenings have had less success and stirred up far more controversy. In 1994 and 1995, the Metro-Dade police in the Miami suburbs took more than 2,000 DNA samples in search of the strangler of six prostitutes, and initially focused on three possible matches before each man was ruled out. Still, the killer was caught only after neighbors found a prostitute bound and gagged in his apartment while he appeared in court on an unrelated robbery charge.

In 1998, the police in Prince George's County, Md., sought DNA samples from 400 male workers at a county hospital where an administrator had been raped and strangled. Union members complained that the police were bullying employees into agreeing and were singling out maintenance workers. No match was made, and the killing remains unsolved.

The chief of the county's police force at the time, John Farrell, defended the DNA tests to USA Today in 1998 as analogous to fingerprinting everyone who worked or shopped in a store that was burglarized, to eliminate potential suspects as well as to catch the criminal.

But mass fingerprint gathering is all but unheard of in criminal cases, said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, precisely because of the probability that a print obtained from a crime scene will turn out to be someone's other than the criminal's.

DNA is different, Professor Fox said, which accounts for its allure: "If you have a rape and murder, and there's semen recovered, it's highly unlikely that it was innocently left there."

Not surprisingly, DNA screenings have been much more successful, if no less provocative, when the police have narrowed their focus to smaller groups — generally those with opportunity, if not motive.

In Lawrence, Mass., in 1999, the police drew blood from 32 men at a nursing home where a resident had been raped and impregnated. A nurse's aide was linked to the crime and pleaded guilty. In Los Angeles that year, detectives who reopened the case of a 1985 killing of a sheriff's deputy set about sampling 165 potential suspects. They had finished 12 when a former colleague of the victim refused to comply; detectives won a court order, matched his DNA to the crime, and were about to arrest him when he killed himself.

Professor Fox, an expert on serial killers who wrote a book on the murders of five University of Florida students in Gainesville in 1990, said investigators in that case, with whom he worked as a consultant, checked the DNA of hundreds of people identified as possible suspects, often surreptitiously.

"We'd follow people as they went through Burger King, and pick up a straw they used, for saliva," he said. "We'd go through their trash on the sidewalk. Not everybody we got DNA on even knew it."

The police were far less quiet about their DNA testing in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1994, after 13 women in a predominantly white community were raped by a black man. Investigators identified more than 700 suspects and took 160 DNA samples from black men, relying on tips that often proved specious.

The strategy caused a racial furor, with blacks saying they were being randomly singled out, and the rapist was caught only after a cab driver spotted him with blood on his clothes.

Some legal experts are now calling for an even more controversial use of genetic forensics: a national databank of DNA taken from every American at birth, solely for the purpose of criminal identifications.

Michael E. Smith, a University of Wisconsin law professor who led a working group for the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence, said such a databank would remove the danger of racial discrimination in DNA testing, as well as the risk that law enforcement agents seeking genetic information would turn to hospitals and medical laboratories, eroding medical privacy rights.

Even better, Professor Smith said, it would make DNA a true deterrent to crime, which it cannot be so long as the DNA databanks contain only information on known criminals and suspects.

The federal government's existing DNA database, by law, includes only material taken from convicted criminals and crime scenes. Increasingly, states including Louisiana and Virginia have authorized the collection of DNA from people arrested for rape, murder and other violent crimes, and in some states even for burglary and lesser charges. The law in most states is much less clear when it comes to the DNA of people merely suspected of a crime but not charged. Yet it is being tested.

In New York City, for example, the medical examiner's office maintains a citywide database of DNA obtained from crime scenes and from suspects in major crimes, either with their consent or with a warrant, said Dr. Howard J. Baum, deputy director of forensic biology.

But in November, a defendant in a Brooklyn rape case who was compelled to give a DNA blood sample won a court order barring the medical examiner from placing it in the citywide DNA database, known to medical examiners as Linkage. The defendant, Carlos Rodriguez, argued that a 1994 state law preventing DNA test results from being disclosed without the subject's consent also barred officials from entering those results into the city database. Justice John M. Leventhal of the State Supreme Court even wrote that the mere existence of the database might constitute a felony under the 1994 law. The medical examiner's office is appealing the ruling.

Mr. Kohler, the Baton Rouge man who demanded a court order before giving a DNA sample, says he, too, plans to sue to get it, and his genetic information, back from the police.

Mr. Kohler, a 44-year-old welder, said he resented the way the police relied on a pair of sketchy tips and seemingly irrelevant evidence as their probable cause, though it was enough to persuade a local judge to issue a warrant. Mr. Kohler said the police cited his 20-year-old burglary conviction, but not his full pardon and restitution in 1996.

Mr. Kohler said he felt that the police violated the Constitution by leaning on him for the DNA sample.

"These rights are what makes America America, to me," he said, adding that he felt he could afford to protest while many others could not.

"My friends know me, and I know me, and other people really don't matter," he said. "I'm not running a business, and I don't have any kids. So I had the freedom to take a stand and not hurt the people around me."

In the end, Mr. Kohler, alone among 15 people who refused the DNA test, was indeed identified in public court documents, and hours later a local television reporter appeared at his front door. The police called the court filing a good-faith clerical mistake. The DNA test later cleared Mr. Kohler. And the killer is still at large.

Reasons Why Americans Must Not Support a War Against Iraq
www.cooperativeresearch.org   and search for the above heading
contributed by D

 This information sheet was compiled by a group of everyday Americans who understand that true patriotism necessarily implies a willingness to be critical of the government when it fails to represent the needs of its people.

·       An unprovoked invasion of Iraq and the removal of its leader by force would only sow more seeds of anti-American sentiment among the populations of the Middle East and inspire more acts of terrorism against innocent Americans.  This view was most recently voiced by experts who testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late July and early August.

·       The American economy is steadily deteriorating:  The trade deficit and the budget deficit are both increasing, the tax base is declining, personal and corporate bankruptcies are on the rise at a staggering rate, consumer confidence is plummeting, investor confidence has all but disappeared, the stock market just recently hit new lows not seen since 1998, millions of Americans are without health insurance, unemployment is rising, affordable housing is almost nonexistent, the U.S. dollar is losing value (which could eventually result in inflation and rising interest rates), state governments - with California in the lead – are under severe financial duress, and the very existence of Social Security and Medicare is at peril.  An expensive war will only exacerbate these problems.  Is this the time to spend billions of dollars to invade a third world country clear across the globe?

