CONTENTS / BLOG (15), Just World Campaign

• 58 candidates agree to co-operate for Humanity and the Planet.

   International Simultaneous Policy, Australian Co-ordinator, Brian Jenkins, "How to Vote for Humanity and the Planet," October 8, 2004
   PERTH: Oz Federal Election, 9 October -- Now we CAN VOTE for Humanity and the Planet
   Your people-power candidates are listed at http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/simpol/SPvoting.html
   Persons of goodwill from all (well, most) parties
   Across Australia, 58 candidates (including 10 for the Senate) have SIGNED ON to the Simpol (Simultaneous Policy) message that politicians must interconnect globally to free democratic government from corporate influence--so that "We the People" can eventually take back control and roll back the tyranny of dollar values.
   (There may be many other worthy candidates, but these 58 have taken the serious step of pledging themselves to a non-party unifying principle.)

< < Back 250 ^ ^ CONTENTS 1 11 Translate Links Events Books HOME Clergy 1 101 Submit Freedom v v 252 Next > >

This series begins at: http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/cont.htm    This is only the start of a huge task but, in SIMPOL www.simpol.org , we have the best method yet devised to link up with world fellow-citizens and start to overthrow the ruinous "world order" of corporate greed.
   It is going to work. So, let's get in there and vote http://members. iinet.net.au/~ jenks/simpol/ SPvoting.html ! (And please pass this message round quickly.)
   -- Brian Jenkins, Australian Coordinator, International Simultaneous Policy, PO Box 637, Rockingham City WA 6168; Phone 08 9528 1864; Mobile 0414 730 096; Email jenks@iinet.net.au .
   Simpol www.simpol.org . Voted in top 25 of 'Those Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics'-- PoliticsOnline global survey (2003)
   Read about StopMAI_WA: www.iinet.net.au/~jenks/fair.html [Oct 8, 04]
• Transfer of technology and jobs, as "Elite" sets the stage for World War Three.

   Neil Baird's News Report, No 930, "Elite sets the stage for World War Three," by Henry Makow, Ph D, Sat Oct 9, 2004
   NORTH AMERICA: Something very worrisome is happening. Some of Rockefeller's best toadies oppose the Iraq war. But Rockefeller and his ilk are responsible for this war. What gives?
   It appears the global elite is dividing its minions into two "house teams" again. The last time this happened we had the Fascist-Communist slugfest called World War Two. The same satanic cabal controlled both sides and picked Germany to take the fall.
   This time, the U.S., Britain and the "coalition of the willing" are on one side. On the other are France, Germany, Russia and China. The centre of global power is moving to China, Europe and Russia. I see a world war over Korea, or more likely Iran and control of Middle East oil. The U.S., overextended from Kuwait to Korea, will come up short.
   My guess is that the US will find itself increasingly isolated and vilified as a result of the Iraq war. I suspect the hidden agenda is to bring down the world's last superpower; to replace the UN with a new instrument of "world government"; to kill a lot of people, and to wean Americans off democracy and their high standard of living.
GLOBALISTS AGAINST THE IRAQ WAR?
   Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, George Soros, Mikail Gorbachev and Walter Cronkite are all globalist elder statesmen-for-hire. Curiously, they all oppose the Iraq war.
   Jimmy Carter, a creation of Rockefeller's "Trilateral Commission" publicly supported more UN inspections. Mikhail Gorbachev said the war is a big mistake. Nelson Mandela called it a "tragedy" and warned Bush was plunging "the world into a holocaust."
   Financial maven George Soros said: "The Bush doctrine is grounded in power; legality and legitimacy are decorations."
   Finally, Walter Cronkite, who is linked to Rockefeller's CFR warned: "We are going to be in such a fix when this war is over, or before this war is over. Our grandchildren's grandchildren are going to be paying for this war. I look at our future as, I'm sorry, being very dark."
   The leaders of Russia, France, Germany and China also voiced opposition with uncharacteristic bluntness. They must have the OK of the global money masters. "Military action ... is a big mistake," Vladimir Putin said. " Iraq has presented no danger..." China urged the US and Britain to halt their military actions.
   France, Russia and Germany all refused a U.S. request to close their Iraqi embassies. North Korea apparently is preparing for war.
   Even in England, major newspapers like The Mirror have been scathing in their criticism of Tony Blair. British newspapers belong to the same clan. I suspect England will defect to Europe's side before this fiasco is over.
PARALLELS TO WORLD WAR TWO
   Before World War Two, a faction of the British [and US, Swedish, Swiss, etc.] elite built up Hitler. This was known as the "policy of appeasement." After Hitler fell into the trap of attacking Poland, they did a "sleight of hand" and replaced the accommodating Chamberlain with the defiant Churchill.
   Iraq is a similar trap. The United States has squandered the sympathy and good will it earned on Sept 11. The images of the World Trade Centre have been replaced in the world's mind by the spectacular explosions in Baghdad.
   The US comes across as a bully too cowardly to pick on anyone its own size. Notch this victory up beside its thrashing of Grenada, Panama and Serbia. The gloating by US TV commentators is particularly distasteful to the outside world
   The damage to America's moral authority is incalculable. After this war, who will have sympathy for Americans if Chinese atomic bombs rain down on Los Angeles and New York? The devil degrades his victims before he destroys them.
ELITE TREASON
   For almost 100 years, the American leadership class has belonged to an international cabal that is determined to dissolve all human loyalties, including the nation state, and establish a global tyranny. George Bush, who is part of this cabal, has led the American people into a trap.
   Who in their right mind would deliberately alienate 1.3 billion Muslims? Of course Hussein is a bad man but this is not the motive. The U.S. is acting as gofer for the Zionists and the oil cartels, two leading parts of the cabal. They will come out ahead while Americans will foot the bill and take the brunt of Muslim indignation.
   Can the U.S. even count on Israel? At his trial, Israeli Spy Jonathon Pollard was called "the greatest traitor in the history of the United States" (Gordon Thomas, Seeds of Fire, p.31-32). In the words of CIA Director George Tenet, Pollard, an American Jew, stole "every worthwhile intelligence secret we have." In the year prior to his arrest in Nov. 1986, Pollard transmitted "over 360 cubic feet of top secret paper to Israel," his trial was told.
   According to Thomas, Israel's Mossad routinely trades information and technology with China's Secret Intelligence Service. (482) Pollard's information could have commanded a pretty price. Thomas says the theft from Los Alamos of the last 50 years of US nuclear research was also a joint Mossad-Chinese operation (33). He says an Israeli team inspected the American EP-3 spy plane the Chinese forced down in April 2001. (487)
   But Israeli espionage must be seen in the context of the treachery of the American political elite in gen eral. During the Clinton Administration, there was massive transfer of critical military technology to China. For example, in late 1994 the Chinese bought and dismantled a McDonnell Douglas plant in Columbus OH that allowed them to produce ultra-modern airplanes and silkworm cruise missiles.
   This technology transfer is continuing under the Bush Administration. Consider the recent sale to China of a GM plant in Valparaiso IN, laying off hundreds of workers and moving sophisticated equipment used for making smart bombs. This transfer of nuclear and other technology to China is reminiscent of what took place after World War Two when secrets of the atom bomb were provided to Russia. (See George Jordan USAF (ret), From Major Jordan's Diaries 1952.)
   Can you see the pattern? Russia and China belong to the cabal and are being used to subjugate the United States. China is to be the new hub because its people are already used to tyranny. In another parallel with the past, American industry is relocating to China and other low-cost countries. At least 3.3 million US white-collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift there by 2015. (See The New American magazine, March 10, 2003). Similarly, Wall Street invested heavily in Nazi Germany in the 1930's. Standard Oil (through subsidiary I.G. Farben), General Motors, Ford, ITT and IBM were mainstays of the Nazi war machine.
   In conclusion, while Americans are distracted by jingoism and jiggle, they are being set up for a nasty fall. The leadership class has already "left the building" as it were. The end of the Iraq war will find the United States isolated and reviled. As the Bush cabal tries to push its advantage, it will come into conflict with China and other nuclear powers. A major confrontation will ensue and an overextended US will be humbled. Americans will take a greatly reduced place in a new world order.
   Americans should direct their anger not at their country but against their political and cultural elite, which is corrupt, cowardly, and traitorous.
   Henry Makow is the inventor of the board game Scruples, and the author of "A Long Way to go for a Date". He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He welcomes your feedback and ideas at henry@savethemales.ca [Emphasis added] [Oct 9, 04]
• FBI Shutdown of Social Justice Web Threatens Free Speech.
   Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR-L), "ACTION ALERT: FBI Shutdown of Indymedia Threatens Free Speech," www.fair.org/ activism/fbi- indymedia.html , October 15, 2004
   UNITED STATES and EUROPE: In a chilling attack on free speech, U.S. authorities on October 7 seized two internet servers in London belonging to the independent media network Indymedia. More than 20 Indymedia sites around the world were taken down as a result of the raid. The servers were returned on October 14, but no formal charges have been announced and no explanation has been given for the raid.
   FBI spokesperson Joe Parris told Agence France Presse that the raid was "not an FBI operation" but that the FBI issued the subpoena on behalf of Italy and Switzerland (10/8/04). U.S. authorities have refused to comment further.
   Rackspace, the U.S.-based company that hosts the Indymedia servers at its London offices, revealed in a press release that the subpoena was issued "pursuant to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), which establishes procedures for countries to assist each other in investigations such as international terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering." Rackspace told Indymedia that they could not reveal any information about the subpoena - apparently the result of a gag order (Indymedia, 10/7/04).
   Swiss authorities said they have opened an investigation into Indymedia coverage of the 2003 G8 Summit in Evian and that they had asked the FBI to help remove photos of Swiss undercover police from a French Indymedia site (AFP, 10/9/04). The FBI visited both a Seattle-based Indymedia lawyer and Rackspace about the photos, and Indymedia believed the issue had been resolved (Indymedia, 10/9/04). The site was among those housed on the seized servers; Swiss authorities, however, have not indicated that they asked the FBI to seize the servers.
   An Italian prosecutor investigating an anarchist group reportedly also requested assistance from the U.S. to obtain information about posts on Italian Indymedia, but she apparently also did not request the seizure of the servers (italy.indymedia.org, 10/14/04). While the details of the subpoena remain undisclosed, the FBI's aggressive action against Indymedia is troubling.
   Indymedia, which provides grassroots reporting on social justice issues and protests, is a decentralized network that allows anyone to post news on its websites. If there is reason to suspect that participants on these websites are involved with criminal activities, shutting down the servers is rather like shutting down the phone system because people have been using the telephone to plot crimes.
   To silence over 20 media sites around the world with no charges and no explanation strikes a severe blow against freedom of expression and should trouble media outlets worldwide. European media have been covering the story, but in this country, the media have been virtually silent. Aside from two AP articles (10/8/04, 10/14/04), one by UPI (10/11/04) and one in the Hartford Courant (10/13/04), FAIR found no mainstream news outlets reporting on the Indymedia story.
