Download A Book Get Arrested, Call For Terror Attacks - No Problem

Published on Saturday, May 31, 2008.

Source: Jones Report - Paul Joseph Watson


University employee jailed for researching Al-Qaeda, while Gingrich and others left alone for encouraging dead Americans
A University employee downloads a document from the Internet about Al-Qaeda for a colleague in the politics department as part of the University's required reading list, meanwhile, a former Speaker of the House publicly laments the fact that more Americans have not been killed in terrorist attacks. Who gets arrested under terrorism legislation? The University employee of course!

Welcome to the up is down, down is up twilight zone of the post-9/11 world!

Newt Gingrich can publicly encourage the government to allow terrorists to attack America to prove "we're in danger" and people barely batter an eyelid yet woe betide someone read something about terrorists, otherwise they'll be shackled and locked up quicker than you can say "police state".

"This is ... one of the great tragedies of the Bush administration," Gingrich said during a Long Island bookstore appearance. "The more successful they've been at intercepting and stopping bad guys, the less proof there is that we're in danger. And therefore, the better they've done at making sure there isn't an attack, the easier it is to say, 'Well, there never was going to be an attack anyway.' And it's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to get through just to remind us."

Just to remind us of what, Gingrich? The Bush administration's blood-soaked eight years in office, the near 3,000 dead on 9/11, the imperial looting and obliteration of Iraq, to remind us that these things really were worthwhile for the greater good? To remind us that "we're in danger"? And you're saying we wouldn't be in danger under a government that willingly allows terrorists to kill us?

Imagine if anti-war demonstrators or 9/11 truthers were calling for violence and killing people to ram through their political agenda? Do you think Homeland Security would turn the other cheek? Do you think Fox News might have something to say about it?

Yet they don't even need to go near advocating violence in order to draw the attention of the authorities - the dastardly crime of downloading a book off the Internet is enough to be labeled a terrorist and have your life ransacked these days, unless you're a frothing-at-the-mouth Neo-Con of course, in that case you can openly call for terror no questions asked.

Nottingham University employees Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza's deadly conspiracy to obtain a document about terrorism that was on their University's reading list resulted in their arrest, their homes being torn apart, their laptops searched and their friends and family members interrogated.

That's right - reading about Al-Qaeda is now tantamount to being a member of Al-Qaeda according to British cops.

After the arrests, which were cited as a textbook example of "totalitarianism" by Nottingham MP Alan Simpson, police attempted to deport Yezza on immigration charges to sweep their disgraceful actions under the carpet. Yezza subsequently won an appeal and he is free to continue living in Britain in fear of a midnight knock on the door if he dares punch the words "Al-Qaeda Training Manual" into a Google search engine ever again.

Meanwhile, people like Gingrich and his Neo-Con peer Stu Bykovsky, along with a host of other Bush administration cronies, routinely and publicly express their fetish for encouraging terrorist attacks and more dead Americans without a care in the world.

What is wrong with this picture? If we are fighting terrorists then why do those that align themselves with the Bush administration's war on terror mentally masturbate about seeing more terrorist attacks?

Neo-Cons are free to engage in one of the primary definitions of terrorism, spewing terrorist rhetoric by hyping the threat of terror to achieve a political objective.

But you want to download a book that's part of the University reading list to help you put together a research paper? Forget about it - you're a terrorist!

P.S. - I made the mistake of typing "terrorism" into Dictionary.com for the purposes of writing this article. I guess I'll see you all in Gitmo!

Time to End "Bernanke Panky?"

Deplore as he must the current minor Internet buzz about abolishing the Federal Reserve Board or impeaching its leaders, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke must have a grudging historical sense that 75 years ago, such chastisement might have been appropriate.

Back in 2002, Bernanke, then a Fed Board member, told a Chicago meeting that the group's honoree, octogenarian economist Milton Friedman, had been correct in blaming the Fed for the Great Depression. "You're right," Bernanke told Friedman and the rest of the audience. "We [the FRB] did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you [Friedman's analyses and teachings], we won't do it again."

So, if recent Fed policies of blowing monetary bubbles and then bailing out the most reckless Wall Street institutions in fact "do it again," albeit through a different economics, is Bernanke ready for a new round of 1932-style talk about abolishing the Fed or impeaching its leaders?

