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9/11 was it a conspiracy?
9/11 was it a conspiracy?
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The American Mafia (or simply the Mafia in the United States), also known as Cosa Nostra or La Cosa Nostra, is an Italian-American criminal society and offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia. Much like the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia had no formal name and is a secret criminal society. Its members usually refer to it as Cosa Nostra or by its English translation "our thing". Another translation/meaning of the term is "this thing of ours". The press has also coined the name "National Crime Syndicate" to refer to the entirety of U.S. organized crime, including the Mafia.
The slaves first become aware of the Mafia Joseph 'Joe Cargo' Valachi (September 22, 1903 – April 3, 1971) also known as "Charles Chanbano" and "Anthony Sorge" was the first Mafia member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made Cosa Nostra (meaning "Our Thing") a household name. In October 1963, Valachi had testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations that the Mafia did exist. The FBI's 33 degree Freemason Hoover, lies to the slaves for decades claiming the Mafia doesn't exist, crime doesn't exist In the same period, there were numerous Mafia shootings as a result of Prohibition, while Hoover continued to deny the very existence of organized crime. In the 1950s, evidence of Hoover's unwillingness to focus FBI resources on the Mafia became grist for the media and his many detractors, after famed reporter Jack Anderson exposed the immense scope of the Mafia's organized crime network, a huge threat Hoover had long downplayed. Hoover's retaliation and continual harassment of Anderson lasted into the 1970s. Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, just days before Hoover testified in the earliest stages of the Warren Commission hearings, President Lyndon B. Johnson waived for Hoover the then-mandatory U.S. government service retirement age of seventy, allowing Hoover to remain the FBI Director "for life." |
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Jack Anderson was a key and often controversial figure in reporting on J. Edgar Hoover's apparent ties to the Mafia, Watergate, the John F. Kennedy assassination. He also broke open the case of John Lennon, who was followed, had his phone tapped and was generally harassed by the Nixon administration during the fight to deport him, the search for fugitive ex-Nazi officials in South America and the Savings and Loan scandal. He discovered a CIA plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, and was credited for breaking the Iran-Contra affair, though he has said the scoop was "spiked" because he had become too close to President Ronald Reagan.
In 1972, Anderson was the target of an assassination plot in the White House. Two Nixon administration conspirators admitted under oath they plotted to poison Anderson on orders from a senior White House aide. White House "plumbers" G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt met with a CIA operative to discuss the possibilities, including drugging Anderson with LSD, poisoning his aspirin bottle, or staging a fatal mugging. The plot was aborted when the plotters were arrested for the Watergate break-in. Nixon had long been angry with Anderson, blaming Anderson's election eve story about a secret loan from Howard Hughes to Nixon's brother for Nixon's loss of the 1960 presidential election. Anderson remained a target of FBI investigation after his death |
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An extract from Mike Ruppert's book "Crossing the Rubicon" on the 911 Commission members' many conflicts of interest. Apologies for its length.
(Link to an online copy of the book here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/15869058/1b-Ruppert-Crossing-the-Rubicon) The record keepers: A study in conflicts of interest The Kean Commission has always been riddled with conflicts of interest. In a criminal proceeding these would have resulted in the immediate recusal of most of the Commission’s members. For the record, I am hard pressed to think of any human being with prior government service who would not have been excused for cause,1given the way the economy and government now operate — as a system of organized crime. The following is only a partial listing of some of the more obvious conflicts within the Kean Commission. It begins with a look at the Commission’s Chairman by economist and historian Michel Chossudovsky, followed by a description of Vice-Chairman Hamilton by independent journalist Jim Rarey. Thomas Kean (Chairman) Thomas Kean is a director (and shareholder) of Amerada Hess Corporation, which is involved in the Hess-Delta joint venture with Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia (owned by the Al-Amoudi clans). Delta- Hess “was established in 1998 for the development and exploration of oil fields in the Caspian region.... In Azerbaijan Delta Hess is involved in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli PSA [Production Sharing Agreement] (2.72 percent) and the Garabaghli-Kursangi PSA (20 percent). It is also an equity holder in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline”: “An air of mystery hangs over Delta-Hess, which... is registered in the Cayman Islands. Hess is in no hurry to reveal the terms of the alliance, which it says are subject to confidentiality clauses. ‘There’s no reason why this should be public information,’ a Hess spokesman says” (Energy Compass, 15 Nov. 2002). Coincidentally, the former Governor of New Jersey is also a mem- ber of the Council on Foreign Relations, together with another 450crossing the rubicon prominent member of the board of directors of Amerada Hess, former Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady. It is also worth mentioning that Thomas Kean also sits as co-chair- man of the Homeland Security Project (HSP) under the auspices of the Century Foundation.2In this capacity, Kean has played a key role in the draft recommendations of the Century Foundation, which laid the groundwork of the Office of Homeland Security legislation. Moreover, it would appear that Delta officials (involved in the UNO- CAL trans-Afghan pipeline consortium) played a key role in negotiations with the Taliban. In turn, Enron, the infamous energy giant — whose former CEO, Ken Lay, had close connections to the Bush family — had been contracted in a cozy relationship to under- take feasibility studies for the Unocal-Delta consortium. Enron Corporation had also been entrusted — in liaison with Delta — with pipeline negotiations with the Taliban government. Wayne Madsen has shown with ample documentation thatGeorge W. Bush also had dealings with Khalid bin Mahfouz, when he was in the Texas oil business.3 Both George W. Bush and Khalid bin-Mahfouz were implicated in the Bank of Commerce International (BCCI) scandal. Other links between Bush and Mahfouz can be found through investments in the Carlyle Group, an American investment firm man- aged by a board on which former president George Bush himself sat. The younger [George W.] Bush personally held shares in one of the components of the Carlyle group, the Caterair company, between 1990-94. And Carlyle today ranks as a leading contributor to Bush’s electoral campaign. On Carlyle’s advisory board is found the name of Sami Baarma, director of the Pakistani financial establishment, Prime Commercial Bank, that is based in Lahore and owned by Mahfouz. (See Maggie Mulvihill, Jonathan Wells, and Jack Meyers: Slick deals; the White House connection; Saudi ‘agents’ close Bush Friends,Boston Herald, 11 December 2001).4[emphasis added] Lee Hamilton (Vice Chair) Commission vice chairman and former congressman Lee Hamilton was appointed [to the Kean Commission] to replace former senate majori- ty leader George Mitchell (CFR), who like [Henry] Kissinger declined to disclose potential conflicts of interest and resigned. Hamilton, a CFR member since at least 1988, was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Select Intelligence Committee. In 