[CTRL] teachers, Alaskan clergy
-Caveat Lector- scroll Abuse is No. 1 reason teachers lose licenses in W.Va. by The Associated Press Charleston, W.VA. 10/17/05 "Sexual abuse of students is the No. 1 reason public school teachers have lost their licenses in West Virginia during the past five years. About 35 percent of those revocations were because of sexual assault or abuse of a student." "Sexual misdeeds by teachers remains a dirty little secret in schools across the nation even though nearly one in 10 students will be abused by a teacher before they graduate, according to studies conducted by Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. "There are about 4.5 million kids who right now would say they have been the target of physical sexual misconduct. And only about 10 percent of the sexual exploitation going on ever gets reported," Shakeshaft said. While most parents regard schools as sanctuaries, roughly 290,000 students nationwide experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee from 1991 to 2000." http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystorystory_id=122160format=html Local diocese startled by suit By Mary Beth Smetzer 10/16/05 "Officials with the Fairbanks Catholic Diocese were surprised by the "new twist" in the most recent civil suit filed against a priest, diocese spokeswoman Ronnie Rosenberg said. The suit claims the Rev. James E. Jacobson, a Jesuit priest who served more than a decade in western Alaska, sexually assaulted two women, impregnated them and left two sons behind." ""More than 80 complaints have been filed against the Fairbanks diocese as well as the Jesuits in the last few years, alleging sexual abuse of minors by priests and a brother affiliated with the diocese." http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~7244~3094627,00.html www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER == CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/ A HREF=""ctrl/A To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
[CTRL] Judy Miller's War
-Caveat Lector- http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn08182003.html August 18, 2003 CounterPunch Diary Judy Miller's War By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Lay all Judith Miller's New York Times stories end to end, from late 2001 to June 2003 and you get a desolate picture of a reporter with an agenda, both manipulating and being manipulated by US government officials, Iraqi exiles and defectors, an entire Noah's Ark of scam-artists. And while Miller, either under her own single by-line or with NYT colleagues, was touting the bioterror threat, her book Germs, co-authored with Times-men Steven Engelberg and William Broad was in the bookstores and climbing the best seller lists. The same day that Miller opened an envelope of white powder (which turned out to be harmless) at her desk at the New York Times, her book was #6 on the New York Times best seller list. The following week (October 21, 2001), it reached #2. By October 28, --at the height of her scare-mongering campaign--it was up to #1. If we were cynical... We don't have full 20/20 hindsight yet, but we do know for certain that all the sensational disclosures in Miller's major stories between late 2001 and early summer, 2003, promoted disingenuous lies. There were no secret biolabs under Saddam's palaces; no nuclear factories across Iraq secretly working at full tilt. A huge percentage of what Miller wrote was garbage, garbage that powered the Bush administration's propaganda drive towards invasion. What does that make Miller? She was a witting cheer-leader for war. She knew what she was doing. And what does Miller's performance make the New York Times? Didn't any senior editors at the New York Times or even the boss, A.O. Sulzberger, ask themselves whether it was appropriate to have a trio of Times reporters touting their book Germs on tv and radio, while simultaneously running stories in the New York Times headlining the risks of biowar and thus creating just the sort of public alarm beneficial to the sales of their book. Isn't that the sort of conflict of interest prosecutors have been hounding Wall Street punters for? The knives are certainly out for Miller. Leaked internal email traffic disclosed Miller's self-confessed reliance on Ahmad Chalabi, a leading Iraqi exile with every motive to produce imaginative defectors eager to testify about Saddam's biowar, chemical and nuclear arsenal. In late June Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post ran a long story about Miller's ability in recent months to make the US Army jump, merely by threatening to go straight to Rumsfeld. It was funny, but again, the conflicts of interest put the New York Times in a terrible light. Here was Miller, with a contract to write a new book on the post-invasion search for "weapons of mass destruction", lodged in the Army unit charged with that search, fiercely insisting that the unit prolong its futile hunt, while simultaneously working hand in glove with Chalabi. Journalists have to do some complex dance steps to get good stories, but a few red flags should have gone up on that one. A brisk, selective timeline: December 20, 2001, Headline, "Iraqi Tells of Renovations at Sites For Chemical and Nuclear Arms". Miller rolls out a new Iraqi defector, in the ripe tradition of her favorite, Khidir Hamza, the utter fraud who called himself Saddam's Bombmaker. Story: "An Iraqi defector who described himself as a civil engineer said he personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as a year ago. "The defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, gave details of the projects he said he worked on for President Saddam Hussein's government in an extensive