Perhaps he should be. At least three aspects of Bernanke's Fed chairmanship over the last two years -- the J.P. Morgan Chase-Bear Stearns bail-out, his subservience to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and the Fed's decision in 2006 to stop publishing M3 money supply data that mocked its insistence on "anchored" inflation -- have generated major controversy.

Extra-legal Bernanke Behavior in the March J.P. Morgan Chase - Bear Stearns Bailout: Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, a recognized pillar of U.S. finance, has opined that the Fed took "actions that extend to the very edge of its lawful and implied powers, transcending in the process certain long-embedded principles and practices." Moreover, the statute under which Bernanke purported to act required affirmative votes from five Fed Board members, and Bernanke procured only four. Other critics contend that the bail-out was really on behalf of J.P. Morgan, which could have been pulled down by the impact on its holdings of a Bear failure. In this view, the $29 billion loaned to finance the deal was legally a usurpation of Congressional appropriations power.

Bernanke and the President's Working Group on Financial Markets: Since this outfit, CIA-like in its official but also clandestine nature was set up in 1988, rumor has made it a backstage and unauthorized financial markets participant in crisis periods. The March episode may well be another example. Treasury Secretary Paulson is the Working Group's big capo in Washington, not Bernanke. Indeed, bipartisan leaders of the Senate Finance Committee expressed open concern that Paulson had told Bernanke what to do. Furthermore, although Bernanke testified to Congress that he didn't know about the grave Bear Stearns financial situation until March 13, it turns out, from Freedom of Information Act disclosures, that he may well have known. On March 11, Bernanke and another bail-out architect, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, lunched with representatives of every big Wall Street firm except Bear Stearns. The financial website Monkeybusinessblog.com assumes that Bear people were not on hand because it was their own situation being discussed.

Bernanke, Inflation and the Suppression of M3 Money Supply Data: In November 2005, several weeks after Bernanke was named as chairman, the Fed announced that publication of the broad "M3" money supply data would be discontinued in March 2006 because it was "duplicative." It wasn't, because the M3 measurement is much broader than the other two yardsticks (M1 and M2). More importantly, over the last two years, M3 has ballooned to a 15-16 percent annual growth rate. These no longer official computations mocked Bernanke's pretenses that inflation was low and under control. Indeed, the investment firm of Stifel Nicolaus just published charts showing how closely the 2001-2008 oil price surge has related to the galloping growth in M3. Here, too, the legal question becomes: What did Bernanke know about inflation and the suppression of M3 and what was his personal involvement?

Given that the embattled chairman has the big guns in Washington and a grateful Wall Street on his side, he probably has little to fear. For example, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a leading pro-bailout Democrat, told the Wall Street Journal that "I don't think that changing the agenda of the Federal Reserve is going to be high on any new president's agenda. I think people think Bernanke is doing well."

People as in "the American people" or people as in big Democratic and Republican donors? One must assume the latter. Right after the Bear gambit, Britain's Financial Times reported that U.S. poll data showed the public opposing bank bail-outs by 4:1 ("U.S. Home-owner Bail-out Hits Resistance," Financial Times, April 2).

Herein lies the warning. Search the Internet for a conjunction of Bernanke or the Federal Reserve with impeachment, you don't get much beyond one or two quirky financiers and the official website of the maverick Republican presidential contender, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, who favors U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and abolition of the Federal Reserve Board. Paul has no use for either anointed GOP nominee John McCain or the party establishment. However, he does have support from a tenth or so of the Republican electorate. And should Paul signal his followers to back this year's presumed Libertarian presidential nominee, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, some pundits think the latter could take 2-3 percent of the November vote, siphoning off enough disgruntled conservatives to beat McCain.

Could the impeachment of Bernanke become a 2008 issue? I doubt it. Congressman Paul, as a member of the House Financial Services, probably knows that back in 1932, Republican Congressman Louis McFadden of Pennsylvania, a longtime Chairman of the House Banking Committee, made a fool of himself with a resolution indicting the Federal Reserve Board for its actions, and then later switched focus to impeachment. The hidden irony is that Bernanke, philosophically, must empathize with frustration with early 1930s monetary policy.