·       The proposed war against Iraq has nothing to do with the government’s purported objective of ridding the world of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.  Rather the real motive behind removing Saddam Hussein from power and imposing a U.S.-friendly government is, as Henry Kissinger admitted in an op-ed piece published by The Washington Post, ‘essentially geopolitical.’  By this he meant that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to American citizens, but rather a threat to the profits of American oil corporations who are covetous of the huge amounts of oil that are inconveniently located in a country ruled by a leader who is not pro-American.   It also means that establishing American hegemony in that oil-rich country is fundamental to the long term strategic -interests of multinational corporations (you know, the ones that have cheated investors out of billions of dollars) who want to increase their influence elsewhere in the world in order to hedge against the possibility of a total economic collapse in the U.S.

·       Outgoing Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, informed incoming President George Bush in January of 2000: “Iraq no longer poses a military threat to its neighbors.”

·       The administration has admitted that it has no evidence.  Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Atherton, recently told reporters that in closed sessions in Sept. 2002, administration officials had been asked several times whether they had evidence of an imminent threat from Hussein against U.S. citizens.  “They said ‘no,’ ” she said, “Not ‘no, but’ or ‘maybe,’ but ‘no.’ I was stunned. Not shocked. Not surprised. Stunned.”

·       The February 6 edition of the New York Times stated, “The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is convinced that Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups.”  The NYT reiterated this view in a recent editorial that was published on August 3 2002.

·       The 2002 annual state department report on state-sponsored terrorism admitted that Saddam Hussein’s regime has few links with Islamic fundamentalists.

·      On August 15 2002, Brent Scowcroft, one of the Republican Party’s most respected foreign policy ‘experts’ wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he stated, “[T]here is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam's goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.  He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address.”

·       In January of 2002, the International Atomic Energy agency sent inspectors into Iraq and found no evidence of nuclear weapons.

·       In 1999, a committee under the UN Security Council concluded that Iraq’s primary biological weapons facility “had been destroyed and rendered harmless.”

·       Hans von Sponneck, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000, wrote in 2001, “Iraq today is no longer a military threat to anyone. Intelligence agencies know this. All the conjectures about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq lack evidence.”

·       In late Aug. 2002, MSNBC reported, “Military officials have told NBC News that there is no evidence that Iraq has produced or obtained any nuclear fuel, clashing with the Bush administration’s official statements that Saddam Hussein is close to developing a nuclear weapon.”  Numerous other U.S. military, intelligence and administration officials have made similar statements to CNN, Knight Ridder, and the Washington Post.

·       David Albright, a physicist who investigated Iraq's nuclear weapons program following the 1991 Persian Gulf War as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspection team told The Washington Post that “government experts on nuclear technology who dissented from the Bush administration's view told him they were expected to remain silent. Several Energy Department officials familiar with the aluminum shipments declined to comment.”  This strongly suggests the Bush administration is lying to the American people.

·       A report published by The Institute for Science and International Security in September 2002, challenged the Bush administration’s recent assertion that Iraq’s alleged importing of aluminum tubes was proof that Iraq is an imminent ‘nuclear threat.’ The Washington Post, summarizing the document, reported that the administration did not “provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational” The report further noted, according to the WP, that “the seized tubes were made of a kind of aluminum that is ill-suited for welding. Other specifications of the imported metal are at odds with what is known about Iraq's previous attempts to build centrifuges. In fact, the report said, Iraq had largely abandoned aluminum for other materials, such as specialized steel and carbon fiber, in its centrifuges at the time its nuclear program was destroyed by allied bombers in the Gulf War.”

·       Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector who describes himself as a staunch Republican recently stated, “The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays that would have been detected by now if they existed. We have been watching, via satellite and other means, and we have seen none of this.”

·       Numerous experts have challenged the so-called ‘evidence’ that has recently been released by the Bush administration asserting that Iraq is developing biological and chemical weapons.  Experts who have spoken out include: Scott Ritter, a former UNCOM chief weapons inspector; Hans Blix, current UNMOVIC chief weapons inspector; Count Hans von Sponeck, former UN under-secretary general; Meir Stieglitz, an Israeli military analyst, Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and numerous other experts quoted by reputable mainstream presses, including the conservative Washington Times.

·       Western journalists have made recent visits to several of the purported weapons facilities and have found no evidence suggesting that they are being used to produce chemical or biological weapons.

·       An attack on Iraq could provoke Saddam Hussein into invading Israel thus drawing the region’s most resented state into the conflict.  A joint U.S./Israeli war against Muslim Iraq would likely inspire uncontrollable popular uprisings in neighboring Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt.

·       A U.S. attack on Iraq would be viewed upon by many in the Arab world as an unprovoked act by Western imperialists.  Many fear that the pro-Western governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordon, which are already breaking at the seams, would experience massive social unrest as a result of a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

·       Saddam Hussein’s military is much stronger and loyal than the former Taliban’s rag tag army of hungry conscripts.  The Iraqi dictator commands an army consisting of 350,000 men, 2,700 tanks, 90 jets, 100 helicopters, and 300 mobile anti-aircraft missile launchers.  Experts agree that his extremely loyal and well-trained elite republican guard would present a considerable challenge to American troops fighting on the ground. Even Colin Powell admitted, “The Taliban neither consolidated its hold nor built regular armed forces. Iraq, on the other hand, has a strong state apparatus and a sizeable professional military.”

·       A U.S. ground invasion of Iraq would require a large commitment of American soldiers because unlike in Afghanistan, where the U.S. relied heavily on the Northern Alliance as a proxy army, there are no Iraqi opposition groups powerful enough to confront Saddam’s military forces.  U.S. military strategists believe a ground force of up to 250,000 American soldiers would be necessary to defeat Saddam Hussein’s army.  They concede that a large number American casualties would be inevitable.

·       Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is densely populated.  Civilian casualties would consequently be much worse

·       An attack on Iraq would likely provoke Saddam Hussein into using whatever destructive weapons he actually has.  The Observer (London) reported, “The planners [in the Pentagon] have decided they will have 48 hours to find and kill or capture Saddam before he tries to deploy any nuclear, biological or major conventional weapons he may have.”  And former Iraqi intelligence officer Wafiq al-Samarrai similarly stated: “The US should know that Saddam will not hesitate to use weapons of mass destruction on American military groupings. Diplomacy is the only choice for the United States.”

·       Even if the proposed military operation were to succeed in ousting Saddam Hussein from power, who would replace him?   The U.S. currently has no clear plan for a post-Saddam government.  The various departments within the U.S. government are at odds with one another over who would be a suitable leader. And even if the U.S. could decide on a successor to Saddam Hussein, it’s certain that the Iraqis themselves, representing several different ethnic groups, would not readily accept a leader imposed upon them by a foreign power.  Experts almost unanimously agree that U.S. plans to invade Iraq lack considerable foresight and hold the potential to make an already bad situation in the Middle East even worse.  As Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution said, “Removing Saddam will be opening a Pandora's box, and there might not be any easy way to close it back up.”