   This is not the first time Indymedia has been targeted by U.S. authorities. During the Republican National Convention in August, the Secret Service attempted to obtain private records from NYC Indymedia's Internet Service Provider; the ISP refused. The FBI attempted to obtain similar records from Indymedia servers during the massive protests against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Quebec City but lost the legal battle (Indymedia, 8/31/04).
   If there is credible evidence of actual crimes that involve Indymedia websites, then an investigation that respects Indymedia's rights as a media outlet may be warranted. But FBI action that intimidates or silences media around the world under a shroud of secrecy is an extraordinary and grave threat to free speech.
   ACTION: Please sign the Indymedia solidarity declaration ( http://solidarity. indymedia. org.uk ) denouncing the hard drive seizure and demanding a full disclosure of who is involved in the seizure, a copy of the court order, and an independent investigation into any violations of due process.
   For more information and updates, see: www.indymedia.org . Your donation to FAIR makes a difference: www.fair.org/donate.html . SUBSCRIBE TO EXTRA! AND GET FAIR'S NEW BOOK FOR FREE: The Oh Really? Factor www.fair.org/ohreally.html . FAIR SHIRTS: Get your "Don't Trust the Corporate Media" shirt today at FAIR's online store: www.merchantamerica.com/fair
   FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit www.fair.org/ counterspin/ stations.html
   Feel free to respond to FAIR ( fair@fair.org ). We can't reply to everything, but we will look at each message. We especially appreciate documented examples of media bias or censorship. And please send copies of your email correspondence with media outlets, including any responses, too.
   You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site. Our subscriber list is kept confidential. FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting; Media analysis, critiques and activism), 112 W. 27th Street New York, NY 10001, USA, (212) 633-6700; Website: www.fair.org , E-mail: fair@fair.org [Oct 15, 04]
• Protecting the Right to Water.
   The Simultaneous Policy News, Britain, www.simpol .org/dossiers/ dossier- UK/pdf_UK/ simpolautumn04.pdf (Warning: HUGE download), Autumn (Northern), 2004
   BRITAIN: Page 4 -- John Bunzl, Director of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation, analyses the European Parliament election.
   Page 6 -- UK MP and Australian Senator sign pledge to implement SP.
   plus all the latest news on the Simultaneous Policy campaign [Autumn (Northern) 2004]
• Qantas admits strikebreaking plan.
   The Australian, www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11114114%255E421,00.html , By Steve Creedy, October 19, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: QANTAS officials finally admitted yesterday that 350 flight attendants employed on three-month contracts would be asked to fly in place of permanent staff if there was a strike over Christmas.
   (Picture -- Understaffed ... Qantas rejects claims replacement flight attendants lack sufficient training.)
   Officials moved beyond previously circumspect references to "contingency plans" amid claims by the Flight Attendants Association of Australia that the airline was creating a "Dad's Army" of poorly trained strikebreakers. [...]
   FAAA international division secretary Michael Mijatov said the flight attendants were receiving 11 days' training instead of six weeks.
   But Mr Borghetti said the training was shorter because crew were being trained on only one aircraft type, the Boeing 747, instead of a range of aircraft. He said the training had been approved by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. # [Oct 19, 2004]
• [Real intent -- drive the Christians out of Iraq.]

The Record (Western Australian Roman Catholic newspaper), "Real intent; Iraqi church bombings prompt Vatican concern for Christians' fate," By John Thavis, p 12, October 21, 2004
BAGHDAD:
T he bombing of five more churches in Baghdad has prompted new Vatican concern about the fate of Iraqi Christian communities.

Baghdad church bombed by persons unknown October 16, 2004. 193.6kb.

Iraqis gather outside a damaged Catholic church in Baghdad, Iraq, following a bomb blast at the church October 16. Bombs damaged five Baghdad churches in co-ordinated early morning attacks, but there were no casualties, an Interior Ministry official said. Photo: CNS/Reuters

   The rudimentary but powerful bombs exploded within an hour and a half of each other beginning at 4 a.m. Oct. 16. No one was injured or killed, but heavy damage was reported to several of the churches.
   At the Chaldean Church of St. Joseph, which was gutted by the bomb blast and a subsequent fire, Sunday Mass was celebrated Oct. 17 following an all-night cleanup effort.
   Other churches that suffered damage were identified as the Latin-rite Church of Rome, the Orthodox churches of St. Jacob and St. George, and the Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Thomas.
   Last August, car bombs at five Catholic churches killed 11 people and sparked an exodus of at least 10,000 Iraqi Christians into neighboring Syria and Jordan, church officials said.
   Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa of Mosul, Iraq, who was in Bangkok, Thailand, at the time of the latest bombing, expressed shock and sorrow at the news. One of the churches bombed in August was in Mosul.
   The terrorist groups that carry out such attacks "hope that many, many more Christians will go," Archbishop Casmoussa told Catholic News Service.
   "Their strategy is to create fear among the Christians and push them out of Iraq," he said. Following the latest bombings the Vatican's missionary news agency, Fides, published a dossier of information asking: "What future lies ahead for Christians in Iraq if this massacre continues?"
   It published what it called a "list of horrors," the names of 88 Iraqi Christians and the dates they were killed, almost all of them during the last nine months. The latest was a 14-year-old girl, a Chaldean Catholic, kidnapped by an Islamic group for ransom and killed "in cold blood" Oct. 14, it said.
   [DOCTRINE: 4 - 8.12 -- ... I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them. www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/004.qmt.html#004.012
   4 - 9.30 -- And the Jews say: Uzair [Ezra] is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away! www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html#009.030
   4 - 19.088-093 -- They say: "(Allah) Most Gracious has begotten a son!" Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous! At it the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin, That they should invoke a son for (Allah) Most Gracious. For it is not consonant with the majesty of (Allah) Most Gracious that He should beget a son. Not one of the beings in the heavens and the earth but must come to (Allah) Most Gracious as a servant. [Yusufali's translation] www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/019.qmt.html#019.088 . DOCTRINE ENDS.] [Oct 21, 04]
• Zarqawi claims cadet slaughter.
   News Corp., www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11177550% 255E401, 00.html , From correspondents in Dubai, Agence France-Presse, October 25, 2004
   IRAQ: The extremist group led by Iraq's most wanted man today claimed it carried out the shocking roadside massacre of almost 50 unarmed cadets.
   An Islamist website carried a statement attributed to Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi's militants.
   The new Iraqi soldiers were found dead beside a remote road after being executed by attackers while returning home from their final training course.
   Many of the recruits were found with a single bullet wound to their heads in one of the deadliest attacks against the country's fledgling security forces.
   "The bodies of 37 new recruits, some with their hands tied, were found, shot dead, on the side of the road, while the corpses of 12 others were found in a minibus a few metres away that had been burnt out," said a spokesman for Iraq's interior ministry, Colonel Adnan Abdul Rahman.
   "The recruits, who came from all over the southern provinces of Iraq, were mainly Shiite and were returning home on board three buses when they were ambushed in Diyala province."
   The attack, discovered last night (AEST) happened overnight Saturday (AEST) after the recruits completed a training course at a base outside the town of Mandali in eastern Iraq, Mandali's Iraqi national guard commander Ali al-Kaaki said.
   He put the toll at 48, and his figure included five civilians who were drivers.
   Anger mixed with grief on the faces of the national guardsmen at the base. "This is a massacre, this is terrorism," screamed one, who did not want to be identified.
   Today's website statement said "Some children of The Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Country of Two Rivers (Iraq) have succeeded in killing 48 corrupt heads, members of ... the Iraqi guard."
   It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the statement.
   The Zarqawi group, formerly known as Al-Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), announced its name change on another Islamist website at the weekend, apparently to show its allegiance to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
   It was also not possible to verify the origin of that statement.
   In the claim for the killings, the website statement said: "The band was coming out of Karkush base, between the towns of Baladruz and Mandali, in the east of the country, and going on holiday in the south."
Related stories
Fallujah: Hardline clerics appeal for hostage release
Arab fighters face death penalty
Militants kill diplomat in precision attack
   [COMMENT: Is it morally right for Muslims to murder Muslim army trainees?
   Background on the group, from Wikiverse: http://al-tawhid-wal-jihad.wikiverse.org/ COMMENT ENDS.]
   DOCTRINE: 4 - 5.80: You will see many of them befriending those who disbelieve; certainly evil is that which their souls have sent before for them, that Allah became displeased with them and in chastisement shall they abide.
   4 - 58.22: You shall not find a people who believe in Allah and the latter day befriending those who act in opposition to Allah and His Apostle, even though they were their (own) fathers, or their sons, or their brothers, or their kinsfolk. DOCTRINE ENDS.] [Oct 25, 04]
• 350 tons of Iraqi explosives 'missing'.
   The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Queensland, www.couriermail. news.com.au/ common/story_ page/0,5936, 11182342% 255E1702,00.html , From correspondents in Vienna, Austria, Oct 25, 2004
   IRAQ: Several hundred tons of conventional explosives are missing from a former Iraqi military facility that once played a key role in Saddam Hussein's efforts to build a nuclear bomb, the UN nuclear agency has confirmed.
   International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei will report the materials' disappearance to the U.N. Security Council later Monday, spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told The Associated Press.
   "On Oct. 10, the IAEA received a declaration from the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology informing us that approximately 350 tons of high explosive material had gone missing," Fleming said.
   The Iraqis told the agency the materials had been stolen and looted because of a lack of security at governmental installations, Fleming said.
   "We do not know what happened to the explosives or when they were looted," she told AP.
   [COMMENT: The US's Rumsfeld talked down the generals who said 500,000 troops would be needed to conquer and hold Iraq. Neither the US nor UK troops stopped the looting, so dishonest elements in the population grew bolder, and decent Iraqis could no longer believe in the Coalition's promises of a better society. It was reported that the only infrastructure that the US troops guarded was related to oil -- wells, pipelines, etc. and administration buildings. Bush and some of his cabinet are investors in oil and war materiel manufacturing. Can the reader "join the dots"? QED.
   A day or so later, after the explosives had been reported missing, a US spokesperson said there were not enough troops to guard all such places. Washington had tried to make excuses, but some film was resurrected showing Coalition troops breaking the locks to inspect such buildings, finding they were explosives stores, then leaving, WITHOUT ensuring they were locked again, and WITHOUT setting guards. - JWC 27 Oct 04, and 05 Feb 05. COMMENT ENDS.] [Oct 25, 04]
• Disloyal to train as a tool to rob jobs.
   The West Australian, letter from John C. Massam, Greenwood, p 17, Monday, October 25, 2004
   PERTH: Although unemployment makes people desperate, isn't it disloyal for Australians to undertake secret training to become Qantas strike-breakers?
   Each one of them ought to have known that Qantas plans to take hundreds of jobs to London (read, any poverty-stricken person who lives there), and so provide even less jobs for Australians.
   The over-paid Qantas and Telstra directors want to send jobs offshore and squash any opponents, whether unions or otherwise.
   Electors recently gave their tick of approval to such behaviour, so they will have to suffer the consequences. [Words in boldface sent, but did not get published.] [Oct 25, 04]
• Wouldn't it be nice to prove 'the experts' wrong?
   Community 1st, Kingsley, WA, received October 26, 2004
   KINGSLEY (Perth, WA): The experts say that what we're trying to do here in the Kingsley [State] electorate is impossible ... the Liberals always win in Kingsley.