In 2008, however, a more restrained critique could be effective. If Paul and Barr de-emphasize the fringe Libertarian stuff -- marijuana legalization and such like -- and go straight for the jugular of Iraq bungling and its effect on oil prices, along with Federal Reserve misbehavior, they might have a shot at that 2-3 percent. Moreover, even if Barr drew only 1.4 percent, say, on a national basis, he could do better in five swing states -- Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico -- where sensitivity to the housing bubble and mismanaged mortgage crisis runs especially high.

Volcker, the grand old man of U.S. monetary policy, has told audiences that he doesn't believe that incumbent Fed chairman Bernanke will be reappointed by the next president. He certainly won't be if the integrity of his behavior in office becomes a significant 2008 campaign issue.

McClellan’s Missile: Media Crimes As War Crimes

When Will US “Journalism” Be Held Accountable for Promoting War?

by Danny Schechter
Duh. The Bush Administration deployed a dishonest but very effective propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq War to the American people on virtually every media outfit. Their “Culture of Deception” is now acknowledged.

How do we know? Scotty McClellan told us so. It’s all in the former Press Secretary’s new book. And, happily, it’s all over the news.

It’s easy to put McClellan down. On the right he’s a traitor. The President dismissed him as “sad.” Karl Rove compared him to a left-wing blogger. Most of the real left-wing bloggers were equally contemptuous suggesting he’s just trying to sell books, some asking: Why did he wait so long? Wasn’t he part of the plot? Is this just the pot calling the kettle black?

Yes, but, at least, he had the courage, these many years later, to confirm what I and other have been saying for years. And he didn’t avoid taking a poke at the media which did the Administration’s job for them by carrying unverified claims as facts, while blocking out any other narrative. To his credit, McClellan called our media “deferential, complicit enablers.”

He’s not the first rat to jump ship and won’t be the last. Think of him like the informants who turn on the mafia. The fact that a high profile former propagandist blew a whistle matters in the same way that it was a former Vietnam strategist named Daniel Ellsberg, who with Anthony Russo, exposed the Pentagon Papers. We all knew the government had lied then, but the Pentagon Papers explained how they did it. (The Papers came out in 1971; the war had been underway since l945.)

Ellsberg was branded a rat too. But without rats, prosecutors can’t get convictions. In Ellsberg’s case, he was the one convicted. Let’s hope that in McClellan’s case, we can get to the real criminals in the dock along with the many who collaborated with them.

To be honest, what’s needed here are not more confessions by political insiders but an actual trial of the perpetrators. This government strategy, and the media coverage that served it, were not just mistakes or lapses in otherwise accurate coverage but crimes with real world consequences. Try a million dead in Iraq, and 4,000 Americans. And counting…

As I and others probed into the daily indifference to Iraqi suffering and the continuing orchestration of pro-war coverage, we came to see the problem not as continuously flawed reporting or even as a series of institutional failures, but in the same way as many whistleblowers tend to view the practices they expose — as a crime.

Given the number of lives lost and the amount of money wasted, these were the moral equivalents of serious felonies. When crimes take place in other settings, eventually government officials step in. As the scandals become public, there are exposés and then prosecutions. In this case, it is the government committing the crime, and the media, in essence, covering it up.

Yes, media crimes rationalize war crimes. Both are shameful and worthy of indictment.

Official scrutiny of media practices rarely happens, partly because of Constitutional protections afforded journalists and media outlets, and partly because wronged parties have little recourse.

It’s hard to fight back against media irresponsibility. Public shaming seems the only response, and its effectiveness depends on whether critics can be heard in the so-called public square. In the case of Iraq, there were 800 experts on all the channels in the run-up to the war. Only 6 opposed the war. No wonder judgments like this are left to historians.

After the Second World War at the Nuremberg Tribunal, American prosecutors wanted to put the German media on trial for promoting Hitler’s policies. State propagandists were condemned. More recently, hate radio was indicted by the Rwanda tribunal investigating the genocide there, while in the former Yugoslavia, Serbian and Croatian TV were criticized for inciting a war that divided that country, encouraging murderous ethnic cleansing.

The principle that media outlets can, for reasons of omission or commission, be held responsible for their role in inflaming conflicts and promoting jingoism, has been well established. Many remember William Randolf Hearst’s famous yellow journalism dictum: “You give me the pictures, I will give you the war.”