1987, House Speaker Jim Wright (who later resigned in dis- grace) appointed Hamilton to chair a committee investigating the Iran/Contra affair. The Record451 When a question was raised about CIA/Contra drug smuggling, the response was release by Hamilton of a cursory review that con- cluded there was no truth to the charges. The CIA recently released a report [Volume II of the CIA’s Inspector General Report on Iran-Contra drug trafficking, released October 8, 1998] (that received almost no publicity) admitting the drug connection.5 Barbara Honegger, who played a pivotal role in bringing the information on the wargames into focus, has remained sharply critical of Hamilton. She has some authority on the subject of Hamilton’s role in the so-called “October Surprise” of 1980-1981, in which it was charged that George Bush Sr., in concert with future CIA Director Bill Casey, engaged in backdoor negotiations with Iran’s new revo- lutionary government to delay the release of American hostages held since the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. Evidence (some of which originated with Honegger) that was serious enough to warrant congressional hearings showed that in exchange for US weapons for use in its pending bloody war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Reagan-Bush team secured a promise from Iran to delay the hostages’ release during the 1980 presidential campaign. President Jimmy Carter had been frantically attempting to secure the hostages’ release in an effort to boost his re-election prospects. Instead, however, the hostages were not returned until the very day of Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration in January 1981. This was one of history’s great “coincidences.” Following her experience as a research assistant at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Honegger joined the policy research team of the Reagan-Bush cam- paign. In 1980, she was part of the Reagan-Bush transition team. In 1981, she worked in the White House Office of Policy Development as a “Research and Policy analyst.” Then she resigned, according to some reports because of sex dis- crimination. Other reports have described her departure from the Reagan administration as a resignation of conscience. Honegger was among the first to go public with allegations of duplicity in the October Surprise. Her 1989 book on the subject, October Surprise (Tudor Press), was well received by the research com- munity, and it remains a useful resource. Iran-Contra was effectively “managed” by Lee Hamilton in the House and John Kerry (among others) in the Senate throughout the late 1980s to conceal the great- est crimes of the era, crimes committed by a litany of well-known government operatives. At the time, Hamilton was the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. While many activists regard 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Kerry as something of a hero for bringing many details of Iran-Contra drug activities to light (and into the public record), others, more deeply versed in the evidentiary record, suspect that he also did a masterful job of keeping some of the most damaging Iran- Contra secrets — especially records of CIA proprietary company operations — hidden. I am among the latter group. 452crossing the rubicon Many figures who came under criminal and investigative scrutiny in Iran- Contra, like John Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Otto Reich, Colin Powell, and John Negroponte, returned (over little or no congressional opposition) to serve in the current Bush administration after the 2000 (so-called) election. Honegger’s position has consistently been that Hamilton’s role was damage control in both the October Surprise and the Iran-Contra hearings. It was obvi- ously a good qualification for his role in 9/11, and Honegger is far from alone in her assessment of the Kean Commission’s vice chair. For more than four decades, veteran Washington journalist Sarah McLendon was the grande dame of the White House Press Corps. Until her January 2003 death (at 92), she was a revered and active journalist known for her feisty confrontations with presidents and the powerful since the Truman administration. In her later years she had a great habit of appearing to be asleep in her wheelchair until the moment when she would wake up and pounce on her prey with incisive questions that revealed she hadn’t missed a word of what had been said. Once, on national television and in the middle of a live White House press conference, she even dared to question President Bill Clinton about the abundantly documented record of CIA and Arkansas state government involvement in drug smuggling operations at Arkansas’ Mena Regional Intermountain Airport during the 1980s. In 1994 and 1995, while living in Washington, I was a regular attendee at McLendon’s weekly study group at the National Press Club and later at her resi- dence on Connecticut Avenue. After she passed, the National Press Club renamed one of its conference rooms The McLendon Room. In 1992 McLendon offered her observations on Hamilton’s behavior as the chief “fact-finder” and chair of the October Surprise and Iran-Contra committees. I declined to withdraw the report I made that Congressman Hyde elicited and obtained a promise from Chairman Lee Hamilton, D., Ind. of the House Task Force on October Surprise, that the group would clear President George Bush of going to Paris to cinch a deal of weapons for Iran in exchange for retaining American hostages to be delivered to President Ronald Reagan and not to outgoing President Jimmy Carter. Hyde says he made no such a deal and I must remember that Hamilton is a Democrat. That makes no difference. Hamilton held a press con- ference to clear Bush before the investigation into the deal between the Reagan-Bush candidates for presidential office and the Iranians had even started. Hamilton then admitted he had not interrogated witness- es or talked with his special attorney hired to investigate the matter.6 Sound familiar? Veteran AP journalist Bob Parry, who broke the first major story linking drug smuggling to Contra support activities, only to later lose his job, offered some The Record453 additional observations on Lee Hamilton in his independent web newsletter, Consortium News. One of the key congressional Republicans fighting this rear-guard action was Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming, who became the ranking House Republican on the Iran-contra investigation. Cheney already enjoyed a favorable reputation in Washington as a steady conservative hand. Cheney smartly exploited his relationship with Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., who was chairman of the Iran-contra panel. Hamilton cared deeply about his reputation for bipartisanship and the Republicans quickly exploited this fact.7 Not only did Hamilton fail to find any wrongdoing by top officials in either investigation, he was even “satisfied” with the performance of Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in the Iran-Contra hearings. North appears before the House Select Committee on Intelligence to answer questions about his role in a Contra resupply operation. He lies convincingly: He has “not in any way, at any time violate[d] the principles or legal requirements of the Boland Amendment,” which bans federal support for the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., pronounces himself satis- fied with North’s “good faith.” When North’s superior, John Poindexter, is told of his successful deception of Congress, Poindexter e-mails Ollie: “Well done.”8 Philip Zelikow (Executive Director) Perhaps no more glaring conflict of interest attracted opposition from victim fam- ilies and 9/11 activists than that of the commission’s Executive Director, Philip Zelikow. Concerns were raised when it was disclosed that only two commission members and Zelikow might be allowed to see certain classified presidential records, including the much ballyhooed and publicly debated Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001. Personally, I viewed the August 6thPDB as a red herring and a hubristic pretext over which the commission could make a show of “battling” the White House for infor- mation. The PDB, titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” was eventually released in a one and a half page version that was presented to the world as “complete.” Nothing could have been further from the truth. The respected German paper Die Zeitpublished a story in October of 2002, well before the PDB became an issue, stating that the PDB was actually 11.5 pages long.9Since I had document- ed so many other clear, direct, and credible and apparently more detailed warnings, the August 6 PDB was a non-issue for me. But the controversy arising from the public debate forced even the New York Times to comment on some of Phil Zelikow’s more obvious conflicts of interest. 