interview last week in Bangkok. The interview with Mr. Saeed was arranged by the Iraqi National Congress, the main Iraqi opposition group, which seeks the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. "If verified, Mr. Saeed's allegations would provide ammunition to officials within the Bush administration who have been arguing that Mr. Hussein should be driven from power partly because of his unwillingness to stop making weapons of mass destruction." Notice the sedate phrase "if verified". It never was verified. But the story served its purpose. September 7, 2002: Headline: "US says Hussein intensifies quest for a-bomb parts". This one was by Miller and Michael Gordon, promoting the aluminum tube nonsense: "In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." All lies of course. Miller and Gordon emphasize "Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals". Another of Miller's defectors takes a bow: "Speaking on the condition
[CTRL] Faith-Based War
-Caveat Lector- October 19, 2005 Faith-Based War by Patrick J. Buchanan "This is a very positive day for world peace," said President Bush, following the referendum on a new Iraqi constitution. "Democracies are peaceful countries." Considering that Iraq is perhaps the least peaceful country on earth, the statement seemed jarring. It should not be. For it reflects a quasi-religious transformation in George W. Bush his political conversion to democratism, a faith-based ideology that holds democracy to be the cure for mankind's ills, and its absence to be the principal cause of terror and war. In the theology of a devout democratist, if Americans will only persevere in using their power to convert the Islamic world, then the whole world, to democracy, we will come as close as mankind can to creating heaven on earth. As Bush said in his second inaugural, "So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Speaking two weeks ago to the 20th birthday conclave of the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush recited the true believer's creed: "If the peoples [of the Middle East] are permitted to choose their own destiny by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end." The president was seconded by Vice President Cheney on CNN: "I think we will, in fact, succeed in getting democracy established in Iraq, and I think that when we do, that will be the end of the insurgency." Upon this faith Bush has wagered his presidency, the lives of America's best and bravest, and our entire position in the Middle East and the world. But as the Los Angeles Times' Tyler Marshall and Louise Roug report, U.S. field commander George Casey is skeptical that any election where Iraq's Sunnis are dispossessed of preeminence and power will ensure an end to terror. It may, he warns, bring new Sunni support for the insurgency. Also challenging the Bush faith is Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist at RAND. He cites Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland as countries where democracy has failed to end political violence. Nathan Brown, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment, agrees: "The democratic process as it has worked so far [in Iraq] has certainly done nothing to undermine the insurgency." But the most sweeping challenge to President Bush's faith-based war comes from F. Gregory Gause III in Foreign Affairs. Writes Gause: "There is no evidence that democracy reduces terror. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington." In Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, it is anti-American Islamists who seem positioned to seize power should it fall from the hands of the authoritarian rulers the National Endowment for Democracy and its neoconservative allies seek to destabilize and dump over. If Gause is right and Bush wrong, the fruits of our bloody war for democracy in Iraq could mean a Middle East more hostile to American values and U.S. vital interests than the one Bush inherited. That would be a strategic disaster of historic dimension. Not only does democracy offer no guarantee against terror, writes Gause, democracies are the most frequent targets of terror. Not one incident of terror was reported in China between 2000 and 2003, but democratic India suffered 203. Israel, the most democratic nation in the Middle East, endured scores of acts of terror from 2000 to 2005. Syria's dictatorship experienced almost none. While Saddam's Iraq was terror-free, democratic Iraq suffers daily attacks. Researching 25 years of suicide bombings, scholar Robert Pape found the leading cause was not a lack of democracy, but the presence of troops from democratic nations on lands terrorists believe by right belong to them. The United States was hit on 9/11 because we had an army on Saudi soil. Britain and Spain were hit for sending troops to occupy Iraq. Russia was hit at Beslan because she is perceived as occupying Chechnya. Democracy is thus no more a cure for terror than its absence is the cause. Osama has no moral objection to dictatorships. He means to establish one, a caliphate where mosque and state are joined, and sharia law is imposed without recourse to referendum. As with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ho, and Castro, so, too, with bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Such men seek absolute power and use revolutionary terror as the means to establish their dictatorships. By January, we shall know whether Iraqi democracy is the antidote to terror Bush believes it to be. If it is not, he and we will have to face the grim consequences of his conversion to a utopian ideology in the name of which he pursued a potentially calamitous three-year war. COPYRIGHT CREATORS
[CTRL] Fwd: Rove Just Another Middleman?