   The experts say that no electorate in Australia has ever before created its own party and then elected its own independent candidate. [...]
   ... all we need is 120 people who would like to help prove the experts wrong. ... each ... letter drop to just 100 houses ...
   Do you agree that Kingsley people are special and can stun the experts by electing their very own Independent candidate? ... occasionally ... letter drop 100 houses? A healthy, half hour walk is all it takes!
   ... ring Marie Evans on 0400 231 617, e-mail community1st@iinet.net.au, or give details to Community 1st, PO Box 307, Greenwood, WA 6924, Australia. Proposed website www.community1st.ws
Have you seen this woman?
   ... No other electorate has ever created its own party to champion its interests. But that's what the people of Greenwood, Woodvale and Kingsley did this year when nearly 600 of them became members of Community 1st. Marie Evans is an 'Independent' because she will act independently of the major parties but she has the support of an energetic new party behind her.
Originals authorised by Dr Sean Monahan, 7 Kiah Ct, Kingsley 6026 [Oct 26, 04]
• Attempts to intimidate African-American voters in Florida.
   Information Clearing House, "New Florida vote scandal revealed," http://207.44. 245.159/video 1030.htm , By Greg Palast, Reporting for BBC's Newsnight, "BBC", Oct/26/04
   FLORIDA: A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
   Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list". It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
   An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."
   Ion Sancho, a Democrat, noted that Florida law allows political party operatives inside polling stations to stop voters from obtaining a ballot.
Mass challenges
   They may then only vote "provisionally" after signing an affidavit attesting to their legal voting status.
   Mass challenges have never occurred in Florida. Indeed, says Mr Sancho, not one challenge has been made to a voter "in the 16 years I've been supervisor of elections."
   "Quite frankly, this process can be used to slow down the voting process and cause chaos on election day; and discourage voters from voting."
   Sancho calls it "intimidation." And it may be illegal.
   In Washington, well-known civil rights attorney, Ralph Neas, noted that US federal law prohibits targeting challenges to voters, even if there is a basis for the challenge, if race is a factor in targeting the voters. The list of Jacksonville voters covers an area with a majority of black residents.
   When asked by Newsnight for an explanation of the list, Republican spokespersons claim the list merely records returned mail from either fundraising solicitations or returned letters sent to newly registered voters to verify their addresses for purposes of mailing campaign literature.
   Republican state campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker Fletcher stated the list was not put together "in order to create" a challenge list, but refused to say it would not be used in that manner.
   Rather, she did acknowledge that the party's poll workers will be instructed to challenge voters, "Where it's stated in the law."
   There was no explanation as to why such clerical matters would be sent to top officials of the Bush campaign in Florida and Washington.
Private detective
   In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows. The private detective claimed not to know who was paying for his all-day services.
   On the scene, Democratic Congresswoman Corinne Brown said the surveillance operation was part of a campaign of intimidation tactics used by the Republican Party to intimate and scare off African American voters, almost all of whom are registered Democrats.
   (Greg Palast's film was broadcast by Newsnight on Tuesday, 26 October, 2004.)
   (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) [Emphasis added] [Oct/26/04]
• Bush's blunders in Iraq.

   The Boston Globe, "GLOBE EDITORIAL -- Bush's blunders in Iraq," www.boston. com/news/globe/ editorial_opinion/ editorials/articles/ 2004/10/26/bushs_ blunders_in_iraq/ , October 26, 2004
   BOSTON (MA): When President Bush declined to answer a debate question about mistakes he made in his first term, it indicated more than a personal idiosyncrasy. His unwillingness to confront past errors reflected a penchant for self-deception that has been characteristic of his administration, particularly in regard to its lethal blunders in Iraq.
   A frightening example of those unacknowledged errors is the failure to prevent the theft of nearly 380 tons of powerful explosives from a well-known site in Iraq. Such blunders must be acknowledged so that similar mistakes will not be made in the future.
   The three-part series published in The New York Times last week, which explored failures of planning and foresight that have led to the current plight in Iraq, performed that useful cauterizing function.
   Retired military and civilian officials who served in Iraq or took part in policy making for the war and postwar period left no doubt that the administration should never have tried to secure postwar Iraq with so few troops. This was a crucial error. Senior Army generals had warned against it. They said that if the ratio of peacekeepers to populace in Kosovo were taken as a measure, more than 400,000 troops would be needed to stabilize Iraq.
   The official most responsible for the refusal to commit the troops needed for postwar security in Iraq was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who kept troop levels low to demonstrate in practice his theories about streamlining the military and transforming it to fight what the Pentagon calls the network-centric warfare of the future.
   Military officers who spoke to the Times made it plain there were not enough troops to police Iraq's borders or to pacify Baghdad and cities of the Sunni triangle where Ba'athists, Islamists, and criminals were able to mount what has become the current insurgency. The related failures to stop postwar looting, protect crucial infrastructure, and guard arms depots -- all these fatal mistakes may be traced back to Rumsfeld's fallacy.
   Perhaps the most telling criticism came from a now-retired Army major general who was chief intelligence officer for the land-war command in 2003. James (Spider) Marks told the Times, "the insurgency was not inevitable." That insurgency was stoked by civilian administrator Paul Bremer's disastrous decision to dissolve the 350,000-man Iraqi army. The insurgents were able to coalesce and flourish because coalition forces lacked the needed human intelligence on the ground.
   These failures were possible because Bush did not encourage a clash of ideas within his inner circle. Even now he refuses to acknowledge the mistakes that were made and to hold Rumsfeld and others responsible. A president who does not demand accountability discards a great advantage of democratic government. [See also The West Australian, p 19, Oct 28, 2004] [Bolding added.]
   [COMMENT: Disbanding the 350,000-strong Iraqi army was, surely, a SENSIBLE decision of the Coalition, not "disastrous." At the two endings of World War II, it is not likely that the victorious Allies allowed the Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese to keep hundreds of thousands of army men in uniform, armed, and being paid!!! It was the decision to dismiss thousands of OTHER Iraq government employees that was disastrous, plus the orders to privatise the economy without protecting the local producers and traders, that caused millions to have no income and no hope. - jcm 31 Oct 04. COMMENT ENDS.] [Oct 26, 04]
• Missing Explosives -- Reports ignore videotapes that debunk Bush team's claims.
   FAIR-L = Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, "Missing the Evidence on Missing Explosives; Reports ignore videotapes that debunk administration claims," www.fair.org/press-releases/missing-explosives.html , October 29, 2004
   UNITED STATES: When the New York Times reported on Monday (Oct/25/04) that over 300 tons of high-explosive materials appeared to be missing from an Iraqi weapons facility, it was no surprise that the Bush administration and conservative pundits would quickly challenge the story. But recent reporting has taken this spin as proof that the facts of the story are in dispute-- even though new evidence disproves the administration's rebuttals.
   On October 28, ABC affiliate KSTP released footage that was shot by its embedded reporters on April 18, 2003, showing members of the 101st Airborne Division searching the Al Qaqaa bunkers. Clearly visible on the tape are containers marked with labels that indicate the barrels contained the high explosives in question. ABC World News Tonight broadcast the footage on October 28, noting that soldiers opened the bunkers that had been sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered the high explosives, and then left those bunkers open and unguarded. Given that the tape was shot nine days after the fall of Baghdad, it would appear to prove that at least some of these explosives were looted after the U.S. invasion -- a scenario that is consistent with statements from Iraqi officials and witnesses to the looting (Agence France Presse, 10/27/04; New York Times, 10/28/04). As ABC's Martha Raddatz put it, "It is the strongest evidence to date the explosives disappeared after the U.S. had taken control of Iraq."
   On the other hand, on the same day the Pentagon released satellite images that they claim show vehicles near some of the bunkers at the Al Qaqaa site on March 17, 2003. That would seem to be an attempt to bolster the administration's claim that the explosives were removed by Saddam Hussein prior to the U.S. invasion, though there is no evidence that the trucks did anything at all with the explosives in question. Indeed, the fact that trucks were in the vicinity of bunkers that contained large amounts of battlefield weapons (in addition to the high explosives) just before a war seems hardly newsworthy. Certainly the presence of trucks near the bunkers does nothing to undermine the footage of explosives in the bunkers days later.
   But despite their dubious relevance, the Pentagon images -- along with the White House's continued criticism of Kerry for bringing up the issue at all -- seemed to leave some news outlets uncertain about the facts. A subhead above a Los Angeles Times story read, "Reporters Taped Troops Apparently Finding Munitions. A Pentagon Photo Implies Otherwise." The actual article, however, noted that the Pentagon photo implied very little: "The photograph reveals little about the fate of the 377 tons of explosives, part of an estimated 600,000 tons of explosives believed to have been scattered throughout Iraq at the time."
   And even though ABC's network newscast had broadcast the KSTP footage, ABC's Ted Koppel reached a very different conclusion on the Nightline broadcast later that evening (10/28/04). Koppel explained that "a friend" in the military had reminded him that he was actually at Al Qaqaa during the war, and that "my friend, the senior military commander, believes that the explosives had already been removed by Saddam's forces before we ever got there. The Iraqis, he said, were convinced that the U.S. was going to bomb the place." For some reason, the theory advanced by his military friend was apparently more credible to Koppel than the television footage ABC had aired hours earlier that debunked his thesis.
   Instead of reporting on this newly discovered footage from Al Qaqaa, the Washington Post (10/29/04) pursued a different angle: "This week's assertions by Sen. John F. Kerry's campaign about the few hundred tons said to have vanished from Iraq's Qaqaa facility have struck some defense experts as exaggerated." The story's point, that the invasion allowed vast quantities of weapons to be looted all over Iraq, would hardly seem to undermine Kerry's critique of the Bush administration.
   Ignoring the evidence released the day before that explosives were on site after the fall of Baghdad, the Post instead reported that "Pentagon officials, reconstructing a timeline of what might have occurred at Qaqaa, believe they have narrowed the window for the disappearance to a two-month period between mid-March 2003, when the IAEA verified its seals were still in place, and May 2003, when U.S. military search teams arrived at the site and found it had been looted, stripped and vandalized." If the Post had reported on the KSTP footage, though, the paper would have been able to shut much of the Pentagon's "window."
   Not surprisingly, Fox News Channel continued to aggressively challenge the explosives story, even after the KSTP footage surfaced. On Special Report (Oct/28/04), anchor Brit Hume told viewers that "officials cite further evidence the material had been moved before U.S. troops arrived"-- apparently a reference to the inconclusive Pentagon satellite images. Special Report did not even mention the KSTP footage. But Fox campaign reporter Carl Cameron claimed that the news of the day was damaging to the Kerry campaign, since "the Iraqi explosives may have disappeared before the invasion, undercutting Kerry's attack on the president." Cameron added, "The Democrat hoped the explosive story would be explosive. But the president is already calling it a dud, accusing Kerry of saying anything to get elected."
   The Los Angeles Times followed a similar tack with an article (Oct/29/04) headlined "Munitions Issue Cuts Both Ways." The only evidence the paper found to support the idea that the issue would be harmful to Kerry were the claims of White House strategist Karl Rove, Bush communications director Nicolle Devenish and George W. Bush.