·       The Joint Chiefs of Staff (comprised of high ranking military officers) have stated their opposition to invading Iraq.  On July 22, Electronic Intelligence Weekly reported that according to a “senior retired U.S. military official” whom the intelligence newsletter interviewed on July 15, “there is total unity among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the regional Commanders-in-Chief, in opposition to an Iraq invasion.”  The source named the new Commander of the Pacific Command as one of the more vocal critics of Washington’s war plans, “noting that the Pacific Command is the key support for all U.S. military operations in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.”  On July 29 The Washington Post published a similar article in which it was reported: “Despite President Bush's repeated bellicose statements about Iraq, many senior U.S. military officers contend that President Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat.”  The Post quoted one officer who actually questioned the president's motives, saying, “I'm not aware of any linkage to al Qaeda or terrorism, so I have to wonder if this has something to do with his father being targeted by Saddam.”

·       Most of the international community opposes the U.S. plan to illegally invade Iraq and forcefully dispose of Saddam Hussein.  Countries that have expressed serious concerns over the Bush administration’s ambitions include: Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

·       Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told David Corn (11-30-2002), Washington editor for The Nation, “They [the hawks] have no reasonable plan, no magic button to push. They want to overthrow Saddam Hussein, but the only way to do that is put U.S. ground forces in Iraq. That would be a bloody mess and we would have no support whatsoever from other countries.”

·       Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponneck, former UN humanitarian coordinators for Iraq, have authored numerous op-ed pieces in major newspapers denouncing U.S. plans for war against Iraq. The two men had resigned from their positions in the U.N. in protest of the U.N. sanctions on Iraq which they argue are genocidal because of the more than one million innocent people that have died as a direct result of the policy.

·       Several former government officials have spoken against the Bush administration’s current war plans, including Henry Kissinger, former secretary of state; Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor; James Baker, former secretary of state; Jack Kemp; Lawrence S. Eagleburger, former secretary of state; Jack Binns, former ambassador to Honduras; Madeline Albright, former secretary of State; former President Jimmy Carter; and James Webb, former assistant secretary of defense and secretary of the Navy.

·       Even the Iraqi “opposition” groups are against U.S. plans to forcibly remove Saddam Hussein.  Ayatollah Mohammad Bakr al-Hakkim of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq told one reporter, “There is no need to send troops from outside to Iraq.  It could be seen as an invasion and could create new problems.   . . . . The best thing the US can do is force the regime not to use its heavy weapons against the people, like they did in Kosovo. Then the Iraqi people can bring change--it must be done by the Iraqis themselves.”  Massoud Barzani of the Kurdish Democratic Party stated back in February, “We will not be ordered by America or any others. We will not be a bargaining chip or tool of pressure to be used against Iraq.” And Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan declared on August 7, “We are not for blindly participating in any attack or in any plan.  . . .  We are not in favor of having a new dictatorship replacing the old one.”

More reasons not to invade Iraq and the documentation for the above information can be found at www.cooperativeresearch.org
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'Felony stop' leaves family traumatized

Mary Jo Denton
Herald-Citizen Staff
http://www.herald-citizen.com/NF/omf.wnm/herald/news_story.html?[rkey=0024251+[cr=gdn
contributed by D

And this is all in a days work.  It is routine.  When will the madness end?

It was the most traumatic experience the Smoak family of North Carolina has ever had, and it happened yesterday afternoon as they traveled
through Cookeville on their way home from a vacation in Nashville.

Before their ordeal was over, three members of the family had been yanked out of their car and handcuffed on the side of Interstate 40 in
downtown Cookeville, and their beloved dog, Patton, had been shot to death by a police officer as they watched.

What was their crime?

There was no crime.

But a passerby with a cell phone apparently assumed a crime had occurred when a wallet flew from a car on Interstate 40 near Nashville.

That citizen called police and inadvertently set in motion what would make it the most horrible vacation the James Smoak family of Saluda, North
Carolina, has ever had.

Today, the Smoak children and their parents were still weeping over what happened to them in Cookeville.

By today, they had also filed complaints with two police agencies, prompting internal investigations, they had met with Tennessee Highway
Patrol Capt. Randy Hoover, and they were on their way to talk to Cookeville Mayor Charles Womack.

Because official internal investigations are underway at the Tennessee Highway Patrol and at the Cookeville Police Dept., the Herald-Citizen
was unable to get details of those two agencies' accounts of the incident.

But the Smoak family willingly told their story to anyone who would listen; they hope by doing so that something might be done to prevent it from
happening to another family.

James Smoak, 38, who was traveling in the family station wagon with his wife, Pamela, their 17-year-old son, Brandon, and the family's two pet
bulldogs, Patton and Cassie, had lost his wallet after stopping for gas as they left Davidson County on Wednesday afternoon.

But he didn't know he lost it. Apparently, he had placed it on top of the car while pumping gas, and it flew off somewhere on the highway a short
time later.

Not knowing his wallet was lost, he and his family traveled on, heading east on their way home to North Carolina.

A few cars behind James and Pamela's station wagon, his parents and the two younger Smoak children were traveling in the elder Smoak's car.

Just a few miles east of Cookeville, James Smoak began to notice that a THP squad car was following him, though the officer was not pulling
him over, just staying behind him, changing lanes any time Smoak did, moving in and out of traffic each time Smoak did.

"It was obvious he was looking at me, not at other vehicles, and I'm thinking I must have done something (in my driving), but I don't know what,"
Smoak said today.

When Smoak reached the 287 exit area in Cookeville, three other police cars suddenly appeared, and the trooper then turned on blue lights and
pulled the Smoak car over.

"I immediately pulled to the side, and expecting him to come to the window, I started reaching for my wallet to get my license and it was not
there," Smoak said.

About that time, he heard the officer broadcast orders over a bullhorn, telling him to toss the keys out the car window and get out with his hands
up and walk backwards to the rear of the car.

Still not knowing what he was being stopped for, Smoak obeyed, and when he reached the back of the car, with a gun pointed at Smoak, the
trooper ordered him to get on his knees, face the back of the car and put his head down.

When he did that, the officer handcuffed him and placed him in the patrol car. Then the same orders were blared over the bullhorn to "passenger"
and Pamela Smoak got out with her hands up, was ordered to the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed. Next, Brandon was ordered out and
handcuffed in the same way.

Terrified at what was happening to them for no reason they knew, the family was also immediately concerned about their two pet dogs being left
in the car there on the highway with the car doors open.

"We kept asking the officers -- there were several officers by now -- to close the car doors because of our dogs, but they didn't do it," said
Pamela Smoak.