454crossing the rubicon Advocates for the families said they were alarmed by the commission’s disclosure on Thursday that only one of the 10 commissioners would have access to a wide range of the briefings, and that the only person from the commission with similar access would be its staff director, Philip Zelikow, who has close ties to Condoleezza Rice and other sen- ior officials in the Bush administration. The commission has previously rejected a request from victims’ families to limit Mr. Zelikow’s responsibilities sharply in light of poten- tial conflict of interests involving the White House. The families’ advocates said the decision to have Mr. Zelikow be one of only two commission officials with wide access to the highly classified documents — the other is Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic commission member who was deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration — raised new questions about the investigation’s impartiality…. Mr. Zelikow, who wrote a book with Ms. Rice in 1995, was on the Bush administration’s transition team for the National Security Council and has acknowledged having contacts earlier this year with Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, about Mr. Zelikow’s schol- arly work at the University of Virginia. “Phil Zelikow has a very large conflict of interest,” said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, was killed at the World Trade Center, and who is a spokeswoman for the Family Steering Committee, an umbrella group that represents several family organizations. “He is very close friends with Condi Rice, he was on the transition team, and some of these documents are going to pertain to that. It’s very disturbing.” Mr. Zelikow said in an interview that he frequently dealt in his scholarly work with prominent political figures, Republicans and Democrats alike, and that he had attempted to be even-handed in pur- suing the commission’s investigation. “I talk to a lot of people in both parties, including highly political people in the Democratic party,” he said.10 Even while serving on the commission, Zelikow’s conduct raised eyebrows. Newsweekcommented on the fact that Zelikow had sent a fax to the White House about Condoleezza Rice’s pending testimony. The grainy photograph rolled off the fax machine at the White House counsel’s office last Monday morning, along with a scribbled note that smacked of blackmail. If the White House didn’t allow national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public before the 9/11 commission, it read, “This will be all over Washington in 24 hours.” The photo, from a Nov. 22, 1945, New York Times story, showed Adm. William D. Leahy, The Record455 chief of staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, appear- ing before a special congressional panel investigating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. PRESIDENT’S CHIEF OF STAFF TESTIFIES read the headline over the snapshot of Leahy’s very public testimony. The point was clear: the White House could no longer get away with the claim that Rice’s appearance would be a profound breach of precedent. The fax was the work of Philip Zelikow, the commission’s execu- tive director….11 What’s more, Zelikow had been serving as a member of President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) since 2001, and he also made a September 2002 public statement saying that US military action against Iraq would be based upon a desire to protect Israeli interests rather than any real threat from Iraq. Zelikow made his statements about “the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president. He served on the board between 2001 and 2003. “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 — it’s the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation. “And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.12 Perhaps the worst conflict of interest was the fact that Zelikow had advised the incoming Bush administration on terror-related intelligence matters and had sev- eral discussions about bin Laden and al Qaeda in 2000-2001 with Richard Clarke. By rights, he should have been a witness testifying under oath before the commis- sion instead of its executive director. When many of the victim families learned of this they were justifiably outraged at an arrangement that would have never been permitted in a court of law. Statement of the Family Steering Committee for The 9/11 Independent Commission March 20, 2004 From The Family Steering Committee is deeply disturbed to learn about Executive Staff Director Phillip Zelikow’s participation in urgent 456crossing the rubicon post-election briefings, December 2000, and January 2001, with Sandy Berger and Condoleezza Rice. In this particular meeting the Senior Clinton Administration official clearly warned that al Qaeda posed the worst Security threat facing the nation. It is apparent that Dr. Zelikow should never have been appointed to be Executive Staff Director of the Commission. As Executive Staff Director his job has been to determine the focus and direction of the Commission’s investigation, an investigation whose mandate includes understanding why the Bush administration failed to prioritize the Al Qaeda threat. It is abundantly clear that Dr. Zelikow’s conflicts go beyond just the transition period. It is extremely distressing to learn this information at this late date. This new information clearly calls into question the integrity of this Commission’s investigation. The Family Steering Committee repeat- edly expressed concerns over all members’ conflicts requesting that the commission be forthcoming so as not to taint the validity of the report. The Family Steering Committee was unaware of Dr. Zelikow’s participation in this intelligence briefing until today. As such, the Family Steering Committee is calling for: 1. Dr. Zelikow’s immediate resignation. 2. Dr. Zelikow’s testimony in public and under oath. 3. Subpoena of Dr. Zelikow’s notes from the intelligence briefings he attended with Richard Clarke. 4. The Commission to apologize to the 9/11 families and America for this massive appearance of impropriety. The Family Steering Committee (FSC) is an independent, nonpar- tisan group of individuals who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001. The FSC does not receive financial or other support from any outside organizations. In spite of all the controversy, and calls from many for his resignation, Zelikow remained securely in place at the Kean Commission until this book went to press. Jamie Gorelick Freelance journalist Jim Rarey writes: Considered one of the 50 most powerful women in the country, CFR member Jamie Gorelick is currently vice-chair of the giant mortgage lender and insurer Fannie Mae. From March 1994 until she joined Fannie Mae in May 1997 she was Deputy Attorney General, the num- ber two spot in Janet Reno’s Department of Justice. In May 1995, the Intelligence Community Law Enforcement Policy Board was established to meet quarterly and discuss mutual con- cerns of the Attorney General and Director of Central Intelligence. The Record457 The board was co-chaired by Gorelick and DCI George Tenet. Other members included all of the law enforcement agencies, the Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research and the Defense Department General Counsel. This is the same time frame (spring of 1995) in which the Philippine government apprised the FBI, CIA and State Department of “Project Bojinka” an Islamic terrorist plot which included hijacking commercial airlines planes and flying them into the Pentagon, World Trade Center towers, and several other buildings. The BCCI scandal involved a number of powerful individuals. Clark Clifford and Robert Altman were the top two officers in First American, the new name given Financial General Bankshares when it was taken over by BCCI (known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International in the corridors of Washington) with the help of the Jackson Stephens/Lippo Worthen Bank and the Rose Law Firm. First American is said to have been using the notoriousPR OMIS software. When BCCI and First American were exposed, the legal defense team for Clifford and Altman attracted a bevy of well-known names including Robert Fiske (later the first “independent counsel” investi- gating Whitewater and Vince Foster’s “suicide”), Robert Bennett (later attorney for Bill Clinton), and Jamie Gorelick. In a somewhat related case in 1978, Financial General Bankshares sued BCCI, two Jackson Stephens’ companies (one was Systematics) and a number of individuals. Two of the attorneys representing Systematics in the controversy over PROMIS software were Webster Hubbell and Hillary Rodham. In 1998, while at Fannie Mae, Gorelick served on Clinton’s Central Intelligence National Security Advisory Panel as well as the President’s Review of Intelligence.13[emphasis added] At one point in the Kean Commission hearings, a brief stir was caused when Republican partisans charged that Gorelick bore some personal blame for the attacks by virtue of having created an “intelligence wall” between the FBI and the CIA. As we have seen, there was no wall. A 2001 RAND Corporation study offered praise for the working relationships between the FBI and the CIA. It is now also painfully apparent that there is no wall between the Kean Commission and the government it was charged with investigating. Gorelick also has oil connections. According to 9/11 researcher Bonnie Hayskar who posted the following to the 9/11 TruthAlliance list: Schlumberger’s board members include John M. Deutch, former CIA director from May 1995-Dec. 1996 and Jamie S. Gorelick who, 458crossing the rubicon among other things, now serves on the 9/11 Commission and is one of the few allowed access to classified presidential records. Schlumberger originated in Paris (and is pronounced “slumber- shay”). It moved to Houston, TX in 1940 when the oil business was booming there, but continues to have strong ties to both the UK and France. Today, from the Schlumberger website 14 Schlumberger is the world’s premier oil drilling company. As one oil expert told me in Berlin in May of 2004, every time a well is drilled, or oil gets pumped, any- where Schlumberger is there. According to its website (above), Schlumberger is comprised of two companies: Schlumberger and WesternGeco. Then it notes: “WesternGeco, which is jointly owned with Baker-Hughes, is the world’s largest and most advanced surface seismic company.”15Baker-Hughes was founded and is run by James Baker who is one of the world’s foremost petroleum lawyers and the former secretary of state to Bush I. Baker is a Republican. Baker was also a key player in Caspian oil exploration in the 1990s. Remember, Gorelick is supposed to be a Democrat. Gorelick was one of four commission members allowed to review presidential intelligence records and make notes before reporting to the commission. It appears that the White House had very little to worry about. The White House did delay releasing the notes taken by the commissioners,16 but as Hayskar observed, “Perhaps Jamie’s notes were being embargoed by the fed- eral government to be sure she was taking notes only on matters pertaining to 9/11...”17 Perhaps it was all just theater. Jim Rarey fills us in on more of the panel: Richard Ben-Veniste Ben-Veniste is a high-visibility Washington attorney and Democrat power broker. He was Democrat counsel to the Senate Whitewater investigation where he blocked inquiries about Webster Hubbell’s hir- ing by the Lippo group and others administered by Truman Arnold. According to investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker, Ben- Veniste then turned around and defended Arnold (the man he was supposed to be investigating) before Ken Starr’s Whitewater grand jury, for which he was roundly criticized. Hopsicker also reveals that Arnold had furnished a $2 million air- plane to his friend Wally Hilliard for $1. Hilliard, Hopsicker says, owned the Flight school in Venice, Florida, where four of the Islamic terrorist pilots were trained that flew the suicide missions on 9/11. Another of Ben-Veniste’s clients was Barry Seal, the drug running CIA asset of Iran/Contra and Mena, Arkansas notoriety. In fact, Hopsicker relates Ben-Veniste told the Wall Street Journal, “I did my part by launch- The Record459 ing him (Seal) into the arms of Vice President Bush who embraced him as an undercover operative.” Fred Fielding Fielding is another one who has been around the centers of power for a while on the Republican side. In the Nixon administration he was a deputy counsel working under John Dean. In the Watergate scandal he helped his boss (Dean) handle Howard Hunt’s safe full of documents. They wore rubber gloves so as not to leave fingerprints. Fielding was not one of the 20 or so Nixon associates (including John Dean) that went to jail over their involvement. Later Fielding served as White House Counsel to President Reagan. More recently he was at least partly responsible for getting George W. Bush’s political mentor Karl Rove in hot water over failure to divest his stock in Intel Corporation valued at over $100,000. Fielding advised Rove, who was planning to divest all of his stock, to hold onto it until a “government certificate of divestiture” could be obtained. The certificate would have allowed deferral of capital gains taxes on stock sold. While he still held the stock, Rove met with Intel executives and Vice President Chaney at which a proposed merger with a Dutch company was discussed. This was a breach of adminis- tration ethics rules. Fielding served on the Bush transition team in early 2001.According to Clay Johnson, Director of Presidential Personnel and Deputy Chief of Staff, “The Vice President asked Fred Fielding, who had been President Reagan’s counsel, to come in and he volunteered to — as soon as we had a Cabinet Secretary-to-be, he would sit down with that person and they’d have a nice little chat for an hour or two. And then Fred would tell us whether he was confident that there were no clear- ance problems or not. If there was something that he thought might be problematic, he would explore it further, and maybe they had to go get some information, whatever.” Johnson said the process now takes 60 days. Jim Thompson Jim Thompson was the longest-serving governor in Illinois history, completing four terms in office leaving in 1991. He is currently chair- man of the large Chicago-based law firm Winston and Strawn…. Thompson got caught in the middle of a messy political battle between outgoing Governor George Ryan and Attorney General Jim Ryan, both Republicans. Governor Ryan was running against Democrat Rod Blagojevich, the victor and incoming governor. At the same time AG Ryan was suing Governor George Ryan over the pardoning of 460crossing the rubicon death row inmates. George Ryan hired former governor Jim Thompson to defend against the lawsuit. Blagojevich had railed in his campaign against the 26 years of Republican corruption and mismanagement. That included 12 of the years when Thompson was governor. To the astonishment of practi- cally everyone, Blagojevich appointed Thompson to lead his transition team. John Lehman John Lehman is an investment bankerwho has served in a number of government positions including as Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987under President Reagan. His first government job was as special counsel and senior staff member to Henry Kissinger on the National Security Council in the Nixon administration. Lehman currently serves on several boards of directors including those of Ball Corporation, as chairman