   That the subject of a scandal gets to decide how important it is is an odd notion-- but many journalists seemed to put more faith in administration pronouncements than in videotaped evidence.
FAIR produces CounterSpin, a weekly radio show heard on over 130 stations in the U.S. and Canada. To find the CounterSpin station nearest you, visit www.fair.org/ counterspin/ stations.html
You can subscribe to FAIR-L at our web site: www.fair.org . Our subscriber list is kept confidential. FAIR (212) 633-6700, fair@fair.org [Oct 29, 04]
• Bush, Kerry - Birds of a Feather.
   Truth in Media Global Watch Bulletins, by Bob Djurdjevic, Editor & Publisher, Truth in Media, www.truthinmedia.org , TiM Bulletin 2004/10-1, October 30, 2004
   FROM NEIL BAIRDS REPORT No. 933, 3. Article: Election 2004: Another "Demo Farce", Patriotic Dissent, TiM Bulletin 2004/10-1, October 30, 2004
   "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" (Thomas Jefferson)
   PHOENIX (Ariz) UNITED STATES -- With only days left before the 2004 U.S. election, many readers and friends have been asking me who I thought would win - George W. Bush or John Kerry? "Ask me if I care?" has been my answer. Repulsion, resentment, rejection... are some of the emotions that well up when I think of these two birds of a feather.
   After months of contemplating my options as a voter, I have concluded that I don't have any. At least not any that would make me feel good about voting. For me, Election 2004 ended on that cold February night when Howard Dean, the only candidate who stood for real change, was defeated in Iowa.
   Sadly, that's nothing new. Eight years ago, I wrote this in a Washington Times column:
   "The Presidential Election '96 had all the excitement of a one-horse race, a big yawn! ...Fielding two horses from the same stable evidently suited the U.S. Establishment just fine. Election '96 was a "demo farce!" The U.S. democracy is turning into a New World Order plutocracy."
   Now substitute Bush for Clinton and Kerry for Dole, and you can draw the same conclusions. "The more things change, they more they are the same" (Alphonse Karr, 1849; also see "Ayatollah Klintonmeini", 1996).
   That great "democrat," Joseph Stalin, noted once: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes, decide everything." The American demo farce variant of Stalin's truism seems to be: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who cast the candidates decide everything."
   Voters decide nothing in our make-believe democracy. Plutocrats decide everything when they buy both candidates. The whole electoral process has become very expensive entertainment, but is much ado about nothing in terms of substance or democracy. It's like a World Series between the Red Sox white and the Red Sox gray teams.
   Bush, Clinton, Dole, Gore, Bush, Kerry... no matter who the White House incumbents or challengers are, or what color their uniforms, they take care of their sponsors at the expense of the American people.
   Here's one example of just how corrupt our political system has become...
Moral Corruption
   Eight years ago, I also wrote in that Times piece, "the Slick (Willie) may NOT serve out his full term." Indeed, Clinton was impeached by the House on December 19, 1998 - "for high crimes and misdemeanors." Only to be saved by the war on Serbia..
   Saved by the war on Serbia? Yes.
   As we now know, the NATO war machinery was already in motion in early 1999. How can a country go to war without a Commander-in-Chief? So the Senate dutifully acquitted Clinton on February 12, 1999. The first bombs fell on Serbia on March 24, 1999. The "death merchants" cheered all the way to the bank. A real life "Wag the Dog" scenario had just been played out.
   The most appalling role in this American demo farce, however, was not played by the disgraced President. It was reserved for the Senate. Like obedient lapdogs of the New World Order masters, 55 Senators voted to excuse the inexcusable; to pardon the unpardonable. They exonerated a President who lied and obstructed justice.
   That set a fine example, especially for the country's youth. "It's okay to lie and cheat," was one clear message. "Why bother to vote?" was another.
   Indeed, in the 2000 presidential election, a nary half of the American electorate eligible to vote (51%) bothered to exercise their rights. And even such a dismal turnout was an improvement over the 1996 demo farce, when only 49% of eligible Americans showed up at the polls. The rest felt indifferent or disenfranchised, as I do today.
Shining Example
   It wasn't always that way. Even in the rebellious 1960s, for example, the voter turnout ranged between 61% and 63%. As a young man growing up under the communist yoke, I remember daydreaming about that wonderful distant country that was a shining example of freedom and democracy -- the United States of America. I loved her so much I even taught myself English -- by "reading" Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck and watching American films.
   Then came the Vietnam war, casting a shadow over my dream. But I kept the faith, thinking that was just an aberration. In early 1970, I managed to flee the communists and arrive safely in North America.
   Then came the Watergate, and my faith was shaken once again. Shaken, but not destroyed. "Per ardua ad astra," I thought ("through hardships we reach the stars").
   Then I took out the American citizenship, as if to prove the point. I did it proudly, "without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion." I celebrated it with a big party at my home. But I prayed to God that the country of my birth (Serbia) and the country of my choice (America), the two nations that had been allies in two world wars, never go to war against each other in the future.
Evolution of an Idealistic Mind
   Then came the Panama invasion and the Tiananmen Square massacre. And my faith was shaken again. What gives us the right to invade other countries (Panama) just because we don't like their leaders? What kind of a "free world leader" are we if we stand idly by while the Chinese communists massacre in cold blood pro-democracy demonstrators? (Little did I know back then that we would also reward Red China with the biggest foreign investment boom in history - $659 billion between 1990 and 2003).
   Then came the end of the Cold War, and my faith was restored. I took pride in how "we" weakened and destroyed the Evil Empire, liberating hundreds of millions of people in Eastern Europe and Asia from the Soviet Union shackles. The fall of the Berlin wall signaled the beginning of the end. Mikhail Gorbachev's resignation, two years later, marked the end of it.
   Then George Bush (Sr.) made his now famous New World Order proclamation. "Time and again in this century, the political map of the world was transformed. And in each instance, a New World Order came about through the advent of a new tyrant or the outbreak of a bloody global war, or its end."
   Later on in an interview, Bush added: "When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this New World Order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the United Nations' founders."
   Bush's ominous words were lost on me back in February 1990. New World Order... United Nations as the global police... It was all there... a blueprint for the future. But I was still too naïve to see it.
   Then came the Gulf War, and I took pride in how our troops liberated a country that a ruthless dictator had unlawfully invaded. In my pure and still idealistic mind, that sort of compensated for our own unlawful invasion of Panama, two years earlier... like a wrong and a right canceling each other out. I just couldn't figure out why we stopped short of ejecting Saddam Hussein from power. (Answer: NWO has to save some bogeys for future wars).
   Then came the Balkan wars, and my worst fears had come true. My two countries were at war. My faith was shaken again. Shaken, but not destroyed. I believed that ignorance had led the U.S. government to side with its current and former enemies (Croat fascists; Islamic fundamentalists and foreign terrorists in Bosnia; Albanian Muslim terrorists in Kosovo...), against its current and former allies (the Serbs).
   So I formed the Truth in Media, a non-profit organization, with a mission to educate the media, the government officials, the politicians, the American public... about what was really going on in the Balkans. It didn't work. Evidently, ignorance was not the reason.
New "Evil Empire" -- Abroad...
   Many trips through war zones and four years later, a changed man with an awakened mind emerged from the Balkan wars. The masks had dropped. This American now understood the full weight of Bush Sr.'s New World Order comments. It was imperial designs and geopolitics that led Bush and Clinton to side with our current and former enemies (see "Green Interstate", Nov 1995). The "lamestream" NWO media cheered them on.
   The fact that both Republican and Democratic administrations did it, proved that there is no substantial difference between the two. Both are in service of the NWO globalists' imperial agenda whose secret motto is, "perpetual commerce through perpetual war" (see "Stitching Together the NWO Flag"), not "world peace through world trade," its publicly proclaimed slogan.
   Bush Sr. even spelled out the new Evil Empire's agenda for us nearly 15 years ago. But the message went over most Americans' heads, including mine. It was encoded in words that obscured its real meaning.
   A New World Order comes about "through the advent of a new tyrant," Bush said back in February 1990. What he didn't say was that the "new tyrant" this time around was us -- the (once) good old United States of America! But his, Clinton's and Bush Jr.'s subsequent military actions proved that in spades... in Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq again...
   Once the New World Order's cover was blown, it was relatively easy to predict what the new Evil Empire's next move would be -- a war with Serbia over Kosovo; the war that saved Clinton from impeachment in 1999. I first foresaw it in early 1996, as the first American troops entered Bosnia.
   After Kosovo, there was East Timor, Afghanistan again, Iraq again... and, of course, the never-ending civil war between Israel and the Palestinians.
   Here's what John Pilger, a visiting professor at Cornell University, said about it in a recent article ("Will There Be a War Against the World After Nov 2?"
   "From Guatemala to Iran, from Chile to Nicaragua, to the struggle for freedom in South Africa, to present-day Venezuela, American state terrorism, licensed by both Republican and Democrat administrations, has fought democrats and sponsored totalitarians. Most societies attacked or otherwise subverted by American power are weak and defenseless, and there is a logic to this. Should a small country succeed in breaking free and establish its own way of developing, then its good example to others becomes a threat to Washington."
   (also see "Bomb Small Obstinate Nations," from this writer's 1999 speech/article).
   "And the serious purpose behind this? Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's secretary of state, once told the United Nations that America had the right to 'unilateral use of power' to ensure 'uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources'. Or as Colin Powell, the Bush-ite laughably promoted by the media as a liberal, put it more than a decade ago: "I want to be the bully on the block" (in reference to Bosnia). Britain's imperialists believed exactly that, and still do; only the language is discreet."
Autocracy at Home
   After 9/11, a domestic war was also being waged; a war on civil liberties. Slyly disguised under the term "Patriot Act" came the latest NWO assault on our Constitution and freedom. Both current presidential candidates (Kerry and Bush) supported this government power grab after swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
   That, too, was predictable. Actions speak louder than words. Here's what I also wrote about such a possibility in that November 1996 Washington Times column: "Clinton's demise, however, may come at the expense of the "American Dream." Real autocracy may follow the current 'demo farce'."
   "Real autocracy" may also follow the current elections, regardless of which candidate wins. Back to Prof. Pilger's article:
   "If George W Bush wins, according to a scientist I met, who escaped Nazi-dominated Europe, America will surrender many of its democratic trappings and succumb to its totalitarian impulses. If John Kerry wins, according to most Democrat voters, the only mandate he will have is that he is not Bush."
   Furthermore, if Kerry wins, more and bloodier wars loom ahead. Writer Prof. Pilger:
   "Having begun his campaign by promising another 40,000 troops for Iraq, he (Kerry) is said to have a 'secret plan to end the war' which foresees a withdrawal in four years. This is an echo of Richard Nixon, who in the 1968 presidential campaign promised a 'secret plan' to end the war in Vietnam. Once in office, he accelerated the slaughter and the war dragged on for six and a half years.
   For Kerry, like Nixon (and later Bush Sr.), the message is that he is not a wimp. Nothing in his campaign or his career suggests he will not continue, even escalate, the 'war on terror', which is now sanctified as a crusade of Americanism like that against communism. No Democratic president has shirked such a task: John Kennedy on the cold war, Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam."