And as the officers worked in the late evening darkness, their weapons drawn as the Smoaks were being handcuffed, the dog Patton came out
of the car and headed toward one of the Cookeville Police officers who was assisting the THP.

"That officer had a flashlight on his shotgun, and the dog was going toward that light and the officer shot him, just blew his head off," said Pamela
Smoak.

"We had begged them to shut the car doors so our dogs wouldn't get out, and they didn't do that."

As the dog was heading out of the car toward the officer, "we had yelled, begging them to let us get him, but the officer shot him," she said.

Grieving for their dog and in shock over their apparent arrest for some unknown crime, the family could only wait. At one point, one state trooper
did tell them they "matched the description" in a robbery that had occurred in Davidson County, Pamela Smoak said.

The ordeal went on for a time after that, the family terrified and in grief over the dog.

Finally, after a time, someone in authority figured out that the officers here had stopped and were holding the very family that someone in
Davidson County had assumed had been robbed, though how that assumption grew to the authorization for a felony stop, James Smoak cannot
understand, he said today.

"Finally, they asked me my name and I told them my name, date of birth, and other information, and they talked by radio to someone in Davidson
County and finally realized that a mistake had been made," he said.

"A lady in Davidson County had seen that wallet fly off our car and had seen money coming out of it and going all over the road, and somehow
that became a felony and they made a felony stop, but no robbery or felony had happened," Pamela Smoak said.

"Apparently, they had listened to some citizen with a cell phone and let her play detective down there," said James Smoak.

"Here we are just a family on vacation, and we had to suffer this."

When the officers did discover the mistake, "they said, 'Okay, we're releasing you and we're sorry,'" Smoak said.

As soon as Brandon was released from the handcuffs, he rushed over to the dead dog and began to cry, Smoak said.

And that's when one of the most infuriating parts of the ordeal happened, according to James Smoak.

"I saw one of the THP officers walk over to the city officer who had shot the dog and grin," he said.

He reported that to the supervising officer, THP Lt. Jerry Andrews, and Andrews "was very nice, very professional," Smoak said.

"He told me the officer was not laughing, but I know he was," said Smoak.

Smoak's parents had come along behind the other car and had seen all the commotion and stopped too, and now all three children were crying
over their pet dog, as they were still doing today.

The Smoaks gathered the body of their pet and went to a motel here to spend the night. But they didn't get much rest, and at one point, James
Smoak became so upset he had to go to the hospital for medical treatment.

They also worked throughout last night to contact all the authorities they could in order to lodge their complaints about what had happened.

Today, Beth Womack, a THP spokesperson in Nashville, told the H-C that an Internal Affairs investigation is underway and that every effort will
be made to "find out exactly what happened and why."

"As I understand it, a report was made in Davidson County to our officers that this car had been seen leaving at a high rate of speed and that a
significant amount of money had come out of the car and someone became suspicious," she said.

An internal investigation is also underway at the Cookeville Police Dept., Capt. Nathan Honeycutt told the H-C today.

James Smoak wonders about the logic of "a robber who would be tossing the money out of the car."

He also wonders about police procedure that would "take this insinuation from a citizen" and "turn it into what happened to us."

"Out there after they handcuffed us at gunpoint and put us in the police cars, they did not ask for ID, and later on, they actually released us just on
my word about my identity, with only the confirmation by radio from an officer in Davidson County who was looking at my lost wallet and the ID in
it down there," he said. "What if I actually had been a robber and not just a family man on vacation?"

His children hope they never come to Tennessee for another vacation.

"Poor Patton," said 13-year-old Jeb Smoak. "When he was killed out there, it was the first time I ever saw my brother, Brandon, cry. Brandon is
the toughest person I've ever met, and he cried."

The other dog, a puppy named Cassie, was "trembling all over" after the ordeal, Jeb Smoak said.

"She's being real quiet today. She knows we're all grieving."

James Smoak, though still deeply upset today, said he understands that "the officer will say the dog was coming after him."

But it could all have been prevented, didn't have to happen, he is convinced.

In addition to telling his family's story to Capt. Randy Hoover, who "was very nice and very professional," and to a Cookeville Police official last
night and to Mayor Womack today, Smoak also plans to tell his lawyer, he said.

"And I also want to tell it to the Tennessee Department of Tourism," he said.

Published January 02, 2003 11:54 AM CST
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A Practical Guide For Lie Detection
By Alan C. Edwards
Freedom Center USA.com
12-30-2
contributed by D

We live in a world of lies and deception. The ability to detect these lies is one of the major differences that separates the wise from the foolish, the truly educated from 'educated' fools, realists from wishful thinkers, and the gullible from the astute. It was Mark Twain who observed that most of human grief, sorrow, and man-made calamities came not from sheer ignorance, but the consequences of untrue beliefs. 'It's not from things we don't know,' he said, 'but things we know that aren't so.'

The world is now headed for a man-made calamity of enormous proportions and being led by people motivated by greed, hatred, and lust for power. These people control national and world events by their ability to manipulate people with lies and propaganda. Their power is exerted through their total control of all popular media. This extends to nearly all forms of news, information, and entertainment.

Even church services are under their control. Churches are controlled by the IRS. Guidelines to what can be said and what cannot be said from the pulpit are found in the IRS qualifications for [501(c) 3] tax exempt status. Clergy who follow these rules are recognized as legitimate religious organizations and given tax exemption, those who dare to tell the truth about what is really going on are declared political propaganda organizations or 'cults' and denied the exemption, or in the case of the Branch Davidians, shot, gassed and burned.

They have used the entertainment industry to create a generation of immoral violence prone savages whose humane feelings have been destroyed by movies that glorify death and destruction and whose minds have been polluted with nerve jangling noise they call 'music' with lyrics so vile that they cannot be repeated in polite company. Public schools are no longer under the control of local school boards. The schools are now under the control of those who are determined to destroy our civilization and create a generation of obedient slaves with no more mental capacity than a barnyard animal.

These people look upon other human beings as mere cattle to be used for any purpose that they deem desirable.

This conspiracy against humanity has accomplished all this through the skillful application of lies and propaganda. If people could recognize the techniques used by lying propagandists they would not fall prey to their lies. The following is an examination of the techniques used.

Lying by omission or telling half truths is a popular technique. This is deliberate omission of vital information necessary for understanding. The truth may be only partially revealed to cause confusion and erroneous conclusions. It may also be given a 'spin' to direct your thinking to the conclusion they want you to have. And finally, the manufactured lie. This kind of lie is usually eventually found out, but almost always after the desired damage is done.