In February 2005, Italy hosted the citizens-initiated World Tribunal on Iraq, which put the media “on trial” for its role in selling of the Iraq War. It was of course not covered here. The Tribunal was modeled on an earlier initiative during the Vietnam War by the then-leading international intellectuals Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone du Bouvoir. As a young journalist, I covered their sessions in Stockholm in 1967. I saw it as an act of conscience.

Most of the U.S. media saw it as an exercise in propaganda. Most of the charges they made then about U.S. war crimes are largely corroborated by the historical record even though only a few were reported when they occurred. I still remember watching CBS correspondent Morley Safer filming a stand-up in Stockholm, denouncing the Tribunal. Decades later, his “60 Minutes” returned to the scene of the My-Lai massacre interviewing former US soldiers who charged the U.S. military with the very war crimes Safer had dismissed when it mattered.

Critics today believe the media has covered up war crimes in Iraq, minimized civilian casualties, downplayed the destruction of cities like Fallujah, and misreported the reasons for going to war and how it was conducted. And they are right.

Will any of the “enablers” in TV news, or our leading newspapers, face consequences for their actions? I am not just talking about high profile journalists but their editors, producers, executives and proprietors.

Unlikely.

Many pro-war reports won awards; many of those who engineered the propagandistic “coverage” were promoted. Their patriotically-correct ‘all the war, all the time’ approach raised ratings and revenues. Some were hailed as heroes, critics dismissed as zeros. Dick Cheney even dropped into a post-invasion media dinner to thank them for their service.

Media companies were happily co-opted as embeds while naysayers like Peter Arnett were banished. Later, many reporters were killed and wounded while trying to tell a story that has now largely disappeared from view.

Has there been any outbreak of conscience in newsrooms over the last five years or, more importantly, any commitment to cover Iraq in a less jingoistic manner? Not that I can see, even though there is occasionally some “good” reporting. The title of the book by Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell sums it up: “So Wrong for So Long.”

No wonder many of the outlets abandoning journalism for “mili-tainment” lost viewers and credibility.

So thank you Scotty, whatever your motives, for reopening the debate. (And thank the indy media and a few gutsy websites and mainstreamers for telling the truth.)

Now it’s time to consider potential remedies even if we lack the power to enforce them. Our main media outlets have already been convicted in the global court of public opinion.

News Dissector Danny Schechter made WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception in 2004, a film shown in 40 countries.(Wmdthefilm.com). He wrote two books on media complicity, Embedded (2003) and When News Lies (2006). His latest, PLUNDER is about the financial crisis. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Fuel suppliers demand airlines pay cash in advance

From The TimesMay 26, 2008

Carl Mortished and Amanda Andrews
Airlines are being forced to pay cash in advance for jet fuel as the major oil companies tighten the screws on an industry that is being crushed by an extraordinary surge in the price of crude oil.

Sources within the airline industry indicate that credit is being denied to most of the leading American carriers and the practice is moving to Europe and Asia. So uncertain is the cash solvency of the industry that jet fuel suppliers insist on prepayments into special bank accounts.

A credit controller at a leading European multinational oil company told The Times that the oil industry was moving to jet fuel prepayment. “It’s common in the US and it is moving to Europe. We have been moving to prepayment since Swissair went bust.”

The need to put up money before delivery of fuel is a huge financial burden that has been shifted from the oil companies to the airlines. According to John Armbrust, a US jet fuel consultant, the oil industry had $5 billion (£2.5 billion) of jet fuel credit outstanding to airlines before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now they are demanding that airlines leave cash on deposit.

“The airlines can’t afford it. Traditionally, oil companies extended credit for 14 or 21 days and some as long as 30 days. Now, most American airlines are on prepay. South West is one of a few likely to still get credit.”

The extent of the cash squeeze was highlighted last week when American Airlines said that it would charge $15 per bag checked even as it revealed plans to shed 75 aircraft, shrinking the airline’s capacity by 12 per cent.

The price of jet fuel has risen by 60 per cent since January and American Airlines paid $665 million more for fuel in the first quarter of this year than in the same period of 2007.

The credit crunch is likely to worsen and a number of financial institutions will fail, according to research from Atradius, the credit insurance group which conducted a global survey of its customers’ views of the financial outlook. Although Atradius said that companies expect the number of failures to be small, about 65 per cent expect there to be failures.