   Remember, "hey, hey, LBJ, how many did you kill today?" (also see "Privatizing War," Apr 2004).
Sellout of America
   The biggest election issue, however, is one that nobody is talking about. America is for sale. And has been for decades. Yes, even our federal government is for sale. Make that especially our federal government. And especially in the last decade of globalization.
   The fact that neither presidential candidate is even mentioning it at the height of a heated presidential election campaign, proves that they are both working for the globalists who look at America and its 294 million citizens as just an asset to be milked for all its worth.
   Not only are American jobs being outsourced to overseas countries with cheaper labor (and even on that subject the political rhetoric has all but died down since Howard Dean dropped out of the race). Our very future is being mortgaged by our leaders - quietly, slyly, without our say-so or even awareness, for the most part. Some "democracy" this is...
   Did you know, for example, that every time you buy something made in China or in some other foreign country, you're tightening the financial noose around our collective necks a little more? That's because our soaring trade deficit ($489 billion last year; 4.5% of GDP, up from 1.9% in 1990 -- see China Follies Revisited, Mar 2004) is financed in part by credit from our trading partners. This has pushed our current account deficit from an all-time high of $542 billion in 2003 (4.5% of GDP), to an even higher 5.7% of GDP in the second quarter.
   That's like a corporation running up ever increasing negative cash flows. Or like a homeowner paying for his monthly expenses out of his mortgage account. The more they spend, the more they owe. Prosperity based on ever-increasing indebtedness is an illusion of prosperity. It is fools' gold.
   No responsible Board would allow a CEO to run a company that way. No responsible household head would handle his family finances that way. No responsible doctor would treat a hemorrhaging patient with only more blood transfusions.
   But that's how the NWO globalist bankers want it. Citizens of no country and would-be masters of all, they have devised a global trading scheme so that they get paid coming and going (on our increased consumption and on our soaring debt -- for more on that, check out "Sellout of America," Oct 2004).
Patriotic Dissent
   "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism," said Thomas Jefferson. On November 2, I plan to dissent. If I vote, it will be against the NWO one-party candidates (Kerry, Bush). Or not at all - the highest form of dissent.
   Sadly, it's the form of patriotism the nation has been practicing for decades. Abstinence from polls is also what I used to practice under the communist rule. It's a real tragedy that America has now come to that.
   P.S. Here's what I also wrote about it in that November 1996 Washington Times column:
   "What if, by voting for Clinton, you have just given a green light to the Islamic fundamentalism's continuing expansion into the heart of Europe (e.g., Bosnia)?
   What if, by voting for Clinton, you've just given a green light for China's continued abuses of its people?
   What if, by voting for Clinton, you've just given a green light for the destruction of ancient cultures, such as that of the Greeks, for example (at the hands of Turkey, the new "Islamic NATO" power), and not just that of the Serbs or the Russians at the hands of expanded NATO?
   What if, by voting for Clinton, you've just helped lose the trust of our traditional allies - the Western Europeans - who have all been hurt by the duplicity of the Clinton administration's foreign policy?
   Distant lands... distant issues... Who cares? Is that what you're thinking?
   But what if, by voting for Clinton, you've just endorsed a globalist policy of the U.S. government which has jeopardized our national sovereignty and the security, so as to advance Clinton's own political, and more importantly the globalist elite's BUSINESS, agendas around the world?
   Too esoteric an argument? Not very important to "America's Heartland?" Okay.
   What if, as a result of YOUR vote for Clinton, YOUR child or a family member is sent off to die in some distant land? Suddenly, it's no longer a distant issue, is it?
   Suddenly, it becomes a "Heartland" issue. Now you're getting the point?
   That's how tens of thousands of U.S. military families must feel now whose relatives are serving the globalists' neo-colonial interests abroad, instead of minding America's interests at home. And those whose relatives died in murderous Islamic terrorist attacks on our troops in Saudi Arabia (a Clinton ally!), or in Lebanon. Or those serving in Bosnia, where thousands of Islamic Mujahideens are waiting for a chance to slit our soldiers' throats.
   That's why patriotic Americans should breathe a sigh of relief when the so-called "American Century" comes to an end. Because this was not an "American" century. The 20th was a century which America is leaving less American than it was when it started. Instead, it was an industrials-driven "Communist Century."   And, thus a period of REGRESSION of Homo Sapiens!"
   Also, check out some of some other reports on New World Order, such as... Stitching Together the New World Order Flag
   Plus, click here for an Index of 911-related articles ... and for others on Balkans and Global Affairs.
   ...such as... "Plutocrats of the World Unite," "Bush League All-Stars," "Enronizing Pretzelitis:" New Alzheimer Strain Strikes Potus Potatus Primus , Censorship Comes to America, Grotesque and Pathetic War, Clash of Greens, End of Folly, Not of World, Collateral Damage Hits Home.
   Also, check out... Djurdjevic's CHRONICLES magazine columns: "ON THE BRINK OF MADNESS", "A BEAR IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING", "WALL STREET BOOM, MAIN STREET DOOM", "PERPETUAL WAR FOR PERPETUAL COMMERCE", "WIPING OUT THE MIDDLE CLASS", "WALL STREET'S FINANCIAL TERRORISM"
   Or Djurdjevic's Washington Times columns: "Christianity Under Siege," "Silence Over Persecuted Christians", "Chinese Dragon Wagging Macedonian Tail," "An Ugly Double Standard in Kosovo Conflict?", "NATO's Bullyboys", "Kosovo: Why Are We Involved?", and "Ginning Up Another Crisis"
   Or Djurdjevic's NEW DAWN (Australia) magazine columns: "Macedonia: Another Farcical American Oil War," "Anti-Christian Crusades," "Blood for Oil, Drugs for Arms", "Washington's Crisis Factory," and "New Iron Curtain Over Europe" (FROM NEIL BAIRDS REPORT No. 933) [Oct 30, 04]
• Evil threat; Bin Laden warns US of more attacks.
   The Sunday Times, Perth, W. Australia, www.sundaytimes. news.com.au/ common/story_ page/0,7034, 11236074% 255E948,00.html , By PHILLIP COOREY, pp 1 and 4, October 31, 2004
   MIDDLE EAST, USA, and AUSTRALIA: Terror mastermind Osama bin Laden has turned the US election campaign upside down by appearing in a new video only four days before polling day and warning of possible new September 11-style attacks.
   And he admitted for the first time that he ordered the September 11, 2001, attacks which destroyed the World Trade Centre.
   Bin Laden, taunting the man who has vowed for three years to take him "dead or alive", said US President George Bush had failed Americans with his Middle-East policies, deceiving the nation and provoking Muslim groups like al-Qaida to strike again.
   "Despite entering the fourth year after September 11, Bush is still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you, and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened," he said.
   In the video, bin Laden accused Mr Bush of giving the hijackers more time than they expected to carry out the attacks because he did not react quickly enough.
   Mr Bush continued to read My Pet Goat to school children in Florida when told a plane had hit the World Trade Centre.
   "It appeared to (Mr Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers," bin Laden said.
   He said he ordered the attacks because of "injustice and inflexibility" by the US and Israel towards the Palestinians and Lebanese.
   Citing the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he said he was inspired "to destroy towers in America" after seeing buildings devastated in Beirut.
   Well-groomed and looking healthy, bin Laden threatened the American people that "the best way to void another Manhattan" was for the US to change its Middle-East policy.
   "Your security is not in the hands of (John) Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands," he said on the video released to Arab TV station al-Jazeera.
   "Each state that does not mess with our security has naturally guaranteed its own security."
   It was bin Laden's first video appearance since September 10, 2003, and came as Senator Kerry and Mr Bush were using the attacks on New York and Washington to argue over who would best protect America. Both men scrambled to respond as analysts concurred that such a hated person criticising Mr Bush would help the President in a deadlocked race.
   "America will not be intimidated or influenced by an enemy of our country," said Mr Bush, who hours before appeared with relatives of September 11 victims at a New Hampshire rally.
   "I'm sure Senator Kerry agrees with this. We're at war with these terrorists and I'm confident that we will prevail."
   Senator Kerry, who earlier criticised Mr Bush for failing to catch bin Laden, called al-Qaida "barbarians".
   "Democrat, Republican, there's no such thing. There's just America and we are all united in hunting down and capturing or killing those who conducted that raid -- and we always knew that that was Osama bin Laden," he said.
   Senator Kerry again accused Mr Bush of allowing bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora in 2001.
   "I will hunt down and kill the terrorists wherever they are," he said. "I can run a more effective war on terror."
   Vigilance in America is high ahead of Tuesday's election but the White House said it did not plan to raise the national terror colour code alert.
   Bin Laden claimed the hijackers, who he called "the 19 blessed ones", were warned that the strikes had to be carried out "within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration noticed".
   The attacks by four planes unfolded over one hour and 20 minutes.
   Bin Laden accused Mr Bush of misleading people by claiming America was attacked because the terrorists hated freedom.
   "Unlike what Bush says – that we hate freedom – let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example," he said.
   Worried Democrat strategists hoped the tape would highlight Mr Bush's failure to capture bin Laden while waging a costly and unnecessary war in Iraq.
   Republican strategists, knowing Mr Bush polls well ahead of Senator Kerry on terrorism, were banking on the video reminding voters that bin Laden was still free and dangerous and that Mr Bush was the best man to get rid of him.
   Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said that despite Osama bin Laden's threats there would be no immediate change to travel alerts to the US.
   "Our message to (bin Laden) is a simple message," he said. "And that is we will defy you and we will defeat you, and countries like Australia must not flinch in the face of these fanatics." [Emphasis added]
   [COMMENT: Another Islamist leader had broadcast a message a few days earlier, threatening that America's streets would run red with blood. COMMENT ENDS]
[DOCTRINE: Koran / Quran 22: 19-21: "But as for those who disbelieve, garments of fire will be cut out for them; boiling fluid will be poured down on their heads, Whereby that which is in their bellies, and their skins too, will be melted; And for them are hooked rods of iron. [Pickthall's translation] http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/022.qmt.html#022.019 . DOCTRINE ENDS.] [Oct 31, 04]
• Iraqi leaders failed, cadets murdered.
   The Sunday Times, W. Australia, Letter from John C. Massam, Greenwood, p 62, October 31, 2004
   PERTH: Murdered cadets were failed by their leaders.
   The Iraqi leaders failed the test of common sense, sending the cadets home, unarmed, after they completed their training.
   Iraq is awash with weapons, ordinary householders each have several. The country's borders have been stupidly left open so that every fanatic and gunrunner has easy entry and exit.
   Are the Iraq leaders as stupid as the Westerners who attacked with no plan of helping the people attain an honest and fair way of life? [Oct 31, 04]
• The Bin Laden tape discussed; Robert Fisk on Iraq and other matters.
   DemocracyNow! www.democracynow. org/article.pl? sid=04/11/ 01/1513254 , ROBERT FISK interview*, Monday, November 1st, 2004
*Robert Fisk, chief Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. He is the author of "Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon" "Bin Laden's Vote is For George Bush"
   As the newest videotaped message from Osama bin Laden is broadcast four days before the election, we speak with veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who has interviewed bin Laden three times. Fisk also discusses Iraqi civilian casualties, kidnapped humanitarian worker Margaret Hassan, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's ailing health and much more.