Another technique is the smear by using erroneous and despicable labels  to characterize their enemies. Lenin stated that the enemy must be described in terms that sows revulsion among the masses. Terms that have been used for this purpose are; racist, fascist, anti-Semitic, Nazi, right wing extremist, Bircher, McCarthyite, lunatic  fringe, radical right, religious fanatic, cultist, isolationist, reactionary, hate group, gun nut, anti-progressive, conspiracy theorist, anti government, wacko, nut case, homophobe, etc. When you hear someone condemning a person or group using these terms, you are listening to the voice of the conspiracy.

Guilt by association is widely used as a means of destroying the enemy with propaganda. This is a technique that erroneously associates a person or group with some despicable act, philosophy, or personality. The comparison to Hitler is most often used for this purpose. The bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City is the current despicable act that is being used against the militias. Two headlines in the Nevada Appeal demonstrate how cleverly this is done. One headline reads, 2 years after bomb, militias move underground, the other, Militias gain support after bombing. No militia connection with the bombing has ever been made despite all efforts to do so.

These stories written with the byline of the Associated Press demonstrates how guilt by association can be achieved when no connection exists. Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center speaks of the threat militias pose. What threat? Who has any militia threatened? Morris Dees doesn't say. Dees has written 'Predicting when and where  the militia will strike next is harder than guessing when and where the next whirlwind will come from.' The next strike? Morris Dees gives no information of any previous strike by the militia. You can be assured that any strike by any militia would have been trumpeted with much fanfare by Dees if one existed. There is much to be observed not only in what is said, but what is not said when evaluating the truthfulness of what you see, hear. and read. If someone to be destroyed attends a meeting or shares a platform at a public meeting with someone who has already had his or her reputation destroyed, the connection will be made insinuating that the person to be destroyed shares the same philosophy as the one already destroyed.

An insidious means of cultural destruction is underway in the form of sabotage of the language. Human beings think with words and words have abstract meaning. The word, unicorn, describes an animal shaped like a horse with a single horn on its forehead. No unicorn exists or ever did exist, the animal is a figment of the imagination. The word  unicorn therefore has no meaning in reality, it is an imaginary abstraction. All words are abstractions, some have meaning in the real world, others have no meaning in reality. Conversely, if there are no words to describe reality because they have been sabotaged, we can't think reality. If you can't say it, you can't think it. The conspiracy has been changing the abstract meaning of words to suit their purposes. To this end they have made words that at one time had a positive connotation into ones with a negative connotation.

'Patriot' at one time meant a person who had love and devotion for his country and was willing to defend it at the risk of his life. The conspiracy is changing the abstract meaning to conjure up an image of a red neck racist with tobacco juice in the corners of his mouth lynching a negro, or a wild eyed bomber bent on the destruction of government property, or figure in camouflage drooling over his rifle, or a nut case who comes out of church determined to kill an abortionist, etc.

George Orwell in his book, 1984, calls this technique of changing the meaning of words, newspeak. Newspeak not only changed the meaning of words but the grammatical structure as well.Information was given in sound bites, acronyms, and hyphenated absurdities.This leads to a condition called doublethink. Doublethink allows a person to hold two contradictory thoughts at one time and hold both to be true. Absurd you say, consider this. We are told continuously that believers in conspiracies are off the wall nut case wackos. At the same time we are told to believe in all kinds of conspiracies of the far right. This is doublethink to anyone who still has control of his mind and is able to think.

Learn to recognize propaganda when it comes to you. Listen to what is not said that should be. Always ask who benefits from the story that is being told. Identify known liars and evaluate what they say accordingly. Remember, there is nothing stranger than the truth.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy”

THE POWER TO DESTROY Big Brother eyes taxes by the mile State considers space-based technology to collect revenue
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30246
contributed by D

The plenary power of taxation is what the sovereign has over its subjects.   Former Chief Justice John Marshall said it best, and said it literally, in the early landmark Supreme Court case of McCulloch v. Maryland, (4 Wheat 418, 431, 1819)  "That the power to tax is the power to destroy..."

Marshall also was clear on a couple more points.

"All subjects over which the sovereign power of a state extends, are objects of taxation;  but those over which it does not extend, are upon the soundest principles, exempt from taxation. This proposition may almost be pronounced self evident..."

"The sovereignty of a State extends to every thing which exists by its own authority, or is introduced by its permission;..."

The one notable adjustment in what Marshall said is that his use of the phrase “exempt from taxation” is more appropriately “not taxable”.  There is a distinction.  You must determine if you are a creation of the state or the creator of the state, to determine if you are taxable.

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

The latest proposal by government to collect tax revenue may seem out of this world – that's because it is.

The state of Oregon is considering the use of satellite technology to charge taxes based on how much mileage you drive your car.

The Road User Fee Task Force set up by lawmakers last year plans to ask the 2003 session to authorize testing of a vehicle-mileage tax, reports the Associated Press.

Oregon was the first state back in 1919 to adopt a gas tax, and today officials expect revenues to flatten as gas mileage improves and more hybrid cars come on line.

Jim Whitty, the task force administrator, says his group is looking at a per-mile charge of up to 1.25 cents to generate funds comparable to the current gas tax.

"We also have to have a way to track mileage only within the state," Whitty told the AP. This rules out basing the fee on odometer readings, which would include out-of-state driving.

"Technology has improved to the degree that this can be done, with an electronic device," he said.

The device in each car would be linked to a Global Positioning Satellite system, or GPS, which allows pinpoint navigation by bouncing signals off satellites.

The task force hopes to organize a test of this system if lawmakers approve, checking to see if the system even works, then conducting a yearlong evaluation.

There are several options for actually collecting fees. One is to send vehicle owners a monthly bill, another is to outfit gas stations so they can read vehicle transponders and collect the tax at fueling stops.

If you think the new method would do away with the tax on fuel, think again. In assessing the new levy, drivers would get credit for gas tax already paid.

To protect drivers' privacy, using the system to track cars in real time would be illegal. New cars would be required to have the GPS technology. Owners of older cars would be allowed to take part by retrofitting them.

A final decision on the proposal is not expected to come until the 2005 legislative session at the earliest.
.                                                                                                  .
.o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o..o*O^~^O*o.

RUBBISH!
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs.
by CHRIS LYDGATE AND NICK BUDNICK
clydgate@wweek.com....nbudnick@wweek.com
contributed by Bill
http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/News3485.lasso
Web-only content: Vera Katz's press release Stories that have appeared in other media KATU The Oregonian

This is powerful.  Those in public servitude certainly believe they are above the law and better than us who pay their excessive salaries (note they are getting salaries and not per diems.  They will talk out both sides of their mouths and the average sheeple WILLFULLY are ignorant and allow the discrepancies to be glassed over or plowed under.