The group added that direct exposure to sub-prime lending is higher in Europe than in the United States even though the bulk of the sub-prime mortgage defaults are in the US and many of the securities these loans are packaged into would have originated from US-based mortgage companies.

“Some explanation for this may be investments by European companies in US securities offering higher returns and more frequent use of secondary financial markets to securitise receivables by European countries,” it said.

Atradius added that only 12 per cent of companies across the world do not expect an economic slowdown in the next year. In Britain, more than 90 per cent of companies surveyed expect a slowdown, the highest percentage. About one in six companies expects a slowdown of only the national economy; a quarter expect a slowdown of the global economy and half expect a slowdown of both. The expectation of a slowdown is also high in Mexico, the United States, Spain, Italy, France and Belgium and lowest in Sweden and the Netherlands.

Atradius found that larger companies are more likely to have been affected by the credit crisis. Although fewer than 30 per cent of small companies reported an impact, almost half of all large companies (with more than €1 billion annual gross sales) said that they had felt the credit-crisis pinch.

Companies operating within the energy industry have been especially affected, but those in the healthcare and services industries reported a relatively low frequency of impact.

IAEA: No N-weaponization found in Iran

Tue, 27 May 2008


IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei
The IAEA has not detected the use of nuclear material linked to Iran's "alleged studies" of weaponization, the agency's latest report says.

The findings are part of a restricted International Atomic Energy Agency report forwarded to the UN Security Council and to the 35 board members of the agency on Monday, May 26.

“The Agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran. Iran has provided the Agency with access to declared nuclear material and has provided the required nuclear material accountancy reports in connection with declared nuclear material and activities,” said the report, a copy of which was obtained by Press TV.

The IAEA holds the view that clarification of the alleged studies "on the green salt project, high explosives testing and missile re-entry vehicle project" is critical "to an assessment of the nature of Iran's past and present nuclear program."

"Iran has agreed to address the alleged studies," it said.

According to the report, Iran's response to a May 9 request by the UN nuclear watchdog to provide "additional clarifications" on the nuclear drive is currently being assessed by the agency.

Director General of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei called on Iran to "implement all measures required to build confidence in the peaceful nature of its nuclear program," the report added.

The West has been at loggerheads with Iran over the country's nuclear drive. Washington and its allies accuse Tehran of pursuing nuclear weaponry; claiming that Iran's uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing fuel for a nuclear weapons progmra - such substance could also be used to produce electricity in nuclear power plants.

IAEA's latest report came a week after ElBaradei said that there is no 'concrete evidence' that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb.

"We haven't seen indications or any concrete evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and I've been saying that consistently for the last five years," ElBaradei said speaking at a May 20 session of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East.

The IAEA boss referred to a Dec 3 joint assessment by 16 US spy agencies, which conceded with 'high confidence' that Tehran is not running a nuclear weapons program, and said that the US intelligence report confirmed his agency's assessment on Iran.

McBush

S&P: US home prices tumble a record 14.1 pct in 1Q

By J.W. ELPHINSTONE, AP Business Writer

U.S. home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter, a closely watched index showed Tuesday, a somber indication that the housing slump continues to deepen.

Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. The quarterly index covers all nine U.S. Census divisions.

Prices nationwide are at levels not seen since the third quarter of 2004, according to Maureen Maitland, a S&P vice president. However, the index is still up 60 percent versus 2000.

The narrower indices also set record declines in the first quarter. The 20-city index tumbled 14.4 percent, the lowest since that index was started in 2001. The 10-city index plunged 15.3 percent, a record in its 20-year history.

"There are very few silver linings that one can see in the data. Most of the nation appears to remain on a downward path," said David Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee.

Nineteen of the 20 metro areas reported annual declines, with 15 of them posting record lows. Six metro areas lost more than 20 percent.

Las Vegas had the worst quarterly performance, falling 25.9 percent, followed by Miami and Phoenix. Only Charlotte, N.C., stayed above water, gaining less than 1 percent over the previous year.

Last week, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said home prices fell 3.1 percent in the first quarter, the largest drop in its 17-year history and only the second quarter of price declines recorded.

The OFHEO index is narrower in scope and is calculated using mortgages of $417,000 or less that are bought or backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. That excludes properties bought with some of the riskier types of home loans.




Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press.