-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: October 19, 2005 2:16:53 PM PDTTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Rove Just Another Middleman? Rove not guilty? "Get Ready for Cheney-gate" by missreporter Sat Jul 16, 2005 at 08:11:01 PM PDTJustin Raimondo of antiwar.com asks the provocative question "what if Karl Rove isn't guilty?"As much as he says he would like to see Bush's Brain frog-marched out of the White House, Raimondo does some well-sourced speculation in this article that Rove and other senior White House officials were merely vehicles for leaking Valerie Plame's name. It's about a cabal of war hawks inside the administration who passed on this information to others without telling them about Plame-Wilson's deep cover status, perhaps suggesting that she was just an analyst working at a desk rather than a covert operative involved in a vitally important overseas operation, the knowledge of which was highly compartmentalized and only dispensed on a need-to-know basis. When Rove and his shills blabbed to reporters and anyone who would listen, they didn't realize that they were aiding and abetting an elaborate ploy to stick it to the CIA.Weaving a variety of sources, he concludes, in a nutshell, that the information came from the State Department after Dick Cheney's office ordered a "work-up" on Joe Wilson as he was trying to get his story out in the months after the SOTU address. Raimondo says that two staffers were assigned simultaneously to the State Department, specifically Bolton's office, and the Office of the Vice President. So the Vice President('s office) leaked the information to Rove and other presidential aides, who in turn leaked it to reporters all over the capital. Meaning that this is a vast conspiracy that reaches to Dick Cheney's office. Raimondo questions why the prosecutor would spend all this time and energy just in pursuit of Rove.Was it a coincidence that two men who worked for Dick Cheney also worked for John Bolton? Who in the administration would've had access to the specific information regarding Plame-Wilson's role in a deep-cover CIA operation involving nuclear proliferation? Why, the man who was the State Department deputy secretary in charge of "weapons of mass destruction" - the somewhat irritable if not downright reckless John Bolton, would-be ambassador to the UN, who played a central role in promulgating the Niger Uranium Myth.Conveniently, two of Bolton's assistants, David Wurmser and John Hannah, also worked in Cheney's office. A story by UPI's Richard Sale, published last year, points at Cheney's office and specifically at Hannah as having played a key role in all this:"Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. "According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, were the two Cheney employees. 'We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,' one federal law-enforcement officer said. ... The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah 'that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time' as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said."Who is John Hannah? According to Juan Cole Hannah is a neoconservative and old cold warrior who is really more of a Soviet expert than a Middle East expert. But in the 90s he for a while headed up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that represents the interests of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).Remember: The AIPAC connection should raise a red flag: AIPAC is already at the center of a case involving espionage conducted by Israel against the United States, with Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin indicted for passing classified information on to longtime AIPAC leader Steve Rosen and his aide Keith Weissman, with an Israeli embassy official, chief political officer Naor Gilon, directly involved.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
[CTRL] Fwd: Let the Heads Roll ...
-Caveat Lector- Begin forwarded message:From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: October 19, 2005 2:44:19 PM PDTTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Let the Heads Roll ... Former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer last week:"On the intelligence, what the president said [about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa] raises an interesting issue, which hasn't been followed by the news media sufficiently. "The documents on which that statement of the president was based were fabrications. We got them from the British. We asked the British, where did you get these documents? They told us they got them from the Italians. "Now, did the Italians fabricate them? And if so, for what purpose? Or did someone else give them to the Italians?"I think we have to pursue that, because the fact of the matter is, our intelligence not only has been poor, but we have been manipulated in the intelligence area by sources which give us intelligence, in order to influence us."Manipulated? BY WHOM? And for what? The significance of the Fitzgerald inquiry is that, before it's over, we'll likely have answers to both questions.Critics of this war have long maintained that the nation was pushed, shoved, and rushed into war by a cabal with its own agenda. In uncovering the culprits, this investigation is bound to unearth the network of Washington warmongers who retaliated with such swift treachery when Joe Wilson hit them, unexpectedly, in a weak spot. Their vulnerability is due to the fact that the source of the President's State of the Union assertion that Saddam was seeking uranium in "an African country" turned out to be a crude forgery. One crime leads to the detection of yet another, perhaps greater crime: and that is how regimes are sometimes brought down. It's happened before, you know. At a time when the methods and quality of intelligence-gathering by federal agencies is in the spotlight, it isn't just the Democrats who are eager to find out what's gone wrong with the process. A lot is at stake. How did a forged document get by so many people and land, as it were, on the President's desk as "fact"? The answer is going to be politically explosive. What is astonishing, in view of the ongoing investigation, is the boldness of this clique, as they fight like cornered rats, spitting and hissing at their tormentors. The Washington Post reports that, even while the investigation into the outing of agent Plame is heating up,"Sources said the CIA believes that people in the [Bush] administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame…."Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it. "CIA officials have challenged the accuracy of the INR document, the official said, because the agency officer identified as talking about Plame's alleged role in arranging Wilson's trip could not have attended the meeting."The classified document "has been circulated around," according to the Post. So the same people who leaked Plame's undercover status – and passed off forged "evidence" of Saddam's nuclear ambitions as authentic – are now adding the theft of classified documents to the growing list of their crimes. What's amazing is that this kind of a leak would be engineered through such an obvious front group. The latest swipe at Wilson and Plame was executed by a right-wing (neocon) news agency, Talon News, whose parent group is called "GOP USA." They somehow bamboozled Wilson into doing an interview, in the course of which they asked him:"An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?" "GOP USA"? I mean, how obvious can you get?What's interesting is that if "Talon News" somehow got its hot little hands on a document that purported to be the minutes of a meeting of CIA officials, it was almost certainly a fake. Like the Niger "yellow-cake" forgeries, which contained the names of officials who could not have been parties to the purported transaction, the phony INR document puts an individual where he couldn't have been. A consistent incompetence seems to be the hallmark of our serial forger.But is it really incompetence – or is there a method to this kind of sloppiness? After all, the reader of the Talon News interview with