Take notice that this has been happening for years and is getting worse since 09/11/01.  And most sheeple are accepting, even inviting, it as neccessary.

The bold emphasis in the following article is by this editor and not part of the original article.  Obviously, any reprint may not carry the emphasis.

It's past midnight. Over the whump of the wipers and the screech of the fan belt, we lurch through the side streets of Southeast Portland in a battered white van, double-checking our toolkit: flashlight, binoculars, duct tape, scissors, watch caps, rawhide gloves, vinyl gloves, latex gloves, trash bags, 30-gallon can, tarpaulins, Sharpie, notebook--notebook?

Well, yes. Technically, this is a journalistic exercise--at least, that's what we keep telling ourselves. We're upholding our sacred trust as representatives of the Fourth Estate. Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. Pushing the reportorial envelope--by liberating the trash of Portland's top brass.

We didn't dream up this idea on our own. We got our inspiration from the Portland police.

Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her (see "Gross Violation," below).

The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?

The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so. Prosecutor Mark McDonnell says that once you set your garbage out on the curb, it becomes public property.

"She placed her garbage can out in the open, open to public view, in the public right of way," McDonnell told Judge Jean Kerr Maurer earlier this month. "There were no signs on the garbage, 'Do not open. Do not trespass.' There was every indication...she had relinquished her privacy, possessory interest."

Police Chief Mark Kroeker echoed this reasoning. "Most judges have the opinion that [once] trash is put out...it's trash, and abandoned in terms of privacy," he told WW.

In fact, it turns out that police officers throughout Oregon have been rummaging through people's trash for more than three decades. Portland drug cops conduct "garbage pulls" once or twice per month, says narcotics Sgt. Eric Schober.

On Dec. 10, Maurer rubbished this practice. Scrutinizing garbage, she declared, is an invasion of privacy: The police must obtain a search warrant before they swipe someone's trash.

"Personal and business correspondence, photographs, personal financial information, political mail, items related to health concerns and sexual practices are all routinely found in garbage receptacles," Maurer wrote. The fact that a person has put these items out for pick-up, she said, "does not suggest an invitation to others to examine them."

But local law enforcement officials pooh-poohed the judge's decision.

"This particular very unique and very by-herself judge took a position not in concert with the other judges who had given us instruction by their decisions across the years," said Kroeker.

The District Attorney's Office agreed and vowed to challenge the ruling.

The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic. It's not. Your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your most intimate secrets; what you toss away is, in many ways, just as revealing as what you keep.

And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy is being pilfered. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government has granted itself far-reaching new powers to spy on you, from email to bank statements to video cameras (see "Big Brother's in Your Trash Can," below).

After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.

We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.

Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.

Boy, were we wrong.

Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief Kroeker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public property.

"Things inside your house are to be guarded," he told WW. "Those that are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers and--and police. And so it's not a matter of privacy anymore."

Then we spread some highlights from our haul on the table in front of him.

"This is very cheap," he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a receipt with his credit-card number, a summary of his wife's investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker."

"Are you a member of Focus on the Family?" we asked.

"No," the chief replied.

"Is your wife?"

"You know," he said, with a Clint Eastwood gaze, "it's none of your business."

As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a fault, cut us off in midsentence. "OK," he said, suddenly standing up, "we're done."

Hours later, the chief issued a press release complaining that WW had gone through "my personal garbage at my home." KATU promptly took to the airwaves declaring, "Kroeker wants Willamette Week to stay out of his garbage."

If the chief got overheated, the mayor went nuclear. When we confessed that we had swiped her recycling, she summoned us to her chambers.

"She wants you to bring the trash--and bring the name of your attorney," said her press secretary, Sarah Bott.

Actually, we couldn't snatch Katz's garbage, because she keeps it right next to her house, well away from the sidewalk. To avoid trespassing, we had to settle for a bin of recycling left out front.

The day after our summons, Wednesday, Dec. 18, we trudged down to City Hall, stack of newsprint in hand. A gaggle of TV and radio reporters were waiting to greet us, tipped off by high-octane KXL motor-mouth Lars Larson.

We filed into the mayor's private conference room. The atmosphere, chilly to begin with, turned arctic when the mayor marched in. She speared us each with a wounded glare, then hoisted the bin of newspaper and stalked out of the room--all without uttering a word.

A few moments later, her office issued a prepared statement. "I consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible," it read. "I will consider all my legal options in response to their actions."

In contrast, DA Mike Schrunk was almost playful when we owned up to nosing through his kitchen scraps. "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?" he joked.

We told Schrunk that we intended to report that his garbage contained mementos of his military service. "Don't burn me on that," he implored. "The Marine Corps will shoot me!"

It's worth emphasizing that our junkaeological dig unearthed no whiff of scandal. Based on their throwaways, the chief, the DA and the mayor are squeaky-clean, poop-scooping folks whose private lives are beyond reproach. They emerge from this escapade smelling like--well, coffee grounds.

But if three moral, upstanding, public-spirited citizens were each chewing their nails about the secrets we might have stumbled on, how the hell should the rest of us be feeling?

HAUL OF FAME

Decked out in watch caps and rubber gloves, we are kneeling in a freezing garage and cradling our first major discovery--a five-pound bag of dog poo.

We set it down next to the rest of our haul from District Attorney Mike Schrunk's trash--the remains of Thanksgiving turkey, the mounting stack of his granddaughter's diapers, the bag of dryer lint, the tub of Skippy peanut butter, and the shredded bag of peanut M&Ms.

There is something about poking through someone else's garbage that makes you feel dirty, and it's not just the stench and the flies. Scrap by scrap, we are reverse-engineering a grimy portrait of another human being, reconstituting an identity from his discards, probing into stuff that is absolutely, positively none of our damn business.

It's one thing to revel in the hallowed tradition of muckraking. It's another to get down on your hands and knees and nose through wads of someone else's Kleenex. Is this why our parents sent us to college? So we could paw through orange peels and ice-cream tubs and half-eaten loaves of bread?

And yet, there is also something seductive, almost intoxicating, about being a Dumpster detective. For example, we spot a clothing tag marked "44/Regular." Then we find half of a torn receipt from Meier & Frank for $262.99. Then we find the other half, which reads: "MENS SU 3BTN." String it together, and we deduce that Schrunk plunked down $262.99 for a size-44 three-button suit at Meier & Frank on Saturday, Nov. 16, at 9:35 am.

We are getting to know Portland's top prosecutor from the inside out. Here's an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. There's a pile of castoff duds from his days as a Marine. Is he going "soft" on terrorism!?

Chinese takeout boxes and junk-food wrappers testify to a busy lifestyle with little time to cook. A Post-it note even lays bare someone's arithmetic skills (the addition is solid, but the long division needs work).