   This is Democracy Now!'s special election coverage "Countdown to the Showdown: The Battle for the White House," The final Gallup poll of the 2004 election was released yesterday showing President Bush and John Kerry in the closest presidential race in the history of Gallup Polls. The poll puts the two in a statistical dead heat, 49-49.
   At least 10 states could end up going to either Bush or Kerry. Of six states polled by Gallup, Kerry was slightly ahead in three: Ohio, Florida and Minnesota. Bush had slight leads in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa, although a Des Moines Register poll released Sunday had Kerry up slightly in Iowa. And other polls released over the weekend showed Kerry ahead in Pennsylvania and Bush ahead in Florida. In all six states, terrorism or the war in Iraq were named by at least half of prospective voters as their primary concern.
   The poll comes as the newest videotaped message from Osama bin Laden dominated the Sunday talk shows. Some are calling it a mini-October surprise. The tape was broadcast on Friday afternoon by the Arabic network al Jazeera. Bin Laden appears to be in good health and is dressed in a gold colored robe standing at a podium reading from prepared notes. The 18 minutes address was directed at the American people. Bin Laden mentioned both Bush and Kerry by name, saying that neither of them can bring security to the people of the United States.
   On the tape, bin Laden says that the motivation for the September 11 attacks goes back to the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the US support for the invasion. He said "As I was looking at those towers that were destroyed in Lebanon, it occurred to me that we have to punish the transgressor with the same -- and that we had to destroy the towers in America so that they taste what we tasted, and they stop killing our women and children."
   Bin Laden blasts Bush's handling of the 9/11 attacks saying, "We never knew that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his people in the two towers to face those events by themselves when they were in the most urgent need of their leader. He was more interested in listening to the child's story about the goat rather than worry about what was happening to the towers. So, we had three times the time necessary to accomplish the events."
   He compares the Bush administration and the Bush family to Gulf monarchies and military dictatorships in the Middle East, saying Bush "moved the tyranny and suppression of freedom to his own country, and they called it the Patriot Act, under the disguise of fighting terrorism. And Bush, the father, found it good to install his children as governors and leaders."
   Bin Laden dismissed the Bush administration's contention that the attacks were carried out because al Qaeda hates freedom. Bin Laden asks, if we hate freedom --let him tell us then, "Why did we not attack Sweden?"
(RUSH TRANSCRIPT)
   AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk joins us on the line right now, the chief Middle East correspondent for The London Independent, author of, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert.
   ROBERT FISK: Thank you.
   AMY GOODMAN: Your reaction to the Bin Laden tape.
   ROBERT FISK: Well, it is clearly timed for the election, and indeed it looks to me like he's voting for Bush. Although he tells the American people, it is in their hands, it is not Bush or Kerry. He has always had this notion. I remember in 1996, I thought it was outlandish, I didn't put it in my report of my meeting, he had this idea that the American people would shrug off the American government, and would -- their individual states of the union would become individual countries, a bit like Yugoslavia has now become. I said to him at the time, I don't think you seem to realize the American people vote for the government in the United States, which they don't of course in Saudi Arabia and most other states in the Middle East. And he just seemed to let that go. He was obsessed at the time with Somalia and how the Americans were paper tigers there.
   I must say when I read that he was telling the American people that Bush couldn't protect them, he didn't do very well in protecting the Afghanistan [? Afghanis] from the Americans, did he? But no, this is clearly Osama Bin Laden coming back into the picture. You have to realize that he is, and this is a fact I can promise you, he keeps up with television news reports, writing, and so on. So, he knows what is being said. The idea of thinking that he is out of touch, he might have been many years ago but not now. He's not a -- an internationally shrewd figure. He has never traveled very much although oddly enough, he has been to Sweden. I did notice that reference to Sweden in the text. He has actually been there, but he does understand what's going on in the rest of the world. So, therefore, this was a clear attempt to come in.
   My belief is that he would calculate correctly, that a tape in which there's a further threat against the United States by the people who -- well, he actually says himself, he admits it the idea occurred to me of the twin towers and the international crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001. I'm sure he realizes that further threats are more likely to help Bush than Kerry and what Osama Bin Laden wants now, of course, is a president to be elected who will further mire the country into the Middle East swamp, and cause, of course more American casualties, which Bush will surely do. So, I think that this is probably Osama Bin Laden's vote for George W. Bush.
   AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who interviewed Osama Bin Laden twice.
   ROBERT FISK: Three times, actually.
   AMY GOODMAN: Three times? When did you interview him and how does he compare in how he looks to when you interviewed him?
   ROBERT FISK: Well, it's an odd thing to say, and I noticed this before the American bombardment of Afghanistan. When I used to see him, he was always dressed very humbly, in a white Jallabia, a cheap cotton gown and Keffiyeh headdress like any Palestinian or Gulf Arab might wear. But more and more now he appears, when he does appear in video?, in sort of gold-fringed robes. And I wonder if that is not a certain amount of vanity crept into his personality. After all, he is a fairly well known guy now. And I wonder if this isn't if I could see something of the Mahdi there, the person who began to believe he was a personal sort of interpreter for some higher being. It's interesting that he constantly wants to be portrayed as did before as being in a cave. Of course, the prophet Mohammad lived in a cave. And indeed he was on a mountain outcrop when he first received the message from God.
   And I wonder what is actually going on not politically over the United States or attacks, but I wonder what's going on in the Bin Laden mind. That's not the first time he has had such a smart gown on. He was wearing it like that all in 2000. But before that he was a much more humble figure, but I suppose could you say that, before he probably thought he had more to be humble about.
   AMY GOODMAN: And yet interestingly, he did not make any reference to the Koran.
   ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the tape was slightly longer than the one that you have seen. And I believe he does make reference to the Koran in the full half hour tape. You thought it was 18 minutes. But it hasn't all been aired. I have spoken to the people who got the original tape and there are a number of Koranic expressions. That's not quite right, but it is not your fault that you got it wrong.
   AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to read you to Walter Cronkite's comments. I don't know if you heard about them.
   ROBERT FISK: Well, I know who Walter Cronkite is but I don't know about his comments.
   AMY GOODMAN: Well, he said this on Larry King. He said, so now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election. And I have a feeling it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up Bin Laden to this thing. The advantage to the Republican side is to get rid of, as a principle subject of the campaigns right now, get rid of the whole problem of the Al-Qaqaa explosive dump.
   ROBERT FISK: I don't really think it's worth much comment. I know the timing and the dates when this tape originally arrived in Islamabad. I don't think anything could have been -- it wasn't -- for example it didn't arrive five weeks ago and was then held up until the right moment in the election if that's what Cronkite was suggesting. I don't think there is any -- yeah, I think that's a conspiratorial theory. There's a lot of things in this, which suggest that Bin Laden is oddly enough actually trying to torture Americans. You see, at the very beginning, when he says, Bush is still misleading you and misinforming you by not telling you the truth.
   The odd thing about that is an awful lot of people think that Bin Laden is quite correct and accurate in saying that. He is not correct in much else, but in that he is.
   He never was of course in Beirut in 1982, you know, he keeps going back to the Lebanese invasion. Although he certainly would have seen pictures. And I saw the real thing in Beirut, whole apartment blocks crumbling to the ground with all of the occupants inside, with -- after the Israelis had bombed the buildings from the air, claiming that terrorists were inside, when in fact in almost all cases, I went to, they were just civilians -- families, babies, children, who of course were flattened like pancakes underneath this mass of concrete and iron. They looked frankly when I saw them very much like the dead looked of September 11. So, I'm not making a dark comparison. That's what Bin Laden is doing.
   But I understand what he is talking about when he talks about the destroyed towers in Lebanon. The odd thing is that there's a slightly wrong translation from the Arabic. He says that, you?know, he never thought of an attack on the twin towers in New York. What he actually says in the Arabic was, I had never thought of doing it until I saw what happened in Lebanon. Then the idea occurred to me. In other words, he's saying that the inspiration came from Israel's invasion rather than him sitting down and saying there's a good target.
   I'm not sure I believe him because it's quite clear that the targets, which were chosen were to represent finance and the military.
   And I -- if indeed Ziad Jarrah's plane, the Lebanese hijacker, I would have thought that would have gone for the legislature and Capitol Hill. Interesting enough, Ziad Jarrah himself was in the Beirut siege and his family who I met managed to get him out. He was a small boy at the time, fascinated by airplanes and flying. He was just a schoolboy. Actually attending a Christian school. And his father told me that after he had gotten out of Beirut and he had seen the air attacks, he refused to play with his sister in the park or go to the swings because he said, what had happened in Beirut was too serious. Of course, he naturally occurred to me when I heard Bin Laden speaking, that if he had met Ziad Jarrah, and I rather suspect he had, Jarrah himself may have given his childhood memories of what happened in Lebanon to Bin Laden, but that might sound as conspiratorial as Walter Cronkite. I don't know.
   AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent, we have to break, when we come back I want to ask you about Yasser Arafat, his health and the significance of his going to France, and his leadership in Palestine and Israel's struggle. And I want to ask you about the deadliest weekend we have seen in Iraq over the last six months for U.S. soldiers. And then the study, 100,000 Iraqis dead. [Break]
   AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk on the line us with, Middle East correspondent for The Independent.
   You wrote a piece on Saturday, Robert, the title, The Truth is that Yasser Arafat died years ago. He married the revolution. And in the end, he became a little dictator, falsely promising democracy. Your response to the latest news of Yasser Arafat and his health?
   ROBERT FISK: Well, he has been -- he's died so many times, hasn't he? We were told originally, he died in one of the air raids in Beirut in 1982, and he didn't. Then he had a crash in the Libyan desert in his plane and he was okay, but the pilot was killed. Then he had a blood clot in the brain on the way to Baghdad from Amman and Jordanian doctors saved him.
   This time, of course, it clearly is serious. Although, I mean in a way, when you look at it symbolically, this old man like an elderly owl who has been trapped inside this rubble for three years, still talking about going to Jerusalem and leading his people to a new state, and so on, peace of the brave, and then eventually, he's hauled out on a stretcher looking like a skeleton and taken off to a foreign country from which he may never return alive.
   It's not the way in which leaders should go, but the problem is, you see, all along, he never allowed a new leadership to take shape around him. He was a corrupt man. He is a corrupt man. He won't be doing much corruption for a while now, but all this time, and this is the great tragedy of the Palestinians, apart from the fact [of] their living under occupation, which is a greater tragedy for them, is that this is a man who didn't allow young and educated Palestinians to take their place in a new political entity. If you look at the pictures or look at any of the pictures that you see of Arafat outside the Mukada building in Ramallah, you look at the pictures of him coming out when he was led out of the building and put in the helicopter, all the men around him are paunchy, 50-60 year olds from the days of fighting the Israelis in Lebanon in the 80s.
   ?henever a bright young spokesman has popped up on television from the Palestinian side, they are being slapped out and the old men are being brought back. Like, for example, the Palestinian representative of the United Nations, who is almost incomprehensible on television or radio. Especially when the Israelis put up extremely eloquent and well educated young people to represent their country.