of OAO Technology Solutions, Inc. and his own J.F. Lehman & Company. He is a former chairman of Sperry Marine and investment banker with Paine Webber.Lehman served 25 years as a naval aviator in the selected reserves. Slade Gorton Slade Gorton is a former senator from the State of Washington. After he lost his re-election bid in 2000, he joined the Seattle law firm of Preston, Gates & Ellis, which specializes in environmental issues. If jury selection rules were being used, Gorton would probably be dismissed from consideration for the commission for cause [a techni- cal term for conflict of interest]. Two days after the 9/11 attacks he told a public-television audience there was nothing government intel- ligence officials could have done to thwart the attack, according to the Seattle Times. The Timesquotes Gorton as saying, “I doubt we can expect to get too much inside information no matter what we do.” Gorton served two years on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He says that experience and his personal friendship with Trent Lott were responsi- ble for his appointment by Lott. Tim Roemer Tim Roemer is a moderate Democrat congressman (at least compared to the Democrat leadership) who is retiring from Congress at the end of this year. He was one of the prime movers in the House championing creation of the Independent Commission. He is credited with bringing the organization representing survivors and families of victims of the 9/11 attacks into the mix of support for the commission. Roemer is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. [emphasis added] The Record461 Max Cleland Former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a triple-amputee from Vietnam, is the exception that proves the rule. But even his kind of courage apparently has its lim- its. Cleland is a one-term senator from Georgia who lost his reelection bid this year [2004] in a close contest. At the age of 28, Cleland was the youngest person and first Vietnam veteran elected to the Georgia State Senate. In 1977, he became the youngest ever head of the Veterans’ Administration when appointed by President Jimmy Carter. In 1982 Cleland became the youngest per- son elected as Georgia Secretary of State. He resigned that position in 1996 to run for the seat being vacated by retiring US Senator Sam Nunn. He was sworn in as a US Senator in 1997. Barring (intentional) leaks, we will have to wait another 17 months to see what the product of the commission will be. By that time the public’s attention will undoubtedly be focused on other things.18 Max Cleland was not cut from the same cloth as the rest of the panel. In spite of his all-too-obvious sacrifice he was targeted by the Bush camp and Karl Rove in the 2002 midterm elections as being “soft on defense”. He lost his Georgia Senate seat in the same election that saw the feisty Cynthia McKinney lose her House seat. Cleland, however, never rose to McKinney’s defense as she was vilified throughout 2002. Perhaps he should have. In July 2004, the phoenix-like McKinney handily defeated five separate opponents to win 51 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for her old seat. Having done that, her re-election to the House in the 2004 election became a virtual certainty in the Democratic safe seat. Cleland had also been a sharp critic of the Bush administration’s less-than-hon- est approach to securing an invasion of Iraq. In a fall 2003 interview with Salon.com, he pulled very few punches. During his six years as a United States senator from the conservative state of Georgia, Max Cleland was known as a moderate Democrat. He drew the wrath of liberals in 2001 when he broke ranks with Democrats and voted for President Bush’s tax cuts, and last year he backed the resolution authorizing Bush to wage war with Iraq (though on that vote, at least, he was joined by some liberals)…. Meanwhile, as one of 10 commissioners serving on the independ- ent panel created by Congress to investigate the 9/11 attacks, Cleland bemoans the administration’s “Nixonian” love of secrecy and its attempt to “slow walk” the commission into irrelevancy. At the center of the secrecy debate are sensitive presidential daily briefings, or PDBs, that the commission wants to examine as part of its inquiry. Particularly important is the crucial Aug. 6, 2001 PDB, which warned of Osama 462crossing the rubicon bin Laden’s desire to hijack commercial planes in the United States. For months the White House resisted, and the commission hinted it might subpoena the document. A deal was finally cut last week, which Cleland opposed, allowing a handpicked subset of commissioners to be briefed on the PDBs. “We shouldn’t be making deals,” Cleland complains. “If some- body wants to deal, we issue subpoenas. That’s the deal.” It’s hard to imagine any recent Democratic senator less soft on national security than Max Cleland, a reflection on the unlikely path he took to the US Senate. In 1967 he volunteered for combat duty. The next year, during the siege of Khe Sahn, Cleland lost both his legs and his right hand to a Viet Cong grenade.… Let’s start with the 9/11 commission. What are your concerns about how it’s dealing with the White House? First of all, as someone who co-sponsored legislation creating the 9/11 commission, against great opposition from the White House, this independent commission should be independent and should not be making deals with anybody. I start from there. It’s been painfully obvi- ous the administration not only fought the creation of the commission but that their objective was the war in Iraq, and one of the notions that was built on was there was a direct connection between al Qaida and 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was not… What have some of the access problems been? In May, the commission asked the FAA to give us the documents we’re look- ing for. We’ve had to subpoena the FAA. We’ve now had to subpoena documents from NORAD, which they have not given us. I for one think we ought to subpoena the White House for the presidential daily brief- ings, to know what the president knew, what the administration knew, and when they knew it so we can determine what changes ought to be made in our intelligence infrastructure, our warning system, so that we don’t go through this kind of surprise attack again…. So it’s not some sort of payback? And after watching History Channel shows on the Warren Commission last night, the Warren Commission blew it. I’m not going to be part of that. I’m not going to be part of looking at information only par- tially. I’m not going to be part of just coming to quick conclusions. I’m not going to be part of political pressure to do this or not do that. I’m not going to be part of that. This is serious. You say you think it should be a national scandal.... It is a national scandal. Here’s the deal. The administration made a The Record463 connection on September 11, and you can read Bob Woodward’s book [Bush at War]. He’s a private citizen. He got access to documents we don’t have yet! Just think about that. He’s a great reporter and a good guy. Bless his heart. But he got documents over two years ago, handwritten notes from Rumsfeld tying the terrorism attack into Iraq. This administration had a point of view the day that happened. If you look at 9/11 separately you realize it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein. Except [vice president Dick] Cheney and [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz put a plan together in ‘92 to try to con- vince [President] Bush One to invade Iraq, but here’s what Bush One said about it, in his book A World Transformed, which I think is dev- astating: “I firmly believed that we should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a secret- ly entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war.” Now, this administration bought the Cheney-Wolfowitz plan from ‘92 hook line and sinker. It was all about using 9/11 as an excuse to go into Baghdad, not as a reason. What’s the significance? Let’s chase this rabbit into the ground here. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that’s what they did; they went to war…. What’s your take on the situation in Iraq? One word: Disaster. And when the secretary of defense puts out a memo to his top staff and says we don’t have the metrics to determine whether we’re winning or losing the war on terrorism? If the secretary of defense does not understand that we’re losing our rear end in Iraq in order to save our face, he ought to quit being secretary of defense. Because all you have to do is ask any Pfc. out there. They’re sitting ducks with tar- gets on their backs; they’re getting blown up. The question more and more is, for what? And, when are we coming home? The president is trying to find a reason, now that there’s no weapons of mass destruction, no yellow cake coming from Niger, no connection with al Qaeda and no immediate threat to the United States, we now have a war of choice. I’m telling you we’re in a mess. It’s a disaster. If the pattern holds for the rest of the month, we’ll have 100 US soldiers killed during November. [Note: As of publication of this book US military deaths in Iraq have exceeded 1,000] We’ve lost more youngsters killed in Iraq in less than a year than we lost during the first 464crossing the rubicon three years of the Vietnam War. And people say there’s no Vietnam analogy?19[emphasis added] Cleland resigned from the Kean Commission in November 2003. There was little doubt as to why Cleland left the panel. He had been making too much noise. Whether Max Cleland fully understood what he had been involved in, or whether he fully acknowledged it to himself, remains a mystery. There is no doubt that he had been making big waves. Scamming America: The Official Guide to the 9/11 Cover-upis a booklet of doc- uments from the activist group NY911Truth; the booklet got its name from a remark made by Cleland after his resignation, when he said, “Bush is scamming America.” Here is an excerpt: Cleland attacked his own commission after the other members cut a deal to accept highly limited access to CIA reports to the White House that may indicate advance knowledge of the attacks on the part of the Bush administration. “This is a scam,” Cleland said. “It’s dis- gusting. America is being cheated.” “As each day goes by,” Cleland said, “we learn that this govern- ment knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11 than it has ever admitted.... Let’s chase this rabbit into the ground. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that’s what they did; they went to war.”20 The ostensible reason for Cleland’s departure, however, was so that he could accept a nomination from President George W. Bush to serve on the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank.21 Cleland was quickly replaced by former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey. Bob Kerrey One press account neatly summed up Kerrey’s own conflicts of interest. The selection of Kerrey was made not by Bush, it should be pointed out, but rather by the Senate minority leader, Thomas Daschle (Democrat of South Dakota). Kerrey’s own conflicts of interest are myriad. As vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kerrey is a veteran of political cover- ups. While Kerrey was no longer a senator at the time, the committee on which he had served as the highest-ranking Democrat carried out a whitewash of the government role in 9/11, together with its House counterpart, in their toothless joint investigation of the terrorist attacks last year. Kerrey was also one of the key figures who approved the nomina- tion of CIA Director Tenet and long remained his defender and The Record465 political ally. What the CIA knew before September 11 is one of the key questions facing any legitimate investigation into the events. The former senator is also complicit in the Bush administration’s manipulation of the September 11 events to justify a war, already decid- ed upon, against Iraq. Little more than a year ago, Kerrey surfaced as a leading member of an outfit known as the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” formed to promote an unprovoked invasion of the Middle Eastern country. The group, in which Kerrey was the only prominent Democrat, was essentially an offshoot of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a Republican think tank that served as a virtual administra- tion-in-waiting. Its principals included Richard Cheney (now vice president), Donald Rumsfeld (now defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy secretary), George Bush’s younger brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The PNAC elaborated a blueprint for achieving US global hegemony by means of military force, beginning with a war against Iraq. Kerrey had himself been a proponent of a war against Iraq since 1998, joining right-wing Republicans in sponsoring the “Iraqi Liberation Act” and forging close political ties to the Iraqi National Congress, which is headed by the convicted bank embezzler Ahmed Chalabi. In September of last year, Kerrey wrote an opinion column for the Wall Street Journalentitled “Finish the War: Liberate Iraq,” in which he echoed the Bush administration’s attempts to justify the war by falsely linking Iraq to the September 11 attacks. He repeated the phony claim that the alleged 9/11 hijackers’ ringleader, Mohammed Atta, had met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague five months before the attacks. The allegation has been discredited repeatedly by US and foreign intelligence agencies, which say there is no evidence that Atta was ever in the Czech Republic or left the US during this period.22 |
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American Mafia (or simply the Mafia in the United States), also known as Cosa Nostra or La Cosa Nostra, is an Italian-American criminal society and offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia. Much like the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia had no formal name and is a secret criminal society. Its members usually refer to it as Cosa Nostra or by its English translation "our thing". Another translation/meaning of the term is "this thing of ours". The press has also coined the name "National Crime Syndicate" to refer to the entirety of U.S. organized crime, including the Mafia.
The slaves first become aware of the Mafia Joseph 'Joe Cargo' Valachi (September 22, 1903 – April 3, 1971) also known as "Charles Chanbano" and "Anthony Sorge" was the first Mafia member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made Cosa Nostra (meaning "Our Thing") a household name. In October 1963, Valachi had testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations that the Mafia did exist. The FBI's 33 degree Freemason Hoover, lies to the slaves for decades claiming the Mafia doesn't exist, crime doesn't exist In the same period, there were numerous Mafia shootings as a result of Prohibition, while Hoover continued to deny the very existence of organized crime. In the 1950s, evidence of Hoover's unwillingness to focus FBI resources on the Mafia became grist for the media and his many detractors, after famed reporter Jack Anderson exposed the immense scope of the Mafia's organized crime network, a huge threat Hoover had long downplayed. Hoover's retaliation and continual harassment of Anderson lasted into the 1970s. Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, just days before Hoover testified in the earliest stages of the Warren Commission hearings, President Lyndon B. Johnson waived for Hoover the then-mandatory U.S. government service retirement age of seventy, allowing Hoover to remain the FBI Director "for life." How is this relevant to 9/11? |
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American Mafia (or simply the Mafia in the United States), also known as Cosa Nostra or La Cosa Nostra, is an Italian-American criminal society and offshoot of the Sicilian Mafia. Much like the Sicilian Mafia, the American Mafia had no formal name and is a secret criminal society. Its members usually refer to it as Cosa Nostra or by its English translation "our thing". Another translation/meaning of the term is "this thing of ours". The press has also coined the name "National Crime Syndicate" to refer to the entirety of U.S. organized crime, including the Mafia.