Our haul from Mayor Vera Katz is limited to a stack of newsprint from her recycling bin--her garbage can was well out of reach--but we assemble several clues to her intellectual leanings. We find overwhelming evidence that the Mayor reads The Oregonian, The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, U.S. Mayor and the Portland Tribune.

We also stumble across a copy of TV Click in which certain programs have been circled in municipal red. If we're not mistaken, the mayor has a special fondness for dog shows, figure skating and The West Wing.

Our inspection of Chief Kroeker's refuse reveals that he is a scrupulous recycler. He is also a health nut. We find a staggering profusion of health-food containers: fat-free milk cartons, fat-free cereal boxes, cans of milk chocolate weight-loss shakes, cans of Swanson chicken broth ("99% fat free!"), water bottles, a cardboard box of protein bars, tubs of low-fat cottage cheese, a paper packet of oatmeal, and an article on "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."

At the same time, we find evidence of rust in the chief's iron self-discipline: wrappers from See's chocolate bars, an unopened bag of Doritos, a dozen perfectly edible fun-size Nestle Crunch bars, three empty Coke cans.

We unearth a crate that once contained 12 bottles of Cook's California sparkling wine, but find no trace of the bottles themselves. Is the chief building a pyramid of them on the mantelpiece? We stack the crate beside a pair of white children's socks, a broken pen, the stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar, burnt toast, a freezer bag of date bars, orange peel, coffee grounds, a cork, an empty film canister (no weed--we checked), eggshells, Q tips, tissue paper and copious quantities of goo.

We uncrumple a holiday flier from the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church, which contains a handwritten note: "Mark. Just want you to know one Latin from Manhattan Loves You."

Invasion of privacy? This is a frontal assault, a D-Day, a Norman Conquest of privacy. We know the chief's credit-card number; we know where he buys his groceries; we know how much toilet tissue he goes through. We know whose Christmas cards he has pitched, whose wedding he skipped, whose photo he threw away. We know what newsletters he gets and how much he's socked away in the stock market. We even know he's thinking about a new car--and which models he's considering.

By the time we tag the last item (a lonesome Christmas tree angel), our noses are running and our gloves are black with gunk. We scrub our hands when we get home. But we still feel dirty. --CL

WHAT WE FOUND

POLICE CHIEF MARK KROEKER

* Empty containers and wrappers: Kodiak Washington pears, Washington "extra fancy" fancy lady peaches, Oasis Floral Foam bricks ("Worth Insisting Upon") (2), Kashi Go Lean! cereal, Sunshine fat-free milk, Kirkland Signature weight-loss shake, fat-free Swanson Chicken Broth, mandarin oranges, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Arrowhead water bottle, Cook's California sparkling-wine box, fried apples, cheese rolls, Bounty paper towels 15-roll pack, Kirkland facial tissue, 12-pack Dove soap, Quaker oatmeal, See's candy bars, lady's razors, Dentyne Ice chewing gum, Vivant zesty vegetable crackers.

* Hershey's Cookies n Crème mini-bars, uneaten (3).

* Several Oregonian issues, still folded.

* Email correspondence between chief and Mayor Katz's staff in which he preps them on what to tell Los Angeles officials regarding his application to be chief there.

* Rough draft, internal police memo.

* Various cash-register receipts.

* Half-full bag of fun-size Nestle Crunch bars.

* Slice of burnt toast.

* Photocopy of WW Nov. 13 "Murmurs" item on chief, hand-dated in blue pen, reporting scuttlebutt that Katz has "taken over the day-to-day running of the Police Bureau."

* Half-smoked stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar.

* Paper cups from Starbucks and Torrefazione.

* Pears, lettuce, grapes, bread, eggshells, goo, potato salad, wire hangers, a 75 watt light bulb, orange peels, coffee grounds, wine cork, dish rag, film canister, used Q-Tips.

* Half-eaten protein bar, still in wrapper.

* Newsletter from Focus on the Family, a conservative political group. Insert, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker." Insert asks for "one last year-end contribution."

* Photos of chief and a bare-chested man moving a large appliance.

* Creased wedding photo of a prominent Portlander.

* Broken pen.

* Three envelopes from California, hand-addressed, sent on consecutive days.

* Notice from mortgage company for payment.

* Internet printout of "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."

* Postcard from friend vacationing in Arizona.

* Post-it with notes about a new car.

* Extremely personal note on dinner napkin, handwritten in pencil.

* Account summary from Fidelity Investments for the chief's wife.

MAYOR VERA KATZ

  * Trader Joe's "Happy   Holidays" paper bag.

  * Several issues of The   Oregonian.

  * Several issues of The   Washington Post National   Weekly Edition.

* A copy of U.S. Mayor (a monthly magazine devoted to mayors).

* A copy of TV Click. Someone has marked several programs in red, including Wargame: Iraq, Simulated National Security Council meetings, MSNBC; Everwood: Ephram tries to revive his mother's Thanksgiving traditions, KWBP; CSI Miami: A dead man is found hanging from a tree, KOIN; Life with Bonnie on KATU; The West Wing on KGW; The National Dog Show on KGW; Figure skating: ISU Cup of Russia, ESPN; Biography: "Audrey Hepburn, the Fairest Lady," A&E: Figure skating: ICE WARS: USA vs. The World, KOIN.

* Several issues of the Portland Tribune.

* Daily Journal of Commerce from Dec. 3, 2002.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY MIKE SCHRUNK

* Empty containers and wrappers: Cozy Fleece Baby Blanket, Bee Cleaners, Nibblets Corn and Butter, Johnnie Walker Black Label, Fred Meyer unflavored gelatin, Burger King beverage cup and straw, possible Chinese takeout (lots), Dreyer's Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream, Skippy peanut butter (creamy), Land's End, Fred Meyer green beans, Campbell's Chunky New England Clam Chowder with 100-watt bulb inside, Meier & Frank, Jelly Belly jelly beans, Foster Farms boneless and skinless Oregon chicken thighs.

* Coffee grounds.

* Used pekoe tea bags, many.

* Used Christmas napkins, used Kleenex, used Q-Tips.

* Remains of Thanksgiving turkey carcass, drumstick intact.

* Remnants of roast beef.

* Soiled baby diapers.

* Plastic bags containing dog poo, very clean, with some blades of grass (2).

* Bag of dryer lint.

* Christmas wrapping paper.

* Orange peels, empty Millstone coffee bag, containing two very ripe but uneaten bananas, two half-eaten loaves of wheat bread.

* Disposable razors.

* Remnants of peanut M&Ms bag.

* Energizer AA batteries (2), wrapped in plastic bag.