   So he's -- you know, I have said many times, even Arafat as a physical existence, that's not a face that you would see on a student dorm window along with Che Guevara or even Castro. In a sense, he represents by his continuity, by his desire to represent the revolution, to be married to the revolution, as he put it, which his wife found out what that meant.
   It has a consistency and a kind of courage to it, but he had everything wrong with the Arabs in the sense that he turned into just another Arab dictator, which is exactly what I think the Israelis wanted. They want an obedient dictator to manage the occupation for them. It was interesting that when the second Intifada broke out, the Israelis asked the question, can Arafat control his own people, which of course was dutifully taken up, the Israelis set the agenda for CNN and the BBC, who said, can care fat [? Arafat] control his people, having forgotten that the principle behind the Oslo agreement was not that Arafat would control his people but that he would represent them. And in a sense he does represent them, because in the streets there are people who say we need control, you see?
   One of the great sicknesses I think, the cancers of the Arab world is the desire for people to put a form of authoritarian regime over the freedoms of the kind of democracy that we think we live in. I would have to say, however, that if he was an Iraqi, living in the hell of Iraq at the moment, I might well look back wishfully on the terrible days of Saddam compared to the infinitely more violent and dangerous days today.
   AMY GOODMAN: Speaking of which, your latest question, what's happening in Iraq right now, as well as the capture, the kidnapping of Margaret Hassan, and the threatened, what will happen to her, the killing of the U.S. soldiers, and the 100,000 report, which we're going to talk about in a minute, of casualties in Iraq--Iraqi civilians.
   ROBERT FISK: Well, you know, the problem is that although some of us, when we go to Iraq are still moving around, most of my colleagues, and I don't blame them at all, scarcely leave their hotels tells because it's too dangerous. We still have the two French journalists missing. Although mostly, I understand they're still alive. We have had journalists murdered; quite a few of them. So, when you talk like this, for example, I just listened to your questions. Excuse me. We are constantly faced by this kind of theatrical facade.
   Who has Margaret Hassan? We don't know. I know Margaret very well, but there's no claim from a particular group. There are no armed men standing in the background with the Islamic banners. Who took her? Why? We hear eight marines were killed. On operational duties. What does that mean? Were they ambushed? Were they in a tank that blew up? Were they in a helicopter that crashed? What does it mean?
   We hear 100,000 casualties. Well, there are two ways of getting a casualty rate, an Iraq casualty rate in Iraq. One is to go around all of the scholarly notebooks of doctors and morticians who wrote down five more bodies at 2:17 p.m. this afternoon. To go to all of the hospitals, to go the ministry of health and when we've done that, and of course, the Associated Press had a pretty good go at this before most of Iraq went outside of government control, we came up with a figure that got to around 20,000 or 30,000 Iraqis. The figure of 100,000 has been extrapolated from a series of interviews in specific locations based upon percentages. In other words, if t?ey went to five houses in a street and found that 20 more people had died of violence in the previous year, then they would extrapolate out from that increase in violence and what it meant. But the 100,000 is not a record of actual deaths. It's an extrapolation of percentages put forward in what is in effect a kind of opinion poll. It may be less than 100,000.
   It may be considerably less, but I think when you get to the point where you are sort of saying, "my god it wasn't 30,000 but 100,000," you are beginning to forget the individual and it's the individual Iraqi who is suffering every day, every day, and there are many, many deaths will never be recorded simply because in a small village out in the desert, they will bury the person quickly and the authorities essentially have no control there anymore. There's no one to take down deaths and no one to notify. In Baghdad you still have to notify deaths. So you can go down to the Baghdad city mortuary, and I actually go there and meet the doctors and morticians. I actually stand there among the corpses and we can count them each day. Now that I can do, I can tell you, on a certain day 27 people were brought with gunshot wounds into this hospital. And I can do all the hospitals in Baghdad. But I can't travel to Najaf and Samara and Fallujah and count there, too. So there is and there will be no precise statistic. That of course is precisely the way the United States and Britain and the American military and America's appointed Iyad Allawi, so-called interim prime minister, that's the way they want it.
   AMY GOODMAN: Well Robert Fisk, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Middle East correspondent for The Independent, interviewed Osama Bin Laden three times. (By courtesy of Michael P's e-mail, Nov 3, 04) [Nov 1, 04]
• Trade and markets, plus necessary welfare, to relieve poverty.
   The Record (Western Australian Roman Catholic newspaper), "The intellectuals," Letter, Hal Colebatch, Nedlands, p 6, November 4, 2004
   PERTH: In reference to Fr Gary Walker's letter (20 October) concerning my review of Paul Gray's book Nightmare of the Prophet, may I point out that I tried to confine my review to commenting on the substance of Mr Gray's arguments?
   The matters Fr Walker mentions are most important but were not, as far as I could see, central to what Mr Gray was saying about ways of countering radical Islamicism and terrorism.
   The duty to relieve poverty is imperative upon us all but it is not the poor who make war, terrorism or even revolution, but the Robespierres, the Lenins, the Ulrike Meinhofs and the Osama bin Ladens -- the disaffected rich and middle classes.
   My own belief, for what it is worth, is that the best single way to both help the world's poor and to promote world peace is through trade and free markets, though with proper allowance for the need for public goods, welfare provisions for those excluded from the market, and for certain other special cases.
   I am having a book of my own, Steadfast Knight, published by the Fremantle Arts Centre Press in a couple of weeks which inter alia and in another context goes into this argument in more detail.
   I don't think the basics for relieving global poverty and promoting global peace put forward by Adam Smith [1723-90] in The Wealth of Nations more than 200 years ago have been much improved upon since, and I commend that wise book to anyone interested in the question.
   [COMMENT: Perhaps the essay The Principle of Population by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) ought to be read, also. The world is not infinite. And perhaps, with trade at record levels, it is not apparent that progress seems to go hand in hand with poverty for most of the world's pop?lation.
   Perhaps the author (a barrister, poet, and reformer) ought to ask himself why, with this record trade, why are there huge increasing trade deficits, and who is financing those of the United States and Australia. And, might the financiers, as they did from 1926 to 1941, exact a terrible penalty on the world? And, where do the financiers get the credit they offer? COMMENT ENDS.] [Nov 4, 2004]
• A-Gs want truth to be a defence in defamation cases.
   ABC News Online, Australia, "A-G to unveil uniform defamation laws," www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200411/s1235171.htm , Friday, November 5, 2004.
   NEW ZEALAND: The state and territory governments have reached agreement on uniform defamation laws across Australia.
   The state and territory attorneys-general are meeting in New Zealand and today will release a draft bill on the new laws.
   The legislation would reform the current laws by ensuring truth is a stand-alone defence.
   The new laws will also ban defamation cases against dead people and remove the right of corporations to sue individuals.
   Defamation damages will be capped and speedy settlements will be encouraged.
   Media organisations, the legal profession and lawyers were consulted and the states and territories describe the bill as a historic agreement.
   They hope the national uniform laws will stop forum-shopping where people pick and choose which state they will take legal action in.
Federal threat
   The Federal Government had threatened to bring in national laws if the states could not agree.
   South Australia's Attorney-General Michael Atkinson says the threat prompted the states to step up their own efforts, which began 20 years ago.
   "The Liberal national Coalition now have a majority in the Senate and it was time for the states and territories to concentrate their minds and get on with the job," he said.
   "All that a Commonwealth defamation law would do, would add a ninth jurisdiction to Australian law.
   "It would add complexity and difficulty."
   But Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says he has concerns about the new laws.
   Mr Ruddock welcomed the efforts of the state and territory governments but says many proposals in the draft bill are unsatisfactory.
   "It does raise some concerns there are issues that have not been clearly resolved to have achieved uniformity," he said.
   "One of those relates to the role of juries. There are other issues in which, in my outlined proposals, they've taken a different view."
   New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties secretary Stephen Blanks agrees there are still important areas of defamation law not addressed by the attorneys-general.
   "The question of the role of juries in defamation trials is an important issue with substantial differences between the states and this proposal doesn't address that," he said.
Union support
   However, Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance secretary Chris Warren says he is pleased the governments are putting forward an alternative to Mr Ruddock's proposals.
   "We welcome the fact that truth alone should be a defence," he said.
   "One of the aspects in the federal draft bill that's caused us immense concern is the proposal to enable dead people to be able to sue.
   "That would be an enormously retrograde step and it's very valuable that in the states, in their proposal are preventing that applying on a national bas?s."
Clarity and speed
   The West Australian Law Society says the uniform code will make the law clearer.
   The vice president of the law society, Wayne Martin, says the new code is consistent with the recommendations made by WA's defamation law reform committee.
   Mr Martin says it is important that protracted legal battles are avoided in favour of an immediate retraction and apology, when someone is defamed.
   "The outcome won't depend upon which side of the state boundary or territory boundary the article is published in," he said.
   "It reflects the modern structure of the media, the media is now nationally organised and the law should be nationally organised."
   The new laws will be introduced on January 1, 2006. [Emphasis added] [Nov 5, 04]
• Liberals to face police inquiry.
   NEWS.com.au, Australia, November 6, 2004
   BRISBANE, Qld, Australia: Police are investigating alleged fraud within the Queensland Liberal Party amid a growing branch-stacking scandal that is threatening to engulf the organisation's political powerbrokers in the state. http://email. news. com. au/ ct/click?q=b8- smc2QQUVc 6gFH5Ilqs73 p1NOP9RR
   [COMMENT: "... threatening to engulf ..." Well, well! Newsitems about Liberal branch-stacking and fraudulent "members" in Western Australia were published in the past couple of years, and nobody was punished by the law or the party. To be honest, the Labor Party in WA also had allegedly false statutory declarations reported to the police within the past year, and all seems to have died away. The WA Labor Party, due to the vehemency of the factions and the need to engage police to prevent violence, had been unable to hold State Executive meetings for months and months, right up to and past the October 9, 2004, federal election. Actions taken by a few "dictators" were those of an allegedly democratic party! And electors went to the polls and voted for candidates selected by a non-democratic inner group! - jcm 11 Nov 04 COMMENT ENDS.] [Nov 6, 04]
• New York Times Killed "Bush Bulge" Story .
   FAIR-L, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting; Media analysis, critiques and activism; www.fair.org/ press-releases/ bush- bulge.html , PRESS RELEASE, Nov 6, 2004
   UNITED STATES: Five days before the presidential election, the New York Times killed a story [= newsitem] about the mysterious object George W. Bush wore on his back during the presidential debates, journalist Dave Lindorff reveals in an exclusive report on this week's CounterSpin, FAIR's weekly radio show. The spiked story included compelling photographic and scientific evidence that would have contradicted Bush's claim that the bulge on his back was just a matter of poor tailoring.
   "The New York Times assigned three editors to this story and had it scheduled to run five days before the election, which would have raised questions about the president's integrity," said Lindorff. "But it was killed by top editors at the Times; clearly they were chickening out of taking this on before the election."
   Lindorff says two other major newspapers, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, also decided not to pursue the story, which featured a leading NASA satellite photo imaging scientist's analysis of pictures of the president's back from the first debate.