The slaves first become aware of the Mafia Joseph 'Joe Cargo' Valachi (September 22, 1903 – April 3, 1971) also known as "Charles Chanbano" and "Anthony Sorge" was the first Mafia member to publicly acknowledge the existence of the Mafia. He is also the person who made Cosa Nostra (meaning "Our Thing") a household name. In October 1963, Valachi had testified before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations that the Mafia did exist. The FBI's 33 degree Freemason Hoover, lies to the slaves for decades claiming the Mafia doesn't exist, crime doesn't exist In the same period, there were numerous Mafia shootings as a result of Prohibition, while Hoover continued to deny the very existence of organized crime. In the 1950s, evidence of Hoover's unwillingness to focus FBI resources on the Mafia became grist for the media and his many detractors, after famed reporter Jack Anderson exposed the immense scope of the Mafia's organized crime network, a huge threat Hoover had long downplayed. Hoover's retaliation and continual harassment of Anderson lasted into the 1970s. Hoover personally directed the FBI investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, just days before Hoover testified in the earliest stages of the Warren Commission hearings, President Lyndon B. Johnson waived for Hoover the then-mandatory U.S. government service retirement age of seventy, allowing Hoover to remain the FBI Director "for life." The thread that wouldn't die. Your just posting stuff now that is not relevant to 9/11. |
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SC
Can you explain how: It is apparent that Dr. Zelikow should never have been appointed to be Executive Staff Director of the Commission. As Executive Staff Director his job has been to determine the focus and direction of the Commission’s investigation, an investigation whose mandate includes understanding why the Bush administration failed to prioritize the Al Qaeda threat. It is abundantly clear that Dr. Zelikow’s conflicts go beyond just the transition period. It is extremely distressing to learn this information at this late date. This new information clearly calls into question the integrity of this Commission’s investigation. The Family Steering Committee repeat- edly expressed concerns over all members’ conflicts requesting that the commission be forthcoming so as not to taint the validity of the report. The Family Steering Committee was unaware of Dr. Zelikow’s participation in this intelligence briefing until today. As such, the Family Steering Committee is calling for: 1. Dr. Zelikow’s immediate resignation. 2. Dr. Zelikow’s testimony in public and under oath. 3. Subpoena of Dr. Zelikow’s notes from the intelligence briefings he attended with Richard Clarke. 4. The Commission to apologize to the 9/11 families and America for this massive appearance of impropriety. has no relevancy to 9/11? |
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Still going keep it up lads others feel free to post in here
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cmon
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nearly 31000 views
impressive |
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Pity they don't have thread royalties
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[:(]
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So why has this fred died? It was just getting started.
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It's a conspiracy momm I tell you
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Maybe it's time we took a look at the moon landings again.
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what moon landings ?
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A further problem with the regional fusion centers and information collection is that there is, more often than not, insufficient purely “terrorist” activity to support a
multi-jurisdictional and multi-governmental level fusion center that exclusively processes terrorist activity. If a fusion center (outside of perhaps NY, LA or DC) were to rely solely on terrorist data to process, I would argue the analysts’ skills would atrophy, as would their interest, from a lack of relevant work. Additionally, due to the paucity of strictly terrorist information, the emergency responder community would soon forget the how or why of reporting information to the fusion center, regardless of any marketing or promotional campaigns to garner interest and participation. -FEMA |
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11 Reasons Why The Threat From Al-Qaeda is Not Real
Radical American cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was ordered to be assassinated by President Obama, met with top military officials at the Pentagon months after the 9/11 attacks CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed in June 2010 on ABC’s This Week that there are less than 100 Al-Qaeda members in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), one of the world’s leading security think tanks, published a report this year which said that the threat of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban is exaggerated by Western policymakers. Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview to the Los Angeles Times’s Patt Morrison in October 2010 that Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist. “The organization that did 9/11 — that Al Qaeda — I don’t think really exists,” said Rice. The U.S. government created, and funded Islamic fundamentalism in the 1980s Robin Cook, who served as a British MP for 22 years and as Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, wrote an article for the Guardian in July 2005, a month before his death: “Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.” A BBC article from July 2004 called “Al-Qaeda’s origins and links” reveals that Osama Bin Laden was a CIA agent in the 1980s. J. Michael Springmann, a 20 year foreign service official, and a former Consulate officer in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has publicly stated for many years that the CIA brought over Muslim radicals to the United States for secret terrorist training. Most of these radicals were brought through Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Germany’s Der Spiegel’s published an article by Siegesmund von Ilsemann called “Arming the Middle East: The Checkered History of American Weapons Deals” in June 2007. The article backed up the reporting done by the BBC, and elsewhere that the United States government “supplied Afghan freedom fighters in the 1980s with money and arms for their struggle against occupying Soviet troops. One of the best customers for the CIA back then was Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden.” Selig Harrison, a current member of the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, a former senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an expert on South Asia, said in March 2001 at a conference called “Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia,” that the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI helped create the backward and tyrannical Taliban. According to Harrison, without the CIA and ISI’s funds and guns, the Taliban wouldn’t exist as a political and religious force in Afghanistan. An excerpt from the Times of India article: “The Taliban are not just recruits from ‘madrassas’ (Muslim theological schools) but are on the payroll of the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence, the intelligence wing of the Pakistani government).” The Taliban are now “making a living out of terrorism.” The September 11, 2001 attacks, which serve as the basis for America’s wars in the Middle East, were committed by the United States government. |
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The September 11, 2001 attacks, which serve as the basis for America’s wars in the Middle East, were committed by the United States government.
Thanks for that. If you knew this all along why didn't you say so earlier? Could have saved us all a lot of trouble. |
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the CIA backed Iran, Iraq, the taliban, Osama Bin Laden, the mujahadeen .......
Talk about backing every horse in the race |
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all intelligence reports lead back to CIA. Every time its CIA. A real war on terror would be war on CIA
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We are off and running again.
 Still no evidence though of a 9/11 conspiracy. |
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Some good stuff there, Tangs.
AQ does indeed appear to have been a CIA project from the start. After the end of the Soviet Afghan campaign they were brought by the US to fight in Bosnia gainst Serbia: . http://www.voltairenet.org/article143050.html |
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Sunset, there is far more evidence of 911 being some form of "inside job" (LIHOP or MIHOP) than of the existence of your "God". If you think otherwise I suggest you look up "evidence" in a dictionary.
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If Man really landed on the Moon how come the price of cheese is still so dear?
Lucan Also, if my namesake really killed the Nanny how come the police have never mentioned DNA evidence? |
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Long kiss Goodnight - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgD4t11Kwdw
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The Lone Gunmen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3WW6eoLcLI
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Some good stuff there, Tangs.
AQ does indeed appear to have been a CIA project from the start. After the end of the Soviet Afghan campaign they were brought by the US to fight in Bosnia gainst Serbia: . http://www.voltairenet.org/article143050.html Have you read this book slarty or are you just taking this interview at face value? |
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Sunset, there is far more evidence of 911 being some form of "inside job" (LIHOP or MIHOP) than of the existence of your "God". If you think otherwise I suggest you look up "evidence" in a dictionary
Haha Very funny. |
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Have you read this book slarty or are you just taking this interview at face value?