* Shopping lists.

* Baseball cap with crustacean emblem: "DON'T BOTHER ME. I'm CRABBY."

* Baseball cap for Outward Bound.

* Baseball cap with embroidered green fish.

* Military khaki shirts with "SCHRUNK" embroidered on pocket and collar (4).

* Jacket, olive drab, with fading stencils of "USMC" and "Schrunk."

* Yellow Post-it note with sample of someone's arithmetic: The addition is successful (54 + 32 = 86), but the long division of 32 divided by 6 comes up a little bit wide, at 5.4.

Gross Violation

Officer Gina Hoesly has long had less privacy than the average cop, thanks to the Portland Police Bureau's rumor mill.

Hoesly (below), 34, has dated rock musicians, other cops and Portland Trail Blazers. She's had breast implants and once posed for a photo on a website selling motorcycle gear--badpig.com--showing plenty of skin. In 1996, she won a $20,000 settlement from the bureau in a sexual-harassment claim based on behavior by her co-workers. But none of that comes close to the scrutiny she received in March, when fellow officers rifled through her garbage. The evidence they found led to her indictment on charges of possessing ecstasy, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Hoesly, a 13-year police officer who occasionally was an undercover decoy in police prostitution stings, became the subject of an investigation early this year, when she told police she'd been assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, Joshua David Rodriguez. Rodriguez has a history of drug arrests and convictions, and when officers booked him on assault charges, they found meth in his pocket.

Subsequently police began investigating Hoesly, hearing rumors from police informants that she had used drugs. On March 13 at 2:07 am, narcotics officers Jay Bates and Michael Krantz took her garbage. The order to do so came from Assistant Chief Andrew Kirkland, who dated Hoesly in the early '90s.

Searching through her trash back at Central Precinct, they found traces of cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as drug paraphernalia. They also found a bloody tampon. They sent a piece of the tampon to the state crime lab, where forensics experts tested it for drugs, DNA and, for reasons that remain unclear, semen. The results of those tests have not been released.

The police didn't seek a search warrant to take Hoesly's trash because, as the Multnomah County District Attorney's office conceded, officers didn't at the time have sufficient evidence to convince a judge to issue a warrant. But once they had drug residue from Hoesly's trash, officers were able to persuade Judge Dorothy Baker to issue a search warrant for Hoesly's house. Inside, they found more paraphernalia and a diary that described apparent drug use. An indictment was issued in June.

Hoesly, who is currently on medical leave and at the time of her arrest was in the process of medically retiring, pleaded not guilty and hired criminal-defense lawyer Stephen Houze. Like a Labrador smelling leftover turkey, Houze promptly zeroed in on the grabbing of her garbage. He argued that under Oregon's Constitution, privacy rights extend to someone's trash--at least until it's picked up by trash haulers. The used tampon "goes to the heart of just what an outrageous violation of privacy rights this police search was," Houze said. "If the police will do this to a police officer, who won't they do it to?"

Not only that, he said, but if garbage is up for grabs, "There will be identity thieves lining up out there on every garbage day, knowing they can [take trash] with impunity."

The Hoesly case is not unprecedented. In 1997, police poked in the trash of David Peters, a star prosecutor for Multnomah County, and found cocaine residue, which was used to obtain a search warrant. Unlike Hoesly, he was not indicted; instead, he was fined and allowed to enter court diversion to maintain a clean record.

In a hearing on Dec. 10, Judge Jean Kerr Maurer agreed with Houze, issuing a ruling that said the cops' taking of trash was illegal. Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonnell immediately said his office would challenge the ruling. --NB

Big Brother's in Your Trash Can

The government is essentially going through your trash every day, says Evan Hendricks, publisher of Privacy Times, a Washington, D.C., newsletter. "They just don't have to get their hands dirty.

In the past 16 months, thanks to measures contained in the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act and the creation of the Total Information Awareness office, our government has turned into a bad Oliver Stone movie--you know, where a cabal of conservative spooks takes over and suddenly Big Brother is in charge.

No longer do the Feds need to meet the evidentiary standard of "probable cause" to initiate an investigation or start amassing information on you. Nor do they need to show any evidence of a link to terrorism. All they need to do, in short, is say they find you suspicious. They don't need to tell a judge why.

"This administration really represents a combination of Reaganism and McCarthyism--though they're not chasing Communists, they're chasing people that they call 'terrorists,'" says Hendricks, who grew up in Portland. "They're expanding their power and intimidating people to sort of go along or be afraid of being accused of being soft on terrorism."

The October 2001 enactment of the USA Patriot Act opened the door to domestic and Internet surveillance, as well as warrantless, covert "sneak and peek" searches. Then, on Nov. 19, 2002, Congress approved the Homeland Security Act, which Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) called the "most severe weakening of the Freedom of Information Act in its 36-year history."

The HSA also created the Total Information Awareness office, whose logo, taken from the back of the dollar bill, is of a pyramid with an eye on top, looking down at the globe. Headed by Iran-Contra co-conspirator Admiral John Poindexter, the agency will "mine" commercial databases, including magazine subscriptions and book purchases, to spy on American citizens. It plans to use this information to profile likely terrorist supporters; it also wants to deploy video camera and facial-recognition surveillance systems.

"The Pentagon basically wants to knock down the walls to all private-sector records and plug into them," says Hendricks. "And trash is like a microcosm of what you get: the bills people pay, what they buy at the store, the packages they throw out. The government is proposing more systematic surveillance of databases that have the same information."

How do they define who is a likely terrorist supporter? Sorry, but that's a secret. Attorney General John Ashcroft has given federal agencies free rein to reject information requests, with the assurance that his Department of Justice would defend the agencies no matter what.

Civil-liberties advocates point to the inherent danger in granting the government such sweeping power. Declassified documents have shown myriad abuses by law-enforcement agencies involved in domestic spying in the '60s, '70s and '80s, including in Portland. In 1997, a Washington, D.C., police official used video surveillance of people coming and going from a gay bar to try to blackmail married men. And studies of camera systems in Britain found that they were used to target minorities for increased police attention, while women caught on camera were often targeted for voyeuristic reasons, with male camera operators panning over them for purposes of ogling.

Small wonder that even conservatives such as Rep. Dick Armey, Sen. Charles Grassley and New York Times columnist William Safire are going ballistic. Attorney General Ashcroft is "out of control," and the federal government has "no credibility" on protecting individuals' privacy, said Armey, who has even volunteered to do consulting work for the ACLU on privacy issues upon his retirement.

"You Are a Suspect" was the title of Safire's Nov. 14 column on the Total Information Awareness program, which he called a "supersnoop's dream" and a "sweeping theft of privacy rights." --NB

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