   The Times' bulge story is the latest example of possible self-censorship by major news media during the election campaign. In September, CBS's 60 Minu?es decided to delay until after the election an investigative segment that questioned the Bush administration's use of forged Niger uranium documents in making its case for the Iraq war, saying that "it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election" (New York Times, Sep/25/04; FAIR Action Alert, Sep/28/04).
   And on September 10, CNN reporter Nic Robertson said of a CNN documentary on Saudi Arabia, "I don't want to prejudge our executives here at CNN... but I think we can be looking forward to [it] shortly after the U.S. elections." The segment is now scheduled to air this Sunday, five days after the election.
   Lindorff first broke the story of "the bulge" in Salon (Oct/8/04). His latest report, "Was Bush Wired? Sure Looks Like It," was published October 30 on MotherJones.com www.motherjones. com/news/update/ 2004/11/10_ 407.html. [...] [Nov 6, 04]
• $US20m demanded by Iraqi terrorists.
   The West Australian, "Militants demand ransom for foreign workers," p 10, Wednesday, November 10, 2004
   IRAQ: Iraqi militants have demanded ransoms totalling about $US20 million ($26.5 million) for an American and a Filipino abducted last week in Baghdad.
   Philippine Foreign Ministry officials said the kidnappers of Robert Tarongoy, a 31-year-old accountant, had contacted his employer, Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Company, and demanded money in exchange for the freedom of the hostages.
   Tarongoy, an unidentified American, a worker from Nepal and three Iraqis were taken at gunpoint on November 1. The Iraqis and the Nepali have been released.
   "We were told that a $US10 million ransom was demanded for Tarongoy," an official said.
   [COMMENT: Anyone who is interested might look in internet translations of the scriptures and related documents of the main Iraqi religion, and see if demanding ransom is permitted by their idea of religion, the killing of prisoners, and beheadings. In addition, ask yourself, if the Coalition of the Killing cannot stop kidnappings in Iraq's capital city, have Bush and Rumsfeld sent enough troops? COMMENT ENDS.] [Nov 10, 04]
• Ruddock thinks military commission trials will go on.

   The West Australian, "Lawyers, Ruddock at odds over court ruling," by Kate Gauntlett, p 10, Wednesday, November 10, 2004
   CANBERRA, Australia: Lawyers for accused terrorist David Hicks have clashed with Attorney-General Philip Ruddock over the significance of a court ruling which found flaws in the United States' military commission process.
   Mr Hicks' lawyer, Stephen Kenny, was optimistic that the decision could force the US to try all of its Guantanamo Bay prisoners in accordance with court martial rules but Mr Ruddock said the case did not set a precedent.
   However, the decision was widely seen as major setback for the Bush administration, which has vowed to appeal immediately.
   US District Court Judge James Robertson found that a tribunal should have determined whether Yemeni detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan was a prisoner-of-war entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention.
   The US claims that detainees, including Hamdan and Hicks, are unlawful combatants to be tried by military commission where the usual rules of evidence do not apply.
   Mr Kenny said there were similarities in the cases of Hicks and Hamdan, who is accused of being Osama bin Laden's driver and bodyguard. [...]
&nbs?; But Mr Ruddock said the case did not outlaw trial by military commission. Law Council of Australia president Steve Southwood QC said the case added to the doubts about the US military commission process. #
   [COMMENT: Mr Ruddock would have been able to explain away the legal practices of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, Hitler, Tojo, and Stalin. Mistreatment of prisoners-of-war was punished severely after World War II, except in the Australian area, where the desire to sell wool to Japan led the Menzies Government to cut the trials short, even repatriating a man who had been condemned to hang. "Can the leopard change his spots?"
   Around Dec 4, 2004, the Liberal-National Government was being reported on Radio National as approving evidence obtained under torture for use in terrorist trials. This was condemned by Australian legal leaders. - JWC, Dec 4, 04. COMMENT ENDS.] [Nov 10, 04]
• Two years' gaol without trial; human rights trampled; $200,000 payout.
   The West Australian, "$200,000 payout for refugee's detention," The Age, p 11, Wednesday, November 10, 2004
   CANBERRA, ACT, Australia: ASIO has been forced to pay about $200,000 in compensation to a refugee it falsely classified as a security risk, causing him to be imprisoned for two years.
   The assessment, from a Middle Eastern secret police service found to have a dubious human rights record, left the Kuwaiti man in the Maribyrnong detention centre for two years.
   Mr Mohammed -- who does not want his real name used -- has fought a lengthy legal battle with ASIO, despite an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security finding its security assessment was substantively defective.
   ASIO accepted information "from a country with a dubious human rights record", the inquiry found.
   For two years, ASIO blocked Mr Mohammed's attempts to appeal against its security assessment in Australian courts, claiming it would jeopardise its relationship with a foreign intelligence agency.
   In 1999, his lawyer complained to the then inspector-general Bill Blick, who launched an investigation. Soon after the investigation began, ASIO reassessed Mr Mohammed and withdrew its claim he was a security risk.
   Mr Blick continued the investigation, finding ASIO had breached its guidelines by accepting "the foreign service's version of events without corroboration or serious question."
   An internal ASIO review also found "substantive defects in the assessment process".
   Although Mr Blick recommended compensation be paid, negotiations have dragged on for over three years.
   [COMMENT: 1. ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) for years has shown itself to be quite inept. One lowlight was having such poor security that years ago Lionel Murphy, a Federal Minister later convicted of some offence and then exonerated, was able to bluff his way into its headquarters with ONE policeman escorting him, and read its files. And how childish the file contents were! Another failure was when it practised bursting into hotel rooms, using a real hotel without warning the management, and its agents were stopped by the police.
   2. "Dubious human rights record" is par for the course for all or nearly all the intelligence agencies of the world, including the USA (torture and murders in Vietnam and now in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay) and UK.
   3. Australian courts, like their overseas counterparts, are too prone to listen to Big Government, instead of staying steadfast to historical legal landmarks such as Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus. The court ought to have said if there was no real evidence and no charge, he must be released.
   4. Old-fashioned A?stralians might ask wouldn't it have been safer for everyone if the Kuwaiti man had been prevented from entering Australia under the old Restrictive Immigration policy.
   5. Will the ASIO director and all staff involved in this false imprisonment be charged with the offences they have committed, imprisoned, and made to pay the damages and inquiry costs from their own assets? Or have Howard and other toadies in Parliament exempted them for this invasion of human rights, breaching traditional justice, not to mention international law?
   6. Hasn't the record of the US in Afghanistan, where people to get a reward would point out anyone at random as a terrorist, taught the Australian politicians and security people that "You don't believe all you hear, and only half of what you read"?
   7. The Liberals and Nationals are planning to take even more rights away from the people and the courts, in the name of security. This is directly against the rhetoric of the Liberal founder Robert G. Menzies. Of course, it fits into the Marxist theory that the owners of capital tend towards dictatorship. If the Australian Lib-Nat Coalition succumbs to the pressure, in future the victims will be human rights workers, as they are in other countries. COMMENT ENDS.] [Nov 10, 04]
• Liberal MHR says playing KKK not racism, like bucks' party fun.
   The Advertiser, Adelaide, S. Australia, "Klan photo not racism: local MP," www.theadvert iser.news.com. au/common/story_ page/0,5936, 11353265^ 1702,00.html , Nov 11, 2004
   AUSTRALIA: There was no racism involved in a photograph of Australian soldiers wearing Ku Klux Klan-style hoods, federal MP Peter Lindsay said today.
   Mr Lindsay, whose Queensland seat of Herbert takes in Townsville's Lavarack barracks where the photograph was taken, said it was in poor taste.
   But he denied there was any endemic racism in the military and said there was little point in a second investigation announced today by defence force chief General Peter Cosgrove.
   "To me it seems a waste of time, I've got to say to you, but it doesn't hurt to double check," Mr Lindsay told ABC radio.
   "(The photograph) should never have been taken and everybody would agree with that.
   "But it's the spirit of thing [?] that out in the general community, nobody would even turn a hair at.
   "You go to a buck's party and you see that sort of thing done and as long as it's understood in the context that it was taken, people don't take offence.
   "But it shouldn't happen in the defence force and that photograph should never have been taken."
   Mr Lindsay said the photographer responsible was adamant there was no racism involved.
   "It was just a fun thing before the troops went overseas," Mr Lindsay said.
   "There was absolutely no context of racism."
   He said recent incidents, such as a group of soldiers torturing a litter of kittens and others hanging a sign from a helicopter saying "Show us your tits" above a Gold Coast car race, showed that members of the defence force needed to understand their position in society.
   "We've seen issues such as kitten killers up here, we've seen the sign in the helicopter that flew past the Gold Coast, now we've seen this," he said.
   "Those are sorts of things that I think the commanders in the defence force are very, very unhappy about because soldiers really should know that they shouldn't carry on in this manner."
   Opposition defence planning spokesman Arch Bevis said the defence force needed to make a full public disclosure about the incident and any punishment ha?ded out.
   "If this were an isolated incident, it would be a cause of great concern," Mr Bevis said.
   "The fact that it is the latest in a long line of improper activities by defence personnel indicates a deeper cultural problem within our defence forces."
   He said a handful of personnel was continuing to tarnish the good name of tens of thousands of troops.
   "Their disgraceful behaviour cannot be tolerated," Mr Bevis said. [Nov 11, 2004]
• I have just witnessed a murder on my TV screen. Video and text commentary.
   Information Clearing House, http://207.44.245.159/video1043.htm (Wording and self-loading video), Nov 11, 2004
   AUSTRALIA and IRAQ: Matt Hamon -- Nov/11/04: "ICH" -- As I sit here and write this I have tears streaming down my face, I am shaking and my heart is pounding. I have just witnessed a murder on my TV screen.
   While watching Lateline on Australian ABC television there was a report from Fallujah. In the story they showed a marine saying, "I've just injured one, he's between the two buildings".
   At that moment another marine walks over to the gap between the two houses, he then climbs on a forty four gallon drum aims his gun at the injured Iraqi and fires one shot.
   The marine then climbs back down saying, "He's done".
   Evidence of a war crime right there on my screen, evidence that America takes no prisoners, evidence of a horrendous act condoned by my country.
   How did we become as bad as this, when did the coalition forces become terrorists themselves?
   I am choking, gagging, I want to vomit. I have just witnessed murder by my own people.
   Will this become the norm, will we in the west idly watch as our government send our young men and women to perpetrate crimes against humanity?
   What ever happened to the Geneva Conventions? What happened that we could become immune to the atrocities committed by our own people in what can only be describe as an illegal invasion for selfish, self-serving reasons, oil, greed and power? ...
   [COMMENT: There is the problem, similar to parts of the Pacific war theatre in 1944-45, that wounded enemy combatants might set a booby-trap, or pull the pin on a grenade, wait until a Coalition soldier approaches to take him prisoner, and then blow himself up. Japanese suicide airpilots were in danger of turning the tide of war against the Allies, because they could sink otherwise unsinkable aircraft carriers, which were the key to mobility and a quick ending to the senseless losses caused by fanatical resistance.
   This video co