No I haven't read the book but I have read the interview (have you?) and it concurs with information from other sources I've seen on the subject of AQ being used as a proxy army in Bosnia by the west after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war. Do you have reason to think the interview does not reflect the book? |
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No I haven't read the book but I have read the interview (have you?)
Yes I have. and it concurs with information from other sources What are these sources and how do you know they are reliable? You seem to take an agnostic position on a lot of stuff until it fits your preconceived ideas and then you seem to take it a face value. Please tell me I am wrong. I've seen on the subject of AQ being used as a proxy army in Bosnia by the west after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war. Do you have reason to think the interview does not reflect the book I don't know, I haven't read the book.Doesn't seem to be on amazon, so it might not have been translated in to English. |
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You are wrong.
"You seem to take an agnostic position on a lot of stuff until it fits your preconceived ideas and then you seem to take it a face value." I suspect that everybody is guilty of confirmation bias to some extent. I woder when you last read a book about atheism, for example? It may even be humanly impossiel to see the world unfettered by assumptions and preconceptios which effect how we filter data. Personally, I treat everything with scepticism, as I have said before. I have long enjoyed reading about ideas with which I expect to disagree - someting I was encouraged to by my A'level Politics teacherand very instructive it it is too. Instead of having firm views about many things I tend to view things in terms of probabilties. I also try to factor in things like the agenda of the author, if any, which can often only be guestimated. For example, there is a long history of intelligence agencies having agents and assets in the media. So when I read/watch/listen to things in the media I don't just passively assume that it is true or even that the author believes it to be true. Instead I wonder, "why might someone want people to think X?" Of course, I dont suspect that the football reports are mendacious but matters such as war reporting where the journalist hasn't seen the action but merely spoken to the NATO spokesman I would treat with a lot of scepticism. |
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You are wrong.
"You seem to take an agnostic position on a lot of stuff until it fits your preconceived ideas and then you seem to take it a face value." I suspect that everybody is guilty of confirmation bias to some extent. Agreed no one is completely objective apart from obviously the anti Christian bigots like Wedged and MOMM. I woder when you last read a book about atheism, for example? A few months ago I read a book called Gospel fictions and I have read books about atheism like Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russel and of course The God Delusion.I have regular debates with atheists, so I am well aware what they believe and that they can't give any evidence for their beliefs. I always try to falsify my beliefs by talking to those that have opposite beliefs to see if they can debunk them.The more I have talked to atheists the more my faith has increased because it is clear they can't debunk what Christians believe and so have to resort to mocking.This shows how puerile their mentality is. It may even be humanly impossiel to see the world unfettered by assumptions and preconceptios which effect how we filter data. Agreed. We are part of reality and can not look at is completely objectively. Personally, I treat everything with scepticism, as I have said before. We all have axioms though.We could all be in a Matrix for all we know. I have long enjoyed reading about ideas with which I expect to disagree - someting I was encouraged to by my A'level Politics teacherand very instructive it it is too. Instead of having firm views about many things I tend to view things in terms of probabilties. Agreed. I also try to factor in things like the agenda of the author, if any, which can often only be guestimated. Every one has an agenda. Some more than others. For example, there is a long history of intelligence agencies having agents and assets in the media. So when I read/watch/listen to things in the media I don't just passively assume that it is true or even that the author believes it to be true. Instead I wonder, "why might someone want people to think X?" Of course, I dont suspect that the football reports are mendacious but matters such as war reporting where the journalist hasn't seen the action but merely spoken to the NATO spokesman I would treat with a lot of scepticism. Of course the media are biased. Depending on which newspaper you read. They contradict each other and put spin on it. You only have to read the Daily Mail to see that.Of course there is a lot of propaganda surrounding war. I think that is generally recognized. It is done for the moral of the people.You only have to look at what was reported during WW2 to see that and what wasn't reported. |
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Sunset: "A few months ago I read a book called Gospel fictions and I have read books about atheism like Why I am not a Christian by Bertrand Russel and of course The God Delusion.I have regular debates with atheists, so I am well aware what they believe and that they can't give any evidence for their beliefs. I always try to falsify my beliefs by talking to those that have opposite beliefs to see if they can debunk them.The more I have talked to atheists the more my faith has increased because it is clear they can't debunk what Christians believe and so have to resort to mocking.This shows how puerile their mentality is." Prove that atheism is a belief. Is "not collecting stamps" a hobby? Prove that atheists can't debunk what Christans claim. What evidence do you have of their puerile mentalities? How can you logically dismiss all atheists as puerile on the basis of a tiny sample? etc etc etc |
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I think you two shoud have a weekend away together in Brighton.
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Prove that atheism is a belief.
Atheists believe there are is no God or gods. There fore it is a belief. They can give no conclusive evidence that they are correct. there fore it is a belief. Is "not collecting stamps" a hobby? True. Prove that atheists can't debunk what Christans claim. I can't prove it , but from my experience the one's I have spoken to over the years can't. What evidence do you have of their puerile mentalities? Again my experience of talking to them over the years. The cildish name calling and mocking because they can't give a reason for their atheistic beliefs. How can you logically dismiss all atheists as puerile on the basis of a tiny sample? I can't. I should of qualified it by saying that I don't think they are all puerile, just the militant one's that come on internet forums.I have friends and family who are atheists, but they are not militant atheists and not anti Christianity. etc etc etc |
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Oh dear, Cristo. I can't believe you still haven't grasped it after so many people have gone to the trouble of explaining it to you so many times. I'm sure a six year-old would have no trouble undestanding it.
Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is the LACK of a belief. The burden of proof lies 100% with the theists. That proof has never been provided. It can't be. It doesn't exist. All you've ever done is provide reasons why YOU believe there's a god. That is not evidence. It was all explained to you yet again by several people on the Noah's flood thread. You never posted again on that thread after it was explained, presumably so you could claim not to have seen it (as you've done on more than one occasion before). I'll bring it back to the top for you to read again. If you any more nonsense to add, do it on that thread rather than this one, which is supposed to be about the events of 11/9. |
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MoMM, that is the clearest answer on these discussions I've ever read on here.
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Wicked Conspiracy. Best ask Mr News corp, and his frends who took out the lease on the twin towers a few months before 9/11, and the other building that mysterly collasped in the early hours of 9/12, that was insured at the same time of it collasped, the same names pop up, big insurance job, and the extras that went with it. maybe it was just a coincident.
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Sunset:
"Is "not collecting stamps" a hobby?" True. ??? [smiley:crazy] |